Every season, you will find a new holiday-relevant type of chocolate bar available for sale. In February, the bite-sized chocolate pieces are molded into the shape of a heart and covered in red and pink foil. By March, the chocolate pieces are in the shape of shamrocks and wear green foil. For Easter, those chocolate […]
Category Archives: Business
Dear Jenae — How do you maintain balance in your private life when swamped with work?
How do you balance your private life and household duties with work? There are up and down seasons, what do you do when there is a surge in incoming work that you don’t want to turn down? Would you cut off your social life, exercise, sleep or anything else (like admin tasks to be postponed […]
Dear Jenae — What inexpensive and easy customer relationship management tool do you recommend?
“CRM tools – can you recommend any that are easy to use and not too expensive? I am looking for something to help me with marketing to new clients and scheduling for chasing up new leads etc.” – Becky Hi Becky, Thanks for your question – it’s a great one. There are a lot of […]
Will new California law change your freelance translation work? Maybe.
If you work as a freelance translator or interpreter in the state of California, chances are good that you are familiar with the recently-passed Assembly Bill No. 5 (AB5) regarding independent contractors. And if you don’t work in the state of California, this law’s passage could still have implications for you in the future. Other […]
Dear Jenae — How do you remain professional in a disagreement with your client and when do I skip signing that NDA?
Q: How do you remain professional in a disagreement with your client and when do I skip signing that NDA? Hi Jenae, I’m very grateful for this opportunity to ask you about our profession. I’d like to have your advice or opinion on a couple of questions. The first one is about customer service. As entrepreneurs, […]
Learn the potential perils – and possibilities – of business diversification
Is it time to diversify your business? You may be considering expanding what services you offer, but making that change is a serious commitment. Let Jenae Spry, founder of Success by Rx, share her experience with you in the following interview. Melissa Kamenjarin, Success by Rx Copywriter: Tell us about expanding the services, besides translation, […]
Help! I was asked to discount my rate and I need the work. What do I do?
Q: Could you please give some advice on how to deal with the pressure to lower rates? This is an issue that I have been faced with just recently. An agency with whom I was working regularly for almost 4 years asked me out of the blue to lower my standard rates by almost 25%. I […]
Breakup emails that land clients
Want an unconventional way to bring in clients? Try saying goodbye … and watch some of your potential clients turn into actual clients. If you have been talking to a client who suddenly stopped replying, you don’t really know what happened. There’s no resolution one way or the other. Did the prospective client find a […]
Competitor or Colleague?
If you’re like most translators, you spend a lot of time alone. You need to be alone to concentrate, but then there’s the other isolating factor of the business. It’s generally freelance and done at home. So when you want to take a break and get some social interaction, you find yourself drawn to other […]
Maybe You Don’t Need That Degree and Certification
What if you don’t need a fancy degree and certification to be an excellent translator or interpreter? It strikes those of us in the language professionals community as shocking – even heretical. It goes against what we’ve been taught. Without a degree or certification, you’re no different from any other bilingual person, right? But maybe […]