Focused - 21: The Second Feedback Episode

Episode Date: May 16, 2017

We're once again answering your letters and tweets In a wide-ranging episode covering all sorts of aspects of being an independent worker.

David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they'd had enough. Now, they are independent workers, learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow host, Mr. Jason Snell. Hi, David. How's it going? Great, Jason. You feeling better? I know you were sick for a while. Yeah, that's going to be a topic of a future show, I think.

There's this thing about your own health and how that works in when you when you were irreplaceable because you're the only person who's doing the work that you're doing that i want to talk about but that's not this show that's another there'll be another episode but it's coming so if you've got some thoughts on it sound off in the facebook group by all means because uh we're working on that outline now yeah for sure today we're here to talk about feedback because uh the gang, our listeners, have been wonderful and sent us so much feedback. I don't even know if we're going to get through it all, but we have a pretty good list here. So I guess we should just start digging in. Yeah, yeah.

So this is quick hits on topics as requested by you. You can always go to our Facebook page, by the way, facebook.com slash groups slash freeagentsgroup. Or you can tweet at us at freeagentsfm. Those are ways that you can reach us. Yes. So what's first? I think there was a lot of affirmation for Jason's task management system. There were some very nice, very nice things that people wrote in about my own sort of self-built, not traditional task management system. And, you know, we can put it in, in fake quotes and stuff, but the fact is it is, it is a system that, and it actually doesn't work for me. Um, and so I appreciate that. Somebody wrote in with, um, with some German and now I'm trying to see if I can find it. I'm not

sure if I can, but there was, they were actually were actually referring to, in German, a word for the people who want you to use a very particular management system. Anyway, I can't find that tweet now. Of course, there's a German word for it, though. It was a very nice compliment about the people. It was about the people who want to judge you and tell you that you weren't doing it right. And thanks to everybody for doing that. We all have ways where we could be better, but it's a system that works well enough for me that I haven't needed to replace it. I think I have to go back and listen to that one again.

Maybe I came off as judgmental. I don't know. I mean, I came off as being judged by people mostly because Mike Hurley judges me about that all the time on Upgrade. But it works for me. You know, I'm kind of – at the same time, I'm kind of unrepentant. or is using complicated, getting things done, inspired tools and other complex flow management and task management systems. And I don't really have any of that. And so I guess that in that way, I'm outside the mainstream of people who've talked about being productive. And that's fine. But again, I don't really feel like it works for me, right? I mean,

I don't feel some sort of guilt about it. Like I'm getting away with something here. It works for me the way it is. And I did hear from some people who said that they use their calendar, especially as a way to keep them on task and to focus when they need to focus on things and they schedule themselves for time to to work on a project and at the same time i take from our conversation that there are certain things that benefit from having a checklist of these are all the things that need to happen whenever i do this certain thing and having that there and there that there are places where i could do um a better job i was actually thinking about this with the monthly newsletter that we do for six colors has a bunch of steps and I've internalized them all, but I could probably

put those down somewhere and use that as a basis every month for doing those steps. I'm not, it's not quite at that level, but if a couple more steps of complexity come in, I would probably, I would probably end up needing to do that, but I just haven't yet. complexity come in, I would probably end up needing to do that. But I just haven't yet. I think I get endorphins released when I can make a checklist. It's a problem of mine. I think it's a fair point. And I think, as we've said on this show a couple of times, the goal is to be more productive. And anything you can do to be more productive or to, or to stay on task is, uh, you should do it. And if it, if it, uh, one of your motivators is that building the work that goes into building the structures is something that helps you feel good and productive, then

that's great. But in the end, as I said in that show, uh, the work that needs to be done is not making the checklist. So if you, if you have a good time doing it, that's great. But in the show, the work that needs to be done is not making the checklist. So if you have a good time doing it, that's great. But in the end, you got to get the work done. And I think one of the other messages we said in that show was, make your system as complex as you need it to be, but no more complex. I think that's just a really good rule of thumb for this stuff. If you can get by with a napkin while you drink your tea in the morning and you don't need anything else, you know, you win, in my opinion. Hopefully, maybe someday I'll get back to that, but I don't see that in my life anytime soon. Yeah, everybody's

got different ways of working. All people are different. Different kinds of work are different. Different projects are different. Everybody's going to have their own. In fact, the things that bother me the most, the stuff that bugs me the most is when somebody sort of sweeps in and says no there's one way to do it and it's this way this way that i invented because i can tell you that i guarantee that is wrong because there is no one way yeah everybody is different and everybody's got different needs and sometimes your system just grows up around you i think the problem is when you realize your system is failing you and you have to come up with something else just because you need. And I think that's where the motivation comes for people seeking out new systems and new software in order

to help them get their lives organized. They're coming from a bad place where their personal systems that they've set up have failed and they know they need something new and they're casting about for it. And then they will cling to all sorts of different things in order to try and find that thing that's going to get there, allow them to keep their head above water, maybe to use that metaphor a little bit. So I get it. I get it. And I may end up there at some point, but it's at this point, this is what's working for me. So I'm, I'm doing okay. I think there's really kind of two areas of shark infested waters with with task management the first one is where you don't give

it enough thought don't have a system and you know that you're blowing deadlines and and and you're you're suffering consequences of not having a system but i think an equally dangerous system is one where you get all your happy chemicals and you do have your checklist and everything. But at the end of the day, you're not shipping product. You're not whatever it is that you do isn't getting done. And I think that's one that can sneak up on people. So be aware of that one as well. Yeah. I think that's a danger is that you feel like if your system's working, then you're doing your job. And that's not true. If your system's working, it's only really working if it allows you to do your job as a part of the system. But if you've got a system nice and set up and categorized and you're checking boxes and things like that, but the work is not getting done or not getting done to the satisfaction of the people who need to be satisfied with it, then the system is not actually working, even if you're checking all the boxes.

