Focused - 58: A Better Path, with Joe Buhlig

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

Podcaster and programmer Joe Buhlig shares his free agent journey, from bean field to office to family room. He joins David and Mike to talk about his experience solving problems, how to let things go, and finding your own definition of success.

David Sparks and Mike Schmitz spent their careers working for the establishment. Now, they've had enough. They've rebelled against the status quo and are now seeking success on their terms. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm Mike Schmitz, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. David Sparks. How's it going today, David? Very well, Mr. Schmitz. How are you today? I'm doing well, doing well. Excited to have another guest episode.

And I'm really excited for this particular guest because he is also a podcast co-host of mine. So welcome to the show, Joe Buehlig. Well, thank you guys. I feel like we've connected on all kinds of fronts, especially you and I, Mike. So it's kind of fun to jump into the free agents world here. So I'm excited about today's episode. It'll be fun. Awesome. So just we'll put a pin in that for just a moment because speaking of free agents world and free agent stuff, David, you have had quite a month. You released two different field guides within a span of about a week. Yeah, man, I'm crazy. You're still here. You're still doing the free agent thing. Yeah, I'm still here. It's all good.

It's all good. For so long, I complained that I wasn't shipping enough and I shipped two things in a month and that was awesome. And it was great. Thank you everyone for all the support. The OmniFocus field guide is out now and the Siri shortcuts field guide is out. And I know a bunch of listeners have helped support me by purchasing it. I'm hearing from a bunch of them and they're sending me their Siri shortcuts and telling me how they're using OmniFocus to change their lives. And it's just awesome. That's great. And now I'm catching my breath. And I'm planning my sabbatical under Mike's orders. Yep. I even sent you a whole bunch of stuff. So you can just rinse and repeat.

You don't have to create it all from scratch. When you do your sabbatical, you've got it all laid out for you. You've got a custom plan ready to go. Yes, we will do that. And I have reconnected with my wife as well. She was very happy. Somebody asked me to guest on their podcast. And I said, OK, I'll do that. And I have reconnected with my wife as well. She was very happy. Somebody asked me to guest on their podcast and I said, okay, I'll do that. And it was like a Saturday right after I shipped everything.

And Daisy's like, no, you're actually going to spend Saturday with me because you've worked every weekend for the last month. And I said, yes, sir. And I did. Yep. Somebody told me one time, happy wife, happy life. And it's definitely, definitely true. We also talk a lot about the free agents forum and the Mac power users discourse.

And Joe is the creator of that. In addition to being an awesome discourse expert, what else do you do, Joe? You want to give a short intro to everybody so they know who you are and what you do? Sure. Where's that list? So, yeah, I do a lot of things. So with regards to this, I do a ton of discourse development. So if you're not familiar with that, it's forum software. But I lead a company called ProCourse that that's what we do, is build on top of discourse and build websites and online communities for people. And I was having an email conversation with David about their Facebook group for Mac power users. And I,

you know, in the midst of that figured out, oh, wait, we could get them off of Facebook and onto discourse. Perfect. Then I'll be more involved with it. So like that's, that's kind of been part of that journey. So I've, I'm kind of excited about, you know, Mac Power users and free agents getting a discourse forum. But yeah, that's the primary of what I do. But when I'm not, you know, if you want to look at the free agent side of it. So I run that business, but I also, I do some IT work for our local church that we're a part of.

So I'm there quasi part-time to some extent. I do some IT work for a commercial real estate general contractor here in town as well. I run a podcast with Mike Bookworm, which is one of my favorites. I also run a podcast with Drew Kaufman called Whims at Work. I run my own blog sometimes whenever I'd get around to it, which isn't that often lately, it seems like. Oh gosh, is that all I do? I don't know. I'm sure there's more I'm missing, but that's kind of been my life lately, it seems like. And you're a family man and you know an extraordinary amount about farming. I know because I listen to you. Yeah, that's how I got my start was in agriculture. It was kind of a fun one. But yeah, no, I grew up on a fairly large, just a, I don't know, it'd be a conventional farm of sorts. And anyway, that's where I came from.

Right now, you know, I'm married, have three little girls. How old are they? One, three, and five. I do the best I can to keep up with them. So, you know, there's a lot going on in joe's world right now it seems like it's called the hustle baby yeah there you go i was telling my kids i think we're in the sparks family motto is going to become fake it until you make it but we just got to figure out how to say that in latin so it sounds fancy there you go um but so joe you

are truly a free agent i mean kidding aside you I mean, kidding aside, you've got your hand in many different pots, and you're cooking a lot of soup and all the other analogies I'm supposed to use. First time I became aware of you was reading your website, and I just thought this guy is really thinking deliberately about the stuff he does, and I really like your opinion on these things. And, of course, you've expanded into this free agency over the years. So tell us kind of about how you got there and where you are now. Yeah, that's kind of a fun one. So we mentioned the agriculture thing. And that's where I really

got into kind of the web development world. I worked for a big ag company and then consulted with them. And as part of that, I got into web development. We were building some pretty high-end web portals for all kinds of data stuff I'm not going to go into. But in that process, I realized I was developing skills that would allow me to step outside of web development and agriculture and then into the broader web development world. And that's essentially what I did. It was about three years ago. The company I was working for at the time was a virtual company. And without going into the nitty gritty there, we both decided it would be better if we split ways.

It was advantageous for them, advantageous for me. So we split ways. And I was sitting on an emergency fund because, you know, all free agents should have an emergency fund. I was sitting on one and looking at that thinking, should I try a go at starting my own gig, which had been kind of a dream of mine for a while? Should I start that now, use the emergency fund to help me get that up and running to buy me the time to get it up and going? Or should I go join a company and continue building on the side? Because I had already started my online presence. I'd already started my blog, had been at that for a year and a half or two years. So I wasn't new to the online presence scenario at all, but I hadn't been super deliberate about

it and trying to drive a decent income off of it. So that was my question to both my wife, who's probably my CFO here, you know, between her and some mentors of mine and just kind of working through, you know, what are the options here? I ended up going for it and saying, okay, let's take three months. I'm going to try it, see if I can drive any form of an income off of this in a three month time span. And if it works out great, if not, I'll go apply to a couple of places. I already had two or three companies that had asked me to get a hold of them if I ever found myself looking for employment. So I kind of had that in my back pocket at the time. But still, three months, that's a pretty short runway, brother.

