Focused - 1: The Temptation of Yes

Episode Date: July 26, 2016

In our very first episode, David and Jason discuss narrowing scope and taking on too much work.

Welcome to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm Jason Snell, and I'm joined by my co-host, Mr. David Sparks. Narrowing scope. One of the challenges that you and I have in deciding to do is keeping track of what the scope of your work is and not having it encompass your entire life. Yeah, I think it's the temptation of yes is very appealing, especially when you're getting started. I mean, I certainly felt it. I'm sure you felt it too, that, that, that first phase of going independent, I feel like for,

for everyone is a fear that nobody wants you and that you're going to be doomed. And so you, any, any work you can find, you take until you realize you, you know, you regret some of the work you took and you have taken on too much and it's affecting the work that is important because you've got other things that you've agreed to. It's a real danger.

The good news is you quit your job. The bad news is the mortgage statement still shows up every month. Right. And you can and you know, you can't it's hard to calibrate. Right. When you're starting out, it's it's a paycheck. You can calibrate the and over time, even though there's a lot of variation, which we should talk about at some point, um, over time you get a better sense of what your income is, but right when you're starting

out, especially it can be a problem because you just don't know. And so you, you know, say yes to everything because you've got to write that, that, that mortgage payment at the end of the month of that rent check. Um, and it's, yeah, and it can be, it's a problem. It's a problem because, you know, we do, we are finite creatures. I'm sure all of us have had those moments where it's gotten to the end of the day and we're exhausted and we need to go to sleep and we realize we just didn't do enough because there's so much to do. And it's hard because, you know, we can't power through two days worth of work in a day. It's not, it's just not possible. If you're thinking about going independent, don't think you're going to be working less

because you're not. You're going to be working a lot more. And I do think it's easy to underestimate the amount of time it takes. One of the problems for me when I started was I underestimated the amount of time it would take to set up the logistics. Just, you know, how do I get a billing system in place?

How am I going to file documents? How am I, you know, all the little things you think are easy, they're not. When you're giving yourself, when you're trying to time things out of like, oh, how much time am I going to spend on everything? You basically need to put in time for overhead. You basically need to say, you know, I don't know, 10% of my life is going to be not paying work. It's going to be the things that keep everything else moving. And if you're lucky, I'm really fortunate because my wife is, I don't want to say she's part-time because she's part-time at a few different libraries. She doesn't have a full-time library job, but she's got enough time in there and an

MBA that she does some of my overhead work for me, which is great. But if she wasn't here, that would be an extra, I don't know, five hours a week that I would be putting in on billing people and moving money around in the business account and stuff like that. And then I still have a lot of other stuff. Like Monday, we're recording this right after a three-day weekend.. I came in on Tuesday morning and I had this pile of stuff. And, you know, my entire morning was taken up with processing things, not writing articles or recording podcasts, but processing things like answering emails from people who say I'm interested in advertising,, which again, has a positive benefit or fixing a technical problem because I don't have a person to refer this weird thing that's happening on the website. I need to fix it. And you end up kind of collecting stuff like that. So you can't pretend that it's not going to be part of it. And that has to be part of your calculation when you're choosing what work to take and what work not to take and what the scope of your job is. One thing I was thinking about is scope and identity. I think it's easy to associate your

identity with the scope of work you do. I'm Jason Snell. I write for magazines and I do this and I do that. And all of a sudden you want to take on projects because it fits your vision of yourself. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that happens, I'm a big, I'm a yes person. And that's actually one of the things that is a challenge is saying yes to ideas for things like you, you know, David Sparks comes to me and says, I think we should do a podcast about being independent. And my initial reaction is to say yes. And then another part of me is like, do you have the time to do that? And then I start to fight it out.

But it is also true that part of the project planning and all of that is, is this the sort of thing, is this the thing I want to do? Is this a thing I should do? And is this the sort of thing that I do? I should do? And is this the sort of thing that I do? And sometimes that can be a challenge of like, don't say yes to something just because it sounds like something you do, because that's not a good enough reason. Well, even just like writing down, one of the things I do, it's a stupid hack, but because I have so much trouble saying no, when someone comes to me and I say no to it, I actually have a little text file. I call it the no list, stuff that I don't do.

