4. How to Succeed with Agencies featuring Steve Rainwater

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4 Succeed with Agencies Steve Rainwater

Mon, Oct 31, 2022 6:17AM • 38:40

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

agencies, translation, clients, contact, project, people, relationship, work, project manager, deadline, steve, heartland, find, website, opportunity, started, job, couple, translator, language

SPEAKERS

Steve Rainwater, Paul Urwin

Paul Urwin 00:00

Hi there. I'm Paul Urwin, and welcome to the proz.com podcast, where we discuss all of the relevant issues to help you succeed as a freelance translator, or interpreter. We cover sales and marketing, networking capsules, and much, much more. Find out more, and podcast.proz.com. Hey there, Paul here, welcome to episode four of the brand new proz.com podcast. Well, today, I've got a really, really good interview for you. Coming up in just a second with Steve rainwater, we'll be talking about how to work how to succeed when working with translation agencies. So he's got some great stories and some really fantastic pieces of advice for you on that topic.

Paul Urwin 00:46

First of all, just a reminder to check out what's going on at training.proz.com We have a, we have a brand new training portal, and we have some really good training programs on them. In particular, I would encourage you to take a look at the spotlight trainings. So if you go to training.proz.com, and then click on spotlight training, you will see some different programs there. Now we are adding new Spotlight trainings all the time, but at the moment we have how to get started as a freelance translator, how to find more direct clients and how to master LinkedIn. Now, what's interesting about these spotlight trainings is not only do they include the video content anywhere between two and 15 hours of video content per spotlight training, but they also include group coaching sessions, and they also include email support their training sessions that are really designed to help you along the way. So it's not just a case of okay, well, here's the video, watch the video. If you have any questions, you're going to have multiple opportunities throughout the course to interact with the training team at ProZ.com and ask any question you may wish to. They also come with a range of templates and worksheets. So it's it's much more complete than watching a webinar and it's really going to help you to achieve the results and to master a particular topic. So check that out. That's training.proz.com and click on spotlight training. In particular for this session, which is how to succeed with agencies, you will find a video a really complete video and some templates within the how to get started as a freelance translator spotlight session.

Paul Urwin 02:32

So so if you're looking for more information on this topic, as with many other topics, you can find it on the website. Right well now let's get started with today's interview and today's interview is with Mr. Steve Rainwater. Steve is a writer, translator and PR strategist. He has worked extensively in translation, and has translated over 4 million words since 2014. For diverse sectors, highlights include industrial marketing, slash PR, consumer health products, corporate governance documents and the airline industry, among many others. Steve, welcome to the show. Thank you. Good to be here. Okay, brilliant. Brilliant. Great to have you here. Well, Steve, I know that you've got a lot of experience working with translation agency. So we're going to be talking about that in a little bit. But first of all, I know you've got a very interesting background. So tell us a little bit about how you started up or how you started working in the translation industry?

Steve Rainwater 03:35

Great. Well, actually, I have I have been a freelancer for a long time. I started working freelance in in about 2001. I was actually completely by accident, I was looking for a job, I went and had a meeting with a company, little manufacturing company up in Michigan. And I actually got called back later for a second meeting. And that day, I left their facility with a verbal consulting agreement and the first month fee, a check for the first month's fee. And that's how I became a freelancer completely by surprise. I didn't you know, I was trying to do the responsible thing for my for my family had a few kids already. And so I was I wasn't saying you know, I need to change my life and be a freelancer. Yeah. And, and then I worked I worked 10 years, really working, working freelance in for for that client. I actually worked eight years for them and had a good relationship. But we there came a time when I was taking a look at making some changes. There were some things in the US economy that you know, had had a couple of hiccups here and there and so it was a good time. Good time for transition. And so I went back to work. I took it, the first real job I'd had in 10 years, I went to work for a creative agency.

