 Happy August everyone! August has now arrived and if you're anything like me this means that your clients have seemed to have gone away for a while. In fact if you have clients or potential clients or if you're located in well pretty much all of Europe, Latin America and let's face it you know the US and August is just a month where not much happens. You know it's a month where most of my clients the people I deal with are in Switzerland and Italy. August 1st is Switzerland's national holiday. August 15th is Ferragosto in Italy which is you know the biggest holiday and pretty much all of August anyone. Anyway everyone is going to the beach or they're going somewhere where they can get some sun anyway so you're not going to find anyone during August. Right now I'm in the States and it seems like it's sort of like that too and I'm reminded because I'm dressed like this because I had a meeting today but it's pretty much the only one I have scheduled for August. You know this is a period where not much is going on and so you might feel like well you know maybe you're frustrated because not much is going on. On the other hand you're thinking well it's August so I might as well take it easy relax like everyone else is doing until September or you could not I think you know where I'm going with this so I've said it in a couple other videos. Let me just tell you my example and tell you what I do. August is a time for me to regroup and to start planning. August for me is when I can decide what I'm going to start doing in September so I can hit the ground running and so what I've been doing here I'm in a new city so I'm you know exploring and not knowing what's going on so if you're in a place that you know well then it's even better what you can start doing is looking to see what will be going on in you know basically any time after August. It's a great time to schedule meetings. I've been looking up at conferences going on that I can attend and you know where my clients are likely to be meetups and internations stuff like that chambers of commerce you know here like I'm looking at the European Chamber of Commerce and stuff like that because you never know I deal with financial translations so I see what's going on the finance world again nothing's happening in August but starting September a lot will be happening so right now I'm trying to get in as many of these as I can find as many of these as I can and trying to schedule all these meetings around here. Some of these are in different cities or I have to go somewhere so I'm trying to see if I can schedule also other meetings with people you know while I'm in that area. Suffice it to say this is a time when you should be trying to plan ahead and the only reason I say this is because everyone else is relaxing so this is your chance to actually get ahead of the competition this is your chance to kind of be doing something while they're not and you can start seeing results because of this right because you can relax like everyone else but then you're going to start over like everyone else you know you're going to be basically in everyone else's shoes and this kind of gives you a chance to go a step further ahead so for me it's a great time to plan all these meetings and these face-to-face meetings. Now I've been asked a couple times if face-to-face meetings are necessary now this could be because maybe you're in an area where there are no other people around or it's very hard to meet other people or it's very hard for you to go and meet other people you don't have a car there's not public transportation around or maybe you really just don't like meeting people face-to-face so here's my advice for you first of all if you're not comfortable with it go out and do it I'm not comfortable with it I hate and I've hated it you know and I've tried to find all these other ways to get around it at the end of the day I figured okay it's one of those things that I have to conquer and I have to go so for a while what I would do what I kind of still do is every for every business card I get I try to treat myself with something right so it could be anything you like an extra glass of wine or an ice cream but decide I have time okay I'm going to treat myself for yeah every business card I get or every meeting one-on-one meeting I can set up or anything along those lines just as a motivation to to to go to these meetings to try to network a bit you should really try to meet face-to-face however some of you still won't or can't because it's just physically impossible or your clients aren't around where you live or you're somewhere else but you can still take this month to plan ahead for example once again something that I'm doing is an email plan I'm trying to target people I can try to do business with like I said I'm in a new place I'm in a new area I don't really know what I'm going to be targeting around here so I have a set number of emails that I send one is an introductory email and and then a couple other emails that I send why do I do this why do I send a couple emails because I want to be a bit different unfortunately a lot of people receive unsolicited emails and I can say this as someone who's setting up a translation agency I receive a ton of emails like every day I receive multiple emails from people saying hey I'm a Swedish-English translator here's my CV hey you know I do great Russian to German translations here's my CV something like that so my advice to you is I mean sure you can do that basically there you're working the number someone needs your language combination soon enough and they're going to hire you unfortunately everyone that comes to me I respond to them and I like to have them in my database but I don't have that many opportunities going on and most unless you're a huge agency that has all this stuff going on you don't have that many opportunities unless face of the huge agencies they already have plenty of translators so they're not looking for new translators so it's very hard to get in the door that way and to differentiate yourself and so what I've been trying to do is contact potential clients with something that can help them now I say this and I'm not sure exactly how to go about it as a freelance translator when you're targeting agencies but try to put yourself in their shoes I can tell you as an agency I mean yeah you always want good translators obviously you want good reliable trustworthy translators who are very good at their job but you also need them when you need them there might be the best translator out there a Swedish to German translator out there but I can't use him or her unfortunately because you know I have no need for that what I always need and what I can always use as clients oh actually if you could contact an agency with a potential client I mean yeah then they'll definitely be interested I'm not saying you'll have a potential client but maybe you can spot opportunities for them or you'd say hey look these people haven't translated their website into any different languages I can translate it from Swedish into English but if you can find other translators to do the other languages this could be a great opportunity for you so how about we work together on this and we figure something out anyway this is really just off the top of my head but if you can contact translation agencies and you have something to offer them more than you're a great translator if you can contact them with something else that you can offer as well then that would be great another thing you could do is say hey I'm a great Swedish to English translator but I work with this other French to English a German to English and Italian to English translator and we work together so if you need me or if you need these other languages we'll be happy to work with you that also can be really attractive to a potential client so anyway just try to think outside the box try to find ways and this is the time to do it take August obviously don't bombard them with email after email after email because that never gets you anywhere but something like that just so you stand out so they remember you would would probably be very good and then anyway that's just an idea but this is a time to formulate a strategy like that take August to do that because this is a great time to do that in essence what I'm saying is that you take August to prepare so you can hit the ground running come September this is either for face-to-face meetings for email marketing or for whatever you might have just so you can keep going of course you should not forget that jobs do happen in August of course so you should be on the lookout for potential jobs in August one good thing is that you'll have less competition let's face it most the translators are out there with everyone else on the beach right now or they're up in the countryside or anyway they're taking August off they're taking it easy in August they're relaxing chillaxing chilling out doing whatever they do during this time so you can kind of like get a leg up by actually keeping track of who needs translations and when also remember people who need translations in August they probably need it a bit more urgently than someone in in September they need something done in August it means they're in the office and they kind of need it done now obviously this depends from the situation to situation but chances are you're going to have less competition and maybe you could even charge a bit more and or anyway do that at your own risk I don't know it obviously it depends on a myriad of details but August is a great time to keep an eye out for potential jobs but also just for preparing so that come September you can get going like I said I love what I do anyway and so this to me is a great time to try different strategies to try to you know experimental let's try this like the email marketing strategy the meeting face to face to this that and the other and I can formulate a whole precise plan and then come September I can see if it works out or if it doesn't and so it's pretty interesting anyway I hope you find this useful and I hope it's useful to me I'll let you know how it works out for me and if you did find this useful please don't forget to leave me a thumbs up that always helps and don't forget to subscribe because then you can receive more emails about freelancing about freelance translation straight to your computer straight to your youtube account and hopefully you can find them helpful I'll see you next time thanks bye