Yeah, I know. I know. And it was one where, you know, looking back on it, I probably would have felt better with like a six to nine month headway. So I don't know that I would recommend a three month, you know, looking back on it, I probably would have felt better with like a six to nine month headway. So I don't know that I would recommend a three month, you know, runway there. Uh, but it worked in my case. I had already been talking to some folks about doing some side gigs. Uh, so in a month span, I had picked up a couple of clients that then paid the bills to extend it to a four or five month stint. And then the next month allowed me to maintain that. And then it slowly built to where I had, you know,

continual income coming in, uh, and was able to cover our expenses. And it's just been kind of perpetually going down that path ever since. So that's three years ago that I, that I'd made that jump and you know, it's grown. You know, I mentioned ProCourse. That's a new, like putting a term on it and then bringing some more people on. So, you know, it's starting to do the whole business building and help getting people on board to help me continue to grow that business. And in that process, of course, you have lots of learnings, lots of

failures, some successes in the way, along the way. So, you know, it's been a fun journey, but at the same time, it's like, it's not exactly simple. I mean, you talk to people that do this all the time and it's not always an easy process, but you know, that's essentially how I got into it was just, I'm going to take a chance at this because I had the perfect opportunity. They talk about if you're going to do something big, do it in the midst of a crisis. That's not always fun, but that's the perfect time to do it. That's exactly what I did. And it's been going for a while now.

I want to go back because you mentioned that every free agent should have an emergency fund. And you had given yourself a three-month runway now yeah it sounds like if that was a couple of years ago you're married at this point you probably have at least a kid so is that three-month runway is that like you had three months worth of savings or you were only willing to dip into three months worth of savings and then also you mentioned that you had other people who had contacted you said, hey, if you ever find yourself looking for a job, contact us. So it sounds like you had options. So in your head, as best as you can remember, what's the mental math that was going on there? How much did the options that you had available contribute to you being willing to make the leap?

Yeah. So at the time, the last company I worked for, part of my role was consulting other big agricultural companies. So I was meeting with, you know, not CTOs, but like their managers directly below them for some of the biggest ag companies in the world. So that's the type of people I was consulting with. And quite often, they would tell me whenever we finished the consulting sessions, like, okay, if you ever find yourself leaving the company you're with, you call me. So I always had that. And I had a direct line to them. So I had their cell phone number. I could call them any time of day and they would pick up. That was the scenario. So I always had that. But whenever we made the change, it wasn't that i had a three month emergency emergency fund we had a six month and because that's just what we maintain and actually we try to get that closer to nine months now just because i never know what a month's gonna look like so you know we had six months in the bank we decided that we'd be willing to part with three months of that to see if this would work, knowing that if in three months time it didn't work, I could make some phone calls and very likely be employed within a month's time. logistics and everything figured out and the first paycheck comes in, I figured I could get all of that nailed down within about two months time frame. Give me an extra month just in case I

screwed up on my timing and we'd be okay. Like that was my thinking. I was trying to cover my tail there because I just didn't know. And there's a lot of unknowns when you're trying to make that leap. You know, you were mentioning how when you were doing work for the man and you worked for their clients, a lot of times they would say, hey, Joe, if you ever need a job, let me know. I think that is a reflection. Having read your blog back then before you were on your own, you treated yourself as a free agent or an independent worker, I think, throughout this process. I think if you're out there and you're working for a big company, taking a free agent mentality towards your day-to-day work does open opportunities for you. And I would venture to guess that's part of the reason why you had people that wanted you to call them.

Sure. Yeah. For a long time, I have had the mentality of even when I'm working for a company or I'm working for myself, it's always been a matter of, you kind of need to let me have control of a certain area. Like I just, I don't do well when someone's going to tell me exactly what it is I need to do every single day, just because I think too much. I think I brainstorm and come up with ideas all the time. And I'm, I'm always curious and I want to explore those. And that's part of what made me good at the consulting role is I spent a lot of time in meetings brainstorming and trying to come up with ways for things to

work for my clients at the time, even though I was working for a company. I still had ownership of that process and knew how to bring up ideas and how to encourage people to come up with ideas. So that was a lot of what drove that. And I kept pushing them outside the box of what they were used to. I was not afraid to tell, you know, some upper level managers that their idea was not good. Like I just wasn't afraid of that. I don't know why. Maybe that's not smart to do as a consultant, but you know, that's, that's been something that's served me pretty well. And in my career history is just, you know, that's not going to work because of X, Y, Z, A, B, C. And I'm okay telling people that whether they're my clients or employees or whoever, you know,

that's, I've never really been afraid of that. I think maybe that's some of that mentality, David. Like it feels like that's maybe part of it, but I don't know that I can recall a time when I haven't thought that way. So I think that's just part of who I've grown up to be. So analog Joe is also autonomous Joe. Yeah, very likely. Maybe that's where the analog thing comes from because I've always spent time on whiteboards and on big notepads and stuff with all those consulting sessions. Maybe that's the derivative of that. I want to point out something that occurs to me hearing you talk about this, though, that's really valuable for every free agent out there, whether they work in a corporation or a bigger company

and they're looking to go out on their own or even they're just working with clients. It kind of sounds to me that you've always had this mindset of solving the problems that the people you're working with are having. It doesn't matter if it happens under Acme Farm Inc. or joebuelig.com. You take this approach that you're working with this person, they're working with you for a reason, they have this problem, you're going to solve it, and you're going to solve it in the best way that you know how. And that, I would argue, probably gives you the, I'm not sure if strength is the

right word, the courage maybe to share some maybe unpopular opinions. Like you were saying, this is the way that this should be done, whether they like it or not. Yeah, that's probably part of it. I mean, I've always been a problem solver. I don't know that my wife enjoys that as much as, you know, my clients do, but like I've, I have a knack for seeing when something's off and I feel like I'm pretty good at saying, okay, this isn't quite right. So we need to either conduct an experiment either on ourselves or find someone who has and figure out what the right path forward is. So a lot of my journey is, okay, well, that's not working. Let's try this. Oh, that's not working. Let's try this. Like I

do a lot of that. So that's probably it, Mike. I mean, that's part of it, at least. Yeah. And I think that's the thing that's really valuable. You know, if you're looking to make the leap specifically, you're talking about how you're meeting all of these people who are saying, if you ever find yourself in need of a job, come talk to me. And in essence, you're networking. So you're building up all these connections, all these relationships. And the way that you're doing that is by authentically caring about the problem that they're having and trying to solve it, presenting a solution that's valuable to them. Yes, exactly. And how many books, you know, you and I read books together for Bookworm, but how many of those books have talked about

the value of connecting people together or just basically being friends with people? That's always been, I'm an introvert, so that's not exactly something that I just, I can't wait to go find a group of people and network with them. No.

