Category / KYW Community Blog

by kywseminar

Announcing a KYW Seminar for the Lockdown

Dear all, 

In what is now being referred to more and more often as “the times of the corona”, we have all seen a considerable portion of our assignments disappear, our savings drain from our accounts, and a generally panic-stricken mood set it on all sides, with everyone desperately waiting for life to go back to normal, at the same time wondering if it ever, truly, will. 

As we wrote in our open letter published a few days ago, even if this current lack of income is weighing on us, we cannot give in to depression. 

During our enforced isolation, we need to take the time to take care of ourselves – and we also have more time than we usually do. Which means we can, and should, use this time to make sure we are better prepared both for now and for when this enforced isolation is over.

Which is why our instructor, Julia Poger, is offering a free 

Know Your Worth Taster

March 31st at 4:00 – 5:00 pm Brussels time (GMT+1)

Julia will talk about the basic mindset changes that you should make to have better relations with your clients.

This will be followed by a webinar:

Know Your Worth Lockdown Seminar

April 6 – 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm – 1. Your Mindset

April 7 – 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm – 2. You

April 8 – 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm – 3. Your Client

April 9 – 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm – 4. Your Money

All times are listed in Brussels time (GMT+1). 

We will work together on issues that have blocked us from seeing what we can do in these unusual times, and figure out a plan to move forward so we can work and earn both now and when things get back to normal – though it will definitely be a new normal. While principles from the Know Your Worth seminar will be discussed, this will be a more hands-on approach to what you personally can do today.

We are currently offering the full webinar series at a special #uncrownthevirus rate, and we are looking forward to sharing these coming weeks with you. 

To sign up, please e-mail us at kyw.seminar@gmail.com, and we’ll walk you through the next steps. 

Please note that the number of participants is limited to 10 people, and we restrict enrollment to those who can make all four parts. 

We will be scheduling more webinars, and releasing more content in the coming weeks, because all of us here at KYW are deeply committed to helping you thrive during this slow period, and on into the future.

Stay healthy, stay in touch, and stay tuned for more updates.

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by kywseminar

An Open Letter from the KYW Team

Dear all, 

In these times of COVID-19, it’s been really hard for us all to see our assignments evaporate, our income dry up, and to hear confusing reports from all sides on when – and if! – our world will right itself and all will go back to normal.

Unfortunately, it looks as if we are in this for the long haul, with at least another 3 weeks to (depending on whom you are listening to) 6 months or more before we can stop the social distancing, etc.

While the lack of income is weighing on us, we cannot give in to depression.  Our countries are starting to move, in some giving tax and mortgage holidays, in others getting cash payments out to everyone.  And we also need to make sure that we are also helping ourselves.

During our enforced isolation, take time to take care of yourselves.  Try out an online exercise class, start that meditation program you thought you didn’t have time for, learn to cook new recipes (food is still available, thank goodness, even if toilet paper is a rarity…)…  

And there are many different online outlets for staying together, if not physically.  There are skypéros (having a drink with friends on Skype), virtual concerts, opera nights and museum tours, webinars, meetups, and enormous amounts of ways to connect and learn online.

We want you to thrive during this slow period, and on into the future – whatever that future will look like, which is why we are thinking about ways of expanding the seminar into something that could help people more deeply and in detail.

We want to keep you all going, and make sure that we can all come out of this ready to explode into action and start – and keep on – earning what we are worth!

Please stay in touch, and so shall we. 

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by kywseminar

Winter to Summer on Fast Forward

This year has definitely taken off to a busy start for all of us here at Know Your Worth, and, now that our mini-marathon is over, we’re delighted to sit back, relax, and share with you some highlights from the past month that saw us do four editions in four countries.

Our year started in beautiful Kyiv, that welcomed us for an anniversary edition with delicious food, incredible artwork, and new participants eager to learn more about marketing and negotiating.

We spent two busy days looking into ways to improve your presence on the market and your negotiating techniques, and we also looked at some possible mindset changes, which is probably the right thing to do at the start of any new year, to ensure you not only keep your existing clients and get new ones, but also understand them better to ensure they stay loyal to you, and keep returning.

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This, like our edition there last June, and the one a year ago, would not have been possible without the help and the incredible organizing skills of our local coordinator Andrii Biesiedin.

We then went to Moscow, where we had a one-day intensive training, focusing not only on the Russian market, but also on the European one, looking at strategies that could be applied universally, and brainstorming new negotiating ideas. It was particularly interesting to see our participants share their own stories and experience, and come up with some very creative solutions.