system is not actually working, even if you're checking all the boxes. Yeah, that's something I've kind of found myself in. In the last six months, I've realized I'm not shipping as many books and videos as I'd like to for the Max Barkey stuff I do. And it really required me to look long and hard at what's going on and what's the bottleneck. And it's not my task system that's holding me up. It's some other things, but I'm figuring that out. And that's, I think it's that free agent. You always want to be looking out for that stuff. Yeah, for sure. We also had a lot of feedback about, well, actually, this was just one question from Kathy,

but I thought it just cut straight to the bone. So I thought I'd just put it right at the top. Kathy on Twitter said, what would it take for you to stop being a free agent? There's a lot of answers to this question. I was thinking about it. And because it's what would it take? There's so many different things to this question. I was thinking about it. And because what would it take? There's so many different things that it could take, right?

I mean, I think up front. The obvious one is bucket loads of money, right? Somebody comes at you and says, I'm going to give you gazillions of dollars to come work for me. Well, yeah, I think the two standard answers here would be, what do you need to do to support yourself or your family or whoever you're supporting and if you're unable to make that happen as a free agent anymore then that would be a situation that would be required that would make you stop like if you literally like i can't pay my bills by doing this i need to go find a job then that would be one and yes the other side of it would be what's your price price? Which is, it's real,

and I don't want to make light of that because I do think everybody has a price. Oh, sure. If someone said, I'm going to pay you enough money, if you work for me for six months, I'm going to pay you enough money you don't have to work ever again

and you can buy that condo in Hawaii. Well, I would say even if somebody said to me, all right, you're going to have a job, it's going to be, it's going to me, all right, you're going to have a job. It's going to be – it's going to be – require a commute. But you're going to be – and here are your hours and here's what we're going to pay you. There is probably a number that would make me say yes. If there's no commute or if it's not a long commute,

that number is lower. If there's a long commute, that number is way higher. But there is a number, I'm sure, because of everything you just said. Because essentially what you're saying there is we're going to give you a huge amount of money, which means that you're going to be able to which means that you're going to be able to not work later. And, you know, that's basically what that is, is, you know, you're buying out several years of my required career in order to do this job for a little while. Although I have to say, after doing this for two and a half years now,

that number that would require me to commute and have long hours away from my family is vastly higher than it used to be because I did a version of that. And there are a lot of things that I would try to do before I would agree to do the grind of a commute every day and being away from my family for a very long amount of time. But again, if that number was high enough or if that was the only way that I could support my family, I would do it. I would say that that number was high enough, or if that was the only way that I could support my family, I would do it.

I would say that that number is a lot lower. If somebody came to me, like a more reasonable example would be what if somebody came to me and said, we're doing a podcasting startup and we've got a lot of funding and we want you to be the executive producer of our podcast network and you can do it from home and you'll host some shows and you'll host some shows and you'll develop new shows and it's like all stuff that i know how to do and they're and but they want me to do it and they're going to pay me well or something like that that would be a lot easier to say yes to again i would have to think about it because i wouldn't be my own boss at that point

but that's a that's a much something that's perfectly aligned is one it's a fantasy but that would be closer to something that I would, that it would be easier for me to consider something like that. But, you know, and I think this says a lot about my priorities is that not having that commute and being able to be around my family during the day and at the edges of the day in the morning and in the early evening is worth a lot to me. Yeah. When I got this question from Kathy, my first thought was I wanted to give the arrogant answer and say, I don't think there's anything that could get me to leave.

Switching over to being an independent worker for the things I do has been very satisfying for me. I bumped into someone from my old firm recently, and she said she thought I looked 10 years younger. And I believe her. I don't think it was just lip service. So it would be very difficult to get me to go somewhere, but we all have a price. I think both sides of that, Jason, are good. If there's so much money that comes in that you can, in essence, accelerate retirement, that would be worth consideration. And if for some reason, things weren't working, and my kids were going hungry, or I wasn't able to meet my obligations I've made to my family, then I would do anything. I'll go dig ditches, I'll get a job, I'll, you

know, whatever, you do what you have to do. The other thing that is interesting for me is, is there some kind of challenge that would pull me out of this that, you know, somebody was making a company and you kind of touched on at the end with the hypothetical podcast network. I honestly can't think of one for me. I think we all have, I mean, it just depends on the person and where you are in your life. Well, and the, the, you know, somebody comes to you, that's somebody with a lot of money. That means that they have, you know, somebody has invested in that company and they've got their vision about it. And what you're doing is you're exchanging a salary for helping them make a lot of money if this business works. And I am enough time on the outside, and you start to think if it's something I really believe in, and that my skill is my skills