Steve Rainwater 05:05

So great, does a great job, a great team of people really enjoyable work a great fit for me. But in the in the three years I was with them, I just started to realize that I freelancing was a better fit. And so I started, I was trying to figure out, you know, what discipline, I would be involved in the communications discipline, I had mostly worked in public relations, done some, some trade journalism type of work. And that's when I started to look at that translation. I was, I was a fluent Portuguese speaker for about 30 years due to my, my marriage and my relationship with Brazil, really no, no formal education in the language and not a, you know, no master's degree in linguistics or anything like that do have master's level education, but not in any field related to translation. Okay, so I actually have a couple of theology degrees. So So anyway,

Steve Rainwater 06:04

yeah, I I had looked long and hard at I had actually started looking at translation. Before I went, I took the, the agency job. And I saw where the industry was headed a little bit. It saw some changes that were taking place. And I said, You know what, I don't know if it's a good time to get on board in this industry. But during the three years, I was working with this agency, I said, You know what, I gotta give it a try. So in July, July 2014, I, I left the agency job, I planned the departure, and I had thought, you know, the fall would be a good time to get going. And I, I started to work in translation, really, at that time, began to learn about the business and it was really one when it all began. Okay, so you have, you had at that point, already quite a lot of experience in different industries and creative in other areas. So you've got a big sort of stock of professional experience, which is, which is amazing. But you're studying communication. Yeah, yeah.

Paul Urwin 07:07

Yeah. b2b communication. Yep. Yep, really useful stuff, really practical stuff. And Yet, You're Going into translation where although you've got the linguistic ability, you don't really have any experience in the translation industry. So I'm intrigued now as to how, as to how that that start work. How do you How did you get started? Where do you when you're saying you sat down in July of 2014?

Paul Urwin 07:32

Where do you where do you start? And how do you start?

Steve Rainwater 07:35

Well, since I had since I had worked as a freelancer, and since I'd worked in b2b communications, and, you know, different b2b types of work, I knew that you have to get clients and you have to do work for those clients. And you have to really, you know, the way to make a decent living, you have to do a good volume of work. And so I set out to find, I set out to use my contacts and just sales 101. And I, the first thing that occurred to me was what I had naturally been doing. And my other PR work was to find some clients, some direct clients, I wasn't really looking to work for translation agencies, I, I because I worked in a creative agency, I understand the agency business, and I understand there's margins everybody has to make. And when you're an agency, you, you try to get good people, you try to pay him well. But you also try to, you know, you have to, you have to make a cut as well. And so I didn't, I figured out the startup, I didn't need to be, you know, sharing any margin was, I needed to share with as few people as I could, because I need to get going. So I started looking for some, I started looking for some direct clients.

Steve Rainwater 08:46

And, and what I found very soon was that there was while you don't have that margin, there are a lot of other cumbersome aspects about having direct clients, I actually bid on some rather large translation projects where I would, I would even have to put together a team and some different things like that, that came came about through some context that I had, I lost them, I'd actually lost a couple of those bids to a couple of well outfitted and organized agencies who had all the resources to do that. So I really began to learn the business the hard way, and I got I got beat up a little bit. So I went back, and I said, you know, I got to really, I really need to do some work here. So I started contacting agencies and I and I kind of have an interesting story about this. Take a minute or so to spin here. But I started reaching out to agencies and I registered I did the thing where you know folks register with a few agencies I file I had never seen such protocol before where you just share your information on a website and surprisingly all sudden you receive an email from somebody and they get back to you or you don't there may be crickets But I received some correspondence and I, I immediately looked at the rates.

Steve Rainwater 10:06

And I said, Boy, I'm not working for this rate, you know, I gotta wait till the better ones come. And so I, you know, I had some, you know, steal some dry time and that had started in July of 2014. It's already September, and I really hadn't done a translation project yet, okay to speak of, except maybe one for one or $200. Yeah. And my mother in law was visiting from Brazil. And she's not, you know, she's not in language services or anything else, yet her background in real estate. And she was visiting, my wife's mother was visiting us. And she said, you know, you're I see you getting this work. And I see marketing all day and talking on the phone and everything. And she said, You know, when these people call you, even though this is not your thing, and these rates are kind of low, she said, why don't you take a few of these jobs just to get some practice? Yeah, she said, you could, you know, and I and so I thought, wow, this is, you know, what a great idea. I'm gonna, I don't know why that didn't occur to me. She said, You're, when you get higher paying jobs, you can take those, but she said maybe should take couple days to get some practice. Yeah. So I literally started, I took on some jobs in September, and I know people listening to this, they might Kearns and fall off their chair. But I took some jobs for six cents a word. Yeah. And, and I have to tell you, I didn't in October, I already wasn't working for six cents a word anymore. I, you know, the the experience and the communication. And then, you know, I started to learn how to work with the offers and different things like that. And

