MY NEWFOUND APPRECIATION FOR DIRECTION IN BUSINESS

Foreword: what a paradox it is that the more you are preoccupied with crying out for
something that will change your life forever, the more you will attract it – it’s just that
chances are it will take place without you even realising it.

As a self-employed translator, I can honestly say that running a business has changed me as a
person in some rather fundamental ways. I imagine that that is not too hard to believe when
you consider that I have been doing it for twelve and a half years and I’m still at it as we
emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: when you’re self-employed, it’s just not enough to
do what seems right alone. I have no false ideas about what I do for a living, whatever in the
real world may get thrown my way. But, if you could live forever, what would you live for?
Just how satisfying can an existence of ceaseless effort without purpose really be? That point
made, all too often it’s better to accept that you are just not truly awake without a sense of a)
direction and b) hope – hope not just in the purely emotional sense of the term. We cannot
change the past, but what does your future hold if you will never take some kind of control of
your present? In other words, what do you have to say about your own destiny? If you don’t
know what a “limiting belief” is, I strongly suggest you look it up damn soon. They call it
“self-respect” for a reason… if you didn’t know who you were, at what point would you
realise you could no longer trust yourself – trust yourself to make things right? I’m telling
you: carry on down that road and the worst that could happen is that you make yourself far
angrier than something like my warped joke about Sarah Everard on LinkedIn and Twitter.
NO-ONE WANTS THAT.

In all candour, there was once a time when I didn’t have any “real” ambition. Every day was
purely a matter of accepting my changing and/or accumulating responsibilities as best I
could; I had at least a basic idea of what was important (by any thinking person’s reckoning)
and what wasn’t, only to remind myself time and time again that I’d long since learned to be
happy with what I had… or so I thought. It’s just that, if you ask me, it’s only a matter of
time before most of us are not only labelling our working life and our private life as such, but
affirmatively segregating them – for better or worse, and people seldom take the trouble to
outline what this means for themselves; something that is never readily expressed with a
deliberate and definitive hint of authority. That’s life. For many people, the bottom line is
that, whatever anyone says or thinks, you’ll always have a private life to find solace and
reinvigoration in. (Only when you’re self-employed, things just aren’t that simple. In my
case, I don’t even have any children to feed and clothe.) I think of Simon Sinek.

Those who work lower paid jobs in which there is no need for any genuine concern for
anything other than not leaving a bad impression on existing or potential customers who are
already in their presence i.e. no need for any genuine concern for anything outside the
boundaries of the premises where they work – cleaning and waiting being good examples –
probably think nothing of this (I’ve done waiting and post office work myself). But when you
move up the career ladder to get a job with a manager’s responsibilities or higher, you may
well find that part of you starts to view the notion indicated in the previous paragraph as a
recipe for professional suicide, even, to use a harsher term, a “bad attitude”. Well, why not?
At that point, the real challenge is how to become and remain an effective player in the actual
market of your industry in a far larger forum – and the actual market as it really is, rather than

what you think it should be or what you would like to believe it is (even if you are being
humble on that score). And of course, “Nothing endures but change” (Heraclitus). When you
get a senior role, you had better be prepared to get out of your bubble!
Today, what I do for a living has me working from home. Considerations about salary and
livelihood (and my well-being) aside, I do work some very long hours, yet I’m happy with
that. I knew my life would never be the same again from the first day I started doing this job.
But even if I went bankrupt today, it will have been worth it. Still, in my current situation, I
do feel the need to be more innovative marketing-wise. The current status quo surely won’t
remain forever. (Again, “Nothing endures but change.”) Yet my personal opinion is that, my
own line of work being what it is, there is relatively little room for clarifying what my
business goals or strategies should be (unless you count “make more money”).
https://chriscardell.com/about-chris-cardell/ I have been to some of Chris Cardell’s
entrepreneur summits in London in the past. The prices for his stuff are high, but he really is
a good bloke and I like and respect him, much as I personally believe that I’m not actually the
kind of entrepreneur he targets. I remember him saying he had some sort of communication
difficulties as a child; I remember him saying he used to be in six-figure debt (!); but he’s
definitely done something right. He’s worth millions today. Well done to him. Anyway, I still
receive marketing emails from him (which, to his credit, are never short of confidence and
conviction while he never comes across as conceited), even though I have a very clear idea of
why I just don’t actually “need” him as much as some people seem to. It is because my line
of work is just seldom subject to customers’ subjective opinions or attitudes. The staple of
translation work well done is just flat academic knowledge, savoir-faire, accuracy and
reasoning (admittedly, sometimes a kind of reasoning where empathy and compassion play a
vital role); I’d say that there’s hardly that much scope for suggestions on how to provide a
more enticing or “better” translation service in the market, or secure customer
recommendations. Compare that to a company which sells bathroom products and solutions,
which decides to add a “bath step” to their range of products. (If you’re wondering if such a
thing would really be worth it, just look up “bath step benefits” on Google and see what you
get.) Or a pub which no longer leans on its “Happy Hour” offer alone to maintain its
popularity in the local area. Those are just two examples. A more exaggerated example is the
music industry – music producers generally need to be highly resolved and competitive just
as much as artists.