Thank you for the inspiring talk and the great workshop. It was interesting, practical, and motivating for anyone who wants to get insights into the world of marketing and negotiating in the field of interpreting

Elena Kravets

“It saved at least three years of my life.”

Kirill Chereshko

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During our time in Moscow our instructor Julia Poger also spoke at the Global Dialogue Forum, and we would like to thank the organizers for their kind invitation and warm welcome. Julia also gave a taster of her Negotiating seminar during the education portion, and took part in two panels, one called The Interpreter of the Future, and one called International Interpreters: How to Train Them:

It really is impressive to see how the interpreting community in Russia gathers to discuss topics of interest.

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 And on our last day in Moscow it snowed, so we got to see the city in winter!

 We then decided it was time to turn our attention to warmer climates, and headed to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, at the kind invitation of our colleague and KYW alum Heather Adams, before diving even further into summer, and bringing Know Your Worth to Guadalajara.

In Las Palmas we delved even further into the many whys we need to be aware of when talking to clients and even looked into the psychology behind negotiating, taking a more holistic approach to the entire process, while focusing at the same time on the particularities of the regional market.

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And the Guadalajara edition would not have been possible without the hard work and amazing energy of Jesse Tomlinson, who made sure not only our Marketing and Negotiating, but also the Intelligent Note Taking for Consecutive Interpreting went smoothly and without a hitch.

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I am convinced that you never stop learning and that one should always be eager to grow; lack of curiosity is one of the biggest mistakes that can lead to failure. I had the first consecutive interpreting assignment after taking Julia Poger’s Intelligent Note Taking course, and I confirmed that analyzing the speech has a whole new meaning in my mind, and it rocks!

Tania Saldivar Alonso

It was the first time we had both courses back-to-back, and we were happy to see that our participants remained active and energetic throughout, despite the sheer volume of new cases and information, with one of them referring to it as “an inspiring four-day journey”.

It certainly felt the same way for us.

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We are now going to take it easy for a few weeks, but not because we have nothing to do. The opposite, really, as we will be using the time to plan for a busy summer season, and look into a couple of new ideas, which we hope we will be able to present to you in no time.

In the meantime though, thank you so much for staying tuned, thank you for joining the ever-growing Know Your Worth family, and thank you for trusting us with your time, and you business.

We will be back with more news soon. 

by kywseminar

Season’s Greetings from the KYW Community

It has been a very busy year for all of us here at Know Your Worth, and we’ve a lot to be grateful for.

We kicked the year off with editions in London and Kyiv, where we’ll be returning to, by the way, in just a little over a week, and we then went on to hold editions in the Hague, Istanbul, Saint Petersburg, Ljubljana, and Montreal. We got to organize seminars in new and exciting locations, and we saw our Know Your Worth family grow even bigger.

We hope you too have had a good year, and we hope we’ll be seeing more of you in the months to come. For now though, enjoy the holidays, and have a brilliant start to the new year!

by kywseminar

A Busy Start to a Busy Summer

Most people use their summers to slow down, relax, and go on holidays, but not us, and definitely not the members of our close-knit and constantly growing Know Your Worth family. After all, what better time to dedicate some of your hard-earned free time to CPD, and to think about ways to change and improve the way you run your business?

Which is why we are so happy – thrilled really! – about the way our summer has been going so far. It started sooner than expected, with glorious weather and an invitation from our colleagues at AIIC Turkey and the TKTD to hold an edition in the beautiful and magical city of Istanbul at the end of May.

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The seminar was organized in record time, and we would like to start by thanking our hosts and local coordinators, Bahar Cotur and Asuman Okatan, for doing such a wonderful job and for welcoming us to Turkey. We would also like to thank Ali Can Karamahmut for the organization, Esin Aslan Gurbuz for the coffee breaks, and Cem Kaan Gundogar for the lunches.

Thanks to their hard work and incredible energy we were able to focus on the seminar, and so we spent two truly wonderful days studying the mindset necessary for successful marketing, regardless of your language combination or current market, and looked at ways to better understand not only you potential clients, but also your existing ones, to ensure they stay loyal to you, and keep returning. We firmly believe that one of the most important steps necessary for any marketing or negotiating to work is making sure you understand your existing and potential clients, as well as the why? and the what for? of the game, and that is why we always make sure to cover these topics during our seminars.

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We also talked about pricing and negotiating, covering same basic principles before diving into an in-depth discussion of real-life practices and the steps necessary to building a more sustainable and a much more successful interpreting business. Our participants also had a chance to work on several carefully selected case-studies, and we were delighted to see how well they coped with them, and how ready they were to think outside the box.

