Focused - 22: Staying Agile

Episode Date: May 30, 2017

One of your great advantages as an independent worker is your agility. While larger companies have more resources, they can be much slower to react to change. David and Jason swap war stories about adapting and changing, including Jason's decision to leave one podcast and start another.

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 the digital age. I'm Jason Snell, and I'm joined as always by my fellow host, Mr. David Sparks. Hello, Jason. Hi, David. Good to be back. It is. And we have an interesting topic today, agility.

Yeah, we were going to do something else, but, you know, something came up, so we moved fast and we changed topics. We don't mess around here at the Free Agents headquarters. and we change topics. We don't mess around here at the free agents headquarters. Sometimes you gotta move. Sometimes, you know, you gotta make decisions and be willing to change things up. A lot of shucking and jiving. It happens.

You know, the world, sometimes you get surprised. Sometimes things change. You gotta be flexible. Yeah, I think that's really one of the best things about being a free agent is the ability to shift quickly. It's, you know, anybody who's worked in a company, even a small company, knows that often companies turn like battleships. It just takes forever to get change. I remember at my old firm at one point, I went on a mission to get Times Roman off of the pleadings that we were filing in court.

You know, a font that just drove me crazy and i took a year and ultimately i lost that battle oh uh yeah it's it's true there are lots of reasons why uh businesses especially you know large organizations have processes designed to keep things running and part of that is to reject change that's just that's part of the it's a little bit like how um cancer is a byproduct of the process of cell division that allows us to be functional multicellular organisms it's a little bit like that or about how a disease that in that attacks system, where the thing that keeps you alive also can do you harm. This is the immune system of businesses and other like large human endeavors.

It is the immune system. It doesn't want to change. It wants to keep things on track. And, you know, we're like that as people we want to get in a groove even if it becomes a rut because it's it's convenient to do that because you get to uh you you know you you push out the new in order to keep doing what you're doing um and it's a problem like this is why we have bureaucracies this is why this is why you get frustrated and decide you want to go out on your own. It's because of things like this.

And like I said, though, you as a free agent, you remove all of that. And if you're wise and smart about it, you can pivot your business so much faster than even a small business that's competing with you. Yep. And this is one of the reasons why you may be able to continue your existence as a free agent if you acknowledge and embrace that. And that's our goal today by the time you finish this episode

to embrace agility because if you don't use it, you're being foolish. Yep, that's right. This is a fundamental advantage of being on your own is that if you're open and receptive and watching and can move and change based on the needs, I mean, that really is, not only is that how you survive, I think, as a free agent, is being kind of open to change and aware of what your opportunities are, but it is your great advantage as well.

a list of a couple different ways agility shows up and and i really like the first way we pick the first way you can show your agility is by quitting projects how do you like that let's just start right there yeah that's that's uh getting you know being able to say i'm not gonna i i'm not gonna do this or i've got this opportunity and so i'm gonna let this other thing go that's definitely a part of it is being able to say, I'm going to, I have, I have something that I want to do and I'm going to, I'm going to make a change.

Like the, a useful relatively recent example is that I, I spent about nine months talking to Mike and Steven who run relay FM, which is the network that this podcast is on about doing a new podcast with them. And it was a group effort where we were talking about what does Relay need and what's the kind of show that we should have for a bunch of different reasons. And I thought that might be something I want to do. And very quickly, I mean, literally in the first few days that we were talking about it, I realized that if I was going to take on this extra work for a lot of different reasons, I would need to cut something else out that I couldn't do this new project and keep doing one of my existing projects that the natural response would be just add on to add another

one on, just keep on adding. And I looked at my bandwidth and the ability to, you know, fill my week with, with work and, and have any time, you know, any time left. And I very rapidly said, okay, I'm going to need to stop doing something else in order to do this new project. And so a few weeks back, we launched that project as a podcast called Download. And the next week, I announced on Clockwise, a podcast that I've been hosting for several years with Dan Morin, that I was going to step away as the co-host of Clockwise. And that was from day one of the, or day two, maybe, of the discussions of the thing that would come to be the download podcast. That was the, that was my choice. That was the plan was I'll do this thing, but it meant that I needed to make that own and being this free agent that I was increasingly ill-equipped to handle large litigation. I didn't have anybody backing me up.

