Moving the stone – dealing with quiet business times

 

[millstone*]

Every freelancer has experienced them, the dead times when the phone does not ring and the only emails that you receive mention deceased distant relatives with large inheritances in very exotic countries. Ever so slowly, the feeling of failure and despair grows until even the most experienced entrepreneurs, including translators, start to have doubts. As the ebbs of business are inevitable as its flows, the only aspect that freelancers can control is their reactions to the situation. In my experience, with understanding, strength, perspective and belief, the quiet seas become an acceptable part of a long voyage.

As each business has its regular flows and unpredictable elements, freelancers can help maintain their emotional balance by analyzing the known and accepting the unknown. In practice, certain months traditionally have more or less work, generally due to holidays, with variances by country. For example, December is a great month for retail in Europe and the US but a terrible month for most other businesses as customers focus on Christmas and New Years. By contrast, December in Israel is a normal month, unlike late September through mid-October when the Tishrei holidays (Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Succot) paralyze the country. On the other hand, some slowdowns are completely mysterious. The reasons why a given month had been traditionally busy but is very slow this year are often not clear unless some even event having a major effect on a given economy has occurred, such as Corona or a hurricane. Wisdom is accepting that it is impossible to predict or understand all events and wait patiently in the meantime. Not every down period is the fault of the freelancer or avoidable.

These periods of low activity create anxiety and even depression, which can lead to lethargy and despair. It is ineffective to advise people not to worry when there are bills to pay. Instead, it is more practical to leverage this emotion and use the free time to improve market position. There are always ways to improve a business, many of which require significant time to plan and implement. These practical actions include improving or building a website, contacting customers, taking online courses, writing articles, exploring social media and investigating other avenues to expand the business. It takes a strong will to harness the negative energy and render it positive in the long term. In some cases, quiet times are not only unavoidable but also necessary to create a successful business.

One of the hardest skills to develop is perspective. It may take years to view the ups and downs of a business work with a calm spirit and quietly roll with them. I have been a translator for almost 19 years ago and no longer despair when work slows down although I still find them annoying. I now use slow times to plan trips, conduct complicated purchases (currently a sofa), spend time with family, get exercise, see doctors and plan an expansion of my services,  not to mention play computer games. I generally find it difficult to find time for these activities when I am busy. My time investment may not be immediately profitable but it will lead to greater financial success in the future and personal happiness in the present. Quiet times do not have be non-productive times if a person can approach them as part and parcel of business.

Ultimately, people choose to become entrepreneurs because they have some type of vision, however unclear it may be. They believe in their skills and ability to provide a product or service that customers will purchase. While periods of low business may be emotionally trying, they do not necessarily signify that the person and business model are deficient in any significant way. The causes of such quiet times often go far beyond the matters of the entrepreneur and may be temporary. In other words, like farmers, entrepreneurs must have faith in the future. Panicking and lowering prices or abandoning a business are not generally not healthy or effective reactions. Sometimes, we need to remind ourselves of past successes to retain the assurance that “we can do it”. Whether it is confidence, faith or stupidity, perseverance and long-term success go hand in hand, tempered by an objective analysis of the market and the flexibility to make changes. In short, successful, happy freelancers have confidence in themselves and the future regardless of current circumstances. This confidence in itself attracts customers.

A very close friend of mine, Sarah Wrench, who unfortunately died in her twenties, wrote a fantasy book in which part of the plot involved people entering a cell in a huge heavy circle with one entrance. Alone in their cells and not knowing what others were doing, they had to push until the circle turned and reached the sole exit. Freelancers, especially translators, can relate to that feeling of working in a void. Sometimes, the work flows but other times, nothing seems to happen despite all one’s best efforts. However, when entrepreneurs grasp the known and accept the unknown, overcome and reverse negative energy, gain a perspective of the business and apply it and keep their faith in themselves and remain steadfast, these times not only do pass but lead to better days.

* Picture captions allow the blind to fully access the Internet.

Picture credit

The inner struggle of entrepreneurship

 

[Brain in lightbulb*]

Being an employee is essentially a carrot/stick psychology, sometimes reaching Pavlovian proportions. People go to work and do their best regardless of their mood or internal needs. The ability to ignore those factors comes from the desire for positive results, whether it be verbal phrase, financial bonuses or promotion, and acceptance from fellow workers, and fear of negative consequences, such as being fired or fined. Internal and cultural values may reinforce these external forces but the maintenance of “proper” work habits over a lifetime essentially is based on the reward principle to the point that many people don’t even consider why they are working so hard.

Freelancers have neither bosses nor co-employees and have to “Zen” it themselves. Faced with never-ending series of tasks each and every day, the discipline must come from within and sometimes fails, each person having a different fault line. Without the outer structure, freelancers have to manipulate their own mind in order to overcome emotional minicrises. This struggle is a part of being an entrepreneur and is winnable.

Procrastination is a human but harmful trait. In simple terms, everybody has certain tasks that create mental resistance in the mind even if they are not difficult in themselves. For children, this can be doing dishes or cleaning up the room. Many freelancers simply avoid bookkeeping tasks, including invoicing and collecting, planning and implementing marketing, and customer follow-up, to name a few. Clearly all these tasks are vital for any business. However, lacking background in the area, these tasks become energy intensive and even frightening in some cases. The best way to overcome that fear is to first recognize them as personally challenging tasks and accomplish them first before beginning the more natural aspects of the business. It is like drinking the medicine and then having a chocolate. The entrepreneur practices self-rewarding and promotes the business at the same time. In practice most of these duties can be accomplished in a few minutes and are quite profitable. Their weight is in the mind and can be thus eliminated.

