Yesterday, I attended a very interesting BDÜ workshop on marketing in Munich. And although I wasn’t too happy about the long day initially (since I have a ton of work), it turned out to have been a very good idea, indeed to go.

It started out with us having to pick a picture and then introducing ourselves and using the picture to describe our current (professional) situation. Here’s the one I picked:

Now, if you know me, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, I am first and foremost a musician at heart, and one of the reasons why I registered for the workshop was that I would love to make that my specialization professionally even more.
The other reason, both for the workshop and the picture, was that I love being “on stage”, which is where an interpreter is most of the time, and I would love to do much more of that, too.

Throughout the workshop, we got a lot of input and ideas and had to do some “soul searching”, i.e. look at all kinds of things from different perspectives, such as our strengths or our target groups aka (potential) customers. The goal was to see where we are experts and are able meet the needs of others, which will make us more content with our work AND boost our businesses at the same time. Win-win, I’d say!
And the result for me was quite surprising and not at all what I had expected. It also means quite a bit of work, primarily on my web presence (yikes!), but if things actually go the way I imagine, then a year from now, my freelance work could look somewhat different from how it is now – but even better!

I bet you’re wondering what I want to change, aren’t you? Well, not to make it a big secret, but you know what we Germans say: “Don’t talk about unlaid eggs.” And one important point we learned yesterday was to stand out from the rest, and giving away too much too soon might lessen my chance at doing just that, so for now, you’ll just have to keep wondering – sorry!
But don’t worry, I’ll let you in on the new stuff once I’m ready to go public, as it were! 😉