Focused - 31: Being Selective About Clients, with Aleen Simms

Episode Date: October 3, 2017

Relay FM Host and App Launch Map founder Aleen Simms joins us to talk about her accidental fall into freelance work and setting high standards for her clients.

Hey everybody, we rely on advertising as a way to support this show. If you could do us a favor and answer a few short questions, it would be really helpful to us. Go to podcastlistener.com slash freeagents. That's podcastlistener.com slash freeagents. 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.

Hello, welcome back everybody hi david good to talk to you at you as well mr snell we're not alone though yes we've got a free agent in our midst welcome to the show aline sims hello how's it going pretty good excellent pretty good yeah yeah so you are a free agent now. I am. I have been for, I guess, I was trying to do the math this morning and I forgot. Like three and a half years, two and a half years, something like that. So yeah, it's been a little while now. So why don't you tell people a little bit about what you do and what you did before you went out on your own. I think that would be good.

A little thumbnail sketch. Okay. So what do I do? This is a really, it's actually a very complicated question. Um, so I am a podcaster. I am a podcaster. I have a show with Tempest Bradford, Kay Tempest Bradford on Relay FM, this very network called Originality. Um, and before that I did Less Than or Equal. I also make appearances on a little show called The Incomparable. I am an App Camp for Girls organizer and fundraising committee member. I have a business called App Launch Map, which is where I help Mac and iOS developers with kind of the non-code part of launching an app. So content strategy,

release notes, app store descriptions, screenshots, videos, all of that stuff I can help with. That's cool. And where were you before? Oh, yeah, you did ask me that. So previous to that, I, um, worked for agile bits, makers of one password. I was on the Mac and iOS teams doing what I do now just for one password. And then before that, I was kind of a, an it coordinator in the healthcare industry. So, so lean, what made you think about going out on your own? I mean, what, what got you started on the path? So it's really interesting. I tried freelancing, I don't know, at this point, probably like eight

or nine years ago. And I wasn't very successful at it because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know how to market myself because I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't know how to reach out to people. And so that kind of failed pretty swiftly. And I was in a job I didn't like. There were some bad things happening. And this job at AgileBits came up and I got it. And it turns out that AgileBits works more on a contract basis. So I didn't need to do kind of like a nine to five thing. As long as I was getting my work done, I was putting in sufficient hours. I could work whenever I wanted to, you know, making meetings and that kind of thing. And so that kind of eased me into it.

And I left AgileBits so that I could focus on organizing AppCamp for Girls Phoenix. I wanted our inaugural year to be amazing. And so I left AgileBit so that I could focus on that for a little bit. And then I kind of decided that I didn't really want to work for somebody else anymore. I wanted to be able to choose my clients and my hours and my projects. And so that's what I did. I kind of fell into freelancing, which I don't think is a common thing. I've been very privileged, I think, to be able to have this kind of gentle career path toward working on my own. Yeah, really. I mean, just listening to you, I'm like, it sounds like it was a very smooth transition. It really, really was. And I'm fortunate. I carry a lot of privilege because my husband works full

time. He's got a great employer who pays him well. So that affords us a little bit of wiggle room, but I do need to bring in money. So it's important that I actually do something and have clients and make some money. And we're really working on diversifying our income streams too, so that we don't have all of our eggs in one basket. At one point, Justin and I were working at the same company and it was like, if something happens, we're in a lot of trouble. And so as time goes on, that's why when people are like, what do you do? I'm like, well, actually, that's a really complicated question because I do a lot of things because we don't want to rely on one thing. I think, you know, it's funny how many people we talk to that are free agents that have

caught on to the idea of diversification of income. And it seems like some of the most successful ones are the ones that have been able to embrace it and actually make it work for them. Yeah, I can't imagine doing it any other way because, you know, especially in the Mac and iOS side of things, there are definite cycles to it. You know, with iOS and macOS releases, I have people who want my help now, but are they going to want my help in March or April? Probably not. So I need something that's going to kind of, you know, sustain me through those months. I'm working on some other things to help with that too. So, you just, I don't feel like it is prudent to just have one big thing if you can get away with having many little things.

