The truth about role models— A short personal perspective

When I was asked who my role model was for the first time, I was 22 years old and I named my mum, and convinced myself that thats true by writing a rather decent essay about it. I named her alongside with Ghandi and a rather accomplished, world travelled business man, who was working at the company that I was interning at that time. He also won an olympic medal as a swimmer, a fact that impressed far more than his career at the corporate that we were working for.

It was true, I was really impressed by my mums persistence and her achievement. She was an immigrant from the post-Sovjetunion with mostly undiscovered jewish roots, who studied German literature because she fell in love with a German decendent when she was 15. Turned out he was not worth it, and German literature doesn’t make much money in the middle of German countryside, so she decided to pick up what fell into her lap and started to run her new husbands family restaurant. She achieved quite some success as a small business owner over 15 years, but threw out her dreams, her beliefs, significantly reduced the number of her functioning relationships (including her own family) and always told herself “its worth it, if we have a better life, if she has a better future”.

Well she, being me, did follow her advice and strong discipline, irravocably induced into our family culture by our jewish grandmother, and managed to finish school as the 2nd best, as well finish studies rather quick with good marks and move on into working life. That’s where the trouble started. Eight years later, here I am, unfinished PhD, failed one company (trying my luck with the 2nd), started one book, published one paper, married the love of her life, travelled the world, with two cats on my lap dreaming about the ability to write for living, in a remote blue and white beach house by the sea.

My therapist says it’s a therapy success, if I back out of a rather emotionally exhausting EMDR session, because I finally started to take care of myself. I see a therapist because I suffered a burnout about 1,5 years ago. I am much better now, but still wondering how much of those de-traumatising EMDR sessions will it need to make me understand that my mum is not my role model.

Whenever people ask me personal questions, I feel that pressure in my chest to have to know the answer. Whenever I start writing a piece, I have the same feeling. The next time somebody asks me who my role model is, my answer is: I don’t have one, but I admire Charles Bukowski for choosing his own, uncorrected thoughts instead of writing yet another socially accepted BS story.

I learned a lot from my mum, nothing from Ghandi, and obviously nothing from that business man with the Olympic medals. I also got scared to just appoint people to be my role models. I asked myself over the last years, who do I want to become? What do I want to aspire? And I have to admit, I yet have to find out the answers to those questions. But I know my way is not the same as anybody else’s and there is only so much we can take out of other people’s ways.

This article was originally published on VentureVillage and inspired by the beautiful ladies at Freelance Power Girls and especially Elena Ruckert.

Although not all of us are aware of it, we’re in the middle of a dramatic change towards a “naked economy”. Life-long employment is an artifact of the old (but not necessarily better!) days. In the EU, 14.5% of the workforce fell into the category “self-employed” in 2010. In the US, every 3rd person was self-employed in 2006, and forecasts predict this will increase to 40% by the year 2020. Tuning into this trend, my experience as an entrepreneur pushed me to become a freelance business consultant. In the following, I summarize the most important takeaways I gathered as a freelancer. I hope they’ll give you a good idea of what to expect when you “run wild”.

1. Be entrepreneurial

Although lots of people don’t seem to think that way especially in Berlin, when you’re a freelancer, you are much more of a small business owner than you are an employee without social benefits. Thinking that I am the CEO of my own little company helped me to understand my areas of action and to focus my energy on what ultimately matters most for a business: to create value and to generate revenue. As a freelancer you’re responsible for the whole value chain from lead generation and sales, to accounting and operations, to customer support and overall strategic direction of the business. Letting one of the areas slip your attention for too long can lead you into a critical situation that impacts your whole existence. That is both the beauty and the difficulty of being a freelancer.

TIP: Customer acquisition is crucial to keep your pipeline of projects filled. When you start out as a freelancer (or better before!), spend 80-90% of your time approaching potential clients. A potential client is everybody in your network that could buy your services or somebody that might know somebody that could buy your services. Approach them via email, via social networks (no, not only Facebook but LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, your blog, Medium and others) or at networking events. Talking to people about you and what you do is crucial. For freelancers, a random chat with a new client can turn struggle, self-doubt and existential fear into an awesome opportunity. I try to spend at the very least one day every week on customer acquisition. I love contactually for organizing all my leads and contacts and spotting new opportunities on time.

