Focused - 24: Take Care of Yourself

Episode Date: June 27, 2017

What happens if you're a lone-wolf independent operator, and then you get sick? Jason was recently out of commission for several days, and David had serious health issues immediately upon going independent. What strategies can help mitigate against illness? How can you avoid getting sick? And what's the deal with disability insurance?

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 Jason Snell, and I'm joined, as always, by my fellow host, Mr. David Sparks. Hi, David. Hi, Jason. How are you feeling?

I'm feeling great. Yeah, you know, I am, too. I'm glad we're recording this podcast when we are, because a few weeks ago, I did not feel great. I felt terrible, because I got sick. Yeah, was that the first time you got really sick as a free agent yeah you know i've gotten a you know i get a cold or something like that and i think i've even mentioned this on this show before that one of the nice things about working from home is that the bed and the couch are not far away and that the the challenge is to give yourself

permission if you're feeling down like run down to not work and say no i'm sick i need to not work but this is the first time where i was completely unable to function like i got i woke up in the middle of the night and spent several i took several quality trips to the uh to the bathroom as i purged everything from my system and uh not to get into too much detail let's just put it that way everything came out and uh that was it was bad because like that was i had commitments and things and i like literally day one i felt well enough to very briefly send some emails to people saying i'm very sick the thing we were planning on doing can't happen and in the afternoon i was

able to sort of check in again just to confirm things weren't going to happen and but no no more than that and on day two i was able to communicate a little bit better um like day one in the morning i could i could do very little of anything um i couldn't even watch tv i was not like at well enough to just let my eyes glaze over and watch tv i just had to just lay down um the afternoon got a little better the next day i got a little better the next day. I got a little better, but it was one of those things where I wasn't even capable of rescheduling and communicating for a day and beyond the most basic I'm sick. I can't do it. Um, and it was, yeah, it was, it was bad. And I was, I was not a hundred percent for, I would say a full week. Like, I got better every day, and I was capable of working after day, sort of maybe on day three, maybe at the end of day two. But it took a long time. And that's the

first time that I've had one of those things where it's like, you know, occasionally, like, when I got the flu, it was like that, where, like, you're just gone for a week. You're unable to function at any level. And it's scary when you are responsible for 100% of the workload of your entity. And in that case, at least I have Dan who works on Six Colors with me. I have my partners on my podcast. I have other people that I can lean on, and we'll talk about that a little bit. But still, so much of what i do is is relying on me that it's pretty scary when you're complete you can't just gut it out like it's just not gonna happen you are not capable of doing your job yeah i think as a free agent that's always in the back of your mind that idea that you know the train stop if you get sick and that's something

that you don't want to have happen but when you actually get sick and that's something that you don't want to have happen. But when you actually get sick and that you, you, that you, you, you, uh, you don't, it's more than hypothetical, you know, when you're actually sick and you've probably got a deadline for a story or something going on that, you know, is just not going to happen without you. Um, that is a realization that's a little scary for a free agent. If you're at an office you've got people and you've got sick time paid sick leave all of these things and the consequence of you getting sick if you can't do the work is that you don't get paid so that's the other that's another part

of it so it's bad now you correct me if i'm wrong you had health issues immediately upon leaving your job yeah it was crazy i am so my my sick war story as a free agent is um i you know i'd given my notice and was going through the whole drama of leaving a job i had been at for 22 years. And the, um, the week I was going a couple times, I, I got really uncomfortable in my stomach and felt sick. And I thought it was stress related. You know, you're going through all this and you're just totally stressed out and it would pass and I'd be okay again. And so I thought, all right, whatever it is, I'll, I'll, I'll live through this. And then, so I left on Friday was my last day. And then Sunday morning, I got up to take a hike with my daughter and I fell off again. And then we were up going up into the local Hills. And I said, you know, I'm really uncomfortable.

I think I need to go back home. So I went home and by the time I got home, I was in a lot of pain. I mean, more pain than I think I've ever been in, in my life, you know? And I'm like, Oh my goodness. I, you know, I quit my job and now I have cancer, you know, cause that's what you do, right? When you're worried about this stuff. And, uh, it got so bad. I finally went to the emergency room and after tests and whatever, I found out I had kidney stones. So, you know, welcome to free agency. You have kidney stones and those are quite painful if you've ever had them. If you haven't had them, I hope you never have them. And they continued on for me for like four months. It was, uh, it was just a long, it took longer than anybody thought it would for this whole process to end.

