Lockdown happened so quickly – and in the Fall of 2021 we aren’t fully out of the woods yet!
This photo shows the beginning of 2020. KYW had been to 5 countries (plus our staff were in still other countries for other meetings) all before mid-March, and then boom! 💣
Or should I say Zoom! 🤯
As of March 2020, Know Your Worth seminars pivoted online, targeting what we as freelance interpreters could do to keep earning money when both we AND our clients were scared about the future.
We have run online seminars since April.
Our community started meeting regularly on Zoom, both to keep in touch and to help each other out by exchanging ideas and information. And we’re still going!
We even have a Whatsapp group for the hardy few who want to stay in closer touch!
We’ve all become even more supportive of each other through thick and thin, on multiple platforms. In fact, we can say confidently that we’ve become even better friends with each other since the pandemic began.
So we can’t really say that those crazy lockdown times were all bad!
This year, the Troublesome Terps invited me to be a guest on their podcast (tagline: The podcast about things that keep interpreters up at night) – and what fun we had!
The four Terps themselves come from all walks of life: three freelancers, one staff interpreter for an international organization, two researchers. All speak English, though not all are native speakers. And their podcast talks about all things interpreting.
This year, their episodes discussed starting out as an interpreter; how to deal with bullying; issues of mental health in interpreting; interpreting in conflict zones; new ways of working as interpreters; websites for interpreters; taking care of our voice, body and mind; tech for interpreters; and meeting the American Translators Association – as well as an episode on the Know Your Worth: Understanding Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters seminar by yours truly.
Just to be chosen to be on the podcast is great! You can see from the non-exhaustive selection I just mentioned that the guests broaden our knowledge and topics of conversation. And the ability to get the Know Your Worth conversation out to a wider audience was fantastic.
But this year, they held their first ever Episode of the Year and Guest of the Year contest, based on votes from their listeners – and the Know Your Worth episode won both categories!
I knew the podcast was still being listened to – my interpreting students periodically ask me to explain an expression in English, or to write out the Big Mac jingle… But the episode obviously brought all the interpreter listeners information they could use, and that could help them – especially during this crazy year.
So I would like to say a heartfelt thank you to Troublesome Terps for inviting me, and to the listeners for voting!
Dear all, Being surrounded by vast volumes of new information when we’re working means that we get used to the feeling, and miss it sorely when it stops. As conference interpreters we are addicted to constant learning, which is why it is hardly surprising that the idea of having a quiet and lazy confinement didn’t stick. We were barely two weeks into our respective lockdowns, when we started discussing which language to add next, and which CPD course to do now that we suddenly have the time.
We here at Know Your Worth have been keeping busy too, and over the past two weeks we’ve had not one, but three highly successful editions of our KYW Lockdown Seminar, talking not only about some of our more evergreen principles, and how we’ve been using them rightly and wrongly, but also about the current situation we’re finding ourselves in.
Some of us were prepared for this crisis, others much less so, 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.
We looked into ways in which we can help our existing clients, and we talked about weathering this storm, and moving forward into whatever the future holds. We also discussed how to best prepare ourselves for that future, no matter how uncertain it may seem at times, and we enjoyed an incredibly interactive and positive exchange with all of our participants.
I didn’t expect the on-line format would be this informative, insightful and interactive.
Libor Nenutil
True, every group felt very different. Different languages, different concerns, different dynamics. But one thing remained constant: at the end we had all become close, just as close as if we had met in person, and no wanted to hang up.
Thanks again for a wonderful seminar. I have been sending e-mails to relevant clients today, and had one good result already.
Catriona Howard
We saw that with our first group, and we had the exact same feeling when the time came to say goodbye to the next two.
Which is why we would like to thank you all for that, and to officially welcome you into the KYW family.
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We would also like to use this opportunity to announce a new edition of our Lockdown Seminar. Based on your comments and impressions, we would like to tweak the format a little bit, moving from one hour and a half long sessions to two hour long ones. This will give us the possibility to focus even more on some of the pricing and negotiating related aspects of the course that you seemed to be particularly interested in.
We are an evolving course. These are challenging times, and the next several months won’t be easy. But we are determined to help you through this. An important part of our philosophy is that we adapt to offer a programme that would best suit your needs, and best answer the questions you might have, given the current situation on the market.