And then when somebody comes to me with something they want me to do, I look at that no list. I'm like, oh, wait, I said no to stuff that was even better than this. And that makes it easier for me to say no, if that makes any sense. Yeah. You're setting boundaries when you do that. You're saying, these are the sorts of things that I shouldn't do. And it also gives you a place to put the nose and to define them as that way. I think one of the reasons that people say yes to things, I mean, there's the fear of, like, I don't want to miss out, especially if you're starting out.

You're like, I don't want to miss out. There's an opportunity here, so I'm going to say yes to everything. But there's also that lack of categorization. Like if you don't have the knowledge and a place, literally a place to store your nose, then it's, then it's like they don't exist. So I think that's really great to have like a net list. So, so the things you do say yes to, you know, I think managing scope, there is some, some nerd stuff in here. I think it's having a calendar and a task system can make a huge difference in not only dealing with the scope you take, but also having knowledge of what

you can continue to take on. Yeah, I agree. And I don't want this, I don't think either of us is going to say, here's our system, our patented system to do this there are lots you know ideally there would be a task management system out there for every human being right i mean because i think that's the truth is ideally there wouldn't be one there would be a bunch you know because everybody's different one per person like a snowflake but you know you're gonna you're gonna talk to people and and they're gonna say uh oh well i getting things done really works for me it's like great if that. If that works for you, then it works for you. But it's not going to work for somebody else. There's some people that'll work. Other people, it might not work for you. But I agree. Ultimately, you need to manage your tasks and manage your calendar. And even if you're,

and we're going to do an episode about setting routine, but it goes back to task management as well. It's just sort of like, you need to know what time things are going to take up and where you're going to be and what you're going to be doing. And you need to know what you need to do. And you have to organize that in some form.

Yeah, I would even argue that the calendar is the easy part in a lot of ways. Because if you have a calendar and you write down a commitment, I'm going to be at a party at 7 p.m., then I can't also schedule myself to be at a client meeting at 7 p.m. In my guts, I know the body can be in one place at a time. Task management systems, for some reason, we suspend that reality when we make tasks. And we add so many to our system or our projects that we, a lot of times, we're unrealistic about what we can do. But I think the process of writing them down somewhere hopefully will give you a little bit more perspective and get you back to that ability to say no. Because you have a better understanding of what kind of gas you

have left in the tank. Yeah, I think. And so I think the beast at the heart of a lot of task management systems is exactly this. It's the struggle with what a task costs, because nobody knows. I mean, nobody knows. Until you do the task, you don't know. I mean, if it's a task that you do every week, you get an idea. But there are a lot of things that you say yeah sure i'll do that project and you really have no idea is this i took a couple hourly projects on when i started and i had no idea i i they estimated like i think this will be about 40 hours of work which was good because i had a i had an hourly rate and it was like so i wasn't going to come back with 100 hours of work and charge them and have them look at the bill and go, what? But I also was, you know, realistic in planning that out.

But a lot of stuff, it's very hard to do, like you said. How do you allocate it? And it's so easy to overload and not realize that what you've just done is write down three weeks of tasks that have to be done in the next week. Or seven hours. Or, yeah. As a lawyer, the law profession has always ran on billable hours, especially I do a lot of business law. So that's a very common thing. And for me, that was a big challenge when I went independent because I like to not overcharge clients and I like to try and do things on time and on budget. And one of the ways I fought that is I have a lot of projects I take on and I have a good understanding of what it's going to take me to do it because I've been doing it over 20 years now. And I just give them a flat fee and say this is what it will cost and I'll do it for that.