So for the first four months of my brand new business, um, I was healthy except when I wasn't. And the way kidney stones work is they don't bother you until they bother you. And then you are, it's paralyzing. There's just nothing you can do. I, I was laughing earlier when you said you couldn't watch TV when you have kidney stones, you can't even think you can't do anything. watch tv when you have kidney stones you can't even think you can't do anything and it's been a while since i've been so sick that i and i'm i'm happy to say this because it's terrible where i've been you know because when you get a cold or something you're feeling run down you sit at home you watch a movie you watch tv shows whatever you you take a nap the like literally unable to do anything completely 100 unable to focus on anything yeah well and that's i went through

that for for months and it wasn't all day every day but it's intermittent exactly and you just never knew and and towards the end it actually got worse and it was you know at the beginning it was maybe once every couple days and then by the end it was two or three times a day. I remember at once I was going to, um, guess on one of your podcasts and I woke up and was all ready to do it. And about a half hour before we were supposed to record the thing hit. And I'm like, there's just no way I can guess on a podcast right now. And you had to run to find a replacement guest, but it was like that for everything. And we're going to talk about that through the content of the show. But being sick like that for that long gave me a lot of thought about being sick and free

agency and how do you deal with it. So I guess that's what we're going to talk about today. That's it. That's about getting sick, about not getting sick, about being healthy. I mean, I think that's the most, we should probably start there, right? The most important thing is to talk about not getting sick, about being healthy? I mean, I think that's the most, we should probably start there, right? The most important thing is to talk about not getting sick, right? And we don't have a,

we're not selling you snake oil here. We're not, I got a curative here. Just step right up, everybody, step right up. But it is important to be healthy and not get sick because it is hard when you're a free agent and you get sick. So the number one rule, which we should talk about at the very top here is take care of yourself and don't let things pile up that will turn into a huge problem for you personally

and for your business that you're creating because you're too busy working on the business. Yeah. I mean, your most important resource for your free agent company is you. Right. You're the valuable resource. You as a productive worker, a healthy, capable, productive worker is in most cases, you know, unless you've got, you know, you may have partners and things like that, but your number one asset of the company, the value of the company is you and your capability. And if your capability is failing, then you're losing your business's most valuable asset. And as a home worker now, and, and, and scheduling and, and, and things like that. It is so easy, especially when you start out to overvalue your quote unquote productive time over everything else. And that can be home and family, but it also is over self care. It just can be so easy to be like, well, I know I could go outside, but in my case, I could go outside, but then I'm not editing a podcast or writing an article.

I could walk the dog, but I'm sure I could work on this invoice instead. And you can always say that, right? And the truth is that the productive time and the self-care both have value and need to be valued accordingly, because if you do no self-care you will run out of productive time yeah there's there's a little hike near my house that's a two-mile walk so at a bare minimum i can do 35 minutes of cardio exercise a day just doing that walk and it is every day i wake up and i say boy i don't want to spend the time doing that i've got a lot of client work to do or podcast prep or whatever. And even this morning, you know, I woke up, we're getting

ready to do the show. And I said, no, just get up 35 minutes earlier and just do it. And I think you really need to make those promises to yourself. I mean, think about the amount of time you spend, like taking care of your computer, you know, keeping viruses off it and the time you spend taking care of your car or whatever else it is. Remember, you are the most important asset. You've got to take care of your body. This is essential maintenance, right? You wouldn't buy a car and then never rotate the tires, never check the tire pressure,

never change the oil, never change the wipers, right? You wouldn't do that. There is never fill up the gas tank right you can't it's not it would that would be a stupid way to approach that asset that you just purchased and you you and your health are are the asset of your company so um taking a break like when we were talking about about working at home and making time one of the things that i mentioned is i've fallen into a schedule where i have a kind of mid to late morning break. And I will get up and have my tea and read the newspaper and do all of these things and the kids go off to school and then I work.