April 27 – 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm – 1. Your Mindset
April 28 – 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm – 2. You
April 29 – 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm – 3. Your Client
April 30 – 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm – 4. Your Money
All times are listed in Brussels time (GMT+1).
We are currently offering the full webinar series at a special #uncrownthevirus rate of EUR 200, 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.
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.
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!
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 registrationprocess is also very straightforward. All you have to do is send an e-mail to the seminar organizer Tatiana Kaplun atkaplun.tatiana@gmail.com, and we’ll guide you through your next steps.
Following a relaxing summer – yes, we did need to rest after all of our editions in the Americas – we thought it was high time we returned to Russia, and so the third Moscow Edition of Know Your Worth: Understanding Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters took place this past weekend, on 30 September 2018. And since it just happened to coincide with the International Translation Day we thought we’d start by wishing you a happy belated St Jerome’s Day!
It was the third time that the seminar was held in Moscow, and the second time we teamed up with the Cosines International Contest for Conference Interpreters, as our instructor Julia Poger joined the jury of this all-Russia turned international competition, and gave a talk on Seeing Structure and the role of analysis in conference interpreting as part of their three-day conference.
We also thought it was time to experiment, to shake things up a little bit, so we decided to revert to our original, one-day format, and the results were as interesting as they were exciting. We still focused in great detail on marketing and negotiating, and we covered such questions as branding, position, and client relations, but this time the speed was slightly different. True, this meant that everything had to go faster, and was considerably more intense than usual – even though some of you might say it’s hard to imagine things getting even more intense – but that also meant a new rhythm, new dynamics, and a much livelier discussion after the event.
We started by talking about the mindset necessary for successful marketing, and covered some general principles (as well as a number of highly practical aspects) of pricing and negotiating, all necessary steps in building a more sustainable and much more successful interpreting business. We were also able to devote some time to looking into how the interpreting profession is perceived from the outside, all in order to better understand our potential and existing clients.
The seminar covered all the bases for me. From reaffirming some practices I had tried out tentatively or providing applicable insights into “something that had felt reasonable to do somehow maybe,” to being an eye-opener.
Fedor Makhlayuk
Despite this edition being held in a special one-day format, we still wanted to see our participants brainstorm at least a couple of new cases together, as this often leads to them finding new and exciting solutions to different marketing and negotiating problems. It also means that they are more likely to start implementing the new principles and ideas sooner, and in a more direct manner. And once again we were not disappointed. On the contrary.
We were particularly happy with the way this edition’s participants responded to the new information, and how they took to the format, and all the commentary and remarks showed that they had come prepared, and with a solid understanding of their respective markets, but with an open mind and a desire to learn more, and to figure out how to navigate it better and more efficiently.
It was super helpful and I’ve already used some of the techniques today trying to ask a client some questions rather than blindly giving them my rates.
Natasha Kharikova
We always say that it’s best if people come prepared, and with a well thought through agenda, and with this group this was clearly the case. Perhaps that’s why the one-day format didn’t seem as daunting as we had feared at first, and why it seemed that everyone had found answers to at least some of the questions bothering them, and for that we are immensely grateful.
Notwithstanding my already considerable experience on Russian interpreting market, I’ve learned a whole number of new insights from Julia regarding the principles of self-promotion among prospective clients, psychology of negotiations, ways to convince the customers of the value of interpreting services and the need to pay for them adequately.
Alexey Prokhorenko
It’s become a tradition of ours by now that we devote considerable attention to the general atmosphere we create at the seminar, and we were extremely lucky – and very grateful – to be able to return for the second year running to the truly incredible Impact Hub Moscow. We would like to thank their team for all their help in the run-up to the seminar, as well on the day, and for making sure our participants had a wonderful time and nothing to worry about, except getting to the seminar, and getting the most out of it.
Last year we thought that we’d found our perfect Moscow location, and that we could not have possibly wished for a better place to hold the seminar. This time simply proved us right: a beautiful location in the heart of Moscow, wonderful atmosphere, and lovely people to help along the way – in all honesty we could not have wished for a better place.
If you would like to hold a Know Your Worth seminar in your area, please contact us via this website, or by contacting the seminar organizer Tatiana Kaplun at kaplun.tatiana@gmail.com.
It’s been almost a year since the last Moscow Edition of the Know Your Worth: Understanding Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters seminar, and we thought it was about time we considered returning to Moscow. We also decided to move back to the original one-day format this time, as we follow the Cosines International Interpreting Contest.