Paul Urwin 11:41

well, you know, I would think, I think whatever the absolute level of of the rate, because I think, you know, we're obviously we've got listeners in different countries in different situations, different markets, different language barriers, etc, etc. You know, I think whatever the absolute value is, and you know, some people might see that as high. Some people, many people might see that as low. But But But regardless, I think, what a wonderful strategy just to get started, and then start to push it up from there, which is obviously what what you did pretty quickly, because you start, you started to get busy at a certain rate, right.

Steve Rainwater 12:17

Sure. And and all due respect, I have worked for that rate since then. And yeah, some of that some of the changes in the industry, again, the rates are irrelevant to what the market will bear in the market demands. And I completely agree with that. Yeah. But at the time, that was in 2014, and I live in in Central Florida in the United States. And I was working with us based agencies and Brazilian based agencies, I saw the prices have a lot more difficulty in the Brazilian based agencies before, before they started the same cycles in the US based agencies, but again, has to do and I know that, you know, we're going to talk about agency business a little bit, it has everything to do with what the market will bear. So we have to, we have to learn to, we have to learn to really craft our approach based on where we can find opportunities within what the market will bear. And that's exactly what I did, is started to spell a lot more work coming in, and I was able to start to select work that made more sense for me.

Paul Urwin 13:18

Okay, so at this point, at this point, are you working with two or three agencies? For agencies?

Steve Rainwater 13:25

I had, I have to say I had, you know, I come from sales 101, where we play the numbers game, and I had contacted over 100 agencies. Okay.

Paul Urwin 13:34

Okay. Well, that's, that's absolutely brilliant. I love to love to hear that. Because, yeah, you know, I'm a big fan of, of sales and sales strategy. So, so yeah, how many people actually get out there and contact 100 agencies within a relatively short period of time. So I think

Steve Rainwater 13:50

about six weeks, in about six weeks, I contacted about 100 agencies, total, total, in my first six months of work, I contacted probably about 150 160 agencies, but I really hit the ground running because I, you know, nobody was sending me any translation. So what else did I have to do, but reach out to folks and, and so I did contract about 100 agencies out of those 100. I probably worked for 10 or 12 of them. I did actual projects for them, and a few times multiple projects. But then as the dust settled, I actually came to spend a lot of time with about three of those agencies. Yeah,

Paul Urwin 14:28

yeah. And that again, you had that choice of three because you'd made the effort and you created some kind of relationship with 10 or 12. So we're then able to sort of pick out the good ones whereas if you'd, if you'd only contacted 30 and ended up with three then you kind of stuck with those three until you can find something that you want to swap out right.

Steve Rainwater 14:48

Sure. Sure. And yeah, the the product mix what I was able to, you know that I came to, I came to, to learn a few things the hard way about the right and wrong kind of product. likes to pick another kind of funny story I, I, early on I, you know, I picked a medical proofread that was offered on probably an email distribution to probably a handful of people. And it was the proofread to a surgical report. And I said, you know, how hard can this be? As a proofreading, it's already translated, I already speak good English, I can handle this. Yeah, that was one of the sweatiest days I ever had. And, and it was, you know, it was I turned it in got good accolades on it. But the reason I did is because I know how to do research, because and I never took another one of those. Yeah, because it was, it just was not in my wheelhouse. And, and it's

Paul Urwin 15:39

great, I take on the job, you do it, you delivered it, you delivered it well, but at the same time you take a lesson from it.

Steve Rainwater 15:45

Sure, sure. That's, that's, you know, you grow in some, there's other times when you find a project, and you say, Boy, I wish I had to do these. And that's one of the things I did is when I found projects like that, I was very quick to communicate to the project manager, send me every one of these you got. And of course, I had to be sending them back something where they would say, Sure, we'd love to do that, because this is great, what we're getting from Steve. And so that's the give and take of it, but I wasn't shy to, to see something and say this is a fit for my, for my skill, or my my specialty focuses or things like that, and I can I can do it, it's a rate where I can, you know, earn a decent hourly rate, when all the all the dust clears. And so I was very quick to, you know, to learn how to find those matches. And I even I would ask project managers how, you know, how do we get more of these? What do we need to do to, you know, what does this? How does it what are the clients say? What are they saying?