And then in the mid to late morning, for me, that's where it worked out, that that's the time where I go for a run or I walk the dog or I do something on the outside. But there's incredible value in getting outside if you can, if it's not pouring down rain and seeing the sun, that's good for your health. Not only will it, you know, give you, I think some nice vitamins in your body, but it actually, your brain responds to having sun be visible, sun wavelengths, you know, walk the dog, take a run, do something outside. It can break up your day. It can allow yourself to think about bigger issues because you're not in the moment of working at your keyboard. They're just, if you're a home worker, getting out and moving around is huge, and it has a huge impact on your health, believe it or not. And the same goes for having a consistent bedtime and a consistent wake-up time

the uh similarly being uh setting a schedule just because you're a home worker you probably should not be waking up and going to bed at all sorts of different hours because that's bad for your sleep which is also bad for your health yeah just on the sleep thing i i i hate this thing where people want to brag about how little sleep they get. You know what I'm talking about? Yep. I think it's very common, too, with free agents. Like, oh, I only get four hours of sleep.

I don't have enough time. I'm like, you are, it's like you are driving off a cliff if you're getting four hours of sleep a night. And you don't even know it. There are very few people. I mean, I'm sure there are people who are outliers who can do that. But in the most case, yeah, it is going to have deleterious effects on your uh on your brain if you do that i wanted to mention and i'll put a link in the show notes there's a great video that i recommend people read which is from our friend and fellow relay host cgp gray that he posted recently called seven ways to to Maximize Misery, sad face emoji.

And I highly recommend it because the idea of this video is, and it's based in part on a book about maximizing being miserable, is that you're more receptive to understanding what not to do sometimes than what to do. So he frames the video as here's how to be as miserable as possible so that you can look at it and think these are all things i shouldn't do because i i want to not be miserable and going outside having having a normal sleep cycle like these are fundamental things that are mentioned in the video like these are ways that you keep yourself healthy and physically and mentally.

So it's definitely something that, that, uh, the long story short here is your health is part of the equation. Don't take it out and make it all just about sitting at your desk, doing what you perceive as your job. Self-care is part of your business. Yeah. And, you know, just looking back, of course, the kidney stones was a huge problem, but in general, since leaving, that's been almost two years now for me, I've been in much better health than I was when I was at the firm. I mean, I have more time to do the hike every day and I eat better because I'm not going out with all the fancy lawyers and, um, I'm just in better health. So, I mean, I think this is something that's doable and, um, I'm just in better health. So I mean, I think this is something that's doable and, uh, and don't think about, you know, I guess just think about keeping

yourself healthy as you go through this. This is an important consideration. Yeah. And I, I share what you say it is. Um, I am not walking to and from the bus stop every day. So I've had to, I, I need to integrate that into my life and I have done that. But it is true, I kind of control what's in the house in terms of what I eat, which if you're out and about in San Francisco looking for a place to eat, like you're not controlling your ingredients anymore at that point. And like, you know, stress, I will say it like there is stress from being a free agent, but the stress that I had in a corporate environment is gone. I have a different kind of stress now, but it's one that is sort of my things under my control instead of things not under my control. And all of this has rolled together to, I think,

make me a healthier person. Also, you know, having the ability to take time if I'm not feeling well and I'm not, and I don't have a commute. So I'm capable of doing that now to make a doctor's appointment. One of the things that I would never do is make a doctor's appointment because the logistics of making a doctor's appointment and either having it be a work at home day or missing meetings. And then do I drive in even though I normally took a bus, I would put off making doctor's appointments. And certainly if I had multiple doctor's appointments that I needed to make to take care of something, it was a huge problem for my commute, for my schedule, for all of my meetings. And now I can do those things because I have a little more loose schedule because I'm not commuting into the city anymore.

And more generally, we should say, going to the doctor, preventative care is important to have, have your annual visit with your doctor and, and have them check you out. Don't leave it until there's an emergency. Yeah. I mean, I just, I was just thinking if I had those kidney sins when I was working at the old firm, they would have lost their minds if I'd said, oh, I can't work on an off and on basis for four months. I don't know how I would have dealt with it. I mean, maybe they would have sent me

packing. I don't know. But anyway, let's take a break because we have a lot more to talk about on this. But before we do, I want to talk about our first sponsor today. And it's our friends over at the Timing app, the automatic time tracking app for macOS. Between now and the end of July, use offer code freeagents is one word and get 20% off. So we're all free agents. We're working hard in front of our Macs all day, but have you ever got to the end of the day and wonder where all the time went? Or maybe you've went to bill a client but struggled to figure out exactly how you spent your time. If this sounds like you, then you need a time tracker. And the problem with time trackers is they're fidgety.