2. Be creative

Since you’re now competing with millions of freelancers on the open market, you need to be at the cutting edge and tap into your creative spirit. As a freelancer, this should come naturally, since your specific skill set is already unique. Your creative task already starts with defining your profile and your services. Don’t try to copy the webpages of other freelancers. You should, however, study your competitors carefully, try to understand how your offering is different and work on your unique selling points. As an independent worker, there is no boss to dictate what you should do, and there are no brand guidelines that determine the style of your presentation. It’s all about your talents, your brains and your ability to utilize them. Take a piece of paper and draw out the concept of your service, the value you’re creating for your clients and how you can communicate that in everything you do.

TIP: When looking for new projects, try to approach the task from a different perspective. Instead of thinking of how you can find companies that want to work with a freelancer, approach companies that are already looking for somebody to take on tasks. They’re just not aware yet that their best choice is a freelancer — you! A friend of mine recently gave me the idea of going through career pages of prospective clients and other job boards and to write to those that are looking for an intern or an employee in my field of expertise.

3. Be determined

All the romance of working from home with the cat on your lap aside, by now it probably occurred to you that being a freelancer is primarily running a small business with you being the CEO, COO, CTO, CMO, CFO and all interns. There is probably one principle that all freelancers would agree on: You need to hustle. Just as running a startup with multiple people filling several roles, running your freelance business is a marathon with euphoric moments and stretches of despair and helplessness. And when the latter come, you need to be prepared. Before making the decision to freelance, think carefully about why you want to do it and analyze how functional your motivation is. Personally, I don’t believe one should freelance for any other reason than personal and/or professional growth (which can also mean financial improvement of course, but statistically speaking it usually means the opposite, at least in the beginning).

TIP: Growth mindset is a good tool that I found very useful when running behind leads for days without closing even one of them. Although the financial aspect of rough patches in a freelancer’s life is very troublesome, the hardest of all can be the psychological effects of the rejection. Don’t take a “no” as the evaluation of your skills and self-worth. Carol Dweck’s theory of fixed vs. growth mindsets helped me to understand the motivational losses I was experiencing when facing long phases of without success. I developed a healthier approach to challenging situations and saw them as an opportunity to learn and grow.

4. Don’t isolate yourself

As I already mentioned before, you are part of a globally growing group of people that face similar challenges. Connect with this group. Other freelancers know the challenges you’re going through, because they’ve been there and know a couple of war tricks that you might use for your own battles. So, put your party hat on and befriend some freelancers. Furthermore, just as with every other challenging situation, one of the most important resources to keep you going is friends and family. Although they might not understand all of your challenges, they will support you no matter what.

TIP: In Berlin you can find multiple freelancer meetup groups, for instance the Freerangersor the Freelance Power Girls Group that meet regularly and serve as a platform to exchange experiences, insider infos and tips, as well as to support each other in the daily battles of the freelance existence.

5. Take breaks

Most of my friends react to my freelance life with the following words: “I don’t know. I would not be able to motivate myself to get out of bed in the mornings. And then all the working alone. I need the team and the social aspects of an office.” Funny enough, I work longer hours, since becoming a freelancer and have no issues motivating myself. Especially in the first weeks as a freelancer, I got to my desk in the morning and did not get up until late in the evening. Working alone makes you fully responsible for everything you produce and all the mistakes you make. Most of the time there is no final check-up before sending materials out to clients. It is important that you’re fully concentrated and bring your best game all the time. For that, taking regular breaks is essential.

TIP: There are different ways to build your own healthy schedule. I know successful people that work with an hourglass. I personally prefer concentrate and online window shopping, travel planning or exercise during my breaks.

6. Kick ass!

And last but not least: Keep your head up high, push aside your fears, be bold, always be professional and kick ass in everything you do.

Find more info on how to get up to speed as a freelancer in an entertaining article by Emil Lamprecht, the CMO of Careerfoundry.

