Putting a name and a real-world profile on your ideal client

The best news of the year so far, for me as a freelance translator, has been the realisation that my client portfolio includes two 'ideal clients.' In fact, one of them deserves super-ideal status, because it not only is fantastic but also points the way to finding other similarly great business partners.

I entered 2015 convinced that marketing would be a crucial element of my year, the one thing that would make or break my translation business in the medium term. I realised that, until now, most of my clients, and certainly the good ones, have found me on their own. I have made sure that my name is out there and that people around me know that I am a professional freelance translator, but so far I have not really managed to attract clients 'on purpose.' Directories and word of mouth have indeed worked, but I am sure I can do more than simply sit and wait for people to knock on my door. 

There was one little problem, of course: I did not really know what 'doing more' meant in more concrete terms. So I had some homework to do. In October, I attended a one-day seminar with Marta Stelmaszak in Buenos Aires, I have avidly listened to every episode in Tess Whitty's podcast, read Tess's book as well as Andrew Morris's and even explored online materials on marketing beyond the world of translation. All of that has delivered very valuable awareness of what I like to do and can do particularly well, along with a sense of how to go about increasing my portfolio of people who hire me to do precisely such things.

First of all, I had a good look at my existing client base. I realised that I have one fantastic client, a firm that requires a lot of translation on topics I love, pays a great rate and has brilliant in-house project managers, so I get all the good things of working with a direct client without any of the hassle. I love them.

Then, I realised that that client, my star client, is probably not my most valuable client. My most valuable client is also great. They pay a lower rate but also send me lot of very interesting work and are easy to handle. What makes them really special at the particular spot in my career where I currently find myself is the fact that they are hardly unique: There are plenty of potential clients out there with very similar characteristics and, at the moment, it has become almost my life's mission to find a few of those near-clones and convince them that I can work well with them too.

That is precisely the good thing about coming up with an ideal client, in marketing terms. An ideal client is a key factor when it comes to building a sustainable, long-term business, because it should be the person or firm you are in business for. You can work for anyone else who is looking for your services and willing to pay what they are worth, of course, but growth prospects should be based on identifying and convincing ideal clients that your services are just right for them.

In an ideal world, I would like to have at least two more such ideal clients, and I am working on that. However, the very realisation that my ideal client does exist, that they are not just a random illusion but rather people who can indeed benefit from my services and do value them has been a massive boost to my confidence and my will to find further outlets for my services.

Now it is up to me to work hard to bridge the gap between an ideal client and an actual client, to identify and win over more of those clients for whom the translation work I do best and most happily is an asset they need on a daily basis. That is clearly no easy task, but then neither was actually identifying what to look for in an originally big, broad and impersonal market. The exercise of breaking down 'the market' into pieces with an easily recognisable name who are clearly connected with who I am as a professional feels like a major leap forward.

I feel like I have achieved that first goal of the year and I am delighted about that, although there are many months still ahead and many tasks left to do. I will keep you posted about any further developments!

Why the ATA Mentoring Programme is worth exploring (before applications close)

This time last year I was feeling a bit stuck. My freelance translation business had reached a plateau of sorts, after a start that had exceeded all my expectations, and I had the impression that I had run out of ideas on how to push it forward.

At the time, the only thing I knew for sure was I wanted to keep trying, and the ATA Mentoring Programme emerged as a welcome tool, one of only a few things I had not yet tested, a way to step outside my own head and bring in some outside help.

Applications are now open for the 2015 class, until 7 March, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Whether, like me, you are somewhat stuck, or whether you can simply benefit from someone else's vision, experience and external assessment, which we arguably all can, at any stage in our careers, it definitely is worth applying!

The programme asks you to set yourself goals and will pair you with someone who can help you achieve them. Your mentor will most likely work in a different language pair and be located far away from you, but they will probably have lots of positive contributions to make. They will not do the work for you, but they can point you in the right direction, or at least in a direction that is worth exploring.