This means we are now incredibly happy to announce that the next edition of the seminar will be once again held in Moscow, on 30 September 2018.
Know Your Worth is aimed at any interpreter who wishes to improve relations with clients and prospects, gain more respect, and negotiate higher fees. We plan to boost the one-day format into a comprehensive day, with much of the content of the two-day seminar, a crash course of sorts.
You will be encouraged to take a step back from your own position, and envision the entire client relationship from new perspectives.
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.
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 are replicable across markets.
We will discuss concepts such as branding, selling, client relationships, pricing, negotiating tricks, and “coopetition,” all illustrated with real-life examples.
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 one-day intensive training event is exactly what you need!
Here’s what some of our past participants have to say:
The KYW training is the fastest path to success for you interpreters out there dreaming of landing THE best clients and THE best deals ever! special thanks to Julia Poger!
Cyril Belange, KYW Paris Edition, 2018
Honestely, I did not expect to have a colleague prepared to confidently share so much knowledge on marketing. I thought we would be talking about our market a few suggestions would be made here and there on how to approach it.
KYW participant, Rio de Janeiro Edition, 2018
Infuriatingly eye-opening.
Melissa Mann, KYW São Paulo Edition, 2018
The registrationprocess 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 tell you what to do next.
Cosines will include our instructor, Julia Poger, as one of the official jury members during the contest – and we will follow the contest with a special one-day Moscow edition of the Know Your Worth: Understanding Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters seminar – all so you won’t have to buy two tickets to Moscow!
If you are going to be in Moscow, please join us for the contest, which will include 3 days of lectures, round tables, and master classes, and then for a one-day edition of Know Your Worth!
For more information about the contest, please visit their official website at cosines-pi.ru.
It seems that the Know Your Worth community is having its busiest season yet, as following the success of our Know Your Worth marathon, and that of the first ever seminar we held in the USA, we are delighted to announce our return to America, and that registration is now open for our first ever New York Edition.
The seminar will take place on 30 June – 1 July 2018, and we would be very happy to see you there.
If you are an interpreter who wishes to improve your relationships with clients and prospects, gain more respect, and negotiate higher fees, then this two-day event is exactly what you need!
You will receive two days of tuition, covering essential skills for any interpreter, costing less than one day’s interpreting fee.
You will be encouraged to take a step back from your own position, and envision the entire client relationship from new perspectives.
What is important to explore?
We will examine the mindset underlying the marketing and negotiating tasks that you carry out every day, so you may acquire invaluable tools that will have an immediate effect on your bottom line.
We will address 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?
We will discussconcepts such as branding, selling, client relationships, pricing, negotiating tricks, and “coopetition,” all illustrated with real-life examples.
Julia draws on parallels with other – often surprisingly similar – professions, and what lessons we may learn from them. She focuses on the upstream work and preparation that must be done before the interpreter advertises his/her services, or negotiates any contracts.
To register, please use the link below, and don’t hesitate to get in touch should you have any questions.
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.
Please stay tuned for more updates, and don’t hesitate to get in touch should you have any questions.
You can also check our Facebook page for regular updates.
Hello and welcome to the longest post we’ve published on our blog yet. So before you scroll down, please prepare yourself for some exciting news and very colourful images. After all, it’s spring, and in some parts of the world it feels like summer already, and we thought a bit of colour would be in order.
If you follow us on social media, you probably know that we’ve had a rather exiting (to say the least) couple of months, as just a few weeks after the end of our Paris Edition we embarked upon a little marathon that took Know Your Worth two three locations over two continents, and what a journey has that been.
First up: Washington, D.C.
First, AIIC USA invited us to hold a seminar in Washington, D.C., which we did on 17 – 18 February 2018. This was the first time that the Know Your Worth seminar was brought to the AIIC USA region, and, needless to say, we were very excited to expand to the American market.
One of the most important steps necessary for any marketing or negotiating to work is making sure you understand your existing and potential clients. The why? and the what for? of the game are probably among the most relevant questions you can ask yourself before diving in, head-first, into that big negotiation, or picking up the phone to make that one call.
Which is why we decided to kick things off by talking about the mindset necessary for successful marketing, and covered some general principles (as well as a number of highly practical aspects) of pricing and negotiating, all necessary steps in building a more sustainable and much more successful interpreting business.
We like to keep are seminars business-oriented, so you can imagine that too was a major part of the discussion.