Give me a book and a cup of coffee. I'll be happier. But that's, it's something that's, uh, and to be honest, maybe this is just my curiosity is whenever I run across someone that has information or knowledge that I don't have, I get curious and I start wanting to know how they come about coming up with their ideas and how they got where they are. And I think that has gone a long way for sure. You know, while you were talking about, I was thinking about, you know, this is a skill of being a free agent, I think is, is honesty, you know, with the people you're working with. I think that's necessary. But as you talked about it more, I think the skill isn't honesty, it's trust in your gut, you know, understanding what's going on and trying to

bring that to the front. Because when you're in a company, sometimes that's even discouraged depending on how management works. You know, some management doesn't want honesty and gut calls. But when you're on your own, the whole thing rests on you. If you don't do the job right, people stop coming and suddenly you're unemployed. You're not a free agent. And I do think that's a very important skill if someone wants to pursue this. When I worked, so one of the big ag companies that I worked for when I worked in that role, it was corporate and very large corporate. And I started off on like a US-based portion of the company. And by the time I left there, I was working with the international side of that.

And my original role was a data analyst, which basically meant that I took all the data in the company, which was like 400 billion rows of data. And it was a lot of information. And I would take that and run the numbers to get marketing information so that the marketing teams could do their publications and ads and all that. It was quite common for those numbers to be massaged a little bit. That's probably the calm way of saying it, uh, before they made it into publication. And that always drove me crazy. Like that's not what the numbers say. Like that's, it's just not. And that particular piece I think has always rubbed me the

wrong way. And it's probably why I don't work with any of those major companies directly anymore and don't find myself helping in those specific scenarios. As a result, I find myself whenever I'm doing the consulting piece, like, okay, here's what your numbers say, but how did you get that and why? Like, sure, all the metrics on your A-B testing tell you to do this particular pop-up, but that pop-up is going to make people angry over time. Like that type of information is what I've come to. It's purely intuition. I don't really have specific metrics on a lot of this. It's just, this is what I'm seeing. This is my gut feel. And most of the time it's right. Every once in a while I'm wrong and I'm okay taking that. That's, that's the other piece of it. I think you have to be willing to accept when

you're wrong and just say, Oh, that's a failure. Let me step away from that. But I would guess that taking that attitude towards your business, you're going to naturally attract clients that value that type of feedback and you're going to naturally repel those that don't. Do you find that generally the clients that you work with the longest are kind of on the same page with you on that yeah for sure uh there have been a number of them over the last two years for specifically that whenever i offer critical feedback saying you know you're doing this you know you're putting a scrolling header up here in this specific scenario, and that's going to drive people crazy because of the way the rest of your site works. And whenever I offer that advice, you can very quickly tell if they're open to that type of feedback or not. Because if they're not, they tend to shut down and the rest of the conversation is

going to be a little awkward. And you basically just have to decide to split ways whether they realize that's what's going on or not. So yes, to answer your question, I'm quite certain that just by the way I operate, which to me tends to have a lot of integrity, I feel like because of that, the clients that I work with are going to have that feeling as well. Because, you know, in the web development business, it's very common for people to try to rip me off. Like that's, that's a big issue in that, uh, when you're a vendor to do that sort of thing, everybody wants a website, but they don't want to pay for it. That's kind of my, like everybody wants a fully custom website, but they don't want to foot the bill that custom brings with it. And that particular piece, you know, you have to

be careful with it. So you start doing those sales enough and working with enough clients on it. You just kind of build up a sixth sense around how that's all going to work. And it works both ways. They pick that up as well. Right. You mentioned the word integrity earlier, and I think maybe related to that would be authenticity. So what you see is what you get. And I think that they are two separate things. Maybe integrity and authenticity are the same thing in certain situations. But just because you quote unquote, do the right thing, doesn't necessarily mean that you are authentic. You can have integrity and try to serve your customers to the best of your ability,

but you might find yourself trying to build a bunch of custom websites for people who don't really want to pay for them. So I think that authenticity, I would add that to the description as well. And then also, how did you then... So you're working for the ag company, you go out on your own,

sounds like you're doing websites at this point. Where do you go from there? How do you get from Joe, the freelance web developer, to Joe who's doing a million things that we described in the intro? together an income because I don't want to build a single, if I'm the owner of it, I don't want to build a single point of revenue and then rely on it and then something happened to it and now I have a problem. And I'm off trying to scramble to get something that can pull together a revenue stream. So what I have essentially done is find various ways of doing work that do a couple of things. One, it diversifies my income stream, but it also, you know, I'm borderline ADHD. I don't know if that actually for me applies entirely, but I have to keep myself moving from thing to thing so that I stay interested of sorts. And because I've pieced so many different things together, it definitely helps me with that.

And maybe there's a third point here in that if I'm doing the podcasts and I'm doing the IT work, but I'm also doing the web development, all of those help me get ideas for the others. And it's a way for me to focus on them, but yet get outside of it to continue to drive some new connecting points for those. And that helps me build the business in the long run. It continues to help me get better feedback on what's a better way to run my business around client work, what's a better way to handle servers whenever you've got a church versus a small business? Like all of those things, they tend to help each other because they help me get ideas on each other. So that's part of the reason why. But most of it, frankly, has to do

with diversified revenue streams. Now, I will point out that not all of the things I'm doing actually drive any income at all. So like you have to keep that in mind too. But at this, you know, with all of this, especially in the online world, it, and you hear this in a lot of places is you're trying to get your failures out of the way faster. Um, which means you're doing some experiments to try to figure out what works and what doesn't work. You know, it's, it's pretty obvious for you, David, that, you know, video guides are a way to go.

Like that is definitely a thing that works for you. I sure hope so, because I've burned my bridges behind me. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, that's an area that you can focus and it works really well for you. For me, I found that the thing that works well is doing custom web development. It's a thing I'm skilled in and I seem to be able to find the right clientele for that. So that's an area that I have focused on and that's what drives the bulk of my income. But at the same time, I love podcasting and I love doing some things with some of the hardware side of the computer realm. So I do some of the IT work as well. So those are ways for me to scratch that itch, if you will, and continue to diversify a little bit. Now, will some of them drive bigger incomes in the future? Maybe.

