In any business there’s a lot of uncertainty and this is felt more keenly, the smaller the business. As freelance translators, we can be dealing with uncertainty in changes in workload as clients move from project to project, change the way they operate or handle translations, promise work that only emerges months later or insist they need help either right this minute or not at all. Then we have income fluctuations with uncertainty over late payments, and making sure we can pay ourselves a steady income despite varying payment terms.
Not knowing what’s around the corner can be an exciting adventure in another context but stressful in business. It can hold you back from taking the action you want to take – raising rates and contacting ideal clients –because you’re unsure of the outcome and how it will impact your business.
Read on for some tips to help you make the decisions you need to make from a place of resilience not unease.
Everyday uncertainty – you’ve got that covered
When you’re away from home, you often encounter unexpected scenarios. You might be on a family holiday, or you could be out in the wild on an exciting expedition. Your plans can change with the weather, an injury, a forgotten piece of kit. It’s always the toothpaste for me. When that happens, you get creative with what’s available or go and source what you need. For bigger problems, you might get the help of a local.
You have to adapt at home too. Family members or pets get sick, you might have a household emergency or a repair to organise, or – let’s think of a positive example – your partner might surprise you with a fabulous mini-break, and you’ve got to scramble to wrap up all your commitments and get your translation projects sorted so you can go and enjoy the fun.
That’s the kind of uncertainty that we know we can deal with because you’ve no doubt already tackled all of those scenarios and more. You willingly put yourself in uncertain situations all the time in life, even if you don’t consider yourself to be a risk taker or particularly adventurous. Just going into business without an employer to pay your monthly salary was a risk, but it’s one that you’re accustomed to now, so perhaps you don’t recognise that achievement.
The latest UK statistics state that only 39.4 % of new businesses survive beyond five years.1 In the EU, the average figure comes in at 46 %. 2 Let’s just take a moment to celebrate your accomplishments if you’ve passed the five-year mark!
Business is all about making decisions under uncertainty
Everything about business is uncertain, and we’re all making decisions with some degree of uncertainty. Linnea Gandhi and Eric Johnson are behavioural scientists and business researchers, who have written about this topic for the Harvard Business Review.3 I especially love that they speak in favour of an experimental approach to reduce that uncertainty. They found that one of the problems big corporations face is that they only incentivise positive results, and that’s a problem, because new initiatives and experiments require taking short-term risks and being open to the very real risk of failing. Sometimes you need to fail to gain the insights that you need for the longer-term benefits.
Wouldn’t you much rather know that an idea isn’t going to work sooner rather than later? Rather than throwing a load of money at it, making a bit splash and then a few months down the line realising it was a terrible mistake. It’s much better to ‘fail’ first, and then you can tweak and adapt things later.
The benefits of being a small translation business
Now, as small businesses and individuals, our experiments and adventures are much lower risk. We’re agile and can adapt once we have the information we need. Admittedly, our testing is going to be on a smaller scale because we’re not contacting or testing our ideas on thousands of people – we don’t need to. But what we do have is something much better: A personal approach.
A one-to-one connection with your target market means you can speak directly with your ideal clients and respond really quickly. If you speak to an exciting prospect but your interaction leaves you with a bad taste or something feels off, you can put that down to experience and let them go. Alternatively, a new conversation might reveal a bigger opportunity and you can tailor a proposal to the new requirements and react swiftly.
As a small translation business we can get the information we need, implement, improve, or switch direction in a matter of hours. So although you might end up with an unexpected insight or unusual opportunity, you can choose to pursue it or put it to one side. You have the ability to act quickly and the power to make decisions that are right for you. And the good news is that there’s a lot we can control.
Focus on marketing actions instead of outcomes
Actions, we can control. Usually, we’ll focus on an outcome i.e. whether a potential client is going to say yes or no, whether our offer will be accepted or not, whether a social media post will get loads of likes and comments. The problem with this is that we usually expect the worst – like someone we want to work with saying a big fat No.
People buy from us when they’re ready, not when we’re ready. So even if our message, our service, and our strategy are all perfectly aligned with our dream client, there’s a small number of people – a very small number of people – who are actually ready to collaborate at any given time. That’s why it’s essential to stay in touch on a regular basis to make sure that we’re ready when they’re ready.