Well, in some ways, you're an accidental free agent, but in other ways, it sounds to me like you've been building up to this for years. I kind of have, I guess. Yeah. And at this point, I can't imagine working like a nine to five going into an office type job. I just don't see how that would work for me anymore. I'm so used to getting up and puttering around for a little bit and getting into work and maybe working later into the night or whatever, but getting up and having to be in an office at a certain time and punching a clock. I don't even work for hourly rates as much as I can. I work project-based rates when I have clients or for the clients I have. And I just can't, I can't envision ever doing that again.

I probably would for the right opportunity, but it would have to be a pretty sweet deal for me. Like it would have to take a lot of the amazing boxes in order for me to consider doing it. I kind of feel like being a free agent has broken me in a certain way where it would be super difficult for me to go into an office every day and work for someone. I'm not, I don't want to say I'm incapable of it because I guess you do what you have to do, but boy, it would be super difficult for me to do that. have to do, but boy, it would be super difficult for me to do that. Yeah. The thought of commuting makes me sad, you know, like dealing with rush hour, that makes me sad. Now I can schedule a doctor's appointment when I need to go. I can schedule, you know, a meeting. I also teach. That's the thing I forgot to mention because I have a lot

of things. So, scheduling a meeting with a student, I can do that whenever. I don't need to work with a work schedule. I also have chronic illness. So if I am having a really down day in terms of like my energy levels, I can take that day off or I can find the least intensive class, least intensive tasks I need to do and work on those and then pick up the slack on other days. And that's not something I can necessarily do working a job job. The big downside for me is I don't really take days off. I do something for work seven days a week, even if it's, you know, reading my email, responding to email, thinking about what I'm going to say about my next like blog post article, what clients I need to contact, I kind of have this constant background process of, okay, I'm going to be working on this release for this person,

what what is that going to look like? And that's just kind of running around, you know, in its own little corner in the back of my head, it's not something I'm consciously thinking of, but it's taking up some mental energy. And so that's the big downside for, not for me, but I think for a lot of people is a lot of these jobs that we do, a lot of these free agent type gigs, they do require like a little bit every day that we do. You know, I know some people who don't, but for the most part, everybody I know who's independent does a little bit every day. Yeah, I hear that. That definitely is the case with me. I try to sometimes wall things off.

I just went on a vacation. We did a whole episode about vacations a while ago. And it was more vacation than usual for me, but it's not like I didn't have checking. I wasn't recording podcasts and writing lots of articles and things, but I was still checking in on projects and in with people and fielding emails and things like that. And that was at an extreme of vacation. Weekends, you know, I don't know if this works for you. I mean, you suggested that your flexibility is what you get out of this. For me, I definitely feel like, yes, I'm working

most Saturday mornings, for example, editing podcasts and doing things like that. But I do have during the week, I do have flexibility to do things that are not work instead of being in a work block the entire day, every weekday. Is that the case for you too? Yes, and it's amazing. I'm probably more flexible than I should be. I feel like I need to introduce a little bit more structure into my days. And I'm kind of working on that. But I've got again, with the chronic illness and some of those health concerns, I'm still figuring out how that works. And what's working this week doesn't necessarily work next week. And that's kind of the problem that I'm facing. So I play things a lot more by ear than I would like to, but I definitely do