And maybe I'll drop some off. The one thing I have learned, especially in the last three years, is, you know, if something's not working, I'm pretty good about dropping it. Like, that's definitely a thing that I have developed as a skill. It's not a thing I was good at to begin with. I was pretty good at saying yes and then just continuing to accrue things like a lot of entrepreneurs tend to do. But since that time, I've been pretty good about, okay, here are the five things that I have going on.

Can I do them well? If yes, continue. If not, what needs to be cut? And that's kind of become a recurring theme over the last two to three years of building up something and then dropping it if it doesn't work. Yeah. And we'll come back to that point for sure. But I want to go back to, you kind of mentioned, you've tried these different things. You found these different things that have worked, different things to diversify your income streams. The Buelig household income

generator doesn't rely on a single point of failure. In your head, do you have some sort of, I don't want to say formula because I'm sure it's not that precise, but how do you weight, like, this is something I really want to do. This is a quote unquote passion project versus this is something that is going to pay the bills and is going to accomplish the goal of diversifying the revenue streams? It's purely time-based, which, you know, that's a good question, by the way. I have a certain amount of time that I devote to all of the ventures that I do in a week. And that involves the time I get up to roughly four o'clock in the day, Monday through Friday. Okay. In that timeframe, if I feel I can add that venture and do it well, I'll add it.

If it doesn't, like if I can't do it well inside that timeframe, something needs to be cut. So I know that I've only got so much energy and time in a day. And if I'm going to be done by four o'clock, because at four o'clock, it's my intent to just drop everything and go spend it with my family for the rest of the night. That's my intent. And on Friday, sometimes at three o'clock, and then I spend the weekend with them and completely separate as much as I can, because the free agent way is take it home and think about it all weekend and then come back and just keep going on Monday. Well, I try specifically not to do that, which is not easy. Like that's definitely a self-discipline process that you got to go through.

You know, there's all kinds of ways that you can use like task managers and talent. Like there's all kinds of ways you can do that. I know what works for me and have continued building that out. And it has to change over time. But all of this to say that throughout that Monday through Friday, you know, the time from the time I get up to the time four o'clock rolls around minus the breaks for like breakfast, second breakfast and lunch, because second breakfast is the most important meal of the day. That's right. You're a hobbit. I forgot.

Exactly. I got to get 11s. He's worked in there somehow. But, you know a hobbit, I forgot. Exactly. I gotta get 11sies worked in there somehow. But I have that certain amount of time in a day. And if Pro Course is not being served well because of the time that I have devoted to it, then I need to quit doing something in that timeframe. If one of my podcasts is suffering because I picked up too many other like little development side gigs that I think might work out because I tend to do that. It's like, okay, this service might work. I'll go build on those. But if my building on those causes something that's currently working

to suffer, then I have to drop it or scale back how much time I'm putting towards it. So for me, it's purely a metric of how much time I have to work with and then allocating that ahead of time. Otherwise, I spend way too much time redesigning my blog for absolutely no gain. So, you know, it's purely calendar-based. This episode of Free Agents is brought to you by Timing, the automatic time tracking app for macOS. In today's fast-moving world, the next distraction is right around the corner, which makes it harder than ever to stay on track with your projects and determine how much you really worked, how much did you really do that thing that is going to pay the bills, and how much did you actually spend surfing social media like Facebook or Twitter.

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to iOS 12 screen time, but it works on your Mac. Plus, timing offers more advanced tracking, including manual tracking in a gorgeous new dark mode. Now, if you use timing for very long, you'll end up with a lot of data, and that can be a lot to go through. So timing also lets you use drag and drop to create rules that automatically categorize your time. It's going to suggest to fill in the gaps in your timeline so you never forget to track a meeting and it can even automatically ask you what you did when you return to your Mac. And with the automatic sync feature, your track time will magically appear across all of your Macs. So even when you work on the go with your MacBook, you'll be able to see the big picture on your iMac once you get home. I've used timing for years. I even recommended it when I gave my presentation on the five personal productivity tools that you need to have at the Macs.Conference and Expo this last summer.

And the thing that's different about timing, which really makes it work for me, is that automatic time tracking. thing that's different about timing, which really makes it work for me, is that automatic time tracking. I tried to track my time in the past with those tools that you have to start and stop timers, and I could never get it to stick. I would start a timer, and then I'd get in my car, and I'd go somewhere, and I would realize once I got there that my timer had been running for my project all along. And it ended up creating a bunch of data that I couldn't really trust. It just wasn't accurate, and the problem wasn't the software, it was me. But by timing taking that away from me and doing all of the tracking automatically, especially with the rules, I don't have to worry about it anymore. Timing does it for me. I can just go in and look at the data and make adjustments to how I plan my day accordingly. Now, Timing is so confident that

you'll love their fuss-free approach to time tracking that they offer a totally free trial. You can download the free 14-day trial today by going to timingapp.com slash freeagents. And if you do, you'll save 10% when you decide to purchase. That's timingapp.com slash freeagents to save 10%. Timing. Stop worrying about time and focus on doing your best work instead. We thank Timing for their support of freeagents and RelayFM. I want to go back and address something that you said because you mentioned the free agent way is to go home and think about stuff all weekend. And I would argue that maybe that's the default free agent way, but it's definitely not the sustainable free agent way. How have you

learned to escape that? I haven't escaped it. How have you learned to escape that? I haven't escaped it. How have you found peace with it? There's a lot of things. You're never going to stop the ideas, especially if you're in the entrepreneurial space, even more so in the tech or software space, you know, it's not uncommon for me to have three or four new business ideas every day. That is not uncommon. And I have a number of habits that help me deal with that. One is when that I've mentioned a number of places, but towards the end of my workday, I try to scale down and de-stress a little bit.