But it’s not all frustration. Being consumed by fear of frustration actually tends only to make
frustration worse… and that’s only to be related to the point I’m trying to make. Imagine, just
for a moment, that you run a company and someone rings up and makes an order that you
cannot fulfill without the availability of another service (outsourcing, if you will). Chances
are there would always be someone willing to fill that gap. My own professional story right
now largely revolves around this point: I find that what I do (the skill and art of it all) is
hardly frequently of direct relevance to other lines of work, even if there is so much
international business today – but I’m open to debating that! I agree that the service I offer is
a type of service in which those who work in it shouldn’t be afraid to seek suggestions or
clarifications from customers in the interest of meeting their demands properly if they really
do care about their customers not losing confidence in them while they themselves come
across as unprofessional or negligent. Who else can you ask, anyway? I’m sorry, I take that
back; I guess I’m just one of those people who wonders how people coped before they had
the Internet and online platforms like Facebook with which to expand professional networks.

So what does the future hold for me right now? I have often pledged to treasure my memories
lest they become all I have left, but the hard truth is that even that has its limits. Whereas I
once turned my back on ambition (out of pessimism), I today think of that mindset as
something of a curse. It’s natural to have no ambition when you’re first born, as it’s like
literally nothing makes sense, but as times change, so must we all. And at a time like this, I
know it makes sense to try harder and make more sacrifices than usual to avoid going out of
business; however, I have faith that my new “ideas” (however defined, and it’s never
impossible that there would be some I would do well to define better) will live on even if I
(as a professional translator) won’t. But I hardly need someone like Chris Cardell to tell me
that it’s all up to me to ensure they will (at least possibly) prove successful.

MY NEWFOUND APPRECIATION FOR DIRECTION IN BUSINESS
Foreword: what a paradox it is that the more you are preoccupied with crying out for
something that will change your life forever, the more you will attract it – it’s just that
chances are it will take place without you even realising it.
As a self-employed translator, I can honestly say that running a business has changed me as a
person in some rather fundamental ways. I imagine that that is not too hard to believe when
you consider that I have been doing it for twelve and a half years and I’m still at it as we
emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic.
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: when you’re self-employed, it’s just not enough to
do what seems right alone. I have no false ideas about what I do for a living, whatever in the
real world may get thrown my way. But, if you could live forever, what would you live for?
Just how satisfying can an existence of ceaseless effort without purpose really be? That point
made, all too often it’s better to accept that you are just not truly awake without a sense of a)
direction and b) hope – hope not just in the purely emotional sense of the term. We cannot
change the past, but what does your future hold if you will never take some kind of control of
your present? In other words, what do you have to say about your own destiny? If you don’t
know what a “limiting belief” is, I strongly suggest you look it up damn soon. They call it
“self-respect” for a reason… if you didn’t know who you were, at what point would you
realise you could no longer trust yourself – trust yourself to make things right? I’m telling
you: carry on down that road and the worst that could happen is that you make yourself far
angrier than something like my warped joke about Sarah Everard on LinkedIn and Twitter.
NO-ONE WANTS THAT.

In all candour, there was once a time when I didn’t have any “real” ambition. Every day was
purely a matter of accepting my changing and/or accumulating responsibilities as best I
could; I had at least a basic idea of what was important (by any thinking person’s reckoning)
and what wasn’t, only to remind myself time and time again that I’d long since learned to be
happy with what I had… or so I thought. It’s just that, if you ask me, it’s only a matter of
time before most of us are not only labelling our working life and our private life as such, but
affirmatively segregating them – for better or worse, and people seldom take the trouble to
outline what this means for themselves; something that is never readily expressed with a
deliberate and definitive hint of authority. That’s life. For many people, the bottom line is
that, whatever anyone says or thinks, you’ll always have a private life to find solace and
reinvigoration in. (Only when you’re self-employed, things just aren’t that simple. In my
case, I don’t even have any children to feed and clothe.) I think of Simon Sinek.
Those who work lower paid jobs in which there is no need for any genuine concern for
anything other than not leaving a bad impression on existing or potential customers who are
already in their presence i.e. no need for any genuine concern for anything outside the
boundaries of the premises where they work – cleaning and waiting being good examples –
probably think nothing of this (I’ve done waiting and post office work myself). But when you
move up the career ladder to get a job with a manager’s responsibilities or higher, you may
well find that part of you starts to view the notion indicated in the previous paragraph as a
recipe for professional suicide, even, to use a harsher term, a “bad attitude”. Well, why not?
At that point, the real challenge is how to become and remain an effective player in the actual
market of your industry in a far larger forum – and the actual market as it really is, rather than