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Go to timingapp.com and get your copy of Timing Today. We thank Timing for their support of this show and RelayFM. I'm excited to, I used the beta of this briefly and I want to dig deeper because I like the idea of some granularity here because that's one of my challenges is a lot of time trackers that are looking at the apps I'm using don't understand how I work. And it becomes this maintenance issue to try to assign things. And at that point, I kind of give up. And I want it to be smarter.

So I'm looking forward to trying out timing, too. Well, this is the only one that I've ever got real accurate information because it because i've cut myself out of the loop you know i don't have to do anything the app does the work for you are the real problem in fact that is true so um let's talk a little bit about what you need to do when you get sick because it's sort of inevitable unless you are um a super powered person like bruce willis in unbreakable i suppose spoilers for unbreakable he never gets sick um you will get sick at some point especially if you've got kids and things around but in general you know we're humans we're frail we get sick what happens as a free agent when you get sick what can you do how do you deal with it i think you really need to manage.

You need to use the term. You need to triage what's going on at that point. I mean, you need to figure out, is there anything that's mission critical that has to get done right now? And if there is, you either need to do it or find somebody else to do it for you. But I don't think there's that much stuff that has that attached to it. I think quite often when you get sick, you think things are mission critical that may not be. So take a really hard look at that. And I think you do exactly what Jason talked about was, you know, I was really sick, but I had enough energy to get a couple emails out to the right people to let them know that I was down for the day or two. It's a lot easier to do when you're sick in bed and you're unable

to do much more than barely send two emails. Like that's the, that focuses the mind of like, what's the minimum I can do here to move on and go back to laying down and being miserable. And so, yeah, you think about that. And I think it's valuable to think about that upfront, like to always be aware, like what do you have going on? Obviously, part of this is how you do your job. I like to think about what ifs a lot. And I don't think about what if being sick, but I do think about like what if something unexpected came up and being sick as a part of that and saying to myself, okay, this, this will take eight hours of work. So what I'm going to do is leave it for eight hours before it's due. And then I'll do eight hours of work, right? This is how my daughter does her homework. And it's dumb to do it that way.

That is not the way to do it. You know, because what if, what if it takes longer than you expected? What if you can't do it then because something else comes up? What if you get sick? So some of it is sort of being aware of what stuff you've got inbound and outbound and trying to plan so that you give yourself some time in case something happens. So that's part of it. And part of it is being aware of what your deliverables are and who the people are that are involved in them so that if something happens, you have the ability to say, I mean, heaven forbid, but what if you have something happen and you are in the hospital or something, you may be able to tell a family member, a loved one, this is what people need to know. Like maybe you need surgery and,

and you don't know what the recovery is going to be like. So that even if you don't send the email, maybe you can tell somebody, here's where this stuff, you know, needs to be. Here's who needs to know. So thinking about that can be useful. I know it's kind of scary, but if it's, I just treat it as part of the whole package of sort of like what's going on and who needs to know and who are the right people. And, you know, it's, it's, it's useful to have that because if you are sick, it gives you, um, you don't have to do a lot of the work

and do a lot of explanations. You, you know, kind of what's out there. I mean, one of the reasons, one of the several reasons why I've kind of backed out of doing much litigation as an attorney is because of the fact that that's a type of law that has very time sensitive deadlines. And as a solo, it's just not that feasible for me to carry and keep track of and live up to all those deadlines and do them properly. And, and getting sick is part of that. Like if I got sick, what is the real deadline that I have to worry about? And it's tough. How do you manage the expectations of your customers or clients? When I first left and I was really quite sick, I don't want to go on about kidney stones, but they're miserable. But I didn't really want my message to my clients

to be, hey, I just left my law firm. I'm going on my own. I'd love to have your business. And by the way, I am super sick and can't do any work for you. You know, that's not really the message you want to send. Yeah. I remember reading an article about how when Watergate was going, how Kissinger was like trying to keep the Russians, you know, from knowing just how screwed up the government was. And I felt like, is this what I'm doing now with the kidney stones? Just trying to, you know, keep it going. But at the end of the day, I found that because a lot of my clients have had long relationships with, I was just totally honest with them and said, look, I'm going through this, but

it'll be okay. And I'm balancing. But my job just in general always has emergencies. There's always some client that has something happen. That's an emergency that requires me to rejuggle. So I have a lot of practice on dealing with what you do when you get sick, because it's just my day to day stuff. But I think there's the big point or the big takeaway here is communicate with people. I mean, if Jason Snell calls me and says, Hey, I'm really sick,