like, you know, one day a week, I'm working just on AppCamp for Girls stuff. And like two days a week, I'm just working on App Launch Map stuff. And, you know, one afternoon a week, I'm planning out podcasts with Tempest or, you know, whatever. I'm trying to do that. So, I definitely have dedicated times for things, but I need to, I feel like I need to introduce, like, I get up by this time every day and this is my morning routine and this is how I'm setting my intention not to, I think that I need to set an intention for the day and that's not something I do necessarily. I just kind of, like into like whatever. And I need to be, I think, a little bit more intentional than I have been. can get diverted very easily and kind of lose track of what the big picture is. And when it's just you, you don't have someone to offload those emergencies to. I do think it's easy to get caught up in that. And for me, I'm like trying to be conscious about when I see myself falling into

an emergency and whether or not I truly need to make it an emergency or whether it's something I can deal with on a less urgent basis. Yeah, that can definitely happen. And I'm also, historically, I've been one of those people who works better under pressure. So, I was definitely that college student waiting until a day or two before the really big paper was due to sit down and really start writing it. And I can't do that now. And so, but every once in a while, I catch myself slipping into that again. And that's a really hard, it's kind of foundational. It's what I did for the first, I don't know, I graduated from college when I was like 24. So, I did that for a really, really long time. And sometimes I just, I slip back into it because that's how I did things. And really, coming up with a system like a to do system that worked for me has taken

me a long time. And I think I finally have that ironed out so that I can then plan out projects. Okay, what is what does this project entail? You know, what milestones do I need to hit? Who else am I accountable to? Who needs to get stuff to me? And when do I need to get that in? That's all stuff that I'm learning how, how to figure out kind of as I go. Fortunately, I mostly work on small projects. I don't work on like huge things. So that doesn't bog me down too much. But when I have like, I do have one really big project I'm working on right now. And it's like, all right, how am I slicing and dicing this? So how's it going overall? I mean, you've been doing it now for a couple of years.

Are you happy with it? I am. App Launch Map is pretty new. So I launched that a month or two before WWDC this year. I think it was like a month before WWDC this year. And so, you know, I have some clients. I'm building an audience. Same thing for originality. Tempest and I launched that podcast earlier this year. So we're working on audience building and that is extremely difficult to do because, you know, in order to get clients, you need to have some kind of audience or you at least need to know some influential people who can refer things or clients or projects to you. And so that's been a challenge for me, but it's going really well. I'm pretty pleased. Just the fact that I have any clients with Apple LaunchMap specifically is pretty exciting given how new it is and that my target audience is independent developers who don't necessarily have a lot of money to spend on basically the content strategies of their launches. So I'm pretty excited. spend on, you know, basically the content strategies of their launches. So I'm pretty excited.

This episode of Free Agents is brought to you by Squarespace. Enter offer code FREEAGENTS, one word, at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain, award-winning templates, and a whole lot more. So if you want to create an online store, a portfolio, a blog, maybe a site for your own business, it's an all-in-one platform that lets you do everything you want to do. There's nothing to install, no software patches to worry about, no upgrades needed. They take care of everything. You don't have to worry about it. There's 24-7 customer support. If you need any help, they can quickly and easily let you grab a unique domain name for your business. And all of those award-winning

templates are beautifully designed for you to show off your great ideas. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month, but you can start a trial with no credit card required by just going to squarespace.com. And when you decide to sign up, use the offer code free agents to get 10% off your first purchase. That's free agents, one word, and that will show your support of this podcast. If you're a free agent, you probably have a project, whether it's your company or something else you're specifically working on that needs a website. Let Squarespace do that for you. Thank you to Squarespace for supporting free agents. Squarespace, Squarespace do that for you. Thank you to Squarespace for supporting free agents. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Now, what are the things that have surprised you most since you've got this thing rolling? I mean, going into it, I'm sure you had certain

expectations, but you know, uh, being a free agent, part of it's just realizing that a lot of plans, uh, change as you get, as you get the product rolling? So for me, writing blog posts, I found is really difficult. I have, you know, my bachelor's degree is in technical writing. I have been a writer. Even when I was doing IT coordination, I was also writing documentation. So I've been a writer my entire professional life. And for some reason, writing regular app launch map blog posts has been really, really difficult for me. So I'm working through like, what is that block? And I did not anticipate that would be the case. I was like, Oh, yeah, I'll just sit down and I'll, you know, roll out like four blog posts in a week, and then I'll be set because I'm only going to do them once a week. And that's been really difficult for me. Another thing is I am a big believer in being

