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This question came up in a T4T alumni question and answer session (“How do I join those??” You take a four-week class with T4T!). “I’m applying to agencies, and lots of them ask for references; it seems weird to provide references from agencies I already work for, because I’m not sure that my current clients would be thrilled to know that I’m applying for other work, and it seems odd for the new potential client to know who I already work for.”

I agree on all fronts, and direct clients ask for references too, so let’s break this down.

First: Make a habit of getting ahead of this request

The best defense is a good offense, and very few of us make a habit of asking clients for a testimonial or letter of recommendation, even when we know that they’re happy with our work. Get in the habit of doing this:

• Whenever a client says something complimentary about your work, or you get the sense that they really like you, act on it! Ask for a LinkedIn recommendation (always assure them that it’s no problem if they’re not able to do this), or a testimonial, or a brief letter of recommendation. Ask on LinkedIn only if you’re OK with it being public knowledge that you work with this client. Otherwise ask for a testimonial and anonymize it when you post it on your website (or elsewhere). Just list it as “Translation agency project manager,” or “Law firm paralegal,” or whatever the person’s title is.
• Ask clients ahead of time if you can list them as references. Again, this doesn’t get around the issue of other clients knowing who you already work for, but it gets around the issue of scrambling at the 11th hour when you need a reference and want to make sure it’s OK with them.
• Keep a running list of your projects/assignments and the subject matter. There’s nothing worse than being sure you’ve done work similar to what a potential client wants, and in the moment (“Tell us about your experience working with clients in XYZ sector”) you draw a complete blank. Again, be prepared before the request comes in!

Second: In my opinion, colleagues make better references

To me, here’s the heart of the issue. I have very few clients (not zero, but very few) who understand my source and target languages well enough to really comment on the quality of my work. Of course, there are tons of other factors involved. Is this person pleasant to work with? Do they meet deadlines? Are they reliable, do they follow directions, do they get along with the client’s other translators and interpreters, etc. etc. But I would argue that in general, colleagues make better references, because they can comment on the above factors, plus the actual quality of your work (what a concept!).

References from colleagues have a few other advantages:

• Your close colleagues probably already know who you work for, so there’s not really a confidentiality issue
• You can pre-emptively ask a couple of close colleagues whether you can list them as a reference if the need comes up. I always add, “You can also feel free to list me as a reference, and you don’t need to ask every time, it’s fine with me in general.“
• You can tell them what to say. Clarification: you don’t get to dictate what the person says about you; that’s the point of the reference. But you can give them some hints that might be weird to tell a client: “This potential client has high-volume projects, can you comment on how I’ve never missed a deadline.” “This potential client needs someone for bidirectional interpreting assignments, can you comment on that assignment we did together where we worked in both directions.” That kind of thing can be really helpful.

Asking for references is, in my opinion, reasonable. Clients want to know what other people say about you, not just what you say about yourself. And, being asked for references can be stressful! I hope that these tips can help smooth the process at least somewhat.

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Getting stuff done is crucial to succeeding as a freelancer: you need to earn money, and you need to meet your deadlines. Productivity is a very personal thing, and it’s a topic I think about a lot. Even when you love your job (which I do!):

• You still have to do things you don’t love, or even things that you hate (hello, accounting)
• It’s always great to earn more, in less time, by working more efficiently
• Thinking about productivity can teach you a lot about how your brain works, which in turn can help you in other areas of life

Step one: A couple of excellent resources

When it comes to productivity, and lots of other things in life, we rarely ask the question: Why? Why do I put off certain tasks? Why do certain tasks feel really easy? Why do I feel really motivated to do some things, and I dread or avoid others? Here are two resources to start with, when you’re trying to answer those questions:

1. Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies personality framework. I am really, really not a personality test kind of person. Myers-Briggs…ugh. But I really love the Four Tendencies framework, because it helps you understand why you (and other people) do (or don’t do) the things you do (or don’t do). You’re identified as one of four types: Upholder, Rebel, Questioner, or Obliger, and I have honestly found this whole concept so helpful. I’m an Upholder: if you tell me to do something, I’m going to do it, and if I tell myself to do something, I’m going to do it; I also struggle to find joy or meaning in activities that don’t have an outcome or a purpose, I have trouble letting go of something I’ve committed to doing, even if I no longer want to do it, and I tend to have little patience with people who can’t just “get it done.” Every type has its advantages and disadvantages; I highly recommend figuring out what type you are, before diving into any productivity initiative!
2. Dorothee Racette’s blog, Take Back My Day. Dorothee is a German<>English translator and past ATA President turned productivity coach, and her stuff is also super-helpful. She really digs into the question of Why: Why procrastination is about managing your perspective, not managing time, Why freelancers with ADHD may not benefit from standard productivity advice, and more. Check out her materials if you haven’t already (not an affiliate deal!).

