August Minke Translation Services
Today we are featuring the business of a dear friend and colleague, August Minke, Esq. He is a translation consultant and runs a successful business. Translation services have become very competitive and use a lot of high-tech tools today. This requires a business that evolves with the technology and provides highly specialized services to business clients. Mr. Minke has been quite successful in building up his translation services, even during the current pandemic. Below he shares some of his strategies for success.
What gig work do you do? What made you decide to do this? How long have you been doing it?
I translate legal and financial documents. I am not sure whether I should categorize my work as a "gig". It is more stable than that, and I am more committed to it. We moved to California in 2007/2008, when the economy was not very good. I had been working as a European attorney for law firms both in New York and for clients in Europe, and for a good three years I flew back and forth almost every week. That was not tenable.
I then found temporary work in Century City and spent more time in traffic than I had been stuck in airports in the previous years. I found something in San Diego, double the distance yet half the travel time, but it was not long-term. Through coincidence I had a link to translation. I once did someone a favor when they suddenly received a lot of foreign correspondence, and somehow the word spread within a small network. That was a few years earlier, but once I decided I should perhaps make a living out of it, people remembered.
What training or education did you have? How did this inform your career path and/or your side-Gig?
I have law degrees from two countries, and a business background in four. So, it was logical that I would specialize in legal, financial and business aspects. And in litigation, a lot of other areas are part of the work.
What is the best part about gig work?
Flexibility. But beware... Timewise, the flexibility is imposed on your family more than onto yourself. You have to meet the deadline... you want to complete it before (or after) the next billing cycle... the person you rely on didn't do a good job and you must make corrections ...something changes last-minute... Your family bears and grins. But they are still happier than when you fly across the country. You can also be flexible and refuse work, but that means you will have less income a month or so down the line.
Most of the flexibility consists of adapting to the client's needs. There are deadlines. In litigation, you must know on which side your party stands. You must adjust to slow months and to very busy months. You must know when to use and when not to use software, what to outsource, what requests to ignore (and how to ignore...). Indeed, if you are not flexible, you can't cope. But if you are too flexible, you are living the lives of others and have no time to yourself.
What was the hardest part about starting with gig work? How would you advise others about this?
Initially it was a step back financially. But there are hardly any costs, no commute, and in my case a lot less flying and lingering in airports. What is more, efficiency increases very fast. Technology also helps. If you can rely on a solid administrative system and process the details immediately, you will not miss a beat. That requires discipline.
The lawyer in me knows what to do with the presumably tedious paperwork, keeping time, follow-up, etc., so that helps. But you must realize that in principle you do not have colleagues or superiors or assistants who ask at the very last minute whether you have completed this or that. If your system does not alert you, but I can more or less set my own time, as long as I make the deadlines.
How have you leveraged social media and the web to grow your gig work?
I used to have a website, and in the beginning, it generated quite some leads and offered a degree of legitimacy to the business toward the firms and clients I used to work for. But soon the leads became less serious, either driven by curiosity or from parties with no realistic idea of prices. There are some social media I use to keep an eye on the market, but they tend to be networks of salespeople meeting other salespeople, while they are seeking to find buyers.
There are professional platforms, subscription-based, where contractors and principals meet and exchange work or services. These are very useful if you want to start or expand your area. There, longevity counts. If you have a higher, more recent registration number, you are a newbie. If you have an older number, you are seasoned - even if you do not vie for stars or numbers or rankings or brownie points that those sites dole out if you put in the requisite time (which you never have enough). Stick to the work, not the smoke and mirrors.
But in the end, maintaining very good relationships with existing clients works best. Online, you hardly meet anyone in person, but I try to give the communication a personal touch. Not hollow words and variations on "your call is important to us". Those can only backfire. But after two or three emails back and forth you get a gist of the person behind the mail. Usually it is appreciated, and at least you're not yet another email address.
Many people start doing gig work to reach financial freedom. Has it been profitable?
Yes. But the income is per definition less regular. Like in any business, there are busy seasons and quiet seasons. Quiet seasons are a lot shorter, but they provide you the time to cement business relationships or to expand your customer base. Because in regular months you don't have the time to properly focus on it, and in busy months, well, you don't have the time, period.
How do you balance your gig work with your personal life (family, vacations, leisure-time, etc.)?
It's tempting to take on that extra project that comes flying by. I'm rather efficient so I often deliver early. If a client then asks to look into a small matter, it is tempting to accept it. But I do keep in mind school hours and my wife's schedule. And school vacations are sacrosanct - that is the only time to visit the grandparents, so that prevails.
How has your business adapted to the sudden changes of the past couple of months?
The business is fully online. In that sense, not much has changed due to Covid. Initially there were some requests for discounts, and there are less smaller projects. But more importantly, California AB5 was a big issue in January/February, and still lingers on. The customer base has adapted as a result, with more expenses, more emails to respond to in European and Asian time zones, additional bank fees and currency conversion as a consequence.
What is your goal in the next 5-10 years?
Now that is a thing that has become flexible due to Covid.
For more information about Mr. Minke and his Translation Services, you can reach him via august.minke@aol.com.
P.S. Mr. Minke has also published a book on trade called Conducting Transatlantic Business - Basic Legal Distinctions in the US and Europe that is available on Amazon. and in eBook digital version at BookBoon.