selective about clients. I do not take every person who approaches me on as a client. I just don't. And I have a really pretty long in-depth contact form on the Apple LaunchMap website. I don't give out my email address. That's really the only way that someone can contact me if they want to work with me. And I kind of expected that people would not fill it out very well. Like they wouldn't answer the questions well, which would be a red flag and mean that I wouldn't work with them. But everybody who has actually filled out the contact form has done an extraordinarily great job. I've been really, really impressed with the caliber of responses I've had. And just having a long form that requires people to write sentences

is kind of the first test, I guess, or first indicator in and of itself, because if they're not a good client for me, they're not even going to fill out the form, you know, you know, those people aren't a good client for you. So that's been pretty interesting for me. Well, you know, I think that's kind of fascinating, because I think one of the most common mistakes a new independent worker makes is taking on clients that they shouldn't, you know, taking on a bad client is worse than not having a client in a lot of ways. And it sounds to me like from the very beginning, you were kind of aware of that. How did you get wise to that? I experience, you know, I haven't always been this way. It's definitely not always been my mindset.

So I think that there are two things that go with this. One is, again, that privilege I have of having a husband who can cover most of our bills. I know that I'm not going to lose the roof over my head. I can say no to things. I might lose my health insurance, but I will not lose the roof over my head. So that is really nice. But the other thing is just like experience and the experience of not even in freelancing, but in, you know, my nine to five jobby jobs where I was going into an office and working with people I could not stand to work with and realizing what an emotional drain that was and what an incredible time sink it was. And working with people I had to argue about, it's like I have said the phrase verbatim,

I have a bachelor's degree in technical writing. This user guide article does not need to be fun. It needs to tell people what they need to do. And I've had that argument and I have lost that argument. And it's like, I don't want to work with people where I'm going to need to argue or I'm going to need to badger them for their feedback or their input or for whatever materials they have due. I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to work with somebody who, you know, one of my questions is like, what is your favorite emoji? I really don't care if you don't have a favorite emoji, but if you put something, you know, that's, that's shorthand for something potentially vulgar in there, I'm probably not going to take you as my client because I've worked with those types of people before and I didn't enjoy it and I didn't do my

best work and they didn't enjoy it either. And, you know, if you're going to be paying me money, I don't want you to hate every moment you're working with me. Yeah, I have a rule in my life. I call it the no dementors rule. And if you've ever seen Harry Potter, dementors are the people who suck happiness out of the room. And just in my life, this applies not even to just my free agency. This applies to everything. If someone comes to my life that's a dementor, I try to do everything i can to get the dementor out of my life because i

i don't need them they get in the way yeah and it it does nobody any good and especially i tend again i tend to work at project rates instead of hourly rates and you know i'm losing money at that point if i'm if i'm arguing with them or i have to to pester them for you know i'm losing money at that point if i'm if i'm arguing with them or i have to to pester them for you know edits or initial copy or whatever it is i'm losing out i'm losing money so i just i don't need it so so you're being careful about the people you work with based on their attitude but you're also something like you're also being careful for the types of projects you're doing are you filtering that in in that way as well? Yeah, I haven't needed to yet. Everybody who's approached me has been pretty spot on with where my skills lie. Part of what I'm trying to do

is, as an example, I've never built a beta program for, you know for using TestFlight or another tool to beta test iOS and Mac apps. I haven't done that. I have a friend who has done that and has done it extremely well. And so if someone came to me and they were like, I need your help building a beta program, I would be like, no, that's not something I can do, but let me refer you to this person. And part of what I want to do, and I'm working on this, I have a list of names and specialties so that I can refer people out to somebody who has more expertise than me. Because again, it doesn't do me, if it's something one, I want to learn, and two, I think I can learn reasonably well pretty quickly, I'm definitely willing to do that. But if it's something that someone else can do better, I want to be able to do that. And my goal with that is actually to make