Some of that involves reading a book. A lot of it has to do with like brain dumping a lot of what I have going on or the projects I'm working on. Just, you know, all the next steps need to get out of my head and into a task manager that I'll come back to. So trying to offload as much as I can. That works great, but it doesn't get rid of everything. So the biggest piece that I have found is finding ways to write down the ideas that I have when I'm off hours. And one of the tips that I use for this, one is what I carry note cards in my back pocket all the time. So I always have a pen and paper with me that works for like quick sketches and stuff because I'm in web development. So I'm always sketching like interfaces out all the time but more often than not i have like a

quick snippet of text that i need to write and come back to um i don't know if you guys have talked about drafts on the show at all or not but that app is one that's been a lifesaver for me. And I have over time built up a habit. So I keep drafts in the dock on my phone and I have this habit of launching it before I put my phone to sleep, which means that whenever I unlock my phone, drafts is already open. I don't even have to tap the app. It's just already there. And if that is open, you know, it does a couple of couple things it adds a little bit of resistance to me going and doing things that i probably shouldn't be doing on my phone like you know checking all the twitters and emails and stuff that i shouldn't be checking uh so it keeps me a little bit away from that but whenever i need to type something it's just immediately there

you just swipe up because iphone 10 swipe up and then start typing right away. That's all it is. Super fast. I love that. That makes it super easy for me to get things out of my head and then I'll come back to them the next day. That particular piece by itself is probably the most clear-headed way I have

of getting through. I don't want to say getting through, but being focused on my family after hours. That is a big piece of it for sure. Now, this is one of those moments where I get to be a podcast listener because I listened to you guys talk about this on Bookworm, just a recent episode. You're talking about how do you end your days. I feel like for a free agent, I've had this practice for a long time. I call it the shutdown where I've just blocked an hour at the end of the day.

And that is in the schedule every day. And when I get to it, I stop everything and do that. And I think that really helps you step aside. Once you properly shut it down, you can then go spend time with your family. And I think it does clear your mind a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the biggest pieces for me is if I have a plan made for how tomorrow is going to go, as far as my client work goes, if I have a plan for that before my current workday ends,

it's a lot easier to let go of it because I know that plan is already in place. Helps a lot. Yeah, I'm a big fan of that. We've talked on Bookworm about my dominate your day worksheet, but you don't need something that complicated either. You could just use a notebook and just the time blocking thing in particular, I think is really valuable. Is that what you do when you say you plan your next days? You kind of allocate hours for which modes you're going to be working in or what tasks you're going to be doing. And then obviously, you know, it's not always going to go perfect. So does it make you freak out when it doesn't go according to plan or how do you deal with that? So I have three points in my day when I put it in my calendar now and I just call it firefighting. I just call it what it is.

And it's going through email, catching up on Slack or the chat windows and stuff and handling things. You know, I'm running a business. I have people that do work for me. So I'm always catching up and trying to help them get questions answered, which is not, you know, it's not driving the important sides of the business, but it keeps the business moving. And so I definitely have points in my day to cover those pieces. But when I say planning my day, I'm talking about setting aside time blocks

when I'm gonna work on client work, setting aside one or two time blocks to handle like some administrative tasks or some of my goal-driven tasks for like the next seven to eight weeks because I'm, you know, 12-week year, great, but it's too far out for me. Things move too fast in my world. So, I've gone to like the seven to eight-week planning period now. So, those goals that I have for that eight-week period, which I don't even know why I came up with. I started calling it a hexagole. I don't even know how I came up with that. Um, but that, that quote unquote hexagol that I'm working on, you know,

that period is one where I need that to help me do the things that will really drive the next steps in my business. Like one of them that I'm working on right now, I'm trying to bring a salesperson on to pro course to help offload the client side of things for me. So they're coming on to help me do the sales, handle clients, and then I can be a go-to resource for the developers who are building it to handle the difficult pieces. But the goal there is to get my time involved with it and de-stress a little bit because the client piece is stressful, let's be honest. At least for me, that's not something I thrive on. I know you and I've talked about this before. So, you know, that's, that's the thing that I know I'm trying

to offload to help me with my stress levels. And so I can focus more on say the CEO role of ProCourse. So I know that bringing someone on is a huge plus to both me and the web development business. So right now, one of the biggest goals that I have that I'm working towards is just that, bringing a person on. How does that process work? What's all the, you know, all the contracts and stuff? Like, what does all that look like? And then once that person is in place, what does the onboarding process look like? Because, you know, it's a very small company. I've never really done onboarding for a salesperson. So chances are that person is not going to have discourse experience. So how do you handle that?

Like those are all questions that I'm trying to answer right now. But that's a part of that goal. If I don't have time in my day scheduled for that, it won't happen. It just won't. So usually it's first thing in the morning, you know, the whole eat the frog thing. So I have to do that early on. Otherwise it won't happen. So yes, that's what I'm doing when I plan my day. Now, you mentioned the firefighting and the things like that, the admin stuff, the email that's on your daily plan, does that factor into something you said earlier about recognizing whether you're able to do

something well? And if not, something's got to go. How much of that daily stuff do you contribute to when you look at over the next however many months am i going to be able to do this thing is it like 20 of your time or is it even a percentage does it get factored in that way or do you just kind of have a sense for this is what i can handle and then follow up to that you know what do you what is it what is your process for actually letting those things go because you mentioned decreasing stress levels and we don't need to get into any of the specifics you don't want to share but i know that you've kind of had to go through some of this stuff recently. So how did you do that successfully? Yeah. So this, maybe this is the

elephant in the room we've been talking around this whole episode so far, but so, and I'm totally cool sharing this because one of the things I have learned is that the stress involved with the free agent lifestyle is one that I used to be really, I used to thrive on that to some extent. But what I have learned in the last probably three to four months, and we don't need to go into this part, but I've had a number of health issues both personally and my wife even had an emergency surgery amongst a couple other things. So the Buley household has had a rough summer into this fall. So it's been a rough number of months here recently. So that doesn't help at all right now. Health plays a big role in the free agent lifestyle more so than I think a lot of people like to admit.

Just because, you know, to your point, David, earlier on, it's like, okay, if, or maybe this was before we started recording, like, if you get sick, your clients are not going to be happy because their work isn't getting done. Thus, Joe's looking at a salesperson because I'm not always the most reliable. a given day. You know, right now I'm averaging around 140 to 150 emails in a day. That's, that's about what I go through and they're not, and that's after all the filtering of stuff. That's not newsletters. That's direct to me. Uh, I think if you include newsletters and junk mail, it's like 500 in a day or something like that. It's kind of ridiculous.

Yeah, go email. So I spend roughly four to four and a half hours on email in one day every day. That's tiring, to be honest. You throw in some of the instant messengers and stuff. Latest count is I'm a part of, I think it's 47 Slack teams now. So there's a lot going on there. Obviously, I'm not reading everything on all of those. I would do nothing but that 24-7. So all of that compounds to a lot of stress on Joe. And because of the health side of things, the financial side of things have been stressful lately too because I haven't been around as much as I need to be.