Paul Urwin 16:43

Okay, so you would say sorry to interrupt, but you would basically say you started off with what you call sales 101. So you were contacting lots of people, you then got you then got 1012 agencies, you then ended up working with three. And now, I mean, even though we haven't sort of set out, or stated explicitly that we're discussing this, you're now developing the relationship with that agency, you're giving them pointers, you're saying, hey, you know, I can do more of this, I can take on more of this, how do we how do we develop this relationship further. So you're already now well into developing that relationship?

Steve Rainwater 17:15

Sure. And this came? Absolutely, this came as a result of learning about the translation industry and also having some experience in, in the creative agency, you know, when, when a client gives us a press release to write, we try to find, you know, some other things that we can do for them, we tried to write some blog articles, we tried to do some, some things where we can, you know, we're obviously trying to help the client to communicate their marketing messages. And so I was I already had that instinct, I was already used to looking for where the opportunities might be. And I just transferred it really into this translation agency life. And I for me, I began, I was actually surprised, I began to enjoy and prefer working for agencies. And I did work for some direct clients also. And I had folks contact me and I do have a couple of direct clients. But and I'm happy to do you know, whatever I can for them, and they're great relationships. But there's, there became a lot of things quickly apparent in the translation industry, about the agency relationship, that for a linguist for somebody who wanted to translate, I don't like to format, I don't want to figure out spreadsheets all day, you know, things like that I really want to do the language work. And for somebody who's a linguist there, there are a lot of really good things about having a good agency partnership.

Paul Urwin 18:48

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I very much like to present a balanced view. So I certainly encourage people to, to try and get more direct clients. But I also encourage people to understand how to manage these translation agency relationships, and I encourage people to find their own solution. I mean, so for some people, it's 100% agency work for others, it's 100% direct clients. And for many others, it's somewhere in between anywhere on that scale, right?

Steve Rainwater 19:17

Sure. Well, sure. It's, it's got to be some combination, also doing the best with the clients that you know, making the most of the opportunities that have come before you too. And those are, those are gonna, you know, sometimes you look everywhere, and somebody contacts you out of the blue, I was contacted by two agencies last month, brand new first time contacts. And they had they had found me on, on in different sources. And in both of those cases, I shared with the project manager that the projects they were addressing weren't really a fit for me, and I did that professionally. I didn't say no thanks. Catch you later. I really, you know, I handled those relationships carefully, because I don't know what I'm still exploring. So how do you do that

Paul Urwin 20:02

when you don't want the? Well, I mean, can you give us a bit more bit more information? What did you say to the project manager in this case,

Steve Rainwater 20:08

in? Well, in this case, I, you know, they sent a sample of the project and the deadline and the very first thing, first thing I say is, you know, thank you for contacting me appreciate you getting in touch, very courteous to them. And I said, in this case, there was a, there was a 24, there was two parts of this project, and there was a 24 and a 48 hour deadline. And, and I shared with the project manager, I said this, this project actually looks great. It looks like something that I would enjoy and could probably help you, you know, we want to talk about helping them it doesn't say they're not calling you because they want to make your day. They're calling you because they have they have a client to serve. And so I tell the project manager, you know, I would love to help you, I think I could really be some help. And you know, in serving this client, but I, I rarely am able to take a 24 hour deadline, because I stay very booked. I didn't say sorry, I don't do 24 hour deadlines. What's the big idea of asking for a 24 hour deadline? That's ridiculous. So they have they have their issues. Maybe they had, yeah, they maybe they had their reasons for a 24 hour deadline. But I said, and then it was on Central Europe time, too, which is all which takes another, you know, six hours out of it for me. And so I said, Look, this is this a great opportunity. But I'm not your I'm not your guy for this one. Because there's no way I can handle this with the deadline. If the very first thing I say is, if you can, you know, let's say they contact me on Tuesday that they wanted it Wednesday, I say if you could take this Friday, sign me up, I'm ready to go. Because I want to give that opportunity right away. And I've gotten some nice projects like

Paul Urwin 21:52

that. I like that. I like that sort of other option. I like to I like to do that as well, you know, I can't do it not just, you know, as long as I'm going to, in principle, take the project on it's not, as you said, it's not No, see you later. But it's sorry, I can't I can't make that deadline, but I can make or I could do it for these other deadlines. So you're immediately offering some kind of potential solution, which, which I think I think they probably appreciate that, whether they take you up on it up on it or not, I think they'll appreciate that kind of communication.