sure that everybody on that list is in some kind of under-indexed in tech group in some way. So, I have women and people of color and transgender people. That is my list because I think it's really important to do that, to make sure that I'm giving that kind of work to people who might not get it otherwise. And I also think though that sending clients out to specialists for special needs is really a value. I mean, first of all, it reinforces to your client that you're a person that they can rely upon to, to give them what they need or get them to the right people. And all those people you're sending work to are going to keep you in mind. So maybe when someone

in your wheelhouse shows up on their front door, they come your way. Yeah, exactly. And then I'm not, I'm not, you know, go ahead. I'm sorry. It's okay. And then I'm not, I'm not, you know, Go ahead. I'm sorry. It's okay. And then I'm not, you know, doing work that I'm unqualified to do or that I'm bad at. Frankly, there are things I'm bad at. So No, I know. It's hard to believe. So, um, and forgive me if you covered this a little bit, but I wanted to go back to it. I, I not too long ago visited you and your husband at your house. And I wanted to ask you about your workspaces because he works at home and you work at home and there's workspace questions I've got.

And I've got like, are there rules about like who does what? Do you take a lunch break? Do you not speak to each other? Is there a, I'm just kind of curious what the rules are in navigating having two home workers in the same space at the same time. It can be really challenging sometimes. So, we are fortunate enough, we have a fairly small house

given the area we live in. I think we have the smallest thing we can get. But we do have three bedrooms and no children. So, we have our master bedroom. We have our living space. He has an office and I have an office. And that's something that I'm extremely fortunate to have. So, kind of the workflow is basically like I tend to wake up earlier in the morning. So, I get up and take a shower, get my day started. And then, you know, when he moseys out, because he sleeps so much later than I do, he moseys out. And he makes his breakfast and he kind of goes into his office and does his own thing. And there are some days we don't like we talk to each other in passing or whatever, but we don't really interact until

the evening. We iMessage each other a lot. You know, he's literally like 25 feet away from me right now, but I will iMessage him before I'll get up and talk to him because he's doing, you know, kind of that deep work. He's a developer. He needs time to concentrate. Same applies for me. I'm a writer. I need to be able to get down into something and concentrate. So we tend to default to messaging each other instead of talking to each other. I'll just pull up my laptop and go and hang out with them. But we don't really necessarily tend to talk. We don't do meals during the day together. We typically do dinner together.

But yeah, it's definitely we have evolved into this. And we've tried it other ways, but it seems to be working really well where we just kind of do our separate things throughout the day and then come together in the evening. So doors closed, doors open. Is there like a communication? Are things sort of shouted every now and then? Or is it like you send in some messages? Or I'm just kind of curious if there's any kind of code of conduct that's evolved out of this. So we have two cats, which is the complicating factor. So he used to, Justin used to go into his office and shut the door and uh there's a cat bed in there and one of the cats favors that bed and she would flip out she would just freak out

and there was no calming her down you know it'd be like three hours and he'd be in there with his music playing and not able to hear her and my hair would be standing on end and I'd be crying. And I'm like, I just can't take this cat anymore. So he works with his door open and he plays music, has speakers on. And so fate can go in and out and sleep or whatever. When I'm recording a podcast, like right now, he puts on headphones. When I'm not recording a podcast, because he works better with speakers, I'll sit in my office with headphones on and listen to something. Although now that Amazon has or the Echo has the ability to play things simultaneously, well, coming soon, I guess, in different rooms, maybe we'll try playing the same