are a huge part of, then I kind of want to own that and do that myself and get the advantages of being the person who creates this stuff. And so, I would be, in a scenario like that, I'd be more interested in being a part of the group that was doing it rather than just being somebody who gets paid to work on this thing and then the investors reap all the rewards of it. But I don't know. The thing that I've always thought about is somebody, there are lots of media, work from home, remote writer, editor jobs. And I've thought about some of those and just over the course of two and a half years of doing this myself, what would be required out of that job just keeps being raised because i'm very happy with what i'm doing now so like if you could replace my salary basically replace what i make now to do the the

stuff that i do now but have it be guaranteed from somebody's salary i wouldn't do that because i'm doing fine as it is and i don't consider a paycheck more i i've seen now like those companies can go out of business too and and and you're helpless you just do your thing until they tell you to stop whereas now i can be looking at new business and ways i want to go into a new area and learn and grow so that that'll pick up for the old but if i was working for a business i couldn't do that i'd be stuck on the old thing until it died and then i'd sort of be adrift and have to figure it out. So, so the,

again, the price, if you want to put it as the price keeps going up, but there's truth in that. Like, you know, it w it would be, it would, it would,

it would take a lot, right. To give up, to buy out essentially some of my freedom, whether it was the commute thing, the home office thing, spending time with my family thing. These are,

it would, you know, it's, it's harder. And I think that's good. I do want to say, like we said at the beginning, I think it's very important to acknowledge that sometimes the, I would say the realistically the best reason to stop being a free agent is that you need to provide for yourself or family, and the free agent job is not doing it. And I'd say there's no shame in that. That is part of being, you know, in the end, we're all free agents in the sense that we can choose to sign with, to extend the free agent metaphor from sports. You can choose to sign a

contract. You can choose to go work for an employer or do this out on your own. It is your choice, and you need to make the right choice for you and for your family. And sometimes in certain circumstances, in certain markets, in certain economies, economic situations, the right thing to do is to take that job because that's the thing that's going to give your family stability and a paycheck and be able to pay the bills. And that's, you know, I think that's always something that's on the list for me is, are we making it? And if not, you know, what will I need to do next? Just because, you know, it's good to be realistic and realize that's a scenario that is out there.

There's certainly no shame in it. I mean, I think if it's going in that direction, it doesn't even need to be financial. We're actually going to have some guests on the show. We're starting to book guests into the future to be financial. We're actually going to have some guests on the show. We're starting to book guests into the future. At some point, we're going to have some guests on the show that left the free agents. They decided to go back. And that's a whole topic to discuss.

But I think you do what you need to do. And for me, and it's such a personal question, and every person's answer is going to be different. But at this point in my life, what I would like nothing better to do is to do this for the duration. Now that I've kind of got my feet wet with it and starting to figure it out, I would love very much. I'm never going to get super rich doing this, but I'm going to be able to take care of myself and my family and I am in. Yeah, I hear you. Let's take a break for our first sponsor. How about that?

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what is overdue. It's all there, clearly, simply presented to you. You can get a 30-day unrestricted free trial as a listener of this show. Just go to freshbooks.com slash free agents and enter free agents in the how did you hear about us section so they know you came from this show. Thank you to FreshBooks for supporting this show, agents everywhere and all of relay fm so we heard from jehuda uh saying uh did you know about i think i know who this person is and it's yahuda yahuda but uh i think i think this person has written to some of my other podcasts is my guess anyway what does he say? The white guy from Southern California screwed it up. I apologize, Yehuda. So he's talking about someone, in all caps, someone.

He says, a good friend of mine once announced that ever since he quit his job and started working from home, he became, in quotes, someone and felt very important. He then proceeded to explain that it meant that someone had to be home to open the door for the repairman. Someone had to take the kids to school. Someone had to take the dog open the door for the repairman, someone had to take the kids to school, someone had to take the dog to the vet, etc. He says, just a little antidote when you address the fact that drawing the line between work and life and family can be quite complicated once you set up your own or start working from the house.

Yeah. We talked about this a little bit in our home working environment episode, and it's definitely true. I just had this happen yesterday where my daughter texted me and said, can you pick me up at school? And I said yes. And then I sat in traffic for 25 minutes and I thought I should have said no. This is ridiculous. I'm not saving her any time.

She could have just walked home, taken the bus. There are so many other ways to do it. But it is true. Something that I deal with. I don't know if you deal with this, David. But for me, there's definitely that sense of like, I know it's not, nobody, it's not stated outright. And in fact, I think nobody actually thinks that, but just emotionally when my wife comes home from her workplace, which is outside the home at the end of the day, if I tell her that I didn't walk

the dog, she's disappointed because I'm home, right? So, should I not have found time to walk the dog? And the truth is, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. And, you know, you can't count on it. You can't count on being there to shuttle a kid here and there. And that's just something you have to navigate because it's so easy to start throwing those tasks on the person who's home and not think about the fact that there's a cost to that. And that person does not have unlimited time to be someone to do all of those tasks. And it's hard. We've done, we've, you know, we've tried to balance it. And I think we constantly still try it. But it definitely, I definitely feel that feeling that, well,

you're home all day. And I don't think anybody's doing it purposefully, but it's just, it's true. I am home all day. I could do all of these things. It just is going to take away from my work if I do. Yeah. And, and sometimes I'll, I, in my house, I'm kind of the, um, when the, when the, when the fallback fails, I'm here. Um, and I don't want to be like the jerk that says, no, pretend I'm not here. Don't give me any of this stuff to do. You know, I'm here. And I don't want to be like the jerk that says, no, pretend I'm not here. Don't give me any of this stuff to do. You know, I'm too important. Don't you know, blah, blah. I don't do that. But at the same time, when I do get drawn into things like an out, because my daughter's commutes are quite long. She, she goes to school and does activities far from our home. That's