We are big fans of an interactive approach, and we also want to make sure that all our participants have their questions answered. Which is why we send out a survey to our participants before the seminar, to find out what they would be most interested in discussing, and which subjects they would be most interested in covering during the seminar.
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.
My favourite thing about the seminar? Julia’s offer to have a consultation. I have my question and I am excited to ask it soon.
Jesse Tomlinson, KYW Washington, D.C., February 2018
We would like to once again express our immense gratitude to the AIIC USA Training Committee, and our wonderful colleague Cyril Flerov in particular, for inviting us over, and for doing such a fabulous job at hosting our first-time US edition. We would also like to thank Sonja Swenson, who helped us make sure everything ran smoothly on the day of the seminar, and without whom it would have been much more difficult to take care of all the things on the ground.
Next stop: Brazil
The São Paulo Edition
After Washington, we went to São Paulo at the invitation of AIIC Brazil and their Training Committee, and our first-ever seminar in Brazil took place on 21 – 22 February 2018.
The seminars in Brazil, just as the one in Washington, D.C., were held in what has become our traditional two-day format. The format, that allows to focus on both marketing and negotiating, also gives us and our participants an opportunity to delve deeper into such subjects as branding, positioning, pricing, pitching, and client relations, all of which are important factor to achieving success.
As freelancers we face many challenges on a daily basis, and since the nature and character of these challenges vary so much from market to market, and from case to case, it is extremely important that we share our stories and examples and learn from the experience of our peers.
That is precisely why 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 us avoid mistakes in the future and considerably improves our performance in the present.
After all, it’s all about learning new things, and what better place to learn than an intense yet interactive event, surrounded by like-minded and highly experienced colleagues.
And if it’s a fun environment and a warm and welcoming atmosphere – well, that’s even better.
Here’s what one of our participants had to say about it:
We looked at theoretical approaches, role-played some sample scenarios, discussed client behavior, and I took home a lot of new ideas. The way she really strives to add as much value as possible to the course, such as by recommending books, videos, websites, and more, is in itself a great example to follow with my own clients.
Daniel Erlich, KYW São Paulo, February 2018
Final stop: Rio
After São Paulo we continued our marathon – and tour of Brazil – to our final destination: the beautiful and magical Rio de Janeiro, where our seminar took place on 24 – 25 February 2018.
The atmosphere in Rio was truly amazing, in every sense of the word, and we have our participants to thank for that, for readily taking part in the discussion, and for bringing so much to the table.
We like to see our participants brainstorm some of the more challenging cases together, as this way they are often able to find new and exciting solutions to different marketing and negotiating problems. We also urge them to share cases from their own experience, as often this proves to be even more interesting to solve than any usual textbook examples.
We would like to thank all of you for taking such an active part in the discussion, and for being so generous with your own cases and experience. The discussion could not have been as relevant to the current situation on the market without that, nor would we have been able to cover such a broad spectrum of problems – and problem-solving techniques.
We would also like to take a moment to thank the APTD in general, and the brilliant Denise de Vasconcelos and Cecilia Tsukamoto in particular, for their incredible hospitality, and for organizing nor one, but two memorable and truly unforgettable editions.
Honestely, I did not expect to have a colleague prepared to confidently share so much knowledge on marketing. I thought we would be talking about our market a few suggestions would be made here and there on how to approach it.
KYW Rio de Janeiro participant, February 2018
The content was a great fit for the current market situation in Brazil, and Julia delivered it with knowledge and grace.
Anna Vianna, KYW Rio de Janeiro, February 2018
We learned lots from the participants everywhere, as they brought new cases and new ideas to the table. Funnily enough, the Washington, D.C. edition was almost as full of Portuguese interpreters as the ones we held in Brazil, but they had different contexts they all worked in.
…this seminar has changed and validated some principles I can use not only for my business, but also for my personal life.
Franziska Becskehazy, KYW Rio de Janeiro, February 2018
These three editions allowed us to reach more than 50 new interpreters in the Americas, and travel across two continents in the span of a little over two weeks. We met new colleagues, talked about new cases, and got to grow our community even further, helping our newest members find the answer to that one very important question: do you know your worth?
Do you?
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.
If you would like to hold a seminar in your area, please contact us via this website, or by contacting the seminar organizerTatiana Kaplunat kaplun.tatiana@gmail.com.
Know Your Worth: Understanding Marketing and Negotiating for Interpreters 