The seminar, business-oriented as always, also covered some market-specific issues, and our participants took a very active part in all of our discussions and brain-storming sessions.

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Overall, it was a brilliant edition, and we are very grateful to AIIC Turkey and the TKTD for the invitation.

Julia’s training was just what we needed: We had known for a long time we had to change our mindset and view our relationship with existing clients and prospect in a completely different way. We knew we were all highly competent and qualified, but always assumed the clients had to understand that – somewhat miraculously. Julia gave us the tools to make this change happen, not overnight, not next week, but in the medium to long term. She shared with us her experience and knowledge that would help us work on ourselves, our way of interacting with the client, correctly positioning ourselves as experts in the relationship. It was absolutely worth the money, and more importantly, the time we invested in this seminar. We’ve all seen how critical continuous professional development is, and we are all grateful to her for that…

Bahar Cotur

 

We would also like to wish the TKTD a very happy 50th Anniversary, with many more years of successful work on the market, and a wonderful celebration in December.

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Following our return from Istanbul, we had a short break before our trainer Julia Poger went to Kyiv to teach at a Know Your Worth spin-off event, a seminar on Consecutive Interpreting and Note-Taking.

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It was wonderful to return to Kyiv again, following our edition there in January, and we are already planning another edition there for the winter of 2020 with our wonderful host and coordinator Andrei Besedin, so please stay tuned for more updates. We won’t disappoint.

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And now, with July already upon us, we are looking forward to a very busy and exciting summer, with an edition a month, and at least two webinars in the works.

Come and join us in Saint Petersburg, Montreal, or Las Palmas, and, if you would like to hold a seminar in your area, please contact us via this website, or by contacting the seminar organizer Tatiana Kaplun at kaplun.tatiana@gmail.com.

by kywseminar

ATA SLD Podcast

A few weeks ago our instructor Julia Poger spoke on the podcast of the American Translators Association’s Slavic Languages Division, talking to Veronika Demichelis and Ekaterina Howard about the Know Your Worth: Understanding Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters seminar, the benefits of a proactive approach, and the value of CPD and professional training. You can listen to it here:

https://soundcloud.com/atasld/episode-14-interview-with-julia-poger

The podcast covers some common issues with marketing and negotiating that most of us conference interpreters have to face in our daily lives, and Julia generally shares her personal and professional experience in the field.

She also talks about Know Your Worth, the seminar for interpreters that started as part of the Cambridge Conference Interpreting Course back in 2002, soon evolved into a one-day, then its current format. It has now taken place in cities and locations all over the globe, and most of our editions seem to support the age-old idea that all too often people are too comfortable sitting where they are. Interpreters are not that different. It is easy to stay within your bubble, and to remain within your comfort zone, but the market is changing, and the profession is as well. And often all you have to do is change just one or two things in your current approach.

If you want to stop being reactive and start being proactive, this seminar is for you. All it takes it “a simple mindset shift”. And that’s exactly what KYW can do for you.

Try to listen more than you talk, try to understand your clients and your prospects, and why they are looking to hire you. You need to present yourself as an expert, you need to know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and in what way is it different from what everyone else does.

What makes you stand out?

How to think in business terms?

How to avoid being treated as a commodity?

If you want good, solid suggestions as to where to get your marketing facts and advice, then listen to the podcast as Julia shares some of her favourite sources on marketing and negotiating, as well as a few suggestions of courses you might want to consider taking if you’re really serious about marketing and turning your interpreting into a successful interpreting business.

Even if you’re a recent graduate, take a look, or rather a listen, so that you don’t make some very disappointing mistakes when you’re starting out.

And drop us a line if you’re interested in joining us at one of our upcoming editions.

by kywseminar

January 2019: From UK to Ukraine

It seems like it’s becoming a tradition of ours here at Know Your Worth to kick off the new year with a series of editions and conference appearances, and although this past fortnight wasn’t quite the marathon we had last year, it certainly felt like one. With two editions in two consecutive weekends, and a talk at an international conference in between in Moscow for our trainer Julia Poger, it’s really hard to imagine it being anything else.

It all started in Merry Olde England, where we had our first-ever British edition on 19 – 20 January 2019, and were joined by one of our liveliest and most language-diverse groups yet.

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Staying true to our philosophy of starting with the mindset, we examined that first, covering the main principles and ideas necessary for successful marketing, regardless of your language combination or current market. We firmly believe that one of the most important steps necessary for any marketing or negotiating to work is making sure you understand your existing and potential clients, as well as the why? and the what for? of the game, and that is why we attach such importance to getting the basics right.