like a two hour commitment when I get drawn into something like that. And when they need me to do it, because something goes wrong, and there's nobody else, I'm here to do it. And that's, that's one of the advantages of this job. But quite often, when I do that, I am after dinner backup in my study working through the evening, and everybody kind of knows, that's the price that gets paid, you know? So, um, I think it really requires a lot of open communication with your family. If you, you know, if you've got a family or that's usually what I think the context of this, um, and just talk about, you know, how important it is to get your work done and it is a job and, and it takes a little time. I was just, I just had lunch today with a friend who's just going

out on his own as an attorney and he's going to be working home with his wife. And, and I told him it took my wife and I, you know, about a year really to kind of sort things into a routine where we stay out of each other's hair, but we're still here for each other. Yeah. It's just, it's tricky. Like everybody can be on board. That's what I want to say is I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to accuse anybody in this situation of being a bad person. It's just, it's a tricky thing to navigate because you have to, you viscerally, you've got this sense of this person's at home. They're available. And you have to kind of like tamp it down as they're available, but they're really not.

They are a last resort. Or there's a certain amount of stuff that you can build in like walking the dog. For me, I've tried to build in on most days as being something that is a good break for me from my work. And it's a thing I can get done. That's in the pile of housework that needs to be done that I can polish off for the day myself. But, you know, you, you're constantly kind of trying to keep that in perspective of it's an optional thing. It might fit in. It's an optional thing for you as the home worker.

It's not part of your job and it may not happen. And you have the ability to say no or at least to talk about why you're not available. And I've had that conversation with my daughter about how I'm doing other stuff and I'm taking time out of my time for her and again she's a teenager too like from her perspective it's way more important for me to waste half an hour than for her to spend uh 20 minutes right like her time for her she it's not even a question like her time is valuable and mine is not and the cold hard truth of it is her time is not valuable and my time is. And I just need to deal with that, that as a parent, I have to also accept that I am a worker and my half hour brings money into the family and her half hour doesn't do anything. It's just her going for a walk home from school. And I have to balance that, too.

So, yeah, it's a great anecdote that the the creep the someone creep is a real thing that you gotta watch it is um weldon wrote in on twitter and he was talking about the stop digging episode we talked about you know sometimes um and uh and he said i've learned to say no to clients that don't fit the way my business is structured. They won't be happy. That's how he ends it in that ominous tone. They won't be happy.

I understand the sentiment of that tweet, but I disagree with it. I think it's the wrong priority. I mean, the point we were trying to make on that show is sometimes they won't be happy, and that's okay because you're making big boy and big girl decisions to keep your business running so you can keep doing it to the future. And keeping all clients happy sometimes is the road to madness or bankruptcy. Yeah, well, and that's, I think, what Weldon is getting at here. This very much like, I like the way that this is the it's not you, it's me kind of thing a little bit. It's to say, this is how I do business, and it's not going, it's me kind of thing a little bit. It's to say, this is how I do business and it's not gonna work for you.

And so even though internally what you're thinking is, I can't work with these people because they're gonna want me to do things in a way that I don't wanna do it. But the way you phrase it is much more like, I see what you want and I can't provide it, which means that you're gonna be unhappy and I don't want you to be an unhappy client. So, I can't work for you. But boy, that is hard. It's hard turning

down. I feel like the hardest thing we've talked about on this show is turning down work. Yeah. Because you're so, I think at various points, so concerned about if there's going to be enough work, if you're going to be able to make it work, if you're going to be able to support yourself. about if there's going to be enough work, if you're going to be able to make it work, if you're going to be able to support yourself and being and turning down work because it's not the right kind of work or because the client is going to be bad. And you just, which is also subsection of not the right kind of work. It's hard, but, um, but I agree with Weldon that, that a really good way to frame it is, is you're not going to be happy with the way

I, the way I work. So, we should not, we should not work together. Even though, you know, I've had that happen where I've worked with somebody and the way their business was structured, it turned out there was no way it was going to work. Like, it was, any scenario where it was going to be good for them was going to be bad for me and vice versa. And there's no harm in just recognizing that and saying, it's not going to work. It's fine. Good luck. I wish you the best. I'll do what I can to, you know, to smooth the transition. But, you know, it's better for all concerned that we don't work together anymore. And that's a conversation I've got very comfortable having. I think as a lawyer, it's really easy to say this isn't in my area of specialty, which is often true. And, you know, it's really truly of concern for the client. I

want them to have the best possible representation with whatever their problem is. And sometimes it's not even that. I'll just tell them it's just not, you know, I don't have the bandwidth for what they need right now or whatever. And it's funny because sometimes they get very upset with you. Sometimes they get very eager to hire you. It's like the more you say no, the more they want you to say yes. It's very weird. But be ready for all sorts of strange responses to telling people no.