we can't record a podcast till next week. We'll just make it work. Yeah. And having those relationships with the people you work with and being understanding, I mean, this goes back to the episode when we talked about having bad clients and needing to fire clients. Yeah. It's funny how all this fits together, isn't it? It is amazing. Um, that the people you want to work with are people who understand and, and, and they understand and are flexible and you understand the level of flexibility that they're capable of and and to david's point if there's something you're doing that cannot be flexible because of something that's not the person being a jerk it's like no no no it has to happen this way there are no no exceptions to that you're as a free agent as a single person entity

you got to be like really wary of that because you probably require some flexibility not because you're a bad person not because you're a layabout or a procrastinator but because you're human and stuff happens so that's uh that's where and we'll maybe talk about this a little bit more later but instances like that you've got to start, what is my contingency plan here? And it may be somebody else because your choices there are either say no, get somebody else who can be your backup, or just take the risk that it's always going to work out exactly right, which is going to blow up in your face at some point. It's inevitable. So you either get a backup plan, you say no, or you're going to be in trouble. And that's no good. Yeah. I guess when you're thinking about taking on work that could be highly time sensitive,

and it's just one person, you're a sole proprietor. You're the only guy or lady running this thing. You should have a plan when you take that work. I think that's part of the commitment is like, is there someone that does what I do that I can have a relationship with? As a lawyer, I actually have two or three attorney friends that do that for me. And I do it for them. If one of them got sick and they needed someone to run off to court for them i'm their guy and they're mine and i've needed that two or three times over the years and it's been super helpful um so give some thought to that is there a substitute in your life

that you can have you know ready in case of emergency yeah i i um this is i mentioned dan earlier like i do six colors with dan moran podcasts are generally, I either have a co-host or a producer. And that's good, not just because it's fun to work with other people, because it is, but also because that relationship means there's somebody there as a backup. So, like, when I was doing Clockwise with Dan Morin for several years, if he got sick, if I got sick, if one of us was traveling, because we're talking about sick here, but sometimes it's like your family, you know, somebody's graduating or somebody else gets sick or dies and you have to go there. There are lots of emergencies beyond just getting sick that you you need to go and if you don't have somebody um what happens and and you should go to

those things those things can't be ignored and so having a partner means you're reducing the uh you're reducing the chance that the thing's going to fall through now that doesn't always mean everything you do has to be a two person project. It can be like what you said, David, which is a community offering to back each other up. People you trust, people who trust you and you know,

you've got their back and they've got your back if something happens. And that's not like you're not going to, one of your colleagues isn't going to work with you on this case that you're working on, but you know that if something really bad happens that you can say i need help here because something bad happened and they can do the same to you yeah yeah it's super important like don't don't be an island on this you need you know because something will come up it is hard though i think part of it for me the hang up is i don't want to admit to people I'm sick when I get sick.

I don't want to admit to myself sometimes. It's hard. I think part of the job of being a solo or a free agent is telling people, look, I have a different business model. I'm going to take good care of you. You're not going to have a bunch of inefficiencies. But the downside of that for the customer is for them to be, to understand that if you're not there, if you're sick, then their work doesn't get done. And I don't want them thinking about that too much. Right. Well, that is a challenge. And that,

if you've got somebody who works with you at all, that's one of those great advantages, right? Is that there's somebody else to run interference for you and smooth everything out and make it seem like there's continuity and i i realize for some people with some jobs that's just not going to be possible some of the some of the independent work uh your whatever your situation is that may not be possible but in some cases it might be my wife is the you know cfo of the company she does the books and she does some email exchanges with people we're paying or people who are paying us and um and i'm fortunate about that because that that gave me when i was sick a backup where i could say to her can you check in with this person um if you don't have somebody i i and i recognize it's not always the case that can be harder but but it is i i think the theme emerging here is is get somebody

it doesn't have to be permanent just somebody to back you up when needed yeah um i just to kind of close the loop on this so my initial inclination when i was dealing with the kidney stones is not to share with the clients and not explain everything to them because I was afraid with me just opening up a new practice and then saying that the first thing of business is it's going to take me longer to do your work. By the way, I have a health issue that makes me unreliable. Yeah, exactly. But I love being your client, please. Yeah. So, but ultimately I decided largely I told everybody, you know, to the extent they wanted to hear about it.

