Networking

This is a guest post by Jorge Reparaz

Downtime is the demon every entrepreneurial translator struggles with. No matter at what stage in your career path, a drop in workload is enough to make you sleepless, even if your experience tells you it is likely to be temporary. The solution may lie in a multifactorial approach, but a change of mindset is downright paramount.

Translators see themselves as mere translators, not as a holistic entity with different and essential roles in business. Being proficient or even excellent in your field of action is a very passive role these days. You should morph into what Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, calls ‘the start-up of you’, that is, you as your own brand, your own asset, your own PR person. This process of redesigning your persona unleashes a flood of endorphins, enthusiasm, and… granted, anxiety.

                  Succeeding in business is all about making connections – Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group

 British tycoon Richard Branson may have a say in this subject, I guess, so let’s give him the benefit of the doubt: Succeeding and networking are inexorably intertwined. Nevertheless, two decades under my belt working in the corporate world has taught me that you have to know your users very well. I will not tell you how to start – you have already started in my mind – or what CAT-tools to promote – there are many people who do it far better than I might. I will focus on what, in my frontal cortex, are core things.

NETWORKING – PLAYING TO PEOPLE’S FANTASIES

                Think as you like, but behave like others – Richard Green author of The 48 Laws of Power

Author Richard Greene, in his Machiavellian, manipulative and best-selling book “The 48 Laws of Power”, asserts – in my view rightly – that equals attract each other, not opposites as folklore goes. Read your clients, understand what they want, try to blend in, and come across as someone they can rely on in the broadest sense. You should speak their language in their world. Thinking you can have a significant top-tier client base through referrals, willing to pay what you ask for, just because you excel at what you do is mostly a huge mistake. Your psychological configuration will set you apart. Your main asset should be you. No doubt.

• Have excellent business cards. If you can hire a designer’s services, do so – it speaks volumes of you. Include a QR code that allows your prospects to download your information without having to type it in. Yes, practical and flashy.
• If you fantasize about a logo, work out how much it will cost and dive in.
• Set up a cool and gorgeous Website. Don’t skimp. Your Website is you.
• Show a perfect LinkedIn, only with contacts representing you professionally. And forget about that photo of you in the Caribbean or holding your baby, that’s Facebook.
• If you have one niche, be as knowledgeable as possible. Your clients must know you know. But, do not seek to impress anyone. Just come across as a smart person with the intuition of saying the right thing at the right time.
• When you face a meeting with decision-makers. Attend it dressed, your wallet allowing, as if you were coming from selling the Empire State Building. Clothes may not be that important in your universe, but they are in theirs.
• Keep regularly in touch with your existing clients, but not like a door-to-door seller. Be nuanced, making them happy because their faces crossed your mind.
• Finally, you are not “the translator”. You are the criminal lawyer or the accountant that will bail your client out of prison. Even when you do not charge a fortune hourly as these guys do. Change your self-perception and you will change the way you position yourself with your clients.

TURNING MARKETING & NETWORKING INTO A LIFESTYLE

                       Entrepreneurship is not a part-time job, and it’s not even a full-time job. It’s a lifestyle – Carrie Layne, BestBuzz Founder & CEO

When you are a freelance professional, you have to re-engineer your viewpoints, no plan B. Being in business mode is priority one. You must make marketing your second nature, which is not incompatible at all with having a good laugh with friends over a beer. Flow in and out of your different roles at will. Why typecast yourself or compartmentalize your life? You find yourself emailing a job while having brunch on a Sunday? OK, have a workout on Monday morning while many with 9-5 jobs are glued to computer screens. Your life is just different. If you don’t want money to be an issue, begin psyching yourself up.

I am sincerely sure that guys like Mark Zuckerberk or Elon Musk do enjoy life; I mean it. They are just programmed differently at a cellular level, and make sense of the world through lateral thinking, acting purposely; Zuckerberk giving a press conference in China … in Chinese is a case in point.  Absolutely everything starts and ends in your mind, much more so your own reinvention.

• Always carry cards on you, even when attending a birthday party.
• In conversations, drop -– subtly -– what you do a few times, and – very subtly – who you work with just as many.
• Never, ever underestimate any chance to strike up a business relationship with anyone. In her must-read book What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, neuroscientist Rita Seelig, from Standford University, states that decontextualizing people is one of the biggest mistakes businesspeople make. Learn to smell who you are with. Google prospective clients. Check them out on LinkedIn. Ask business contacts about them. You cannot be out of the loop. Leave that to those who do not get the jobs you get.
• Always speak kindly about the people you have worked or work with. The hormones you trigger with positive messages are different from the cancerous cortisol you unleash with negative ones.
• Try to see how you can help others, how you can be useful to them, that will turn you into a very desirable asset. That’s what we want, right?

YOUR NEW YOU: A STRATEGIST

I hope that by now you are, at a minimum, considering making changes. Whatever we do, translating in our case, it is imperative to have a strategy. Be ready for changes and develop the street smarts and suppleness to bounce back after a fall. Learn from your mistakes instead of stubbornly blaming them on external forces. See your clients as the vehicles to lead the life you want to lead. Read about that area you are likely at your weakest: business, marketing, networking and with some tweaks, adjust the tips to your market and circumstances. Redesign your lifestyle so that you can show your universe your fittest you. The world is your play field; you just have to rewrite your script and start the game. Enjoy the journey.

Success is living up to your potential. That’s all. Wake up with a smile and go after life. Don’t just show up at the game or the office. Live it, enjoy it, smell it, feel it. – Joe Kapp, former American football quarterback

Jorge Reparaz

Jorge Reparaz is an English <> Spanish translator and interpreter with vast experience in corporate finance and economy. He worked as an interpreter for the American Embassy in Buenos Aires for 4 years and as a regional in-house translator and interpreter for the rating agency Standard & Poor’s, Buenos Aires office, for 9 years. At present, he is the managing partner of ITER TRANSLATIONS www.itertranslations.com – a translation company specialized in financial and economic subjects. He also writes on his blog www.translationsthinktank.com about issues regarding translation and interpreting. You can reach Jorge at reparazjorge@itertranslations.com

For more information and help to create a marketing plan and get your year started right, check out the Quick Start Guide – 8 steps to a marketing plan for translators.