Six productivity strategies to try

As mentioned above, hitting the productivity sweet spot depends on a lot on how your brain works. Start there! After that, here are six things I’d recommend trying:

1. Swallow the frog. Do the least appealing task first. Sometimes, I boost this strategy by depriving myself of coffee until I do the dreaded thing. At least 98.5% of the time, I’ve spent more time avoiding the task than it actually takes to do it. I’m particularly avoidant about accounting and tax tasks, so I implement this strategy for those types of things.
2. Bribe yourself. If you market to one new client every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, then on Friday, you get to go to your favorite café as soon as you’re done with work.
3. Sprint. Whether it’s a power hour or a 25-minute Pomodoro, this technique really helps me. Something about the defined period of time makes it less intimidating.
4. Go all-in, for a set number of days. This is kind of the underlying concept of any challenge group: you don’t have to keep up with the habit forever, but by ingraining it for something like 30 days, you’ll probably stick with it in some capacity even after the group is done. Setting a really ambitious goal that you only have to stick with for 30 days can be great, because you can pick something you’d never stick with otherwise. For example, market to five clients every weekday (25 clients in one month…probably more than you did in all of last year!).
5. Outsource judiciously. Hiring an accountant and a website manager frees me up to earn money doing what I’m good at, so that I can pay them to do what they’re good at. Don’t think of this purely in terms of hourly rate (my accountant charges a lot more than I do!), think of it in terms of how many hours it would take for you to do what they do. In the case of accounting, I’m probably 3-4x slower than my accountant, and I hate the work!
6. Identify your highest and lowest-energy times of the day or week and, to whatever extent you can, work around them. I am honestly neither a morning person nor a night person (I just love to sleep!), but I find it almost impossible to work on cognitively intensive work at night. If work bleeds over into the evening, I try to save the least intensive work for the evening. Some people’s “golden hour” is Sunday afternoons; for some, it’s 5 AM. Capitalize on that as much as you can.

Finally: a bonus mindset tip. A while ago, I heard a really great interview with Mark McGuinness, the author of Productivity for Creative People. I don’t actually consider myself very creative, but I loved his key point: think of productivity (with the tasks you don’t love: accounting, marketing, answering non-critical e-mail, cleaning off your desk, IT maintenance) as what frees you up to spend as much time as possible on the things you do love. I really liked that!

I hope these tips are helpful in your own productivity efforts! Have a great week!

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Nudging dormant clients is the world’s most boring, and the world’s most effective marketing method. In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What nudging is
• Who to nudge
• How to nudge
• When to nudge
• What to say when you nudge

Listen (Training for Translators) in Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, or right here!

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Direct client marketing launch pad starts on Monday, November 4. It’s a four-week, self-paced class (you don’t need to be online at a specific time), registration is $195 (ATA members, use coupon code ATA for $30 off), and you have access to the course materials for six months. This course is for you, if you’re thinking:

• I’d like to work with direct clients, but I have no idea who might need me, or how to contact them
• I think about working with direct clients, but it seems so overwhelming, and I get stuck before I even start
• I see some direct clients who could use my services, but I don’t know what to say when I contact them

This is a “from the ground up” course, and we do weekly recorded question and answer sessions so that you can get all of your questions answered! Full description here!

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This week’s Training for Translators podcast episode is not based on a past blog post, it’s a podcast about how I make my podcast! I wanted to document this:

• In case you’re interested in making your own podcast
• In case you’re curious about how podcasts get made
• For my own reference, so I remember the process!

In this episode, I discuss how I record, edit, and host the podcast, where I found the intro/outro voiceover team, and the technological skills that I learned along the way. You can listen to Training for Translators in Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or using the audio player below.

Although my friend and colleague Eve Bodeux and I hosted Speaking of Translation for 13 years (seriously!!), the technology has changed a lot, and my own audio quality standards have increased since I’ve been doing more interpreting.

Like Speaking of Translation, Training for Translators is hosted on Libsyn (the $7/month plan works for me, so far). The big difference is that I learned how to record and edit in Audacity, and I purchased a Shure MV7+ microphone. I originally planned to take a class in how to use Audacity, but there are so many great YouTube tutorials that I ended up just watching a couple of those (just go on YouTube and search for “Audacity basics”). Then I did Audacity’s own tutorial on mixing narration with background music. Details in the episode!