You know, an interesting follow-up to Weldon's tweet was Mike on Twitter. He said, did fear ever hold you back from making the jump? And if so, did it ever go away? Yeah and no. It's funny because that was my exact response. it's funny because that was my exact response yeah yeah no i mean fear did fear hold us back yeah of course fear was the thing holding us back i would say right i mean that took me 22 years yeah and for me you know i had i i was miserable and i had and fear of change and fear of making a mistake and ruining something that was, you know, I had, when I had somebody paying me every two weeks, a pretty good salary to mess that up for something, you know, are you diluted? Are you, you just, you should just keep taking the money. You should just keep working. And, and that fear of, of, of messing it up and ruining everything and ruining your career

and ruining your family and not having any money and all of those things. That was absolutely, in fact, I would say that it could only be explained by fear after a while. After a while, it could only be explained by fear because that was the only logical, I mean, it's not even logic, the only reason remaining not to leave was fear. I think it was an Audio Dharma podcast I had listened to once, or I don't remember where, but somebody did this exercise where they said, take the thing you're most afraid of in your life, and rather than shrink from it, just embrace it for 10 minutes. Just say, okay, let's say your biggest fear is you're going to go bankrupt, that this is going to work, you're not going to make any money. And just rather than stopping right there, just let your brain go through this exercise.

Well, what would happen? What would you do? And then I did that. And I still, that's a great tool I use for anything I'm afraid of in life. And what would happen if nobody bought it? What would happen if nobody, clients showed up? And you start thinking through, and logically, what steps would you take? Do you have options?

If suddenly all my money dried up, I could probably go get a job somewhere. And you start thinking through all this stuff. And if you spend a little bit of time with this fear, you get a lot more comfortable with it because in your mind, you've accepted what's the worst scenario. And most times you discover that, well, you know what, I could probably live with that. If I did all this and it went terrible, I could probably take the steps necessary to set things right and move on. And it's just a great exercise. And I think if you're thinking about going independent, it's something you should certainly take a few minutes to try.

Yeah, for me, the fear just gets modulated. It becomes a different kind of fear. So in the end, I was able to get over the hump of the fear of change by realizing that it was more – I was more afraid of how bad it was going to get for me in my job than to leave it. And so the fear kind of moved into, yes, you may be afraid of change, but do you want to keep going through this? And it was like a different motivator. And then did it ever go away though? No, because then it becomes, is this going to work? What are the threats here?

You know, always having some, I think there's, there's some level of fear that is healthy. There's also a, definitely a level that is unhealthy. And so keeping it there as, as a, as, as a thing to question what you're doing and to make sure to keep you honest. I think, yeah, you know, that still exists. You go, it's, I can't imagine going out on your own and not waking up in the middle of the night every now and then thinking, oh, but what about this? But what about this? But what about this? And just, you know, eventually you move on because there's always questions. There's always a moving target of what's going to happen. You just have to deal with it. I think it's a good point to make that I, towards the end of my run working for the man, I up my own website and not leaving and then trying to find another job. One of my motivators was I have to try this because I will never forgive myself if I didn't give it a try because I won't know. And for the rest of my life, I will wonder, could I have done this? If not now, then when? Yeah, and even if it fails, it will have been successful in the sense that I will have learned

my lesson. I will have gotten my answer. Yeah. Yeah. We got a Facebook post about health insurance where we were asked if we're going to do a show on health insurance. I would like to do one at some point. Neither of us are experts, although we both navigated it. I think the big question mark and why we've tabled it up to now and I think we need to table it further is nobody really knows what in the United States, at least the lay of the land is going to be with health insurance. It's all still a question mark. So I feel like we should just keep pushing this off for a little while. You know, at some point we'll have to do it.

But, you know, until some point we'll have to do it. But, you know, until then, I don't know. Right now, I believe our status, both of us, are paying independently for health insurance, right? Yes, yes. Yeah. That's one of my bigger expenses. My status is actually about to change because my wife just got hired full-time by her previously part-time employer. So, that will change our insurance. And honestly, that will be quite a relief to have employee healthcare, again, covering our family. But there's just, there's so much shifting ground out there about

what is going to happen in terms of what insurance is available, what pre-existing conditions are covered, what the system is, what are the tax benefits for American audiences anyway? It's a mystery right now. Yeah, it is because I don't have that option. My spouse doesn't have a job where we could get insurance. And I think like a lot of free agents out there, I'm nervous right now. Yeah. We don't right now. It's too early to tell where, you know, when we do get around to it, when the solutions and the answers are there, we'll have somebody on the show, just like we did with the accounting show. We'll bring somebody in that knows what the heck they're talking about. Good point. It'll be a good show, but just not

yet. Well, David, do you want to tell everybody about our other sponsor in this episode? Yeah. And I'm really excited to have SaneBox as a sponsor of the free agents because I feel like it's such a great fit. So this episode of free agents brought to you by SaneBox. It's an email service. And one of the things about being a free agent is you have to manage a lot of email and you probably don't have a lot of people to help you out. And I think of SaneBox as my own personal email assistant. SaneBox is a web-based service, but they're not creepy like some of the others out there we've heard about recently. They don't sell your data. They have a whole page on how important they take privacy. And they look at your inbox in terms of where email is coming from

and what's in the subject line. They don't even look at the body, but just using those pieces of data, they can do a very good job of filtering your email for you. So when you wake up in the morning, you look at your email, your inbox, instead of having a hundred items in it, and many of which are things like lands in calendars or catalogs and solicitations and things you don't care about, they take care of that for you. They put it in different sub-email boxes. They essentially do this initial sort for you. So instead of 100 emails, you wake up to seven.