I have an increasing number of small and medium-sized companies I represent that need me, oftentimes with little warning. And just everything about my business had evolved to a point where getting into long trials was going to end up costing me more money, or at least costing me more in terms of my relationships with my clients than it was going to give me. But the problem was for lawyers, you know, litigation is a bonfire of a hundred dollar bills. It's, it's the most lucrative by far area of law I've ever practiced where I do the corporate stuff and the contracts and that's great and I make good money, but it's not the same. And so I had to really think about that

in terms of agility and what do I do? And I ended up when we started the show, I explained that one of the reasons I did this show was because it was so interesting to me going through that thought process of saying, what if I gave up the most lucrative part of my business? What would that do for me? And I can report back on that. It's been a year and it's been great. I feel like the stuff that I'm still doing is stuff that I'm best at. And the stuff that I'm not doing is stuff that I wasn't really equipped for. I did not make as much money last year. I actually lost money as a result. And it's not that I'm starving. I just didn't make quite as much as I would have if I'd done the other thing. But I think in terms of the general direction and the way this business is running, I think it's right on track and I'm completely fine with losing a little money to get things a little bit more under control.

Individually, whether it's making a big decision like like giving up a project, or whether it's just the, I think, day by day steering that you do with your business of, oh, this is happening, I'm going to do a little more of this, I'm going to do a little less of this, which you may not even notice it happening. But that is that these are both examples of being open to this. And I certainly working at a big media corporation, right, I witnessed firsthand um i was just talking to somebody on twitter about this about somebody else's big media business now that i'm not in it anymore but i can see it i i can see how they're behaving and it's the same thing of like i thought podcasting was going to be really interesting and i couldn't get my media company to pay the slightest attention and part of that is the scale right they had built

an entire business around uh ad sales and for the web basically print magazines and then for the web and podcasts were small so it was never going to be a good incentive for the sales people and even if you could make the argument that eventually it could be a major business uh for them a profit center for them they were focused on other things and it was one of those that for me a little bit like when the web was starting to take off and i i kept trying to tell the magazine publishers no no no the web is important you need to do the web and they were just not there they weren't focused on it podcasting was definitely like that for me, where I thought this, there was something here. And the fact is, could half of my company's budget have been paid for by podcasting in a couple of years? Probably not. But I've reached the point where roughly half of my revenue, my income comes from podcasting now. And is dramatic so uh i i guess that goes back to

sometimes being a small business or a single person not only not only uh is it gives you more agility but it also lets you take advantage of opportunities that a bigger player might um not not that they don't even acknowledge it as an opportunity, but it's not big enough for them to go after. But it's big enough for you to go after. So there's, you know, it's not just the agility, but it's also the, the ability to, to value something that would be beneath the notice of a larger competitor. But it's also I think agility falls into that mix because like you as a small businessman

were able to dip your toe, get it started. And then as it was more successful to dive in, I mean, this new show you're doing is a, I mean, it's a great show and it's a lot of work and it's going to be super successful.

And that doesn't start, you don't start with that show, you know, download isn't the beginning point for you. It takes a series of steps to get there. And, and only because you're able to, to turn into this, this podcasting thing, we're able to get to where you're at now. But it's also part of a process that includes asking that question about what else could we do? Where are the opportunities? And opportunities and and that that is the that is part of the agility story is being able to not just say okay i've got a set of things that i do this is the way it's going to be forever but to say what what is where are their opportunities

what's the next step could we could could we do something else uh is the market going in a certain way is the you know the the work that we're getting following a certain trend and being able to follow that? And so for something like Download, it was definitely a conversation about where should we go next and what would be something here and then making it happen instead of just sort of being comfortable to sit back with what currently exists, which, as you and I have both said on this podcast before is vitally important. If you're going to be a free agent, because you're going to have work that falls apart that over time,

it just, the money drops off and then it goes away. And that's why you always need to be looking for that new thing that's on its way up so that you can keep kind of replenishing. And, and then, and that's how change happens. Not in like a moment by moment

but just over time this thing this thing's going down this thing's riding high and this other thing is coming up yeah and but i thought i think it's a great takeaway point though that a manifestation of agility is quitting projects and business lines and it absolutely is and if you're a free agent you should regularly be asking yourself does this thing still earn its keep in my life even if it earned its keep really well two years ago um so much of agility is is being able the the i'm going to pile on the metaphors here but it's the ability to take on something new when you recognize that it's something you need to do in other words agility is being able to jump at an opportunity and if you're weighed down by a bunch of other stuff that you might be able to unencumber yourself with over time

