Before we begin your story as a booked-out freelance translator, let me tell you mine.

It started in 1996. I was a clinical medical student on an Erasmus exchange when a professor started slipping me snippets of his research papers — in French — and asking me to turn them into English. No brief. No training. Just trust. That moment planted a seed: what if language could be my career?

I finished my medical training, added a postgraduate qualification at the University of Bath, and then did something most people thought was reckless — I moved to Spain with barely enough Spanish to order coffee and a French vocabulary built in lecture theatres, not boardrooms.

I didn’t wait to feel ready. I got fluent. I built a life. I met my wife, raised two daughters, and laid down roots in Madrid.

And somewhere between the hospital corridors, the French research papers, and a new language learned out of necessity — a translation business was born.

Today, I run two businesses built entirely on specialisation.

As founder of The Entrepreneurial Translator, I do something I wish existed when I was starting out: I help freelance translators stop undercharging, escape agency dependency and build direct-client businesses around their specialist knowledge.

I speak at industry events and global conferences, not because I like the spotlight, but because the translation profession needs more people willing to say: there’s a better way to build this career.

And when I’m not translating or speaking, I’m coaching the next generation of translators — helping them skip the years of trial and error and move faster toward the business they actually want.

This isn’t theory. Every strategy I teach I’ve lived. Every obstacle I warn you about, I’ve hit face-first.

That’s why it works.