And they're the seven emails from your most important clients and co-workers. And it allows you to just deal with the most important stuff first. So it's like having your own little assistant take care of that for you. And that's just one of the features you get with SaneBox. They have a great service where you can defer email. Like if I get an email on Friday afternoon, and it's something that can truly wait until Monday, I have a box called Monday.

And I just drag the email to Monday, and then it disappears from my inbox, and it comes back on Monday. Email deferment is really powerful because it gets the emotional baggage of that email out of your life. Another thing you do as a free agent is you send somebody an email, and you have to keep track of whether they write back. You send out a proposal to a potential client maybe. And if you don't follow up in a week, maybe they move on to somebody else. So with SaneBox, you can just blind copy that email to oneweekatsanebox.com, or you can make it two hours or May 15th or whatever. And on the designated time and date, if you don't get a reply to that email, SaneBox will send you a reminder and say, hey, you sent that email to Jason.

You never heard back. It's just a great set of power tools for email. and you never heard back. It's just a great set of power tools for email. And because it's a web-based service, you can use it with any email system, whether you're Gmail or IMAP or iCloud, it doesn't matter. It works with all those different services. And you can also use it with any combination of email applications. So if you like Apple Mail on your Mac and you like Outlook on your PC and you like Air Mail on your iPhone, it doesn't matter. SaneBox will work with all those different services. So it just gives you a great list of tools to kind of work some magic on your email.

It allows you to do it anywhere, and it's reasonably priced. And we really like the gang behind SaneBox. Super happy to have them as a sponsor. And we told them, hey, we want to give something to our listeners if they want to try it out. And they really delivered. So if you go to SaneBox.com slash free agents today, you'll get an extra $20 credit on top of their two-week free trial. So go in, give it a try. Go to that website, SaneBox.com slash free agents. We are hearing back that the free

agents listeners that try the service are loving it. They're having very high signup rates. So, you know, you should go try it too, if you haven't and help conquer your inbox. It's SaneBox, S-A-N-E-B-O-X.com slash free agents. All right. So, we heard from Liam on Facebook who said, very interested to hear about how you've been integrating people into your team, David, specifically how you found people, what you have them doing, how you integrate them into your systems, how that experience has gone for you as a solo lawyer myself. I'd also be very interested in how you handled the additional complications bringing new staff into a law practice. So, you've been talking about getting help for a little while. So, where are you in that and how have you been doing that?

Yeah, I think we'll do a full show on it when I have better feedback, but just to kind of give you an interim report. I realized, like I said at the top of the show, I wasn't shipping as much Mac Sparky product as I would like to. One of the reasons I went out and did this is I want to have more time to get more books and videos out the door. And I started taking that problem seriously. And around the new year, I started running timers every day, just from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed. How much time do I spend working out? How much time do I spend answering emails from customers that need a new download link? You know, I just set up a bunch of timers and I collected data on those for about a month and a half just to see where my time was adding up. And I learned tons from that because things I thought were taking a long time were actually

not taking a long time. Your perception of time isn't always accurate. It's one of the things you discover when you do this. And I found some really easy low-hanging fruit with some of these things that are things I don't need to be doing, that it doesn't require my activity, and nevertheless could still get done by somebody else. So I started making lists of those. And I originally was going to hire one person to be like my friend and helper to do all these different tasks. But as I started thinking about it, I mean, I have tasks that involve editing screencast video and tasks that involve sending out legal billings. And you look at the diverse list of things I want help with, and there's no one person that's going to be perfect for all of

those things. So to tell you where I'm at, Liam, is I have now three people that are helping me in various pieces of it. My checklist of things I want to offload is not fully taken care of yet, but I'm trying to do it kind of with baby steps and get the people that are helping me doing the stuff they're doing well before I give them any more or find another person. And I feel very optimistic about this. I feel like I've made real progress and it's starting to show dividends for me, but not nearly as much as I think it will in about two months as I get deeper down this road. And I mean, you know, it's, you know, no surprise that if you hire somebody to help you with stuff, things get easier. no surprise that if you hire somebody to help you with stuff things get easier um and uh i think this is a big step for me i'm super excited about it and we'll do a whole show on it once i figure it

all out all right thank you you're getting help too like you have uh you have you have dan over at six colors and i know you've got people helping you out yeah and i've hired some uh some people to do some podcast editing for me which has been that's been a huge thing where there are things that i wanted to exist in the world that i wasn't willing to add to my plate or keep on my plate as much and i realized that the best thing to do would be to bring somebody in to do that for me so that i could use my time on other things and those things could still exist so paying some people to add a podcast is part of that, and then having Dan help with Six Colors,

and Dan and also Stephen Hackett to help put together our monthly newsletter. And I think it makes sense to work on that stuff. Because the other thing, and this is another show that we could do at some point, is I was trying to think about what is required, and this actually segues into something that we're about to talk about, which is like, how much time, how much work does one person have? And I think about this because as somebody who used to lead an editorial team of dozens of people, I still have those standards sometimes in my head. And then I realized that Six Colors is literally two guys who have other things that they're doing and i i had that thought of like if if that site was there and it was just me like during fireball is just john gruber then you would be able to see like here is jason's output for the week and i will tell you one person can only do so much.