As I applied for the programme, I tried to pinpoint the problems I was facing. That was already good, insofar as I had to sit down, think what the problem might be and explain it in writing to someone who did not know me at all. It helped me define exactly where I felt I had reached a dead end.

A few weeks later, by the time I had actually been assigned a mentor, things had picked up on their own, and I am pretty sure that the exercise of trying to make sense of it all helped. My mentor became someone who would answer my questions and provide me with real-life benchmarks, which was very, very welcome. I had done lots of reading, followed many online debates and engaged in generous introspection, but the chance to ask an actual person concrete questions was quite refreshing.

My mentor made suggestions that have helped me define in greater detail the translator I want to be, gave me answers that allowed me to feel more confident on my chances of getting there and - as his single most important contribution - persuaded me to spend a small fortune to go to the ATA Conference in Chicago. That event changed the way I feel about the profession, so it was clearly great advice! And, of course, my mentor was around to make the whole thing less daunting.

The Mentoring Programme is free for ATA members, and I am pretty sure it will be worth every effort you put into it. You do not need to be a newbie, just someone with things to learn and explore, and it will help you from the moment you start to write down why you want to sign up for it. The programme will probably leave you with a much clearer idea of where you want to go in the field of translation a few years into the future.

By the way, in case you are wondering, I need to put in a few years' work first, but yes, I will hopefully return to the programme sooner rather than later, as a mentor!

Reinventing your professional self: a career change as a conscious, creative, exciting process

Changing careers is a privilege. You get to work out what you want to do and more generally who you want to be, insofar as work is a major portion of most people's lives these days. And you get to build on aspects of your personality and the wider world that you never knew about at university.

The decision to embark on a different career, as a freelance translator in my case, comes coupled with the opportunity to rethink yourself as a professional.

You need to work out your strengths and your weaknesses in an altogether different setting, and to consider your skills and aspirations both in the short term and far into the future. You need to establish whether there is a market for the services you would like to provide, and find that market in the form of potential and actual clients, one at a time. And you need to make sure your dream plan supports both your personal and professional ambitions and the living standards you want for yourself and your family.

All this is a major challenge, but it also breeds a massive surge in enthusiasm. I have been known to say, 'I don't even care about whether or not it works out.' I did of course want my career change to be successful in all possible respects, but what I meant was that the positive feeling, the excitement I drew from each step of the way was in itself a great thing. I stand by that: working out the professional you want to be is a fascinating and extremely energising experience.

Of course, I had chosen my first career too, I prepared myself well to become a journalist. It was in tune with many of my skills, suited my aspirations at the time and was great fun for many years, but the process is quite different the second time around.

When I chose to become a reporter, I was young and did not really need to take into account several factors that are crucial more than a decade later. I am a bit of a control freak and was one back then too, but I just did not know enough about the world around me to really be able to think rationally about a lot of the things the decision involved. I thought hard, but I was in many ways doing the wrong kind of thinking. That was of course inevitable: as we age, we do not necessarily become wiser, but we do tend to have more information.

The good thing about a career change is that you get to imagine yourself as a professional all over again, with a broader focus. You should clearly take pride of place in that wider picture too, but having a clearer idea of what to expect from the world around you and what others 'out there' expect from you is a healthy addition.

The difference between a university leaver who becomes a journalist and a journalist in her mid-thirties who becomes a rookie freelance translator can be spelled out in terms of consciousness as well as age.

As a career changer, I was more aware of my own skills and had more confidence in them. I knew I lacked other tools that would be useful, and I had a clearer idea of how I could start to develop those too. And most importantly, in my opinion, I approached the whole process with a more critical eye, constantly assessing how the whole bundle could help me lead the life I want to lead.

As a young graduate, I looked for a job I would enjoy doing. As a career changer, I knew I was looking for one crucial element in a more generally satisfying life and that keeping a balance with all the things that were already going well was important.

A career change is a way to revisit the abstract exercise of choosing your profession in your early twenties, pull it apart and turn it into a more down-to-earth, better-rounded effort with feasibility as a key element.