Steve Rainwater 22:24

I had a I had an agency that I do I do occasional work for I don't do much, but but they give me all the work they have in my language Fair, which is actually not much. And, and they contacted me last month for it to do a personal document translation, which i i also don't, I don't care to work on personal documents all that much. But for these guys, because they, they kind of you know, they use me for other things, I take a personal document. In this case, I was working on a big project. And I said, you know this, this won't take me too long. But I actually can't get it back to you for about two days. And so if you need it sooner, you know, sometimes people give, you know, pretty tight deadlines for personal document translation. So if you need it sooner, feel free to contact somebody else. They emailed me back, they said two days is fine. Yeah, exactly within two days, and I did it. And it was great. You know, so you just, you have to really look at working with the agency. And, you know, they have that back and forth.

Paul Urwin 23:24

Yeah, I really like that there's some there's something else that's occurred to me that I'd love to ask you about. So, I mean, I know we're sort of in the middle of the process now. But let's go back to the beginning. And I'd just like you to sort of share some of your your tips, cuz you obviously have quite a lot of a lot of experience doing this, Steve, so. So if you go back to contacting agencies in the first place, I think the fear is that there's just so many agencies out there, there's so many translators out there. And if, for example, if I send my CV and I find, you know, a sort of general, a general email and I send my CV and well, no one's really going to look at it, or if I find an online form, then I'm going to spend hours filling in forms and, and sort of attaching documents and everything else, and then no one's ever going to call me. That's definitely a fear that a lot of people have. So how do you get over that? Is it is is it a reality? And to what extent is it a reality? And what to what extent can you bypass it by, for example, contacting people directly through LinkedIn, or I don't know, it could be anything. So. So how did you go about that process of actually getting signed up at translation agencies because it's not easy.

Steve Rainwater 24:37

So I'll give you I'll give you a quick story that just happened. I actually just did three projects for a Swiss based agency. Just I just finished one a couple days ago. And they're they're a Swiss based a Swiss based agency. They have offices in San Francisco to I think I worked for their Berlin office right now, but I did I just did three projects for them. I had to fill out their forms six months ago, and off into oblivion, I didn't contact anybody. But I just filled out their stuff because I learned about their agency on LinkedIn, I said, this looks like a cool agency, I'm gonna contact them. But it was literally six months, and, and nothing. But they sent me they inquired about this project. And it was actually based on some of the sample work that I included in my portfolio that I sent them. And the projects were exactly like the work sample I sent them. And so they they match, you know, they figured out a good match, and I just have delivered the third project to them, we had, you know, we had some a little bit of clunky feedback from the end client, and we got it worked out. And I don't know how things are gonna go going forward. But so far, so good. And

Paul Urwin 25:46

that little bit of patience, then a little bit of patience. Did you did you? Did you contact them at all in that six month period from the initial contact?

Steve Rainwater 25:53

No. And that's what I was gonna say doesn't sometimes you do throw throw your stuff out there into their portals, and and you never know what's gonna happen. And that was a case where that was that happened. So I don't want to discourage anybody that's doing that. And I sort of preface preface the real answer to your question, by with that little story, because it literally just happened. And it was a nice result. But what what I, what I aim for, when I'm contacting those agencies, those 100 agencies that I contacted, I tried to increase the odds of somebody actually reading my materials, or having a real reach with a real person, you know, you don't know what's on the end of those portals all the time. But one of the things I did the way these 100 agencies, I went on, I did, I did sign up for pros, a few years before I ever became a translator, because I was looking at, at pros, and I thought, you know, this community reaches everywhere. And so I had, I had been on pros, I had had an account, I think, maybe four or five years before I started as a translator, but I didn't do anything with it. And when I looked at pros, one of the coolest things on the pros, the pros, those fear out there, their whole world of everything, is there, their list, their agency directory, is fantastic. Yeah. And, and one of the things I found is you could, you know, you could find eight, you could search agencies according to language pairs, and competencies. Now, some of these agencies, they list, you know, 150 languages as they do, and competent, and, and they're competent, and everything, you know, they just list everything because they want, they want to come up in search results, and I get that. But what I would do then is I would look for I did the filters, and I would look for these agencies, and then I would find the agency website. And I would look, I would do my own little research on the agency, and I would, I had some qualifying parameters, by which I decided whether this was an agency I was gonna follow up on or not. So I might have, you know, I my pros filter, I might have 750 agencies. And out of that search, I came out with 30 that that, you know, filled my parameters. And you know, I didn't take all day on that project, but that to find 3030 agencies out of a 750 items search, that's a workday for you right there, you got to you got to spend all day on that project. But guess what, that's that was what I was doing, that was what I needed to do, okay, but