And that way I don't have that stress of the clock on me. Once you know, once you've internalized what the work is and what the value is, it's way better not to work hourly if you can get away with it. Because in the end, the client wants what they want and giving them a price for it is that's what they want. They want to pay you and get the thing that you're going to give them. Unless, unless it very particularly is a time-based sort of work, but you know, like you need to stand somewhere for five hours that,

that, you know, but a lot of this is like for me writing articles, like I don't get paid by the word, not really. And nor do I get paid, nor does it matter to Mac world or I'm more, or whoever's having me write freelance stuff for them.

It does not matter to them how long it takes me to write an article. I could, they pay me the same whether I knock it out in two hours or it takes me two days of bloodletting to get an article out. It doesn't matter to them. I mean, it matters if it's nonsensical, if it's, you know, if it's a bad article. But in terms of the amount of work i actually put in over time it doesn't really matter what they want is a about 800 words yeah you know and and and if it's if it's more words they don't pay me more so really that that's the best because then i know how much effort it's usually going to take me to do it. They know what they're going to get, and we agree on a fee, and we're done.

And that is the best, but you have to have a lot of confidence and really history to know that that's going to be a fair transaction for everybody. And getting back to scope, you have to have an understanding of how long or how much time, even though you're not billing by time, you have to have an understanding of how long or how much time, even though you're not billing by time, you have to have an understanding of how much time and resources you're going to put into that because you are now taking a chunk. You know, maybe, maybe you make that a six hour block in your calendar to, to write that article or do whatever project you're doing. And that's time that you can't spend doing anything else. So, you know, getting to scope, I think you really need to have a good understanding of that. Yeah. Which maybe brings us to, you know, kind of our stories.

You and I have been at this about a year and a half each now. That's true. And so, what are your, where are your scars over scope? So, yeah. So, for me, so, for what we, all we just said about saying, learning to say no and not saying yes to everything. When I started, I mean, we should we will do an episode down the road where we tell our stories, but we didn't want to start with episodes about our about starting. But the short version is I was burned out and planning my exit for a long time. And so when I exited, I had some runway.

I had some time. And I wanted to learn because I had been in a salaried job for 20 years since I was out of school. I wanted to learn. And so I said yes to everything. My goal really was to say yes to everything. So I took that hourly work on. I took some other kind of hourly consulting work on, I learned a little bit about rates and things like that, which we should talk about at some point. I took on some freelance writing tasks for that were outside of my comfort zone, in terms of the audience and the subject matter. And I started a bunch of projects and stuff just to just to see. So. So at the start, I took on too much. Yeah, by design, though, really.

Yeah, it was a conscious decision to do it. And so it was good. It was a good learning experience. It taught me a lot about those different kinds of jobs and what I liked about them and what I didn't like about them. But implicit in that decision was the idea that at some point I would have to disengage. At some point, I would go a few months or six months or whatever, and I would calculate out what was working and what was not working. And then I would need to start to shed things. I'd either need to start to shed things because I was overworked and

I didn't need all the work, or I would start to shed things because it was bad work and I needed to find better work. But, um, but I did, I did start that way. Um, that said, disengaging is really hard and it's a lot thornier than, um, than, than you might think. There are, there are assignments that you can refuse, you know, but, uh, especially as a writer, uh, you, you do risk not them never coming back to you again. But if you decide you don't want to work with them anymore, it's fine. But it's still it's still hard. And getting out of projects can be hard, too. If you take on something, I mean, this would be your case with, you know, with a case that you're working on.

If you decide you don't want to do it anymore, you can't just say I'm out, right? No, it's once you you file papers, like in litigation, which I'll talk about in a second, it's a big deal. You're in there. And so I had some of these long-term projects, these 40, 50-hour projects that I was wrapping up and I knew I did not want to continue, but I needed to be responsible and and go through the process. The other thing I would mention at this point is about keeping your options open and remaining balanced. One of the fears that I had

was that I was going to be closed off to new opportunities. And I didn't want to do that. I wanted to give myself some space to say yes to things. And that was a challenge because if you say yes to everything, you've closed it off. So sometimes you have open space and you still say no, but you're doing that because you never know when there is going to be something that you want to say yes to. And if you're full, then you can't say yes to the thing you really want to. So it's not just about kicking out the things that get you to level. It's almost about kicking out things that