I want to be a freelance translator for a lot of reasons besides the fact that I like translating. I am good at it, there is a market out there for my services, it allows me to earn the amount of money I want to earn to lead the life I want to lead, and it is consistent with that life more generally.

Of course, well into my thirties the opportunity comes coupled with greater responsibilities, including my share of the family income and a certain obsession with how to transition from my employer's health plan to its still-to-be-determined freelance equivalent. It takes time, many hours of scratching my head and ploughing along with a mix of caution and determination.

However, being able to reinvent yourself so many years into your adult life is a fun way to grow. I am convinced that the experience, creativity, ambition and careful planning one can muster with university as a distant memory would lead anyone to a life that is closer to the one they want to lead. It has certainly worked wonders for me.

Enjoy success, celebrate progress as the year draws to a close

It is that time of the year again, and I am inevitably reflecting on how everything went, looking back on my original plans, recalling the milestones of my very own 2014 and devising ways to hopefully build on it from January.

The first thing I thought about was that, as a freelance translator, I have met and even exceeded the income goal I had set myself for the year. It was an ambitious goal, and it looked almost impossible as recently as July, so it is a major achievement.

However, the more I think about it, the more I become convinced that the real story of a fantastic year for me is not success, but progress: the best thing about 2014 is not that I attained my income goal, but rather that I am a lot closer to my long-term objectives as a freelance translator.

Meeting an income target is great for at least three reasons: the achievement itself feels very nice, it means I have an extra cash injection rather than have to worry about making ends meet, and it will allow for investment that is perhaps a bit more ambitious and even expensive in the year to come.

However, what I will be taking away from 2014 is certainly not an income figure. As I came to realise that, I tried to come up with a list of the things that will hopefully stay with me from 1 January.

One would like to think that effort, skills and perseverance always pay off, but, at 38, I am old enough to know that is not always the case. Still, it is no reason not to go for precisely that mix: it may not be infallible, but it remains the safest bet.

This year, I have worked hard, got my DipTrans, took several MOOCs to improve my knowledge of my areas of specialisation, tried to be helpful and pleasant to deal with, and delivered the best translations I could muster. When I got stuck, I looked harder for possible solutions and I tried to listen to anyone with a different approach. When I was doing well, I tried to build on my achievements.

I started the year with resounding failures, and the effort I made to get over those probably set me up for the successes that were to follow. I looked into the ATA Mentoring Programme, and a suggestion from my mentor took me to the ATA conference in Chicago.

I got several new clients, and they are generally a lot better than the clients I had last year. I even had a few lucky, almost unexpected breakthroughs with very good direct clients, but luck was hardly part of the equation as I tried to gain their trust and, hopefully, repeat business.

A couple of direct-client projects where I felt overstretched became my first project management efforts, as I found translators and proofreaders, negotiated other people's rates rather than my own, and tried to build relationships with fellow freelancers for the future. I found project management hard, stressful, and definitely out of my comfort zone. However, those projects were instances of major personal growth and learning as well as huge business development.

I refloated my blog, which had fallen through the cracks when things were not going so well, for lack of anything positive to say. I also made the leap into Twitter, which I had consciously avoided (as too time-sapping) until them. Surprisingly enough, not only did I find that I enjoy Twitter and can keep it in check, at least for now, but also got a nice translation job from a colleague out of it!

The ATA conference was a major expense. Imagine a trip from Buenos Aires to Chicago! I hesitated a lot, but it was honestly worth every penny. I got a great confidence boost, inspiring exchanges with colleagues and sessions and a bunch of business cards that may or may not deliver actual work. There again, however, I did my homework: I travelled to the conference, tried to enjoy my time there, and did the follow-up. I will be back next year, and it was important for me to make sure that my second experience is different, because it builds on earlier discoveries and earlier efforts.

I can also count some achievements at a more personal level. Spending over a month in Brazil, to cover the World Cup as a reporter, brought home the fact that, inside, I am now a translator rather than a journalist. A dream reporting job was suddenly not quite as perfect as it could have been, just because the heart was not completely in it.