So I'm in the process right now of bringing on a salesperson and then doing some training on the guys that I have currently doing some work for me to offload some of what I'm doing on them. And you work through the financials, this works out, but that puts me in a spot where I'm spending around maybe one or two hours in a week on that business. Now, granted, my income on that drops significantly when I do that. Because you're offloading a bunch of your work to somebody else. You got to pay them. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's classic. You know, you delegate, you need to pay the person that you're delegating it to. But it also means that I free up to think on a higher level.

At the same time, when all of that financial piece happens, it means that I free up to think on a higher level. At the same time, when all of that financial piece happens, it means that I actually don't have the income to maintain the income that we need for our family. So then Joe needs to be bringing in some other form of revenue stream. And, you know, without going into all the emotional side of it, it means that I'm going to maintain the ProCourse business, but I'm also looking to join a company. So I'm going to maintain the pro course business, but I'm also looking to join a company. So I'm kind of doing the reverse at this point where a lot of people have this dream of, I can't wait to own and run my own business. But to be honest with you, that's a super stressful thing to do. Like that's, it just is. And especially when you

have a number of months that are difficult, like it's hard to maintain that. And right now I know that probably for the next between three and five years, I know that I need to bring a lot more stability to our family. I can keep doing these side gigs because I'm forever going to be an ideas person and need something to offload those ideas into. So, which is why I'm keeping the company around and not selling it. Uh, cause I could do that. I've had even had a couple offers on it. Uh, so I could sell it, but I'm not going to, cause I, I just know that if I put the right people in place and I do the training, right, you know, my time can be very minimal and it can continue to go. Uh, but I also know that moving to joining a company, which I

haven't done, I don't even have a formal offer on that. So, you know, that's a process I'm in the middle of right now. I wouldn't even have the time to join right now, but in the next month or two, I'm looking at that. But that's the path I'm going down now, primarily to get myself out of the stressful side of pieces, bring a little more stability, and continue to give me the outlet. So right now, between my wife and I, that feels like it's the right path. Because the way things have been going, to your point, Mike, how do you know when you should drop something? I gauge a lot of that off of how do I feel when I'm spending time with my family. And although I have all the ways and the tricks and the daily shutdown stuff and daily shutdown stuff and, you know, writing things down.

All the life hacks. Yeah, they're just tweaks. You know, it doesn't solve the bigger problem. And I still, even after an entire weekend, like Sunday night, I should be pretty refreshed, itching to get back to work. But I find myself just tired. You know, I'm just, I'm still exhausted. Maybe there's burnout involved. I don't know. But there's just not the joy there that there should be. And although I love, you know, helping clients out and stuff,

it's too much right now. So I have sensed that and I'm trying to act on that. And that's why I have that path put forward. So that's kind of how I get the feel for it. Last guest episode, we had Sean McCabe on and he talked about his experience with burnout. And I think that kudos to you for recognizing what's the right thing for the right moment. Because I think a lot of people who are on there, just beginning their free agent journey, they have this picture in their head of, I'm going to stick it to the man, I'm going to leave my company, and things are just going to be awesome after that.

But maybe your definition of success should be a little bit more realistic and maybe even a little bit different. Maybe success for you isn't leaving a company and going out on your own. Maybe it's carving out the time in your day to do the thing that you really love. And if it ends up being just a quote unquote, just a side hustle, that's completely fine. That's a whole nother topic I think we need to dive into. But also, you mentioned a specific time period for the next three to five years. This is what it looks like I'm going to need. So being willing to adjust and adapt, recognizing that this is the right thing for right now, but it's not always going to be this way. And when we get to that bridge,

we'll cross and we'll figure out what the next thing is. That's important too. Yeah. And really, one of the reasons I want to have you on, Joe, is because we talk about this all the time. And this show is not intended to be cheerleaders for having you quit your job. It's a big decision, and I'm super happy when I hear from listeners that have successfully become free agents, but it doesn't always remain. And in Joe's case, you've got a successful business, a successful growing business. I mean, you found the right niche to such an extent that you went from being a solo free agent to a guy who runs a company. And yet you find yourself at this point thinking maybe you need to go a different direction.

That was very brave to come to that. I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think it must have been difficult to reach that conclusion. Confessing it's the hard part. That's because in this is, you know, in our society, this whole running your own business thing is kind of the dream. Like that's the, you know, I get to work from home and I get to do what I love to do. Yeah.

But the thing that you love to do has a lot of things you hate to do. Like that's just the way it is. There is no perfect position. It just doesn't exist. If it does, you've offloaded all the stuff you don't like to do. Like, that's just the way it is. There is no perfect position. It just doesn't exist. If it does, you've offloaded all the stuff you don't like to do. You know, that's the way it operates. But when you're doing the whole, let's get going and bootstrap it sort of thing, you're always going to have things you don't like doing. And in this particular case, you know, I just know between, you know, the health side of things and the way that the business has grown. It started off in a definitely in my wheelhouse and it played to all of my strengths because that was how it got going.

And as it's grown, it's slowly progressed to the point where it's no longer in my wheelhouse. And I haven't had a ton of experience in running larger scale businesses of any kind. So I've done small stuff and led teams in the past. That's not the issue. But whenever it gets to the business side of how do you make bigger decisions, like I'm OK at it, but I don't think that I'm in a spot where that's definitely a thing I thrive on. So that's that's why I'm OK. This needs to get to a point where someone else can handle pieces of that. I can help set a little direction, but then the day-to-day side of that definitely doesn't fit me. So I'm, I've at least recognized that and I'm willing to make that move.

Like I'm, I'm not afraid to go do some experiments, but at the same time, to go do some experiments. But at the same time, and I keep saying stability, but, you know, there is another piece of this in that, you know, when we do web development, I do a lot of large scale websites. But at the same level, like there is another level that I would like to grow into in the realm of building websites. And that's a level that I'm very intrigued by and have been for a long time. That level is one that I'm trying to find and trying to learn more about. And I'm not going to do that on my own time because I don't know it. Like I got to find somebody that can help me learn that. And I just know that finding another team that's already had the success at it can be one that I can jump into, learn that, help them along the way because of the skills that I have. And we can work collaboratively

together to build something. So that's what I'm kind of looking for as a secondary to this is that, you know, I'm trying to keep Pro Course operating by, you know, delegating things to people and de-stress, but trying to take myself to the next level at the same time. So it's multifaceted. There's a lot of different factors at play here. And I haven't even gotten into, and probably shouldn't, the whole how my wife feels about this. We're not going to go there, but she has a lot of feelings about this as well. So there's a lot of aspects to it. And that's why I say it's multifaceted. There's a lot going on. And it all just seems to make sense. I've played around with a lot of different scenarios.