give you enough space to find the next thing. And that can be hard, but I always want to be open. I'm a firm believer that you can't have a master plan that you plan out to the letter that's going to get you to your destination, that you've got to have lots of master plan that you plan out to the letter that's going to get you to your destination that you've got to be you got to have lots of contingencies and you've got to have some space to have something appear that you didn't expect and say oh that we should do that i should i should take that on you got to have some of that and if you're completely locked you can't yeah i think you almost have to be a little fearless to say you see a different track suddenly appear and you have to be willing to jump on it, which is not easy.

And able, right? I mean, if you're full up, you can't jump on that other thing. And that's – it's a challenge because you could say I could take on more work, but what's the work you're taking on and are you bypassing some other potential opportunities by doing it? What's the work you're taking on? And are you bypassing some other potential opportunities by doing it? But so much of it comes back to what your time is I find balance? How do I pick projects? If you're fortunate enough to be able to pick some projects and not just say yes because you need to say yes to anything that will pay the bills, which sometimes happens and that's just how it is. But it's that do I want to say yes to something that's going to take me away from my family for weekends for the next two months? And maybe the answer is yes, but your family needs to know why. And you need to make sure that that's a good idea to do that.

And you need to say no if it's not. And also, you know, sometimes the calculation is I will take on something that isn't going to generate as much money, but is something I'm going to like better. Yeah, that's actually something to consider because when you get started in this, you are worried about the bills, but there's a reason why you did this, the reason why you went independent. You want to honor that, you know? Right. I mean, why am I – yeah, why am I – the idea here is to be happier, to do better work and be happier, right? By being independent.

And, and, and otherwise, why would you not go back to, go back to getting, working somewhere and getting a paycheck and all of that, that you take on so much by going independent, but, but what, what you get is the ability to chart your own course a little bit. And, and if you end up being less happy, then it's not for you. You ultimately want the net result to be that you're happier. And that means that you do have to make decisions saying, this is a more fun project. And again, if you can afford to have every project you have be super fun and still make a living, then you are in great shape. But, you know, most of us take on projects that we don't love, but that we, you know,

like and can do a good job. But keeping a balance, I think, is important to not just, you know, to leave yourself open to have some things that are more fun, even if they don't pay quite as well. And the other thing I wanted to mention is the end result of all of this, which is after a year and a half, if you ask me what's one of the big things that I've done in order to keep from my scope getting completely out of hand, the scope creep, learning to let go is actually a huge part of it. Learning to let go and ask for help and give control of stuff that you're used to having control away, bringing in other people, paying other people, or giving work that was yours to other people. I think all of that is

part of the solution. It's not just about saying no. I think especially, I mean, you know this because you've got clients and relationships with people that you want to keep. Some of it is when you're working on a project and you realize, I don't want to do this anymore, or I can't, this is more work than I thought, or I've got other things I'd rather do. Even if I could keep doing this, I'd rather not. One of the things that I found in the last six months, especially, is I have friends who have, you know, who basically have room for the work and they will do a perfectly fine job. And I would rather be a responsible person and say, I don't need to do this anymore. This person needs the work. Let's have a transition and let them do that work.

So I get more time back. And yes, I'm going to lose a little bit of money that I used to get for that. But in the end it will be in a perfectly fine place and i will have the bandwidth to do something else so i that that's sort of been my thing in the last six months is is learning to let go and let and let some other people help and let some of them do some of the work so you know and this is not just like great advice give somebody else the work and have them do it for you and this is not just like great advice, give somebody else the work and have them do it for you. But this is also you're giving up some work, which means you're giving up some money, but you're also opening yourself to other to other things. And

that was that was tough for me, because I think a lot of people who go independent, one of the reasons they want to go independent is is is to take more control. And, you know, giving something to someone else is giving up control essentially. But I think that it's part of the, part of the process. Oh yeah. And it's funny because I feel like I'm in phase two of my narrowing scope, you know, experience right now. I mean, for me, leaving my day job was a huge narrowing and scope issue. I wanted to get away from the commitments that came with that. And I wanted to take care of my clients and I wanted to write my books.

