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After last week’s newsletter about the amount of time it takes to grow and run a successful freelance business, (spending roughly 10% of your time on marketing, and 40% total on activities other than translating or interpreting), a couple of readers replied, saying something along the lines of:
“Yes, yes, I totally get it, but how do I find the motivation to do this? When I don’t have translation or interpreting work, I find myself just doing other things (stuff around my house, etc.) instead of marketing.”
This is a common issue, so I thought it was worth its own article. I’ll address this with a few ideas, in no particular order.
First: I’m not exaggerating
I think a lot of freelancers hear these kinds of statistics (“You should spend four hours a week on marketing”) and dismiss them as extreme; I’d say they’re not. Here’s a LinkedIn article I really love, in which freelance finance writer Carter Kilmann describes his experience taking Ed Gandia‘s prospecting class and then sending pitch e-mails to 100 clients in three months. His results align with what I’ve experienced, and what I often tell other freelancers to expect: he spent 54 hours total on this initiative (I usually say 20-25 hours of marketing to find a new direct client), 88 of the potential clients didn’t respond at all, and two became actual clients. So when I tell people to expect a success rate of 1-2% with direct clients, I’m serious.
Stop worrying about motivation, and worry about consistency
Every year, I tell my March Marketing Madness challenge group that we all focus too much on how to stay motivated when it comes to marketing. To tell you the truth, you don’t have to stay motivated, you just have to stay consistent. Here’s an example: I have high-maintenance teeth (jaw alignment problems, hard teeth that crack easily, etc.) and I kind of hate maintaining them. And yet, I don’t think, “How can I stay motivated here? How can I find an oral hygiene routine that sparks joy?” I just know that if I don’t maintain my teeth, I’m going to end up with implants or dentures. We can apply this thinking to our freelance businesses: you take care of your business, or it withers and dies; it’s that simple! Don’t look for motivation, just find a marketing routine that you can keep up with some level of consistency.
Understand why you do (or don’t do) the things you do (or don’t do)
A friend introduced me to Gretchen Rubin (who I guess you could call a personal growth guru, except that she went to Yale Law School??) and her Four Tendencies framework. Basically, this helps us understand how we (and other people) deal with internal and external demands and expectations. This framework really, really helped me understand myself and other people when it comes to productivity. I’m an Upholder (I find freedom in discipline). Honestly, I work on marketing because I want to tick the box in my Todoist app. But if you’re a Questioner or a Rebel, you may have to find other motivations.
Do you hate marketing, or do you resent it?
Hatred and resentment are two different emotions. Lots of us hate marketing. We want to just translate or interpret…which is understandable…but which is also called an in-house job. Resentment is a different story. Resentment shows up like this: “Clients should be coming to me! Why has it gotten so much harder to find good work? Why don’t clients understand the value of a professional? Why do other freelancers undercut me?” Stuff like that. I don’t have a quick fix for those (complex) emotions, but I think that identifying themis the first step to overcoming them.
Do you have depression, anxiety, ADHD, or another way in which your brain works differently?
I mean this for real, and (as someone who has a lot of people in my life who would say “yes” to this question), with a lot of empathy. If you’re chronically feeling like, I get no enjoyment out of my job, I’m so paralyzed with anxiety that I can’t even try to market because I’m so afraid of failing, I know what to do and I just can’t get anything done, I feel like all marketing is pointless because no client will want to work with me anyway because I have nothing to offer, I keep missing deadlines because I can’t make myself work on the projects I do have…then I think you might want to take a deeper look at what’s going on inside your brain and whether some type of therapy, medication, or both might help you. Again, I say this as someone who considers myself a mental health advocate: feeling like you can’t do what you want to do in life because your brain is holding you back is not fun, and most importantly you deserve to not feel that way.
Do you understand your Why?
I know, the whole “Why” thing is kind of a trendy topic. But there’s a reason for that: as a freelancer, your Why is crucial. As a freelancer, you deal with a lot of things that an employer would deal with for you: from paying self-employment tax, to serving as the director of IT, marketing, professional development, and HR, to having no guaranteed income stream, it’s a lot. So, why are you doing this? Getting clear on that is really important. In my own business:
- I really enjoy making my own decisions: whether they’re the right ones or not, the onus is on me, not on someone else telling me to do something that I knew was a bad idea.
- I don’t think any in-house job gives the level of flexibility that I want. I take a lot of vacation (for an American; about six weeks a year), I tend not to work on Friday afternoons unless I have something urgent going on, and I don’t want to have to ask someone else if it’s OK to go to yoga over lunch.
- I hate worrying about money. This sounds basic, but it’s a major reason I set a high income goal. I like having three to six months’ living expenses in the bank. Life has so many problems that you can’t fix with money, so I like to be able to throw money at the ones you can fix with money.
I have other “Why” factors, but those are the three big ones. Knowing yours can be a really good motivator: for a long time, I would look at my daughter (now 21 and thinking about her own career!) playing on the floor in my office, and think, failure as a freelancer is not an option, because if I fail, my other option is an in-house job and she goes to full-time child care, which wasn’t what I wanted for me or for her. I’m not judging anyone who chooses that option, just saying it wasn’t for me.
If you, too, are struggling to find the motivation to work on your business, I hope these tips are helpful!
Corinne McKay (classes@trainingfortranslators.com) is the founder of Training for Translators, and has been a full-time freelancer since 2002. An ATA-certified French to English translator and Colorado court-certified interpreter, she also holds a Master of Conference Interpreting from Glendon College. For more tips and insights, join the Training for Translators mailing list!
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