I could bring these people on and then I could be going and building the stuff that I find fun and interesting for the business. Maybe that would work. That could be a way to do that. But that's not an experiment I'm comfortable doing right now. But building that system and then joining a company, it solves a lot of the issues that I've been playing around with in my head that I've been dealing with. And it just seems to make sense. Like it's, it's not a popular opinion based on the people I've talked to about it. But whenever you start to explain all the details to it, you know, most people come around and say, yeah, that's probably the right move. But again, it's, it's opposite of what we see as like the dream job of, you know, let me go

run my own business. This is kind of anti that at the moment. Yeah, well, it's interesting because a lot of people, I think you're right, will view going back to work for a company as like a concession or, oh, you couldn't make it, you know, but that's not the way I would argue that you should view a situation like that. I think the important thing, and you've definitely got it based on what you just said, is the growth mindset. So maybe, like you said, going and joining a company is the thing that helps you develop your skills to the next level so that you can try this again in the future. I mean, I was looking at an email from a free

agents listener just yesterday, and they had mentioned, you know, I tried it once, from a free agents listener just yesterday. And they had mentioned, I tried it once, didn't really work. So any advice before I try it again? There's nothing wrong with failing at something. And I would argue even that you didn't necessarily fail. But even if you did, going back and saying,

okay, let's regroup and let's figure out a different way to attack this problem. As long as you have that mindset, it doesn't really matter how many times you fail it's kind of like thomas edison in the light bulb you just figure out 9999 ways that it doesn't work before you find the one that does yeah yeah yeah because this isn't a like i you know a couple people have said well does the is the business failed like well no because otherwise i would have sold it to the people that offered to buy it. Right.

And I haven't. As it stands today, it provides the income we need. To me, I would consider that a success. But at the same time, maintaining that success, what it takes to do that pulls enough from me in a way that I don't thrive. And that's what I'm trying to solve. So it is a successful business. I'm not relinquishing it. I'm just changing my involvement in it so that I can step away from it from a day-to-day operations stance. So I don't consider it a failure in that sense. This episode of The Free Agents is brought to you by Squarespace.

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practice, and I can't be happier. Since I made the switch to Squarespace, I haven't had to spend any time dealing with the fussiness of a website. They take care of all of that for you. I just focus my time on making content, and that's where I want to spend my time. Squarespace plans start at just $12 a month, but you can start a trial with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com slash free agents. And when you decide to sign up, use offer code free agents, that's one word,

to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and to show your support for the free agents. We really appreciate that. Once again, that's squarespace.com slash free agents with the code free agents, one word there, to get 10% off your first purchase. Thank you, Squarespace, for your support of the free agents. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. Joe, one of the things we often talk about is, you know, when do you get help and where do you get help? And the common wisdom is, you know, the stuff that you are not good at, you hand off the stuff that you are good at, but you don't enjoy, you hand off. Listening to your story, it sounds to me like you built yourself a trap. You built a company

that pushed you into a corner where you're not doing the stuff you really want to be doing at all. Kind of, yeah. You could say that. That's been part of the conversation. And so here's how I got where I'm at with that is I have always gone after some of these cool projects, at least what I think are cool, and going and building on them so that I can figure out how they work

and they do something that I want them to do. And in the process, I realized I could do that for other people too. And when I first started doing that, it was very interesting to take their ideas and then work at it to help that become something that was real. And I always enjoy that. Even today, as much as I'm worn out from doing development right now, if I sat down with a new project to start working on it tonight, if I allowed myself, I could just sit and develop that until it was like one in the morning because I was so interested in it. I could do that today. But I have worked myself into a position now where we're not off building these fun projects for our own, like for ProCourse. We're not building things for ProCourse, we're building it for other people. And when you change the ownership of who you're building it for, to me, in my mind,

it's very different. You know, some people can make the translation and it's fine. I'm just not one that does that. I didn't know that until, you know, we were about, I was about a year into the freelance on discourse before I fully connected that, which is why I started building a few side projects even within that business so that I could keep that interest going. Well, then it got to be like, I couldn't keep up with the client work that was coming in. So I hired help to help me get it done, which meant that they were doing the development, which at that point I was getting tired of. So it felt like a natural progression of, okay, well, I'm not thriving off of like,

I'm not really enjoying that development work for those clients now. So let me bring somebody else on so that they can do it. Great. And that worked for a while. But that then meant that I was doing only clients communications and the customer side of it. And that was great for a while. But then now I've gotten exhausted with that piece because, again, that's not right in my strength zone. And on top of that, a piece that's highly motivating to me. So that gets to be tiring, which is why now I'm looking at a salesperson to come on and take that as well. So yeah, you're right. Absolutely. Like this started off as a thing where I was really enjoying it, but have slowly as it's grown,

it's taking me away from the pieces that I loved doing and slowly pushed myself into a spot where I'm doing only the things that completely drain me. I had a similar experience with woodworking. I like to make furniture. And years ago, I put some stuff into like a gallery showing locally. And then several people contacted me. They wanted me to commission pieces for them. And I love woodworking.

And then the first time I made something for someone else, I realized I hated woodworking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it's,

I guess this is a lesson learned. And, um, now how do you feel going forward? I mean, what's your mental state about all this? I mean, I understand you,

you feel like in some ways it is at some level you feel like, oh, I failed at this, but then it sounds to me like you're really taking a much healthier attitude towards it. I hope so. I mean, that's the goal. I can say, depending on when you catch me in the day, there are some points where I feel like I should have built this differently and I could still make it work.

There's always that second guessing piece in the back of my head. Like there's always that second guessing piece in the back of my head. But at the same, you know, in the same scenario, there's also this piece of, you know, this is the right move. I'm going to have to hustle here in the next six weeks because I'm trying to bring somebody on. I'm trying to onboard.