Occasionally, the brain goes on strike, simply refusing to work on anything. Regardless of the amount of energy and discipline, the freelancer is incapable of doing the job at hand, period. Energy and will fail to change that reality. Of course, people become frustrated at this inability to move forward, especially if they have chosen the task and made a commitment. Psychologically, no man’s land is the worst place to be as a person can neither work nor relax. The solution is to accept and adapt. In practice, that means understanding that, even if it is somehow possible to overcome the inertia, the quality of the work, will be so low that it will probably have to be redone in any case. The next step is to direct energy and thought to rescheduling the task timeline and deciding what type of mini-break will best allow the re-start mechanism to work. Sometimes, the customer will agree to a later deadline. If not, ideally, deadlines should always have some “fudge” time Still, a few hours can be gained by working in the evening or getting up early in the morning. Options for relaxing include a nap, gardening, baking, cooking, running and talking to a friend, to name a few. The ideal break activity depends on the person. It is important to limit in advance the duration of the break as it tends to extend itself somehow. Upon return to the desk, the task no longer seems so daunting. As in most types of pain, acceptance, not denial, is the best method.

The silent killer of entrepreneurs is burnout, a slow-forming calcification of the motivation to work and succeed. Freelancers have great incentive to work hard and succeed as they started the business and enjoy all of its financial fruits. Unfortunately, they do not enjoy paid vacations nor are they prevented from working on weekends and holidays. Thus, the direct road to burnout involves a permanent 7 day a week schedule and no real vacation time. By contrast, a scheduled weekly day off, except for very extreme emergencies, coupled with aoccasional complete vacation from work leads to long term success. Many freelancers fail to realize that they will almost never lose a customer if they take a week off to go skiing or visit family from time to time nor do clients expect them to work on holidays. This life balance not only does not harm business but significantly increases productivity as a refreshed mind has more perspective and is more enthusiastic. People do not choose the way of freelancing in order to become robots.

Doubt is a more insidious challenge. Success is often neither immediate nor constant. Everybody loses customers, faces criticism and lacks uncertainty about the present and future at one time or another. As freelancers have no marketing or strategic planning department, they must depend on their instinct, initial plan and faith in their judgment of the situation. Even the most confident sometimes can momentarily lack faith. To overcome this crisis, it is necessary to switch modes from the emotional to the rational, identifying the reasons for the loss of customers, lack of success or change in reactions by seeking information. With that data, it is possible to make logical changes to the operating mode. Thus, the energy created by the legitimate concern for the future is productively directed to understanding that future. Once again, negative energy is directed towards progress.

The secret of success is in the mind, more so for a lone entrepreneur. The temptation to delay, avoid, stop and question will occur at one time or another. Freelancers simply have to know how to overcome it as much as possible. That is the inner struggle of entrepreneurship.

*Captions help the blind read posts. Picture for Pixabay

Famine relief – Profiting from lean times

Most freelancers, including translators, suffer the extremes of work demand. A period of having to refuse work is suddenly followed by one of seeking work.  To one degree or another, this instability is a part of doing business.  As such, the freelancer must learn to cope with it both psychologically and actually benefit from the free time. The key to keeping in an even keel in those quiet times is to view the free hours not at a threat but instead as an opportunity.

To clarify, the cause of the quietness on the email front may be known or unknown. Worldwide, August and the three weeks from December 15^th to January 6^th are great for retailers but awful for service providers simply because most non-retail businesses close or go in sleep mode. Likewise, national and bank holidays affect transactions for one to three days.  A quick Google search can quickly identify the various and multifarious off-days of a given country.  In fact, in Israel and many countries, there is the term “after the holidays” to explain why nothing can be done during certain times of the year. A hidden factor may be an internal company matter or specific sector crisis. The long term and fundamental causes of downtime are slow but constant trends in the economy or business sector, such as a recession or conglomeration, which change the supply and demand curve. Clearly, a despairing freelancer can often but not always find a comforting explanation for the down trend.

A time to breath after a long stretch of intense work can actually feel quite refreshing.  It is the ideal moment to clean up unfinished matters.  These include ongoing accounting or financial issues, bill collecting, financial reporting, email correspondence and inventory, to name just a few. Given the importance of the Internet for most businesses, it is vital to periodically review and revise all profiles, brand identifiers and approaches.  All these tasks tend to be postponed while work is heavy but must be carried out in order to maintain a business.  In industrial management terms, these actions are considered productive even if they are not lucrative since they must be performed in order to maintain business efficiency.

Having completed these essential tasks, the freelancer can use the time to develop known potential contacts. During busy periods, the names of people and companies that could turn into clients come up. The quiet now makes it possible to carefully consider the manner of developing these contacts and actually follow up. Not only is this time productively spent but such actions are an essential part of future growth.

For sole proprietors, the background quite allows them to switch hats and become the director of marketing and research.  The problem with being a freelancer is the multiplicity of roles that need to filled and leads to the problem of “jack of all trades and master of none”. With only one hat on the head, the entrepreneur can analyze, research and discuss macro medium- and long-term trends and decide on actions to take to stay in line with them. Such a process requires time and concentration, which is only generally available when work is slow.

Of course, business people are also human.  Quiet times provide the best opportunity to spend time with family and friends without watching the clock. Short and even long trips become possible. It is a great time to lose a few grams of extra weight or see nature (or pick mushrooms as we do.).  It becomes possible to put a check on household tasks that have been put on hold for months or higher end purchases that must be considered carefully, such as buying a car. 

The message is that down time can be up time, both psychologically and operationally. It is the ideal time to accomplish all tasks that cannot be or simply are not handled when work is aplenty. As such, the freelancer can more easily maintain a good attitude and worry less. Remember that growth in children occurs when they sleep. Likewise, freelancers prepare their growth when business is slow. They can profit from the worst of times no less than from the best of times.