music across, you know, throughout the house because it's just kind of the ambient without noise or without words, which I need to work. So we might try doing that. But for now, I have my headphones on and it's not a big deal. And then if I get up, I tend to putter around the house more than he does. And so I'll get up and listen to a podcast or an audio book and put in my AirPods and have my phone somewhere nearby. But yeah, we make it work pretty well uh housework actually suffers more than anything else you would think with both of us being here most of the time that we would be um that our house would be immaculate and that is

definitely not the case and that's just because it's really easy to to start working instead of um vacuuming or you know mopping or whatever yep that's totally true every now and then i do take a break and and unload the dishwasher or something just as a i need to not be sitting at my desk right now um and so some stuff gets done during the day but it is yeah there's always more work to do right instead of instead of vacuuming or or cleaning up the kitchen or something yep and i do think that's one of the like false attractions of working at home it's like oh i can do all this stuff and clean the house and no i mean you can but then you're not going to get any work done yeah i never run errands that's the thing that really shocked me the most honestly this is what I should answer when people say, what surprises you the most about working at home?

Is I thought working at home, I have access now to all the stores that are only open during business hours that I could never get to when I worked in San Francisco. And I would just be able to like pop out and do that. I never, I never go. It is so rare when I get in my car during the day and drive to somewhere for like a store or something. It is incredibly rare because that's not the mindset, right? It's like I'm working. I'm here.

I'm not going to go to the supermarket unless I need something desperately. But I'm not going to go drive up to the Apple store and look around because it's fun. It's not going to go drive up to the Apple store and look around because it's fun. It's not going to happen. Yeah. Well, and because of where Justin and I live, it's kind of, Jason, you know this, it's kind of a haul to get to anywhere. It's 30 minutes. Yeah, everything in Phoenix is 30 minutes away, anything you want to get to. And so what we tend to do is we do take advantage of being able to get out during the week.

And what we'll do is we'll kind of have a day where we're both kind of antsy and we're like, no, really, I need to get out of the house today. And that tends to be, we tend to have the same interval on that. And so we will make that kind of a hybrid errand work day and we'll pack up. We both have laptops. We don't have desktops. So we'll pack up our computers and we'll go run some errands and then go to a restaurant we work out of. They're very kind and let us sit there and work for hours on end.

And then we'll come back and do some more errands on the way back home. So we do take advantage of it in that way. But it's never a, no, I'm not doing any work today. And then we know, like, either we do more work the day before or we do more work the day after. You know, but it does, we have to, there's an accounting, right? And it has to balance out in the end. Yeah, I think it really is a challenge to work at home with your spouse too. And, and I, um, it sounds to me like you guys have really found your, your mojo though.

Yeah. Well, and we've been doing a, you know, I I've been working from home since, uh, like March of 2014, I think. And he left his job with a commute a few months after I did. And so, I mean, for the better part of three years, we have been doing this and it evolves and it changes over time. And, you know, sometimes it's less harmonious than others. But right now, I think we're in a pretty good spot. So, what's the hardest part about being a free agent for you? so what's the hardest part about being a free agent for you um i think right now the audience building is difficult and frustrating because what i am doing really does require an audience and so you have you have people like i know people who have like tens of thousands of followers because they've been you know prominent i'm looking at jason's avatar jason

you've been in a prominent thing for for years and um and so you went from macworld to six colors and you have the incomparableparable and you have an audience that you've worked on building over time. And I'll get there eventually, but I haven't had the time and I'm not an extremely patient person, which I don't know if that's surprising to people or not, but I'm not a very patient person.