You know, and that's just, that's how it is. One person only has so much that they can produce in a good week, operating 100% efficiency, no travel, no sickness, no extenuating circumstances. There's only so much one human being can do in a week, no matter who you are, no matter whether you're the, you know, the prime minister of Greatain or you're the ceo of apple it doesn't matter there's only so much one human being can do so that leads into kim you know yeah and that's exactly it so kim emailed and said after being indie for a few years are you working more or less than you did when you were working for the man it's a good question i'm working more for certain me too yeah yeah it's not even a question for me i'm working more and that's one of the things the soul searching i've been doing is am i doing

something if i'm not doing something that requires me to use my brain as a lawyer or is producing content as max barkey um then I want to look at that very carefully to see if that's something that I still want to do or if I want to get some help for it. But one of the things you have to accept about this is we are not machines, and we cannot just wake up at 6 in the morning and work until 10 p.m. and go to bed

and do the same rinse and repeat the next day. Yesterday, I did a podcast for Mac Power users, and I did a lot of the prep for it. I had some client stuff in the morning, and I had some more stuff that was almost a deadline, but not really, but stuff I really would have benefited from finishing last night. And I got to 6 p.m. There was no plans last night. I could have stayed in my office and worked for three or four hours and got that stuff knocked out. But I realized I didn't have it in me. I just, I was out of gas.

And, you know, you have to plan for that as a free agent. You're not a machine. You got to have some time, some downtime once in a while. So I went down. I watched the Americans with my daughter. I cooked dinner with her and we had a good time and it was just a nice evening. I woke up this morning and got caught up again, but be ready for that. if it's going well and you've got enough work and you are supporting yourself, you end up having to ask yourself that question, which is,

I can take on incrementally more work for incrementally more money, but I don't need incrementally more money, really. And so I should not do incrementally more work. And I that's a again what i'm not saying is if you're scratching and clawing to survive then you're going to need to do what you what you need to do to make it work but i think i think a lot of us will get to that point where it's sort of like it's hard not to say yes to another five hundred dollars another thousand dollars here and there right of like i'll take on this extra work because it's more not to say yes to another $500, another $1,000 here and there, right? Of like, oh, I'll take on this extra work because it's more money. And that is good because you never know when the car is going to break down

or there's some other thing or my daughter is going to go to college pretty soon and I need more money in the bank or whatever it is, right? It's hard to ever say no to that. But being aware that by saying yes, you're also saying yes to more work that you have to take on and that has to go somewhere in your day and do you have energy for it and do you want to be working until you know late in the evening where because the last thing i want to do is end up working to the same point as when i would come home from work right the last thing i want to do is is go from having this commute and leaving early and getting home late to

staying at home, but working straight through that whole time. Right. If I have to, I will, but if I can manage that, there's certain, you know, there's certain stuff that beyond, beyond a certain point, I don't want to take on more because I want to be done at five 30 or six o'clock. I want to be done and spending time with my family. And, and that is, uh, yeah, yeah. So, but I, I feel the same way that I, I am definitely working more, but I'm trying now to balance it so that I'm not, um, I'm not, uh, overdoing it. I am able to take time during other parts of the day to go back to our question about someone has to do these other things. I mean, some of that is balanced by being

able to take, uh, time out and allow myself to take time out during the day at some point. And sometimes that can be healthy, I think, to take, you know, take a little, take a, take a full hour for lunch, which I did today, which I never used to do. And I needed to recharge, so I made myself a sandwich and watched a TV show. And I was always a work-at-my-desk kind of person, and I still am. But I have the flexibility to do that now. that now. Yeah. And I would add to the idea of incremental costs of projects as you, you know, add one or two more of that extra thousand dollars or whatever. There's even a tipping point beyond that, where if you keep saying yes to those, where you're working so hard that the

quality of everything starts to decrease and that's killing the golden goose, you know, if you're not careful so be very aware of what your capacity is and a little over capacity for a little while is fine a lot over capacity even for a short while it can be pretty devastating to your business yeah all right uh robert on facebook wrote on he says how about an episode about handling rejection how do you handle rejection when you're emotionally invested in a sales pitch? Like when you need to make this sale so you can make payroll so you won't have workers revolt. These examples.

Or when you need to make rent. Ouch. Yeah. I mean, I question the premise of this question. Yeah. Because handling rejection emotionally is one thing but like being rejected when your business is going to fail you're not going to be able to pay your workers or you're not going to be able to pay your rent i don't know that's that's that feels very different to me and it's a different

set of problems yeah and that's not i mean rejection there's rejection and then there's like you're desperate and under pressure and something bad happened to you and i i don't know if i feel qualified to talk about what happens if you need to make payroll or you need to make rent and you're under incredible pressure because i don't have stories about that it's not something that i've i've experienced and i i uh i just it feels very different than the kind of more run-of-the-mill garden variety. Everybody hates being rejected, but rejection is a part of business. Yeah, well, I think it kind of goes back to Kathy's question at the top of the show. If I'm at a point where I can't pay my mortgage, I'm dusting off the resume. I mean, that's just what

you do. That's the answer. That can't be a routine. Like if that's routine just what you do that's the answer that can't be a routine like if that's routine that you need to make the sale so you can make payroll for your business if you're down to your last straw if you you um you you're gonna miss your rent check and get kicked out of your apartment if you don't do this job right now um that's that that yeah, there are bigger issues at play then. If you're on the knife's edge like that, that isn't about dealing with rejection. That is a business that's on the edge of being unsuccessful. So let's sanitize the question a little bit. Just take that last part out. How do you handle rejection when you're making a pitch and you get invested in it, what do you do? For me, I think a lot of it is emotional distance. And I know that sounds maybe like a weird answer,