Paul Urwin 28:29

that's worth it compared to targeting 750 many of which are not going to be a good fit.

Steve Rainwater 28:36

You have to have some qualifying parameters and yours are going to be according to what your skills are, what your location is, what your budget is, everything else, you know, whoever may be listening to our broadcast here, and you're gonna find you're going to have to determine what your qualifications are going to be. But then, once I had those qualifications, and once I had boiled down, you know, a number of agencies, I what I was trying to do was keep my funnel full. So I was contacting maybe 10 agencies a day, which is a lot but if you do if you're not doing any billable work, you have that kind of time, once you're doing billable work, I work with much smaller amounts. And as you can see from the six months ago, contact, I'm still reaching out to agencies to resources every month and and now that I that I'm very busy and always stay busy. I still try to do I tried to do one a week, and I and I ended up sometimes with about two a month. But I'm still reaching out to new folks all the time and new opportunities.

Paul Urwin 29:38

And that's even though you are working. If I'm not wrong, what 80% of the time 80% of the working week is actually work, translation work.

Steve Rainwater 29:48

I would say 90% of my Yeah 80 90% of my work week is actually translation work. I've I've just transitioned back into some copywriting recently, but I would say she short of a year ago, I was doing 100% translation work and a few, a few trade publication articles here and there just from relationships that I had in the past. Brilliant. Well, I mostly translation.

Paul Urwin 30:11

Yeah, I mean, I absolutely love this and, and again, or to ask you a slightly different question. So you're working most of the time 80 90%. But I understand, Steve, that this is something that you've been doing for a while. So it's, it's not the case, your situation is not as follows your situation is not, okay, well, I'm going to do a big translation project, it's going to take me two weeks. And then when you get to the end of that two weeks, you kind of twiddling your thumbs wondering where the next job is going to come from? That's not your situation, is it? Not at all? No, you have a consort, you have a constant workflow. Right, you have a car, you have work all the time. And this is what I love about your story. Because I know you have this constant workflow. And I can see and understand from talking to you how you've created that. So you did a massive effort at the beginning. And even though you did that massive effort, the beginning, and got on to proz.com and targeted, specific agencies. So you went you went that that route as well, even now, you're taking time out to keep marketing to new agencies, which has just resulted in those three projects with that Swiss based agency? Yes, yeah. I mean, this is brilliant. This is absolutely brilliant. And I think it's a, I think it's a huge lesson for, for many people out there. And I love the way you put it as well. It's just, you know, sales 101. That's exactly what this is, it's really making the effort at the beginning to get in touch with as many of the right people as possible. And then to develop those relationships over time. And that's that is, it seems to me that you've done this extremely well, to get to position where you are right now.