what you think it should be or what you would like to believe it is (even if you are being
humble on that score). And of course, “Nothing endures but change” (Heraclitus). When you
get a senior role, you had better be prepared to get out of your bubble!
Today, what I do for a living has me working from home. Considerations about salary and
livelihood (and my well-being) aside, I do work some very long hours, yet I’m happy with
that. I knew my life would never be the same again from the first day I started doing this job.
But even if I went bankrupt today, it will have been worth it. Still, in my current situation, I
do feel the need to be more innovative marketing-wise. The current status quo surely won’t
remain forever. (Again, “Nothing endures but change.”) Yet my personal opinion is that, my
own line of work being what it is, there is relatively little room for clarifying what my
business goals or strategies should be (unless you count “make more money”).
https://chriscardell.com/about-chris-cardell/ I have been to some of Chris Cardell’s
entrepreneur summits in London in the past. The prices for his stuff are high, but he really is
a good bloke and I like and respect him, much as I personally believe that I’m not actually the
kind of entrepreneur he targets. I remember him saying he had some sort of communication
difficulties as a child; I remember him saying he used to be in six-figure debt (!); but he’s
definitely done something right. He’s worth millions today. Well done to him. Anyway, I still
receive marketing emails from him (which, to his credit, are never short of confidence and
conviction while he never comes across as conceited), even though I have a very clear idea of
why I just don’t actually “need” him as much as some people seem to. It is because my line
of work is just seldom subject to customers’ subjective opinions or attitudes. The staple of
translation work well done is just flat academic knowledge, savoir-faire, accuracy and
reasoning (admittedly, sometimes a kind of reasoning where empathy and compassion play a
vital role); I’d say that there’s hardly that much scope for suggestions on how to provide a
more enticing or “better” translation service in the market, or secure customer
recommendations. Compare that to a company which sells bathroom products and solutions,
which decides to add a “bath step” to their range of products. (If you’re wondering if such a
thing would really be worth it, just look up “bath step benefits” on Google and see what you
get.) Or a pub which no longer leans on its “Happy Hour” offer alone to maintain its
popularity in the local area. Those are just two examples. A more exaggerated example is the
music industry – music producers generally need to be highly resolved and competitive just
as much as artists.
But it’s not all frustration. Being consumed by fear of frustration actually tends only to make
frustration worse… and that’s only to be related to the point I’m trying to make. Imagine, just
for a moment, that you run a company and someone rings up and makes an order that you
cannot fulfill without the availability of another service (outsourcing, if you will). Chances
are there would always be someone willing to fill that gap. My own professional story right
now largely revolves around this point: I find that what I do (the skill and art of it all) is
hardly frequently of direct relevance to other lines of work, even if there is so much
international business today – but I’m open to debating that! I agree that the service I offer is
a type of service in which those who work in it shouldn’t be afraid to seek suggestions or
clarifications from customers in the interest of meeting their demands properly if they really
do care about their customers not losing confidence in them while they themselves come
across as unprofessional or negligent. Who else can you ask, anyway? I’m sorry, I take that
back; I guess I’m just one of those people who wonders how people coped before they had
the Internet and online platforms like Facebook with which to expand professional networks.

So what does the future hold for me right now? I have often pledged to treasure my memories
lest they become all I have left, but the hard truth is that even that has its limits. Whereas I
once turned my back on ambition (out of pessimism), I today think of that mindset as
something of a curse. It’s natural to have no ambition when you’re first born, as it’s like
literally nothing makes sense, but as times change, so must we all. And at a time like this, I
know it makes sense to try harder and make more sacrifices than usual to avoid going out of
business; however, I have faith that my new “ideas” (however defined, and it’s never
impossible that there would be some I would do well to define better) will live on even if I
(as a professional translator) won’t. But I hardly need someone like Chris Cardell to tell me
that it’s all up to me to ensure they will (at least possibly) prove successful.