I told them what was going on. And, you know, I have a good relationship with these people and they were totally understanding. And I didn't need to, you know, play the Henry Kissinger game. So it worked out for me. But think about that now, because when you are sick, trying to figure out what you're going to do is even worse because you're sick. It's hard to think when you're sick. It's too late. Yeah.

We have a few more best practices to talk about before we wrap it up, but I want to tell you about our second sponsor first before we do that. Seems like a good idea. And once again, this episode of Free Agents is being brought to you by FreshBooks. You know, you're racing against the clock. You've got a bunch of different projects. You're prepping for a meeting later. You're trying to tackle a mountain of paperwork. Maybe you're coming down with a cold.

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No more guessing games. It's presented clearly and simply to you. You can get a 30-day unrestricted free trial if you're a listener to Free Agents, which you are because you're listening now. Here's where you go. Listen up, freshbooks.com slash freeagents and enter freeagents in the how did you hear about us section. That way they know you came from this show. Thank you, Fresh Books, for supporting Free Agents everywhere, Free Agents the podcast, and all of Relay FM. Hey, let's talk a little bit about just best practices as we deal with getting sick. And I

think the first step is let's put together a sick plan. That's great. Yeah, that's the that's the, you know, a little bit of what I was saying earlier. That's that's the think about it now while you're not sick. Contingencies are good. Yeah. And everything, you know, varies on the kind of work you do, but that's one of the considerations you need to do is, is consider what, what type of work that you do and what the effect of you being sick for, let's say three days, you know, the standard, you know, stomach flu, whatever. And you're just, you're down with the yuck for three days.

Um, how much time sensitive stuff comes across your desk? Usually, I mean, because you're not going to know when you're going to get sick, is it? I mean, maybe you've got a type of business where you don't have much time sensitive work. And if you got sick for three days, it would just be a question of sending out emails saying, I need an additional three days and it'll be fine. Good on you if that's the case. The idea that you could potentially even, I mean, some of, sometimes you can just put this in your head, but you have the opportunity if you're a spreadsheet person, if you're something where

you've got different columns of due dates and things like that, something to consider is to have a system that includes contingencies. So for every project you work on, you think about the due date and you think about what amount of padding you want to put in in case there's a problem. And that could be unforeseen circumstances or it could be being sick. But if you put that in and you build the padding in, then you've made it a part of your system. Similarly, if you need somebody as a backup, who's going to work with you on the project, or who's just there in case of an emergency, maybe that's part of your system. Maybe you when you are writing down what your project is, or what the deadline is, there's a field to fill out a line in the document that is who's the

emergency backup person and prompt yourself to figure that out. If you're somebody who is very good at planning things and has a system, maybe integrating your sick plan into your project planning is the way to do this. I don't know. Yeah, but you should have a plan, especially if you do have things that are time sensitive. Another issue is how physically do you get the word out? You know, you had said earlier, you had just enough energy when you were sick a few weeks ago to, to get a couple emails out. I actually became an expert in this when I was dealing with my kidney stones, because you, like I said, when a kidney stone is, is, is causing pain, you are incapable of much.

But I had put together, you know, here's a nerd tip. I use this text expander app. That's really great on the Mac and an iOS. And it allows you to type a very short statement and expand to a very long one. I didn't want to send my clients a poorly written sick email saying I'm sick, which would have probably had typos and everything else because I'm in the throes of pain at the time. I didn't want to send them text messages. So I made a snippet. If I just type, I'm sick with no space,

it's a, it's a carefully written paragraph that I put together when I was not sick explaining I'm ill right now and I can't get back with you, but just give me a little time and I will, you know, and actually the way I did it, it has a fill in so you can put in if you need a day or two. But you know, and actually the way I did it, it has a fill in so you can put in if you need a day or two. But, you know, and as goofy as that sounds, when you are really sick, having the ability

to get the word out by just typing, I'm sick is kind of useful. Yeah. I love that idea. Have a snippet ready to go that you can fire off when you get sick. I love it. Yeah. Think about a backup person. I mean, we've kind of beat that horse, but if you haven't,

think about it. I mean, there's probably somebody that does something similar to you that you're friends with and schedule a lunch and say, look, let's be each other's backup person. Make a pact. Make a little emergency pact. It's not weird. It's kind of fun. Yeah. Yeah. Knowing you have somebody that's there for you and they know that you're there for them. And having somebody to check in with is not a bad thing in general, right? If you don't have anybody that you've made that connection with yet, maybe this is a good way to start that.