 

KYW is so much more than an opportunity to hone your client interface skills (although it does a top job on that too). Julia’s insights and mindset help you to stay on top of your game right across the board. Grab a seat while you can!

Heather Adams

 

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Dealing with pricing and negotiating included an in-depth discussion of the general principles and real-life practices, all necessary steps in building a more sustainable and a much more successful interpreting business. We then moved on to looking into the practices and approaches to implement in more detail, and offered our participants several case-studies, both from the interpreting profession, and from outside, to help them see the mechanisms and tactics at work more clearly.

As anyone who’s been to at least one of our editions will be able to tell you, we keep our seminars business-oriented, and with the London edition we did that from the very first moment when we all set down and started with the introductions. Taking advantage of the fact that we had two non-interpreting participants, we suggested our interpreting participants introduce themselves the way they would to potential clients, which proved an interesting and revealing exercise.

 

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Speaking of our non-interpreting participants, we’d like to offer the warmest thanks to our brilliant photographers, Guy Ellis and Julian Wakefield from Teralon Media Ltd. We can’t wait to share the results of their hard work.

And when our participants send such glowing reviews mere days after the seminar, it makes us feel like we got something right:

I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your workshop in London: I gained so much from it! I cannot think of someone more motivating, inspiring and charismatic than you.

I look forward to putting the ideas and tactics I’ve learned into practice. I feel so empowered after this workshop.

Chiara Bartolozzi

 

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After London our instructor Julia Poger flew to Moscow, to take part in the second Global Dialogue International Conference for Conference Interpreters, where she presented a master-class with a special focus on marketing skills for interpreters.

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Global Dialogue proved to be a fabulous learning environment, and a mere two hours after Julia’s master-class, Know Your Worth was drawn into a scribing experiment, all of which goes to prove that marketing and negotiating ideas, paramount for our professional success, can be good fun as well.

It was also a fabulous opportunity to meet more colleagues from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and a wonderful energy boost just in time for our last edition on that tour, in Kyiv. However, before we go any further, we’d like to take a minute to thank Elena Stupnikova, Dmitry Venyavkin, Daria Nossovitskaya, and everyone from the Global Dialogue organizing committee.

It was a pleasure to be a part of such a brilliant event.

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Probably the best thing about our Kyiv group is that you could tell that while the ideas were new, people were nonetheless willing to take them on board, and see their businesses in a new light. As freelancers we face many challenges on a daily basis, and it is natural that the character of these challenges should vary from market to market, and from case to case. That is why it is so important that we do not limit our understanding of the situation to just one perspective. It is equally important that we share our stories and examples and learn from the experience of our peers. This also means that we should keep an open mind, and that is exactly what our participants did, and what helped ensure the success of the seminar.

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We are big fans of an interactive approach, which is why we make sure that all our participants have their questions answered, by leaving ample time for a Q&A session. We also encourage our participants to take some of the case studies in groups to enable them to brainstorm the best solutions and practices together.

Had so much passion, inspiration and perspectives today from Julia Poger.

Victoria Moroz

 

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Julia also offers one consultation for free to all of our participants, be it next steps, or looking at a CV or website, or a strategy question, and we are very happy that our participants are finding it helpful.

  

Everything about marketing and negotiating they should be telling people starting from uni.

Marina Myntsykovska

 

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This year has already given us much to be grateful for, and even more to look forward to, and we would like to end this post by thanking all those who took part, and helped us make it all possible. We learned lots from the participants everywhere, as they brought new cases and new ideas to the table.

We would also like to take a minute to thank our two brilliant local coordinators, Sabina Metcalf and Andrii Biesiedin, without whom it would have been a completely different – and much more stressful – experience. Thank you for taking such good care of us, and for making sure our participants didn’t have to worry about anything except getting to the seminar, and making the most of it.

 

We have a new edition coming up in two weeks’ time in the Hague, so stay tuned for more updates and news from the Netherlands, and if you’d like to join us, all you have to do is drop us a line at kaplun.tatiana@gmail.com or fill out the contact form on the website.

We always look forward to welcoming new colleagues to the community, as they always have something new and interesting to share, be it a case study, an idea or a principle they’ve been trying to apply to their work. All of this feeds into the overall ‘bank’ of experience, which helps all of us avoid mistakes in the future and considerably improves our performance in the present.

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If you would like to hold a seminar in your area, please contact us via this website, or by contacting the seminar organizer Tatiana Kaplun at kaplun.tatiana@gmail.com.

by kywseminar

A New Edition in the Hague

As promised, we have some very exciting news to kick off the New Year: a new edition announcement, and a new location to add to our list! We are delighted to announce that registration is now officially open for the Hague Edition of Know Your Worth: Understanding Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters set to take place on 16–17 February 2019.