Lessons learned at the Web Summit 2013

A few days ago I got back from Summit, which turned out to be the biggest tech conference in Europe in 2013 with some 11,000 attendees (I didn’t even know 11,000 tech entrepreneurs existed, but let yourself be surprised). Sitting on the plane back to Berlin I asked myself, was it worth it? I would say: partly. Would I still go to the Summit ‘14? Sure! I would just do 5 things differently:

1. Be less egoistic

Instead of constantly being concerned about who WE need to meet, it would serve most of us well to think about who would benefit from knowing US. Assuming we’re not Elon Musk, we could probably benefit from almost all people at the Summit who would benefit from us. In order to start constructive and durable business relationships, a best practice is to be of use to someone before demanding their attention. Even in biology, mutualistic relationships (“one hand washes the other” or favor trading) are among the most durable and evolutionarily beneficial, especially in situations where being highly competitive doesn’t help your game (e.g. in a conference of 11,000 people where there’s only one Elon Musk). So instead of going through the conference attendee lists and fishing for investors, go through the list and think about what you can offer other attendees. Then write them on Twitter and tell them where they can find you and when.

Gary Vaynerchuk inspired me with a great talk about destructive egoism in tech entrepreneurship.

2. Do your homework

Do all of the stuff that you can do from home, from home. And I mean EVERYTHING. Create a list in Excel with all the meetings you have planned along with the Twitter handles of everyone relevant to you and what you can offer them. Make sure your team is ready to go and that your products and promotional materials are complete. It’s a complete waste of time to spend the first day of a conference finishing things up, especially if you need to present the next day (I know this firsthand because I have done it and it’s bullocks). Instead of crunching at the last minute, have your eyes and ears completely focused on what’s going on around you. You never know when your next business partner, the one who will change your story completely, will come around.

3. Be visible

I still haven’t figured out the best way to tackle this one, but I at my next conference I plan to wear a t-shirt that says:

Front:

Darja, CEO, founder of Triptourage, global developer at Waymate. Offering: Start-upping around the world, early stage funding, lessons on how to get an MVP as a non-coder, etc.

Back:

Seeking: Early customers, business partners in travel industry, advisory board members with at least one successful exit. And I love surfing!

At a conference bursting with 11,000 people, first names only play a role for the polite introduction — nobody ever remembers the names they heard during those 2 days. But even if they don’t remember names, they do, however, remember products, focus areas and experiences they shared with you. This is a tech conference: we are all passionate about what we do, so why not wear our heart on our sleeves?

4. Use your resources

When you attend a tech conference, make sure to apply to all the programs on offer. Applying to and getting into Summit’s Alpha Start-Up Selection helped my startup immensely! The most intense networking/business development and user feedbacking I experienced at the Summit happened when we exhibited at Alphaville. The exhibition basically is Powerade for your networking and a reversal of the mutualistic networking strategy you should be following: you get to stand there, visible and interesting (if you prepare your stand right), and people come to you to tell you about what they can do for you (and if you are in the proper mindset you will tell them what you can do for them). The Summit gave startups with the Alpha exhibition package 3 tickets for team members to attend. My advice? Use those tickets, ALL 3 OF THEM. All good things come in 3’s, and this is no different for teams highly effective at exhibiting at conferences with stands. You need 3 people: 1 person (the motivated pitching hero) who is always by the stand, 1 person (the networker) who is running around making connections at other stands, coffee places, etc. and a third person (the strategist, thinker) who is attending talks. At least at this year’s Summit the talks were totally worth attending: you don’t want to miss Elon Musk!

There are some neat tools out there to help you to identify key players in real time at the conference you’re visiting. One of them is Bizzabo, a tool that allows you to instantly connect with people who should matter to you. The only downside is that it’s only available where Bizzabo founders Alon and Eran got conference leaders on-board the Bizzabo ship.

5. Network like a pro

In order to get the best advice on how to rock it in networking I asked Mario Palladini, founder and CEO of G1obals, what his hacks are for networking big events like the Summit. Mario recommends that startups go all out to make themselves as visible as possible. He said:

“I spoke to about 100 people during the Summit and around 20% of those conversations turned into leads. My tip for events like these is: schedule meetings with your target audience beforehand, position yourself at a visible meeting point (e.g. decorate your booth with branded helium balloons) and wear an eye catcher like red glasses without the actual glass. This time it got me an interview with The Irish Times!”

Last but not least, I would strongly recommend that you enjoy the whole event as much as possible. In the end, Web Summit offers a pretty amazing program with great sponsors such as Spotify that bring you not only drinks on the house but also some of the best live performances out there. But beware: always be on top of your game! The next investor is just around that bar corner ;)