And that was kind of the goal when I left. And now a year and a half in, I successfully did that. But I'm also further narrowing the scope and the type of work I do. I mean, for lawyers, it's very common for us to refer work to other lawyers because anybody who really wants to serve the client best knows you want to get the right person to solve the right problem. So it's always been easy to, to refer a case off. But, um, for me, uh, the little ticky tack stuff, even just like managing the finance and stuff, I've always been just a huge control freak and it's really hard. And, um, and you know, even very little, I mean, it's, it's a sickness if you really knew how much of a control freak I am. But, you know, a year and a half in, I'm suddenly realizing that is something that needs to change.

And for me, when I first left, my general practice is I represent a lot of companies and, you know, take care of them. But occasionally I do litigation. When I first started for many years, that was all I did. And I took some litigation when I started out on my own. And a couple of those cases have grown in scope dramatically, you know, to the extent where I could see myself being in trial for six weeks, you know. And right now, if I did that, that would just blow up my life. It just, I don't have the, I don't have the bandwidth for it. And these things have grown to extent that I've had to hand some of them off to firms that have more bandwidth and

can do a better job taking care of the client. And, and the attorneys I handed off to said, what are you doing? I mean, this is not a little bit of money that I'm losing by getting rid of some of these things, but it's that it is exactly the kind of thing that Jason was talking about in terms of pulling in, giving yourself space, giving yourself room for other opportunities and frankly accepting this is where I am at this point and this is what I'm most tooled to do and this is what I'm going to do. And it was really hard for me because, you know, getting back to that identity thing, it's like, wait a second, you know, you're a lawyer, you're supposed to go to trial and do the, you know, you shouldn't be handing these things off. You're the guy who, who people hand their problems to. But, but I had to separate my identity from it. And it was, it was painful for me. It took a couple of weeks to kind of get through the whole process. And, and when I was done, I felt better, but man, it was rough. And I just went through that in the last couple of months. So I think anybody that goes independent is going to have to deal with those demons a little bit. Um, uh, one of the things I had was in the first year out, I did not get as many books written for Max Barkey and I didn't get as much content delivered as I wanted. And I was always down on myself about it. I'm like, well, okay, big boy, you quit your job and what do you have to show for it? And it comes

down to the fact that it was a scope problem. You know, the litigation stuff I had taken had grown beyond what, you know, I initially thought it would be. And frankly, the number of clients that I do the stuff I really enjoy, which is taking care of their business and helping them with their day-to-day operations, had grown. And I was turning into that flaky guy that didn't respond to emails quick enough and didn't get things done. And all this stuff was suffering. So I've just gone through a drastic reduction in scope where I'm now focusing just on my business clients. focusing just on my business clients and, you know, I'm always, you know, I'm bringing new, new business clients in, but I'm turning away the big expensive time consuming work. And,

and it feels a lot better, but we'll see how, you know, I'll report back in six months. Sure. Hopefully I can still make my house payment, you know, but the, but it's a scope problem. And I think this is something, this is why I was passionate about this topic as one of our early shows. I just feel like this is something that anybody that's running their own shop must constantly bang their head into. And I don't think there's a permanent solution. I think you find what works right now and you need to reevaluate it next month. Right. But I think you make a great point about that, the identity issue of issue of like, this is a thing I do, so I should keep doing it. And that doesn't necessarily,

that isn't necessarily true, especially when you looked around and, and thought one of the reasons I'm not doing these other things that I want to do is because I'm doing this thing that I feel I should do. Yeah. And that, you know, you got to balance,

you got to balance your, your passion with your, with your money. Absolutely. As a calculation, but it can be really illuminating, I think, to have that moment of, of, uh, of realization that you're doing something not because you want to do it. You're like, who's making me do this? And the answer is, well, I'm making me do this. I could stop if I wanted to. And it's amazing sometimes where I learned this when I was a manager, you know, at IDG for all those years that, um, those years that very few times is the edict from a person.