but the phrase, it's just business, I think is important to keep in mind that your pitch is what you're willing to do. And you want people to take you up on it, presumably, but they might not because it might be a bad business decision for them. And that's fine. That's, it's not you. It's, it's, it's business. It's just business. And then I, I feel that way too about some of the stuff that I've pitched where it's like, I'm going to tell you how I want to do this I want to tell you this is this is what I'm willing to do and this is what you need to pay me and if somebody says no rather than rather than the natural reaction which is oh why didn't they want me why didn't they pick me what I try to do is

remind myself I told them what I needed to do to do this job properly and they didn't want to do it so to go back to the bad client sort of scenario it's like if they can find somebody else to do to do this job properly, and they didn't want to do it. So, to go back to the bad client sort of scenario, it's like, if they can find somebody else to do it who they think is going to do better, and they're going to pay them less, more power to them, because I wasn't willing to work for that. I don't want, you know, it's just business. I gave you my best, and you didn't want it, and fair enough. And having that emotional distance, I find valuable. Yeah, I think in some ways, you can look at that as dodging a bullet when they turn you down. Yeah. I do think part of it is, and you and I have been kind of at work for decades.

We're not old, but we're not young either. And I think as you get older, it gets a lot easier not to get invested in these things. And you say this is what we're going to take. And if you get a lot of rejection, I think it's worth some little navel-gazing. Well, why are people turning this down? Maybe I am charging too much, or maybe I'm not presenting myself in the best possible light. I mean, there's nothing wrong with a little introspection if you feel like you're getting a lot of rejection. But don't necessarily think it's you.

This is where we get to switch it. It's not me. It's you. Yeah, it's just business. In a lot of cases, that's the truth. The judgment isn't about the quality of you or the quality of your work sometimes. Sometimes it's about the budget that they've been given. It might even be an assumption made in their budget that is wrong, but somebody

made it and it's not even the people you're dealing with and they are stuck trying to do it. There may be politics involved that you aren't aware of. There are so many things that could be that lead to a project falling apart, a job not coming through. And you bring the same. You have your own cost structure and what's your time worth to you. And those don't always align. And that's just business. That is not about one group or the other group being bad or needing to be rejected. Sometimes that's the case.

I just had this thing where somebody wanted me to do a proposal for this job. And it was not quite what I usually do. for this job. And it was not quite what I usually do, but it was something that I was, that I thought might be worth doing at a certain price. Everybody's got a price, right? So I put together a proposal and I said, I will do this work for you for this amount. And now I will say, I never got, I never heard back from them, which I think is bad business. I think you need to say, we're going with something else. Thank you for your, you know, thanks for your pitch, but we're not going to do it. But I don't question like, oh man, I should have asked for less money. Maybe they would have hired me because the bid that I gave them, the proposal I gave them, that was what I was willing to do to do the job. And

I wasn't willing to do it for less. So if that wasn't going to work for them, that's fine. I wish them well, but I, I wasn't trying to extract more money out of them for a job that I desperately wanted. I was legitimately telling them, this is, this is what will, what you have to pay me to do this. And in my case, they've vanished, which is weird, but it's like, that's fine because I don't consider that a missed opportunity. I consider that, you know, they had the opportunity to get me and they chose not to, and that's fine because I wasn't going to work for less or do it a different way. And again, the way they handled it is another dodged bullet for you. I mean,

that's the kind of person you probably don't want to do a job for. That's exactly. And if I'm being honest, part of what i did in doing it the way i did was um this is essentially if you really want me this is how you how you have to treat me and uh in in hindsight based on what their behavior was that was good that i did that because they i think are not somebody that i actually wanted to work with and that's just fine going going back to the getting paid episode something we really should have covered is the scenario where you make a proposal like that and they write back or they call you and they say, this is great, but we need to cut the budget by X percent. And I know there's different theories on that. Some people are okay. forbid maybe to begin with, with the idea they've got a little wiggle room, because there's certainly a lot of folks out there that believe in kind of the barter mentality, and they want to barter. My attitude has generally been, no, this is the cost, and

I gave you the cost, and if it doesn't work for you, I wish you the best of luck, and I hope you find somebody, but that's what it would cost for me to do it. And I've always taken that attitude. Occasionally, people will say, well, then I don't want you to do it. And I feel like another dodge bullet. And then other people like, yeah, you know what? You're right. And we're fine with it. And that's a good way to start the relationship too.

Yep. All right. We should wrap this up. That's a good thank you to everybody who wrote in. And again, facebook.com slash groups slash free agent group is a place that you can post things. You can ask to join that group. We'll let you in, and then you can post things there. You can tweet at us at freeagentsfm, or you can go to relay.fm slash freeagents

and click on the email link and send us an email. All of those things will work. One of the things I like about the Facebook group is seeing people interact with each other. Yeah, the goal is not for us to, it's not like David and Jason answer your questions and help you. That's a group of people who are all doing this or thinking about doing this, helping each other. Yeah, it's a good resource. If you're thinking about it or if you're a free agent, you should probably join. Yeah, because there are a lot of people who've got a lot of different kinds of personal experiences that are, you know, the collective wisdom in that group is so far beyond, you know, just the two of us that

it's quite a sight to see. It's very nice. Inspiring. All right. Well, David, it's been a pleasure as always. See you next time. Thank you.