So as I'm in this phase where I'm trying to provide value to people and build an audience and also show them that I can help them with things that one, they don't know, things that they don't necessarily want to do and also things that they don't know how to do. Like I have expertise and I can help them with these things. But getting to that point where I have kind of that critical mass of people who want to listen to my podcast, they want to literally subscribe to my newsletter, they want to, you know, read my blog posts. That is slow. That is a slow, slow, slow process, especially when there are so many things vying for people's attention right now. And that's really kind of an offshoot of the marketing point of this, you know,

getting the word out there, getting, getting customers. Yep. Absolutely. Hell, it's not easy, but it sounds like you're, you're working on it. Yeah. And I'm, you know, I'm, I'm determined. I know what I'm doing. It's just that time piece waiting for, waiting for the time to pass is a little a little frustrating sometimes, but it's great. I couldn't be I couldn't be more pleased with where things are right now. Honestly, it's it's all really fallen into place for me really, really well so far. My concern is it won't continue to, right? And so what do I do to plan for that?

And that's, you know, we're working on that, but it's been wonderful. It's been really, really good for me. I feel like going, becoming a free agent starts out with you being manic about getting away from working for the man. And then once you break free, you get a new thing. And that is you sit

around and worry about having to go back to work for the man. It's just, you just trade neuroses, I guess. Yeah. It's funny. I was with a friend several weeks ago and he's also, uh, well, he's working on, in the process of becoming a free. And, and he was like, so would you, you know, looking around at this crowd around us, would you recommend what, what you do, what we do to other people, just like the general, you know, a person off the street? And I was like, I gotta say no, I don't think I could in good conscious recommend that just anybody, I don't know know partake of this lifestyle or embark on this lifestyle um and it is for me it is it is a lifestyle for me it's about

being happy in my day-to-day and not you know doing something to build to build a lot of wealth right now and then retire at 50 like I I don't want to be miserable until I'm 50. I want to be happy now. And, you know, and, but no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't recommend it to just anybody. I think that there's a lot of planning and a lot of worrying and a lot of work that goes into being a free agent, being independent.

And it is definitely not for everyone. Amen, sister. Yep. all the upside and the downside you gotta you gotta keep it all in mind it's not yeah be being realistic people are thinking of doing this you just got to be realistic about it has great advantages and there are lots of issues and you you got to be realistic you got to understand that it's a little bit of both yeah and communication i think if if there's one thing you need to be able to do you have be realistic. You got to understand that it's a little bit of both. Yeah. And communication. I think if, if there's one thing you need to be able to do, you have to be able to communicate. You have to be able to communicate with, you know, if you have children, if you have a partner, if you have a business partner, as well as, you know, romantic or life partner,

whatever, you need to be able to set up boundaries and communicate those. And, you know, what is the day going to look like? You, you need to expect that i'm not going to have the dishwasher unloaded when you get home like like those kinds of things but also you know you've got to be able to communicate with clients and um do that back and forth and if you can't if you can't or won't communicate effectively you're not going to last long. Well, on that happy note, no, I, I, I'm so happy for you, Alina. I know that, uh, you've worked very hard to do what you've done. And I, I, as a, as an outside fan, I like watching you grow this business and I have nothing but confidence that this is just going to get bigger for you. And I want to thank you for coming by and sharing some of your wisdom with us.

And where can people find you? So the kind of amalgamation of all the things goes through Twitter. My account is Alene, that's A-L-E-E-N, but I do have applaunchmap.com and on twitter at app launch map and of course the podcast is originality which you can find at relay.fm originality but kind of everything i tweet about everything from my twitter account so it's where if you want to learn app camp for girls all those things uh that's probably the best way to kind of see all of it well i encourage everyone to check out all the stuff that leans up to, uh, we are the free agents.

You can find us at relay.fm slash free agents. This is show 31. Uh, you can send us feedback. We have a forum right on the website. Uh, we're on Twitter as the, uh, I always get it wrong. Jason, it's free agents, FM, free agents, FM. And then we also have a Facebook group. So you can check us out there as well.

Yeah, absolutely. And there are links to all of that at relay.fm slash freeagents. So you can check it out. Find us. And that's it for another fortnight. Thanks, David. Pleasure as always. Thank you.

And thank you, Aline, for joining us. Thanks for asking me. Bye, everybody.