Picture this. You sit down to conduct a personal history interview. You pull out your voice recorder and your client looks stricken. You reassure her that there’s no need to worry and ask your first question. She looks at the floor and gives a brief two or three word response. It doesn’t get any better. It feels as though your “pulling teeth”. Beads of perspiration break out on your forehead. You finish the interview and leave for home, tired and discouraged.
What went wrong?… Read more.
Posted in Audio recording, How to, Interviewing, Personal historian
Tagged #1 secret, How to, Interviewing, personal history, rapport, success, Tips
Why do some succeed and others fail? In a word – persistence. It’s that ability to get knocked down, pick yourself up, and keep going. Success of course is entirely in the mind of the beholder. Success to one person is failure to another.
Increasingly people find their way to my blog looking for the key to a successful career as a personal historian. I don’t have a magic formula. But what I do know from years of experience is that without persistence nothing of real value can be achieved.
There are plenty of obstacles on the road to becoming a successful personal historian. I’ve selected four. Your success will largely be determined by whether you persist and overcome these obstacles .
Your home office can be a lonely place. This is especially true if you previously worked in a business where you socialized with fellow employees.
There are ways to minimize the isolation. You can network through social media, join professional associations, and participate in service organizations. But the truth is that a good part of your personal history work will be spent alone.
Failure to overcome this isolation and persist can give you second thoughts about being a personal historian.
This is the biggest obstacle to your success.
There’s so much to fear when starting a new personal history business. There’s the fear of marketing yourself, the fear of doing the wrong thing, the fear of not having enough money to live on, the fear of being a competent interviewer, and on and on.
Fear can paralyze. An ability to keep going in spite of your fears spells the difference between success and failure.
If you’re used to a regular paycheck, get ready for a shock. For the first couple of years you’ll find more money going out than coming in.
In order to persist through the lean times you’ll need to be able to call on all your financial ingenuity. If you don’t have a reserve of funds, or a part-time income or the support of friends and family or the thriftiness of a Scotsman, you may not be able to continue.
Personal historians come from a wide range of professions but no one comes to the business fully experienced. It’s the kind of work you learn over time and largely by doing.
There are a host of basic skills you need – marketing, interviewing, editing, project management, and sales, to mention a few. Being able to clearly identify your business shortcomings and showing persistence in overcoming them spells the difference between success and failure.
Let me leave you with these inspiring words on persistence by American naturalist and author, Edward O. Wilson.
You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for you and strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give.
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Let me begin by saying there are legitimate reasons to be wary of the ever expanding digital universe – a glut of junk information, loss of privacy, time wasting, and addiction. But there are also irrational fears at work based in part on our inherent resistance to change.
Change happens. And a good thing too. Lucky for us there was the invention of the printing press. Monks no longer toil on illuminated texts for a select few. Manual typewriters have a certain aesthetic appeal but quite frankly I was happy to throw out the rolls of correction tape.
Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons. ~ Popular Mechanics, 1949
There are those for whom the world was a much better place when we read “real” books, wrote in longhand, and used manual typewriters. There’s a wistful longing for a slower paced, more genteel life. And while I sympathize, I can’t help but feel that these people are missing a richness of experience that’s just a click away.
Television won’t matter in your lifetime or mine. ~ 1936, Richard Lambert, broadcaster
If you’re not running a small business, it probably doesn’t matter if you’re digitally savvy. But if you want to create a successful personal history business, you’ve got to stick more than your big toe into the digital stream. This doesn’t mean you have to be sucked under and drown. But it does mean that you need to be familiar with what’s out there to be able to pick and choose the digital tools that’ll help your business. Sticking your head in the sand and ignoring the wealth of resources that are available will hurt your business.
Here are a few digital resources worth considering. What would you add to this list?