And maybe there are some projects you can work on together. Maybe not. But finding a backup, cultivating somebody you trust and who trusts you, just, yeah, I think it's a must. You got to have it. The 800-pound gorilla that we haven't addressed in the show is what happens if you get really sick? You know, what happens if you're sick for six months? Right. So we asked, we asked us this question.

We asked ourselves this question just a month ago. And when you got sick? Well, it was actually a little bit before that, but that was definitely a reminder that we were on the right path here which is um we're in the process i actually have a phone call i need to make to do the last part of it but we're in the process of buying disability insurance for me with the idea that if something happens to me that prevents me and my old job i actually had disability insurance that was one of the things that was covered but for me as an independent i don't have it right now and the fact is if i go down if i have something that happens like my father-in-law got throat cancer about a year and a half ago.

And he is like only now able to not be fed by a tube anymore. He's completely on solid food again. But like he was down. And I do podcasts, right? Like I would have been if i had been out for a year and a half i mean what happens the business is me so it just dries up so disability insurance which is not cheap but disability insurance allows you to have a backup in case you something happens and you're unable to work for a long period of time and uh i mean this is

why insurance exists right is the ability to buy in to something that's going to say yes if something terrible happens to you and you're unable to do your job for six months or a year or two years or for your whole life who knows until you're 60 until you're 65 that you will be compensated for that and that's important in the short term. We went through all of this about like, well, what does it mean in terms of the business? In the short term for my business, it would probably mean that I would be able to still work or not work, but still pay somebody to do the work

and the business would continue. And that's huge, right? I could choose to do that rather than have the business just cease and then try to rebuild it in a year and a half or whenever I felt better about the thing that had been disabling me. So there are lots of arguments for getting disability insurance because the alternative is that this business that you've built basically stops and you have nothing because that's your income. And that's the last thing you want to be dealing with when you've got a serious illness that's preventing you from working is the fact that the money has stopped and your business is dead. Agreed.

My old job didn't give me disability insurance, so I bought my own years ago. And every month I send the check and knock know knock on wood i've never needed it but i think if you're a free agent this should be if this isn't on your list right now you need to write it on your list because it's super important yeah it's not and it's not something you you think about and certainly since my old business had it um and and sometimes there are like there's state disability and there are some things but like if if you are worried about the fact that something could happen to you and your ability as a, as an earner could disappear,

which is absolutely true, then you should at least look into this and then weigh the cost versus the risk, because that's what insurance is all about. But I am happy to go down this path because I know that if something happened to me that um i would want my and i'm talking about like if i died i'm talking about if i because i have life insurance too but if i had something that prevented me from working how is my family going to be able

to support itself if i'm a major source of support and the answer is now there's a backup there's disability insurance yeah and then the last thing is you you know, like we said, the top of the show, take care of yourself. Yeah, that's, that's, that's number one, right? It's prioritized self-care. It's important. It's part of your job. Part of your job is you being well enough to do your job. And when you're sitting there thinking, well, I could work on one more thing or I could get up and walk around and go outside or go for a run or do something active or maybe I should go to sleep instead of staying up really late working on this project.

Think about that. Think about that. One of the things is to stay healthy and not hurt yourself because then you won't be able to work if you're sick, too. So you've got to prioritize yourself something i've got good at in terms of sleep as i got older is i realized that if i stay up late often all i'm doing is borrowing against tomorrow that staying up late just means i'm going to be a mess tomorrow so unless it's absolutely critical i'll go to bed at the right time and wake up early and resume then yep sounds uh sounds about right i've had the same thing, which is you pay for it. And if you're on a tight deadline and it's got to be done and you're going to stay up till three in the

morning, then great. But know that you're going to be a wreck the next day. So I hope it was worth it. Be sure to calculate in the cost of that to your well-being. So everybody stay healthy, make a sick plan and think about disability insurance. Yep, that's it. And that wraps it up, I think, for this episode. We're from the currently healthy Jason and David. You can check out our website, relay.fm, slash freeagents. And there's a contact link there. You can email us.

You can tweet at freeagentsfm. You can go to the Facebook group, facebook.com slash groups slash freeagentsgroup. And those are ways that you can reach us. And we'll be back in a fortnight with more. But until then, David, it's been a pleasure as always. See you next time.