 Hello everyone hello from from very sunny Taipei take my word from it is take my word for it It's very very sunny out there. In fact, it's really really hot out there. It's really hot in Taipei, but luckily I'm indoors I have the AC running. Hopefully it isn't too loud and so I'm going to give you another video today's video I'm going to talk to you about Things that you do not need for freelance translation things you should not be spending your money on for freelance translation I've gotten a couple of these asked as questions before and I've seen way too many people spend a whole lot of money on things that they don't necessarily need when they're first starting out as Freelancers as freelance translators more specifically and so I wanted to go through a couple of them Or quite a few of them because there are quite a few things that people just assume they need and I think they also use that as a as an excuse to delay Starting and that's the main thing I want. I don't want people to do they should never delay starting for any of these reasons because So often that's just an excuse to say I'm not ready. I'm not it read I'm not ready yet, which is just that you're kind of too scared to start off. So anyway Before I get off on a tangent, let's go through the things you don't need for freelance translation things You should not be spending your money on yet if you're first starting out so first thing is Trados or Trados, however, you want to pronounce it or pretty much any other cat tool that you have to pay for now This I'm starting off strong I should say mainly because this is gonna be a bit controversial a lot of people are big fans and use it a lot and rightly so But when you first start out First of all, it costs a lot. It's gonna be 600 bucks and up usually up Depending on which program you want and what computer system you have and everything like that and it really is an expense and To spend that type of money before you even start out to me is kind of ridiculous And you should wait until you get some traction first until you get some clients until you find you need to have some need for it because Depending on which direction your career goes you might not even have any need for it And you might end up using some other type of cat tool that a company has You know use their own thing or you may might not use one at all So at the beginning definitely you should not be buying this if you have access to it If someone else has it and you can use it or the school you're in or you know Something has it and you can use it for freedom. That's fine What I'm saying is you should not be spending money on it when you first start out Trados any other type of cat tool that you have to pay for their free ones out there And I've mentioned them before but any one of these that you that you have to pay for Don't be spending money on it at least at the beginning you can wait until later and all and at the end of the video I'll talk to you a bit about expenses and when you can start buying all of these things that I'm going to mention but that's the first one and So I just wanted to put it out there right away Second thing you should not be spending your money on when you first start out is a website now in fact, this is a bit odd because I've mentioned websites before and What I just looked myself. I'm kind of backlit. Anyway, hopefully you can still see me. It doesn't matter I've mentioned websites before and I've Said that you should have a website that everyone should have a website because and I mentioned if you take my course or write my Book, you know that I go through this and how you should structure a website and that everyone should have a website So you can be found online However, you should not be paying for a website if you want a website You can easily get one at about me They offer you free online profiles You can get a website LinkedIn can count as a website or you know, whatever online profile you want There are many other ways you can get one for free You should not be spending money on it right now Eventually, maybe you want to get one and that's fine But when you first start out, you should not be going in the red for a website because you can get clients without a website It's not needed. It can help but it's not needed. So don't spend money on it yet and and You know wait a bit until you do that The next one which kind of goes hand-in-hand with the website is business cards Business cards again are something that are useful, especially if you're meeting people face-to-face if you're going to networking events Which again, I say you should go to and I you know Explain how to find the best network events where there's meetups or internations or Chamber of Commerce meetings or whatever it might be and And I talk about how you should how I feel you should go about I've done videos on what I think is the best way to network But you should not get business cards at the beginning You should not be spending money on fancy cool business cards when you don't even have anything going on yet and you should wait until you do have something going on to get a business card and Again business cards can help that make you look more professional if you have access somehow You can get a business card for free fine get them, but don't spend money on it and Yeah, again, I'll get to it later on get to it at the end of the video of when you can start spending money on this stuff Because it is useful, but at the beginning you should not be spending money on this other stuff You shouldn't be spending money on a fancy desk. I'm sure they have the most cool ergonomic desk that you could find with it You know matching chair and everything like that that you work really well out of but you don't need at the beginning I spend most of my I have a nice desk, but I spend most of my time working out of coffee shops And I've realized that you know any place that is comfortable where I can get in the zone is perfect for me to work in Another thing is a whole fancy office. I mean that's a big expense, but some people think they even need that They need a whole office so they can be alone so they can do this and that and it's true You do need a space where it can be alone But there are many of those spaces around look at your local coffee shop go to your local library find and I mean Find a room in your house And I would say co-working space, but you have to pay for that as well And at the beginning you don't need that which brings me To I mean I should also say when I say fancy desk or fancy office You also shouldn't be spending money on a crummy desk or a crummy office at the beginning use what you have right now I'm talking to you from a table Which is I know you can't see anyway I'm just sitting at a table in this kind of living room area and this is where I'm broadcasting from and it's where I've been working from for the past couple hours and And yeah before that I was in the coffee shop. They have a couple coffee shops around here Anyway, you don't need to be spending money on this Another thing you don't need to be spending money on when you first start out is fancy coffee Anything above I don't know five bucks is you don't need I mean, I don't know