Anyone who has read my blog from the start will know of my conflicted relationship with French. I love it, but I eventually dropped it from my translation CV altogether because it did not seem to convince clients and was effectively just noise in my profile. This year, I received one French-English 8,000-word project and could not believe my luck. I took it on, and got the following reply from the project manager: "I want to congratulate you, because it is really a pleasure to read your translation."

In this post, I want to highlight my own realisation that this year's achievements relative to my income goals are tiny compared to those that will lead to more and better work in the years to come: more and better clients, closer relationships with colleagues, a greater understanding of the profession, in terms of both depth and scope, and above all a clearer idea of my own potential role within it.

On 1 January, both my income target and my professional development goals will be different. However, they will incorporate everything I have learned this year, and they will be all the more solid for it.

Translation as a problem-solving service: a consumer's approach

I am a proud translator, but I do not live in a vacuum: I am also a consumer, and I find that my own experience as such is an essential tool in my dealings with any potential or actual clients.

It is a simple idea. Beyond languages, CAT tools and writing skills, customer service is one thing that can make me stand out from the global translation crowd. I still need to translate well but, all other things being equal, I will be a better translator if I am more customer-oriented.

Being a consumer in other works of life provides me with crucial information about my clients and their needs, and I make a point of keeping in mind that information at all times. What do I need when I need a service? When and how do I want it delivered? Who and why do I appreciate the most for the servicethey provide? Who do I call again, even if they have never actually worked for me?

As a consumer, I have dealt with a zillion unreliable and unfriendly service providers. There is the electrician who says he will show up on Tuesday and does not, and the plumber who says she will turn up at 2 pm and shows up at 3.30 pm, just as I am getting ready to pick up my children from school. There is the Internet company who says the line will be back to normal within two hours, which I can cope with, and again tells me it will take two hours when nothing happens and I call in again to report that things are still not working. And there is the lawyer who does not reply to my e-mails.

We have all been there, probably lots of times. In my case, the unreliability of my own service providers continues to drive me nuts whenever I have to endure it, but I have to admit that it also provides fantastic ongoing training in my effort to become a good translator. It is an always timely reminder of the kind of professional I do not want to be.

When I call a plumber, an electrician or a lawyer, it is because I need to get something fixed or sorted out. I need the job done sooner rather than later, although I can accept that I am probably not the only person in town with a problem that needs to be solved. In most cases, I can wait at least a bit, but I do need to feel that the service provider in question is taking me seriously, that they acknowledge the problem I am facing, that they will try to fix it as soon as possible.

I need them to be pleasant in their dealings with me - not to buy me lunch or sing my favourite song, just to be civil and helpful. I need them to show up when they said they would, to have with them any tools they might foreseeably have to work with, to acnowledge the fact that I know nothing about their trade without making me feel stupid or cheated.

I assume that potential clients who approach me as a translator want the same things, and I make a point of responding as I wish the electrician, the plumber and the lawyer would. Whether they are agencies or direct clients, people who seek out my translation services come up to me with a need, and it is essential that I respond to that need. I may not always be able to meet it, but I can always try, and I can certainly always aim to remain pleasant and point clients in the direction of a solution.

Responding means acknowledging the need, returning e-mails and calls, perhaps explaining why I cannot translate a document on aircraft engines at all or why I cannot translate a 5,000-word report by tomorrow morning, or noting that I am busy until a certain date. I may be able to provide a referral, or say I cannot do the job by Thursday but can do it by lunchtime on Friday.

It is hardly rocket science. All you need to do is to remember your dealings with your last two computer repair people, the annoying one you dropped and the one who saved your life. Presumably you, like me, know who of those you want to be.

At the end of the day, being nice will not make you translate better, but it will ensure that you provide a better service, and it will help you run a better business. As freelance translators, that is surely part of our job, and a major part of our job at that.

Friendliness is simply business savvy, even without considering its positive personal effects on ourselves and those around us. So... be pleasant, be helpful, be thoughtful, for your own sake as well as your clients'!