Photo by wecand
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Posted in How to, Personal historian, Resources, Self-employed, Tips, Uncategorized
Tagged digital resources, digital universe, How to, Personal historian, small business, success, Tips
Picture this. You sit down to conduct a personal history interview. You pull out your voice recorder and your client looks stricken. You reassure her that there’s no need to worry and ask your first question. She looks at the floor and gives a brief two or three word response. It doesn’t get any better. It feels as though your “pulling teeth”. Beads of perspiration break out on your forehead. You finish the interview and leave for home, tired and discouraged.
What went wrong?
Some of you will say it was the voice recorder that made the client uneasy. Nope! Not the recorder. Today’s devices are small and unobtrusive. There might be some initial discomfort but it passes – like gas. I’ve done hundreds of hours of interviews and within a few minutes people forget there’s even a recorder in the room. So don’t blame the recorder.
Sorry to say but the problem rests with the interviewer. If you’re not comfortable with the equipment or anxious about getting a good interview or worried about the questions you’re going to ask, then your anxiety is going to rub off on your client. Neuroscience research has uncovered “mirror neurons” which seems to indicate that if we see someone frowning or smiling, it triggers a similar internal reaction in us.
In a word the #1 secret to a successful interview is rapport. Here’s what you need to do.
Nothing creates more anxiety in a client than rushing in all “business-like”, ready to record. Take an hour to have a conversation with your client. Stress the personal. Imagine you’re dropping in on a favorite aunt or uncle. Do talk about the upcoming interview but spend as much time if not more on small talk. I try to get a quick sense of people’s interests by looking at how they’ve decorated and what treasures they’ve chosen to display. A question about a painting, photo, or figurine can unlock some charming stories. And it puts your client at ease. Find something in common – maybe it’s grandchildren, a favorite author, or similar childhood roots.
Remember that clients will pick up on your anxiety. This in turn makes them anxious. When you walk through the door to a client’s home, you want to be smiling and aware of what is happening from moment to moment. To do that effectively, you need to be rested and focused solely on the interview at hand. How does your client look? How are you feeling? What extraneous activities or sounds are intruding on your interview space?
I never set up my recorder or camera for an interview without first engaging my client in some small talk. It can be about the weather, their day or week’s activities, or any other subject that’s informal. I find a sense of humor and some laughter go a long way to defuse anxiety. I’m also mindful that we’ve a job at hand and I don’t let the chatting eat up too much time.
Don’t make setting up your recording equipment a “big production”. The more I consciously avoid flailing about with my recorder and microphone, the less distressing it is for my client. This means you have to know your equipment superbly. It’s not the time to begin fretting over what folder you’re recording in or why you’re not getting sound in your headphones. It also helps to keep some chit-chat going while you clip on a lavaliere mic and adjust the sound levels.
What techniques do you use to build rapport?
Photo by Chickpea
Posted in Audio recording, How to, Interviewing, Personal historian, Tips
Tagged #1 secret, How to, Interviewing, rapport, success, Tips
I spent this past weekend on a silent Buddhist Insight Meditation retreat. I’ve been practicing Insight Meditation regularly for over a decade and twice a year attend a two-day retreat. It’s hard work and useful insights arise. The most useful is the discovery that forcing yourself to be calm only makes the mind and body more tense. Struggling doesn’t work. It’s like training a dog to “stay”. It requires patience. You can’t force it. You have to gently and repeatedly bring the dog back, sit it down, and tell it to “stay”. Eventually it catches on. The mind works the same way. In order to change old ways or learn new ones we need commitment, practice, and patience.
This got me thinking that too often we fail to succeed in our work and life, not because we don’t try hard enough but that we try too hard. When we struggle, we eventually get burned out, discouraged, and give up or look for magical solutions. So how can we apply the wisdom of Insight Meditation in a practical way to our work? Here’s a six step approach you might try:
I believe that if you apply commitment, practice, and patience without struggle your chances of success in all that you do are more likely.
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Posted in How to, Personal historian, Tips
Tagged achieve success, commitment, How to, patience, Personal historian, practice, stop struggling, struggle, success
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