But we can set ourselves up for success and focus on how many conversations we have, how many connections we make, what actions we’re taking to be more visible in the right places and to the right people. If we’re taking enough action, which is something that we can track, and if it is effective action, then as a bare minimum we’ll get the information we need to know if we’re heading in the right direction.
The more action we take, the more feedback and the greater the likelihood of getting the results we want: new clients, higher rates, better choice of projects, more control over our time and our business.
The feeling of unease
Logically, you might be nodding along, thinking this all makes sense. And yet logic gets cast aside in the moment. You might still get a visceral feeling of unease and anxiety when you’re about to do something new.
Whether you’re behind a computer screen at home or meeting people in real life at an event, this anxiety can be a huge obstacle. Your heart rate quickens, your hands are clammy, you wonder whether your breakfast is going to make a re-appearance. It’s the instinctive part of your brain telling you you’re unsafe in this unfamiliar setting. It senses danger which puts you in fight or flight mode, even though you might simply be hitting send on a connection request, publishing an article or telling clients and colleagues all the different ways they can work with you. The bigger the risk – like going to a client industry event, speaking in front of your target audience or pitching for a dream project – the more visceral those instinctive fight-or-flight feelings.
There are a few ways that you can reassure your brain that you’re not facing down an angry buffalo. Here are three things I do when dealing with uncertainty.
1. Find the familiar
When those physical symptoms manifest, focus on what you can see, hear, touch, smell, all of those senses. Because it’s very likely that a lot of those sensations will be familiar. You can feel the ground underneath your feet. You can see people that represent safety. Taking a little bit of time to just stand still and take a look around also signals to your subconscious that you’re safe. Because if there was an angry buffalo right in front of you, you wouldn’t have the time to take a look around.
2. What’s the worst that can happen?
This may sound trite but it truly helps me put things into perspective. If the worst happens when I’m marketing or running my business, no one’s going to die. Someone might hate me, I might embarrass myself, I might lose a potential client, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not the end of the world.
3. Prepare ahead of time – but not in the way you think
This is probably the most important: Preparation that we can do ahead of time to minimise those feelings you get when you’re actually in that scenario. And I don’t mean spending hours perfecting your portfolio or doing extra research here. My top tip is to regularly put yourself in a situation that involves an element of minor risk. By stretching your comfort zone just a little, inside and outside of work, and mini-adventures is an excellent way to do this.
Build resilience in your translation business with mini-adventures
Mini-adventures you embark on in your personal life, help build resilience that transfers over to your business and helps when dealing with uncertainty. Shaking things up just a little in your personal life could even be as simple as trying a new food or taking a different route home on a walk. Anything with the slightest hint of jeopardy, where the outcome is uncertain. Roll the dice or flip a coin to make your next decision. Join a friend for some forest bathing, introduce yourself to a new networking group. Take a taster class in African drumming, Taekwondo or pole fit.
This kind of thing slowly builds up your tolerance to scenarios with an uncertain outcome. And it sounds ridiculous, but it absolutely does work. Schedule your bolder marketing for when you’ve come back from a run, all high on endorphins and ready to take on the world!
Why does it help? Doing something new helps build up trust in yourself and gives you confidence when dealing with slightly risky situations. It boosts your resilience and all of that is directly correlated to how confident you feel when marketing. It boosts your confidence when you’re at work, raising your rates, contacting new people and pitching for new opportunities.
Your mini-adventures can start today
Do something where the outcome is uncertain. It doesn’t have to be huge, but I’d love you to keep in mind the idea of going on mini-adventures inside and outside of work. When you stretch your comfort zone in one area, it transfers to other areas. Challenging yourself regularly is a fantastic way to build resilience. It’s fun, makes life more interesting, and will help deal with uncertainty in your translation business. I can’t wait to hear what you get up to!
References
- Office for National Statistics (ONS), published 18 November 2024, ONS website, statistical bulletin, Business demography, UK: 2023
- https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/htmlpub/key_figures_on_european_business_2021/business_dynamics.html
- Linnea Gandhi and Erik Johnson, 8 Things to Do Before You Run a Business Experiment, Harvard Business Review, 2019 https://hbr.org/2019/02/8-things-to-do-before-you-run-a-business-experiment
If you’d like to hear about my mini-adventures and behind the scenes of my marketing experiments, you’ll enjoy my weekly newsletter for translators. You can subscribe here.
You can also find my book, Your Ticket to Explore – Essential preparation for your translation marketing adventures, in all good bookshops.
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