I'm sure you have your preferences and that's fine, but quite frankly. I don't think you need I will allow crummy coffee when you're first starting out I mean look when you're first starting out your bootstrapping and you're trying to earn money And you don't want to be spending too much money. So you kind of need to get into that mentality of bootstrapping of being an entrepreneur and so I will allow crummy coffee By all means have your crummy coffee I still drink crummy coffee all the time and I just get you know my black coffee And that's what I live on and I'm fine with that So I'm not sure if I should go through well Let's go through the reasoning that I have and the reason I say you shouldn't be spending money on this is because You can very quickly spend a lot of money You notice all the things that I listed there between the website the business cards pros.com and Desk a chair an office, you know a fancy coffee, whatever it might be you're gonna be spending like a thousand bucks and Thousand bucks US or more, you know, or yeah Probably quite a bit more actually more maybe closer to 2000 before you even get started before even contact the client and there's no reason to go that much in the red before you even start contacting clients and So even though these things are things that can help and they're important you should be very careful about You know saying oh just a small expense here just one expense here I'll just buy business cards here but then because gradually gradually they start accumulating and becomes a lot of money and so you should you should try to leave out anything you don't need right at the beginning and Wait to buy them when should you buy them? I think the best method is to wait until you earn enough money to buy them So let's say you do want business cards and you look up on Vista print or a zazzle or whatever And you can order your first set of business cards for I can't remember how much they are that say 25 bucks You'd be like okay once I earn 25 bucks I can use those profits reinvested in my business and use that to buy business cards that way you never go into red For all these things, but you always use your own profits for them And as long as you can stick to that then that's great And if you can stick to it and you know if you start making a couple thousand and then you're like I do want that nice chair. I want the nice office. I want the fancy coffee, whatever Hey, if you're earning it, it's your money. Spend it however you want But at the beginning you shouldn't be going into the red for these things because you really can get by without them And so it doesn't make sense to go into the red to go into debt or you know, whatever it might be For future earnings later on unless you really have to and you know That's that's what the whole lean startup bootstrapping kind of mentality is and you try to get by on what you have And I think it's very helpful when you're first starting out. So having said all that What are some things you should be spending money on and At first of all, I'm don't worry. I'm not gonna mention my course or my book Even though I have mentioned it in the past I'm gonna leave those out for now. But what are things that you should be spending money on? First of all, you need a computer. I know that might seem obvious, but you do need a computer you're going to be working quite a bit on Usually on word and or maybe excel but mostly on word I would say word of but I've met quite a few translators who don't use word and get by fine with open office and other variations I Use word. I absolutely need it And and I feel safer with it But again, other people don't at all. And so see what works best for you, but you will need a computer You absolutely will need a computer. You also need a Wi-Fi connection But again, it might seem obvious, but you'll need an internet connection Nowadays again, you can get them in coffee shops You can get those in your local library. So actually, you don't you know, I don't know if that's necessarily an expense But if you're get moving into a new place, I'm wondering if you want to get Wi-Fi I don't know why you'd wonder that but yes, you will need a Wi-Fi connection And so aside from these which I think are the obvious the one thing that I would spend money on When first starting out is if you're gonna spend money on anything You can get by without spending money on anything by the way because then you just use that and you contact people You send cold emails and you go to Upwork and try to get jobs through that But if you're going to spend money on something I think it should be an account with pros.com because it's still the best place to get a job quite frankly once again I'm not affiliated with pros. I have nothing to do with them at all But this is just in my experience while you do have Upwork You also have translators cafe by the way, which isn't bad for finding jobs. I think you can Waste a lot of time you can spend a lot of time looking for jobs there while in pros you you can get jobs a lot more quickly and So to me, it's worth the money and I if you search for my videos on how to sign up for pros I go through the options and how to spend a bit less money when you first sign up, but I think that's the one thing that is worth spending money on when you're first starting out That's the one thing that if you do have to kind of go into red quote unquote That's worth it because that will pay dividends Very quickly relatively quickly at least compared to the other websites, but otherwise everything else you spend money on I believe Not talking about my course or my book or anything like that anything else you spend money on I think you can do it with your profits once you start making a little bit of money use that little bit of money to You know get the next thing that'll make your life a bit easier and help you to earn more money So maybe a personal website that you can direct people to or business cards if you're meeting people face to face Because that makes you look more professional, you know, it says you're a translator and you can start handing those out stuff like that I Yeah, and that's just how I feel and pretty much all the expenses I have now for my business that I'm running as a translator as a translation agency I really try to do that I try to use profits that I have from the business and put those back in which means I'm not going to start spending 200,000 on a marketing campaign And it kind of keeps me in check so I make sure I don't suddenly say hey Why don't I spend $200,000 on a marketing campaign? But I use whatever profits I have for whatever I might need and I think it's just a good philosophy in general So that's all I wanted to say Hopefully you could hear me because the AC is going on pretty loudly and I didn't test this ahead of time So I really hope I didn't waste 12 minutes or so on this But hopefully you found it useful if you did please please click thumbs up so I know what works and what doesn't And don't forget to subscribe and you'll get more videos about freelancing about freelance translation and about languages Sometimes and stuff like that. Otherwise, I will talk to you in the next video. Thanks. Bye. Save Doom