Steve Rainwater 31:51

I have an end client that I'm on I've, it's an agency client, it's a it's an end client through an agency, and I work for them every week. Many times every day of the week, and I'm on my I'm on my third project manager that has handled that in client. But I have been the for this particular project and client I've been the the dedicated Portuguese to English resource, this project actually takes place in 20 languages. But I've actually been the dedicated Portuguese to English resource for this project for four years. And so that that project alone is it's good steady work. And, and I've endeavored to, to keep it from the beginning, I actually helped the client sell the project to the end client. We worked on sample translations for the end client back in back at the end of 2015. And they were trying, they were trying to do the sales portion. And as a result, you know, that we've had, we've had a great relationship, it's put some food on our table, we've helped, as I said, we've been through, I'm on the third project manager because different project managers have gotten promotions or moved on to things. I also have another end client that I work for, through and through an agency. That is it's in its second year now. And I probably probably at least two days a week, sometimes five days a week, but at least one or two days a week, rarely do we go a week without work from this client. I've got some work for them tomorrow do for them tomorrow. And we've been about two years on that project. So we know, we really know two things, Paul, when we're working for agencies. Number one, there's sometimes there's in clients that have lots of different things to do. And if you can get a relationship with the with the end client. And what I mean is through the agency, I've never had contact with the end client in a personal way. But if you get that relationship that that work can be consistent. The other thing is if you get a project manager, maybe they handle a dozen clients, but if you get a project manager that you the two of you really click and you work well together and you can meet their needs and help make their life easier. Then there's there's ongoing work from that standpoint. And I've had both I've had project managers where they they contact me frequently and often with different client work and they know the type of work that's a fit. And you know, we stay in touch that way and then I've had these other projects that are long term projects, but we know that if we're going to make a living in this business, we have to have consistent work and and a good volume.

Paul Urwin 34:44

Yeah, absolutely consistent work and good volume. Well, it seems to me Steve, like you've you've really mastered that and thank you so much for sharing some of your tips today. I know you've got so many more but we're gonna have to wrap it up for time but brilliant, brilliant tips. Thank you so much for sharing that. I'll just give you a couple of minutes at the end. If there's anything else you want to add and do, please include your URL URL, your website so people can get in touch with you if they're interested in talking to you more.

Steve Rainwater 35:15

Sure, sure. Well, thank you for the opportunity to share, I hope that possibly through this, this broadcast here that may we've helped some folks who are maybe a little bit stuck or maybe would like to find a little smoother way to to grow their business I don't want to downplay working for in clients, either the the end clients I have are the direct clients and clients are great relationships, and I actually have, you know, a couple of those that I really enjoy and wouldn't want them to go anywhere. But there's, you know, there's some really good things about the, the agency relationships, and it's, you know, it's where the industry is going as well, there, you know, the agencies are out there working hard to do good volumes of business. And so they have a lot of work. So it makes sense to, to build some good relationships out there. And hopefully, we've helped some folks today to do that. Yeah, my Oh, go ahead.

Paul Urwin 36:12

No, no, I'm sure you have I'm sure you have to stay there's been some great tips in there. I'm sure plenty of value. So yeah, go on.

Steve Rainwater 36:18

Well, my I just have a you know, my website I you know, website is a whole nother conversation. I think you need to have a good website out there today as a freelancer to be, you know, to legitimize yourself and to give people some information as part of the relationship. But the, you know, the website also is it's minimal compared to the other things that you also need to be doing so, so you know, that's kind of another conversation. My my entity, Heartland multilingual I'm, I live in Florida, I'm a native Indiana guy. So you know, the Midwest, we have we have the heartland values. And so heart Heartland multilingual is my website, Heartland multilingual.com. And it's just a really a little biocide about me, and it just sort of gives a little my background, it's actually very general. There's also a pay portal on there, all my international clients pay me by credit card, or, or PayPal. And you know that your website gives you a chance to get paid and getting paid is great. So I want to have that opportunity there. So Heartland multilingual.com. I'm on LinkedIn. Also, LinkedIn as a is a great resource. I a couple of those direct clients I've gotten from LinkedIn, always good to keep in touch with folks out there. And we look forward to, you know, making some new friends as a result of this broadcast. Thanks, Paul, for the opportunity.

Paul Urwin 37:46

Now, brilliant, thanks so much to you, Steve. It's been awesome stuff really, really interesting to hear your story. I love how you've made a success out of it. I love how you kind of sort of, you know, did quite a bit of research at the beginning trying to figure things out and then took massive action with those, you know, contacting 100 agencies in in six weeks or something like that. So brilliant, brilliant stuff. You've got to a level of consistency. And thank you so much for your time today. sharing your expertise with others with our audience. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you, Paul. All right, overstay take care. You too. Thanks. Okay, Bye Bye. Great stuff that from Steve Rainwater. Hope you enjoyed that interview. Don't forget to check out all of the training programs, the brand new training programs that we have available at training.proz.com Thanks so much for tuning in. Until next time, all the best bye bye.