like you're not able to jump right so on level, you want to have enough agility, enough room in your workload, I think, so that you have the ability to jump at a chance. That's a great opportunity and not let it pass you by. And in a big company, and one of the big hangups is there's a bunch of people that owe their entire existence to whatever is happening now. And if you suddenly change business models, give up on things, you are going to have some people that are going to be out of jobs and other people who are going to have

their expertise diminished. And that's the reason why Kodak, you know, was once a very big company and ultimately was not. And I think that as an independent worker, as a small company, you have the ability to capitalize on that, but you got to be smart about it and be willing to do it. Also, as an individual in a large company, even the ones that do adapt, what they do is

they adapt in divisions, they adapt in groups. So, your group will be focused on this thing that's going down and then you'll get laid off. And you could literally work in the same group for 20 years and it's the little group that's coming up and then it's the group that's riding high and then it's the group that's fading away and then you're out of a job and the company may be motoring on right because they've had other groups that have been going in and they keep finding new business and all of that but you just sort of stayed still in the middle of that as a free agent you can't afford to do that as a free agent i think you need to be aware of parts of your time and expertise are all of those things because otherwise you risk again specializing to the point where there's only

one thing you can do and that's that's a little bit like having one client where if you lose them or two or two clients that are each half of your business, if you lose one of them, you are in big trouble. And it's just dangerous to put all of your money on one client or one type of work and not try to be flexible and adapt. Well, you know what? That's a good time to talk about our first sponsor at SaneBox. I think so. Yeah, because one of the things you want to do is avoid becoming a dinosaur and ignoring your email is a great way to become a dinosaur. It's a great way to get yourself in trouble. SaneBox is a service for your email that takes care of managing your email for you. And I don't mean, I mean this in the most general of terms. It's like having your own assistant. It goes through your email for you. It sorts it into

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It's a good idea. So where were we? We're just agile. We're pivoting. Yeah, well, I think we were beating the horse on quitting. But there's other reasons agility applies in your life. I think one of them is business model changes. Like I mentioned, I feel like the idea of adjusting as you go, that things keep changing and you can't remain the same.

Just your business in general will change over time, imperceptibly even. And you have to be open to those changes. Are you thinking about like particular shifts in business model that also you have to be agile about? Well, I'm thinking about it in two ways. The first is there is the big changes. And maybe that's kind of what we were talking about earlier, quitting one project or business line to pursue another. But I also think being independent allows you to do little experiments. And I'm certainly guilty of this, of running experiments about how, like one of the things, one of my gripes with the legal profession is the way they charge money. They charge by the

hour. In some ways, the worse you are at a job, the longer it takes, the more money you make, which I think is kind of ridiculous. So I'm always doing experiments about how can I do this in a way that's more of a flat fee where it's you pay me X and I deliver the goods. And I'm doing all these little experiments with pricing models with clients to see what works and what doesn't. And in a big firm, that wouldn't be possible to say, hey, guys, with this client, we're going to run this experiment. It what doesn't and in a big firm that wouldn't be possible to say hey guys with this client we're going to run this experiment it just doesn't work yeah no that's a that's a really great point that that you have the ability to try things out and in the end it impacts you right it just impacts you yeah but it's on a small scale, even in my small scale, if that makes sense. And the ones at work, I have the agility to expand. And several of the ways I charge clients started out as an experiment that are now applied across the board. And both my broom pressure and my executive president all agree on the change. Yeah, that's a great point. on the change yeah like you i know you've made like little changes about several of the ways

you do like the independent writing for for magazine publications and that model for you has changed quite a bit since you started yeah it's it you know a lot of it i i i took some freelance work that was hourly and i thought that was an interesting idea and then i decided that it was a bad idea and then i've i've gotten a sense of sort of like what kind of articles are worth what kind of of money and that changes my uh when i say yes and when i say no and then on the uh on the uh the six colors in terms of what i'm writing um one of the big changes there and it's also true with the incomparable actually for some of my podcasting is i experimented with memberships where there's direct support.

