Greater than 2 minutes
Dry spells, droughts, fires and illness- how are all these brought together? overcoming dry spells in business
A period which freelancers do not want to last long. A dry spell. Is there a wet spell?
The sun has been shining for days without end, mercilessly. The land is drying out, stretches of dessert showing up in areas which have never have never grown accustomed to such drought before. One of the ongoing threats now: fires blazing.
You can build a bridge from there, although I can’t picture fires metaphorically in the proximity of a freelancer. More a drought. And it’s precisely because of this drought that freelancers temporarily exit their jobs. It’s only natural that in summer business doesn’t thrive or at least it doesn’t with most translators. The demand for translations comes from clients and they are on holiday right now.
Still, I tend to motivate myself at this stage and keep being positive that bad results with the end of the summer months will not be that detrimental to business, seen from an annual perspective. Business is prospering at a steady pace and there’s no need to entertain thoughts like those here http://tralangia.com/freelancers-dilemma/.
Dry spells in business are inevitable and they are good. Provided they are not that long. Then they are just as good as periods of short illness (strange as it may sound). They make you slow down. Although at first, dry spells will cause additional headaches, added to those resulting from non-paying clients or clients who you must constantly remind to settle their dues, taking on projects which seem so easy when you analyse them on first reading (how can you so quickly analyse texts which entail more than 30 and more pages to place an offer), but then prove so troublesome when you sit down and start translating it thoroughly. This headache comes from an absence. From the fact that something stops happening.
So you are there in your office and have to combat this silent enemy, urging it to issue at least an audible voice so that you may answer it and convince it to work with you. Chances are, if you go on a holiday later, some clients (most of them new) will come and pay you a visit via email, eager to know whether you are working at the moment (their trusted translator being unavailable) and these cases can be rare or can happen very often (depending on your language combination). These are offers which you may not jump at at the first moment, but they can help you to get through dry spells.
And if they don’t come?
Rachel Steer 
Federica Cocuccioni 
Karen Montaldi 
Staying positive is the only way to turn a dry spell into a “wet spell” 🙂 I try to take dry spells as a blessing to work on other aspects of my business, be it marketing, branding, billing, networking…In the process, you’ll be working on your inbound marketing and increase the chances of new job opportunities coming to you. And, why not catch some rest while you can? This way you’ll be super-ready when work does come your way and you will be able to allocate more time daily for translation, considering you got a jump on all the ‘secondary’ activities while clients were on holiday. We’ll all be rain dancing for you, Mariann 🙂
Yes, positivity helps a lot when you have to confront some bleak times. And start to think more about your skills which you need to better constantly. About resting— Especially when you are not that loaded with jobs, you can rest too much (provided that you don not do anything in the direction of investing into self-betterment) and still end up feeling as if you had overworked yourself. Even not working for a bit longer may be tiring.
I agree with Eleonora! Staying positive and keeping yourself busy is the best way to carry yourself through the dry spell. Picking up courses or taking classes to improve your skills (translation, marketing, sales, business) – is a good way to spend your time while you’re in the dry spell zone.