The Technician Takes Over
Maybe you remember an earlier post I wrote about a book I was reading, entitled ‘The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It’ by Michael E. Gerber.
To sum it up again (and the book is full of interesting coaching ideas, at least from my ‘mature’ perspective, to put it nicely), the author declares that the three major roles in a small business are the Entrepreneur, the Manager and the Technician.
Reflecting upon my experience in the light of the structure described in the book, it would seem that I followed the path down to failure, because I started off focusing on the Technician side. I was 100% the Technician, working on many different projects, I couldn’t stop for a minute, because I wanted to work, to be there, I accepted everything that came my way (yet within reasonable limits, such as rates), and some days I would be interpreting in the daytime and translating at night. Needless to say, something in me eventually told me to stop!
Very soon in my career, I knew I had to be a Manager too, although I wasn’t aware of these labels. Being self-employed means that you have to fill in all the positions, and Accounts is certainly one of those I hate most. Let me rephrase that. I and numbers have a relationship based on mutual hatred. I will key in a whole list of numbers -it was even worse when I was doing it by hand- only to find that they don’t add up, and after a lot of cross-checks, I realize that some digits simply switched places without my noticing them. Now I have an accountant, even though I’ve learned the hard way that accountants too can make mistakes.
The position I am toying with now is that of the Entrepreneur. I don’t mean that I am considering hiring people or going into any kind of ‘big’ business. No. I am already thinking of different ways to organize as I approach retirement, but there’s still plenty of time for that, thanks to population aging and its implications on retirement age. What I am trying to do is simply to explore new ideas and I am deriving a lot of pleasure from looking at my business from a different perspective. It’s like starting a new career, in a way.
So the idea of the Entrepreneur, even though like Mr. Jourdain with his prose, I was probably one already, appeals to me immensely. Being the captain of a ship, albeit a small one with only one person on board, certainly inspires me.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the humblest position, that of the Technician, is the one that gets real food on my plate, money in my bank account, and keeps various government avatars happy. And in times like this, when I learn that I am going to pay for a social security contribution double what I was paying last year, when I have several translation projects, even with reasonable deadlines, with the prospect of a couple of days out of the office, even out of town, for interpreting, the only thing I can think of doing is this: sit down at my computer and put my fingers to the keyboard, and I don’t have much time to maintain my presence on the internet, whether it is by blogging, twittering, facebooking, or any other channel.
I still read the odd post or online paper, say Hello across the seas, but the bottom line of it all is that translating, not marketing, is what defines me, and it takes due priority over the rest in times like this.
And the interesting thing is that I notice a number of fellow translators, wherever they may be on the world map, doing the same.
Do you feel the same about it, or differently?
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