Usually the edict is from yourself. You've internalized some sort of rule and are going to follow it even though nobody's telling you to do it. And that means there's nobody to tell you to stop. You have to do it yourself i do think this is um if you if you're deciding to change your scope or change your focus it's not necessarily something you can do on a dime you know um this litigation thing for me it's taken a couple months and i still feel like i'm turning a battleship to a certain extent but i can see it turning right right no you can't very rarely do you just flip a switch and say okay um i I'm off. You're disengaging and winding things down. And it can be really frustrating to do that. But I've got some percolating projects now, and they've been percolating for a while. And I want to jump in to them. And I have that moment of like, it's not time yet. It's not time yet. you gotta you gotta wind down some of the old stuff and it's

you know but that that's progress you just have to keep score a little bit differently you can't say you know did i do this new exciting thing today uh yes or no win or lose it's more like am i on the right path am i is the battleship turning am i am i uh making progress in getting to where i want to be so what's some good general tips when saying yes for an indie? I mean, not saying yes immediately would be my first tip. Like, think about it. Think about it. Don't default to yes. Opportunity costs. Think about, you know, think realistically how much time it's going to take. Oh, yeah. I think another good one is learning curve. I think when you're indie, it's tempting to say yes to things you traditionally

haven't said yes to because you want the work. And if it's when you're, um, Indy, it's, it's tempting to say yes to things you traditionally haven't said yes to because you want the work. And if it's something you're going to have to learn about, you know, maybe you have to learn a new programming language or maybe you have to learn a new area of whatever it is you do. Uh, you better build that in.

If you're going to say yes to it, it's huge. I actually had this happen to me where I had a, I had a friend who's a, who's a, an editor, um, at a website.

And she said, I will, I will pay you monthly or even maybe even twice monthly to write about this subject. And it's a subject that I'm not super deep into. And I looked at the, and she was going to pay me roughly what I get paid for, you know, for same word count other places. But in a subject area that I don't follow and I had to, that's, that's your learning curve there, which is, you know,

just as a base transaction, I'm going to pay you this for that. It was identical to some of my other writing work, but I knew it was going to be a lot more work because I was going to have to take on a whole other category and get up to speed. And the learning curve was going to cost me a whole lot. And I thought, now, I also thought, am I going to pay off this learning curve with other assignments down the road? And my judgment there was probably not. And so, you know, it became a much less, although it was somebody offering me work, the learning curve made it way less desirable than it would have been otherwise. And so I said no. Yeah, I think another thing to consider is what I call project press.

It's like when this thing comes down to it, whether, you know, every business is different, but, you know, for the lawyers, it's like when you're in trial, how long is this thing going to be in trial? I mean, can I manage the press when this project hits, you know, full steam? Oh, yeah, that's like a, uh, it's like a maximum. So, uh, I'll put that in, in, in my terms a little bit. It's like, I've got the stuff that I do every week, right? I've got an article. I write an article for Mac world every week. I do these three podcasts. I do, I do things for six colors. I do, I have all these things that I do

and I do them every week. If I take on a project that at some point during the process is going to swamp all of my time, right? You've you this is like flood control almost right? Like you have to you have to build capacity. You got to recognize your maximum capacity and and not and be aware of taking on a project that is going to flood you, right? Because if I have a project that's going to take me, like your equivalent would be like a trial, that is going to take me away from all the things I do for a week or two, I could do that. But what's the cost? Because I'm going to have to either pay people to do my jobs, my other jobs for me, or I'm going to have to spend a couple of weeks doubling up on my existing workload to work ahead in order to do it. Can I do that? And maybe I can, but boy, that changes the equation a lot, doesn't it? Sure does. Sure does. I mean, I guess some people are like this. I think book writers are like this. I'm sure there are some people for whom the long-term project is what they do and short-term projects don't exist so much for them. But,