Know Your Worth is aimed at any interpreter who wishes to improve relations with clients and prospects, gain more respect, negotiate higher fees, and learn more about the European and US markets.

By examining the mindset underlying the marketing and negotiating tasks that interpreters carry out every day, participants will obtain invaluable tools for marketing their services and negotiating contracts that they may put into practice immediately, whichever market they target.

You will be encouraged to take a step back from your own position, and envision the entire client relationship from new perspectives.

We will address several important questions, such as:

– What can you do to increase your chances of getting the job once you have targeted the client?

– What should you avoid saying, or else the client may never hire you – or anyone else?

– What phrase should always end your conversations with any client?

– How do you increase your chances of earning what you are worth?

The trainer will work with you on your examples, as well as case studies from her own experience, showing how these techniques can be replicated across markets.

We will discuss concepts such as branding, selling, client relationships, pricing, negotiating tricks, and “coopetition,” all illustrated with real-life examples.

During the seminar, Julia draws on parallels with other – often surprisingly similar – professions, and what lessons we could learn from them. She focuses on the upstream work that must be done by the interpreter before advertising his/her services, as well as on the preparation involved before beginning the selling or negotiating process.

So, if you are an interpreter who wishes to improve your relations with clients and prospects, gain more respect, and negotiate higher fees, then this two-day intensive training event is exactly what you need.

The registration process is also very straightforward. All you have to do is send an e-mail to the seminar organizer Tatiana Kaplun at kaplun.tatiana@gmail.com, and we’ll walk you through your next steps.

by kywseminar

Season’s Greetings

This has been an exciting year for us at Know Your Worth, with new editions, new locations, and new people joining the network. Over the course of the past twelve months we’ve hosted editions in Europe, Russia, and the Americas, and we already have a busy schedule for the start of 2019, with new editions scheduled for London and Kyiv, and more exciting news coming up shortly!

In September, our trainer Julia Poger was one of the two keynote speakers at the CIOL Interpreting Division AGM in London, and she also presented – and was invited to join the jury – of the Cosines International Contest for Conference Interpreters for the second year running.

As for our alumni, we have been keen to follow their progress, and are grateful to all who have shared their news and stories with us, as well as photos from other CPD events and conferences they have attended together, or times where they got to share a booth.

It gives us great joy to hear from you, so please keep doing so, and we hope the new year will open new doors for you, and bring you new opportunities to successfully market your services, and negotiate you fees and conditions. And we’ll be there to help along the way.

So, from all of us at Know Your Worth we would like to wish you a beautiful holiday season, and all the best for the coming New Year!

by kywseminar

From UK to Ukraine. A brand new Kyiv Edition

It looks like the coming year will be just as busy and just as exciting as this year has been. It gives us great pleasure to announce our second edition of the coming new year, the first Know Your Worth: Understanding Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters seminar to be held in Kyiv on 26-27 January 2019.

Know Your Worth is aimed at any interpreter who wishes to improve relations with clients and prospects, gain more respect, negotiate higher fees, and learn more about the European and US markets.

By examining the mindset underlying the marketing and negotiating tasks that interpreters carry out every day, participants will obtain invaluable tools for marketing their services and negotiating contracts that they may put into practice immediately, whichever market they target.

You will be encouraged to take a step back from your own position, and envision the entire client relationship from new perspectives.

We will address several important questions, such as:

– What can you do to increase your chances of getting the job once you have targeted the client?

– What should you avoid saying, or else the client may never hire you – or anyone else?

– What phrase should always end your conversations with any client?

– How do you increase your chances of earning what you are worth?

The trainer will work with you on your examples, as well as case studies from her own experience, showing how these techniques can be replicated across markets.

We will discuss concepts such as branding, selling, client relationships, pricing, negotiating tricks, and “coopetition,” all illustrated with real-life examples.

During the seminar, Julia draws on parallels with other – often surprisingly similar – professions, and what lessons we could learn from them. She focuses on the upstream work that must be done by the interpreter before advertising his/her services, as well as on the preparation involved before beginning the selling or negotiating process.

So, if you are an interpreter who wishes to improve your relations with clients and prospects, gain more respect, and negotiate higher fees, then this two-day intensive training event is exactly what you need.

The registration process is also very straightforward. All you have to do is send an e-mail to the seminar organizer Tatiana Kaplun at kaplun.tatiana@gmail.com, and we’ll guide you through your next steps.

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