And the fact is that the direct support thing has been a big deal. And in fact, that's a business model that in the end may be more fruitful than the classic put things up for free and get advertising model. I think it's entirely possible that in the advertising business models fall apart and as it becomes much easier to communicate with people who are giving you money directly that i may end up just leaning all the way into that and and and having a lot less that i give away for free and a lot more that i provide for people who pay me and and that would be that's not a big like a strategic thing of like me saying here's what i want to do it's more just following the money and following where the where the people are if the if the money's coming from people paying me for content that's exclusive and it's

not coming so much from people who are paying me to advertise for free content then i will logically just start adjusting my emphasis to the stuff where i'm getting paid right because you know it's very hard if you have to do a and b and you realize a pays you a small amount and b pays you a larger amount it's very hard to focus on a much easier to focus on B because B is paying the bills in a way that A isn't. And that has to do with business model changes. That happens where I look at this and think, I'm making some money from this and I'm making more money from this. I should do more of this. And that can be one going up. It could be one

going down. It could be one going up and one going down be one going up, it could be one going down, it could be one going up and one going down, or one going up more slowly and the other one going up more quickly. There are lots of ways to do it. And then that just becomes an adjustment. Yeah, I agree with all of that. And because you're independent and small, you can make those experiments, you can make those changes very quickly. Another way, the third way I was thinking that agility really applies to a free agent is on just the day-to-day tool decisions and the technology and the workflows and the things that make the work get done faster. In companies, that is always hard

to make changes. And just as we record this, I've been doing a lot of work with helpers lately. I'm getting people, I'm hiring people to help me out with various pieces of my businesses. And I've been super agile in the tools that I use for that. I mean, I've tried and given up on tools in the course of a week. I feel very sorry for the people that are working with me because they're getting kind of run through this meat grinder as I figure out the right tools. But just even in the first month, it's settled down a lot and I found some really great tools and it's working. But if I were in the old days in a big firm or a company, you know, saying, okay, we're going to try this tool. Once you commit to it, you're stuck with it for a long

time. Getting people to change is really hard. But by my small size, I've been able to say, okay, that didn't work. Instead, we're going to do this one. Everybody sign up for an account for this, and I'm going to start sending you work. And I'm getting this feedback from the people that are helping me, so they say what do they like the best, which is certainly relevant and important.

And from my end, what works with my workflows, and we're getting really progress i suspect we're going to have you know we're going to make a very much you know the percentage change we've made so far has been huge but now we're getting to the point where we're making much smaller refinements to the system and we're settling on tools and um and i feel like the way this has happened is something that could only happen in a very small independent operation and that's the one of the great benefits of agility is exactly that that the something new we live in an era where there are new tools coming around all the

time and if you see something that might work for you you can just say let's try it and i used to try to do that in my old job and it was hard and if i was working with like a large group of people outside my own work group it was impossible and that gives you know that gives you an advantage if you can take things off a shelf that other people are spending a lot of money to build themselves and you can just take this web app and say we're integrating this it integrates with our existing stuff here, let's try it. Oh, it does work. Let's keep it. Then you have a huge advantage over somebody who made a decision in technology five years ago, and they can't change. It'll take them years to change. And that's, you know, that's the power of being small and agile. Absolutely.

I think all of this just kind of reminds me of a general theme of our show is that when you are an independent worker you can't forget that you're also the ceo of that company right it's easy to say i'm an independent worker i'm a graphic designer i do beautiful graphic design but you have to step back and remember that you're also the ceo if you just do graphic design work all day and don't think about where the business is going, where is the money being earned? You know, what is the future hold? You could, you know, you could do beautiful graphic design right out of a job, you know, because it'll sneak up on you if you're not careful. So you've got to stop and be the CEO and be agile and start thinking about this stuff, not only from the day you start from before you, and continuing on as long as you want to make this work.

Yeah. In the end, your business needs somebody at its head who's thinking about what your next project and task and pivot is going to be. And that is you. There's nobody else. But the beauty of it is, it's you. There's nobody else. You get to decide.

Amen, brother. Yeah. All right. You get to decide. Amen, brother. Yeah. All right. So go be agile. Yeah, that's right. And thanks for listening to this episode of Free Agents. Here's how you can reach us. Go to facebook.com slash groups slash free agents group.

And you can join and talk to fellow free agents in there about your experiences. You can tweet at us at freeagentsfm or you can email us. Use the email link at freeagentswebpage, relay.fm slash freeagents. And I think that's it for this fortnight. Right, David? That's it. See you next time. Bye, everybody.