you know, I don't think you and I are like that, right? Where I'm shucking and jiving my way through life, brother. Yeah, I got I got stuff I do. I mean, I've got a shape to my week. Another thing we'll talk about is routines, but I got a shape to my week. I've got stuff that I owe to various places, including myself. But throughout the week, I can't step away and do a big project, go away for a week or a month and work on a big project and then come back. And if you can, that's a very different kind of calculation. But a lot of us, you know, you have to think about, like, could I say yes to this? And a lot of times the answer is, well, I can't. This is not the kind of work that I do to just walk away for, for even a week. Well, uh, winding back the clock, would you do it any differently? Would you,

you know, you said you said yes to a lot of things when you started. No, I'm glad. I'm glad I said yes to all the things that I did, um, because they did earn me money at a point where I wanted to prove to myself that I could earn money, um, on my own. And they taught me things about, yes, sometimes about things that I wanted to do or things that I wanted to do differently or things that I wanted to do differently, or things that I learned I didn't want to do. And that was part of the education process. And like I said, I had some clients where I decided that was not what I wanted to do. And that was good for me, because the next time I get a project that's in that vein, I can say, yeah, I'm not going to say yes to that, because I learned my lesson. And so I think that

was good. I think it's an ongoing process. Like you said, you've got to always question yourself about saying yes to things. You've got to always be asking yourself, are the things that I'm doing that I should offload, which is tough. It's not the no, it's saying, you know, it's, it's saying yes. And then later saying, I'm not going to do this anymore. And that's, that's one of the ways you can, the scope can creep is if, is if you say yes to something when it makes sense at the time, and then a year goes by and it doesn't make sense anymore, but you're not asking yourself, should I drop this? Because you already said yes. So I think that's, that's part of my ongoing challenge is that is, is, uh, revisiting what I do and saying, is this, does this fit in the mix anymore? Or do I need to wind this down or hand this off to somebody

and, and pick up, pick up something different. And, um, and I think it comes back to something I wrote down while we were talking about, I wanted to mention, which is ultimately when you go indie, when you're, when you're, when you're in business for yourself, um, I think a lot of people will take that to mean being indie means I will do everything. And it doesn't mean that it doesn't have to mean that. So it's something to keep. Frankly, it shouldn't mean that.

Yeah. Right. I mean, you can't do everything. You literally can't do everything. And, and some things that you think I'm going to, I'm going to own this. We had this, our, our, our relay FM buddies, Stephen and Mike. I had conversations with them at the beginning about this where where they when they started their goal was to do everything themselves like control everything themselves like right down to merchandise and stuff and i said i said okay well i i i don't recommend that and they've learned over time that they have to have

help and they and and it's happened that way. But when I say something like, my wife helps with the books for the company, that's a huge help because that means that's one thing that I'm able to hand off. And when I get somebody who I give some work to because I don't want to do that work anymore, that's part of that process, too. that's part of that process too. And I just feel like, you know, you can fully commit to the independent lifestyle and not get to that last point, which is just because you are independent, independent means choosing what to do and what not to do, not to just choose to do everything. Yeah. And frankly, and this is another show, so I'm just going to say in passing, but if you get to the point where you want to hand things off, you can do that in a way if you can communicate what the kind of work is that you want to be doing. Those people you hand work to may send some back.

Yeah, that's part of the beauty of it. Yeah. It can work for you. So anyway, we've got this new show about going independent and independent lifestyle. Let us know what you think about the format. We're going to be doing these what we call content shows. We'll also have some interview shows. But, you know, we're early days, so we're subject to...

We're learning, growing, changing the scope. Yeah, we're willing to change the scope. If there's a topic that you think would be really good for us to cover, let us know. If you know of a person that would be a great guest for this show, please let us know. And thanks for listening. Thanks. We'll see you next time.