I'm trying to apply and do interviews and I'm trying to maintain client conversations. I'm trying to catch up on developers. I'm like, there's a lot of pieces to this, uh, trying to transition. So, you know, on top of this exhaustion state, I actually have to increase hours and work more to try to keep up with it so that I can make that, uh, that move possible. But, and that doesn't help with, you know, the, the different negative feelings that you can have in the scenario. But if I stop and think about what's going on and objectively, I realized this is exactly what I should be doing. Like, this is definitely the

road I need to be on. And this is primarily what I need to be spending my time on. Definitely the important thing to be working on. So when I stop and think about it, yes, I'm doing the right thing and I am confident in that and I'm very happy about that. So I think once I get through this transitional period, it'll be a pretty big de-stress scenario. I'm probably going to take a week and a half off and just sleep. I'm already kind of planning that to some extent. So I'm trying to plan all those scenarios out such that I can get a break between the positions. So yes, it's definitely a thing where you have to, at least for me,

I have to make sure that I'm thinking about it the right way. It's the right move. I'm quite confident in that. I just need to remember that at the times when I'm a little weak in the scenario. You mentioned when you have time to think about it, you recognize that this is the right thing to do. And I want to call out that as a very important point, because a lot of times, free agents especially, I would say where there's always one more thing that you could do,

one more thing you quote unquote should be working on, you can get so caught up in the next thing on the task list that you don't even get that little bit of distance to see the forest through the trees. You know, we talked about the personal retreats and the sabbaticals at the beginning of the episode. And you don't necessarily need to take an entire day off to do that. But I do think that carving out the time to think about things and letting your brain just sort through the stuff, just giving it the space to do that so you can feel good about the decision that you're making. That's something that's very important. And it sounds like you've done that. So I would argue that puts you on a better path. And that's kind of what gives you the confidence to say, yeah, this is the right thing. And this

is not a step backwards, but this is setting my setback is the setup for my, my comeback. Yeah. I've spent a number of, like I do my weekly reviews to use the GTD thing. Um, but I, I've tried to keep those coming up. I was on a phone call with, uh, uh, a good friend yesterday morning. Um, you know, as we're recording this of course but you know whenever we were talking about it like okay the the more stressed and overwhelmed i get the more time i spend in my task manager you know screw all the people that tell me i'm not supposed to live in my task manager like i'm living in my task manager forget that it's just the way i'm gonna be right now but it's in a very different way than what they mean, because it's not that I am constantly working with the tool and trying to get the right, you know, so how do I see the right thing? That's not it. It's more, I'm trying to make sure that I have the right projects and the right tasks for today in line.

because of all the fires and stuff that happened throughout the day, yes, I can plan what I want to do ahead of time. But by 10 a.m., the rest of the day's plan may need to have been changed because of client A decided that that feature didn't need added or client B finally paid their deposit. So now we've got that one as a go. Those things happen midday. So I still put together my plan, but I know it's going to fall apart most days. But it at least gives me something to start with. But, you know, even with that, I have to have points where I step back from it. You know, we talked about the shutdown thing. That's one point where I can do that on a daily basis.

But I'm not usually stepping up high enough during that process. But it's usually like on a Sunday afternoon when I can take an hour and a half most Sundays, do the weekly review. I don't like doing it on Sundays, but this is kind of where it has to fall right now. But I'll try to take a step back, reevaluate all the projects I have going on, make sure that they fit into where I want to be going in my broader life in general. I try to do that on a weekly basis. It doesn't always work because I'm not perfect. Most people aren't. I hope, you know, if you think you are perfect, let's talk. But, you know, that's what I try to do. I try to separate on a Sunday afternoon to think about

it at a different level. But honestly, I think, Mike, you know, it's an interesting question because frankly, one of the ways that I do this the most, so I do the IT thing at church. It's about a 10-minute drive to get to our church. I make sure that I don't turn on a podcast. I don't turn on the radio and I don't have anything on at all. It's just silence. That point in time right there is where I do most of my higher level thinking because I'm making that trip, you know, four or five times in a week. So that right there is where I spend a lot of my time thinking at a higher level. It just works. You know, you don't have to have something on in the background all the time you know don't listen to me very long if that if you love listening to lots of podcasts

no no but you make a great point and and honestly we do need time for introspection and that is one of the fears in today's world because there's so many things asking for your attention all the time that it's it's very difficult for some people to find that time. Something that's really encouraging to me is your optimism about all of this. It seems to me like you kind of, you have a new plan and now you're happily executing it. And I think that's a really good sign you're on the right track. No, thanks for the vote of confidence. Like, I don't know where I'm going. I haven't nailed down what company to, some of which I haven't even figured out where to apply in some cases. But, you know, to me, I feel a lot better when I know what the path is. I tend to struggle when there's an

unknown. Okay, well, what's going on today? I don't know. I'd rather know what's going on in two weeks. Like, that's, you know, what's the next two weeks look like? That's what I'm shooting for. Uh, and then, you know, taking step backs, even from that, it's like, okay, what's the next six months look like? That's, that's very helpful for me. So as long as I have that plan, that's what helps me out with that. Uh, so I, I hope I'm optimistic on it. Uh, I have a lot of, uh, you know, I guess expectations for the process. I work in the tech space. So a lot of the companies that I tend to follow or have an interest in joining have the exact same type of culture that I've been trying to build in my own company. So like that should be a pretty easy fit there. So anyway, yeah, I hope it's something that I'm not,

I try not to focus on the negative sides of it as much because there's definitely a lot of work that needs done and it's easy to get bogged down in that. But if I continue thinking about the positive outcome that comes with it, to me, that's the part I should be focusing on. Well, I would argue you've done a lot of things right. And I forget which book it was that we covered, but we talked about the difference between failure and fall year. And just because you, you fell doesn't mean that, that you're a failure. Uh, you just have to keep getting back up, figuring things out, figure out what the next step is. And, uh, I think it's, it's kind of interesting because the last couple guest episodes, you know, Sean McCabe was on here

talking about how he was all stressed out and burning out. And you're sharing about how like, had to readjust some things because it didn't go exactly the way that you thought it was going to. But I think that this is this is gold for a lot of free agents, because a lot of people have this picture of like, well, I'm just gonna do this, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. And then I'm going to achieve my ideal future, and everything's gonna be perfect. But success is never that straight line. There's a lot of course correction along the way. And it's refreshing, I think, for people to hear somebody who like you, you know, you've done a lot, right? Maybe you've made a few mistakes, but it doesn't define you. And you just keep going and you figure out the next thing.

And you achieve success, even if it's not exactly what you pictured when you started. That gives a lot of other people a lot of hope. At least that's my hope. You're listening to this and you're thinking about, well, I want to become a free agent maybe, but I don't know exactly what that looks like and I don't know exactly how to do it. Neither do we. We've been doing it for a while.

That's okay. It's a thing that you figure out every day when you wake up. And Job, we can't wait to see your next act with that result in i know it's going to be something amazing and uh maybe we'll even hear from you again on the free agents yeah for sure well it's a journey and i hope this has been helpful to people who are listening because you know if there's a lot of free agents listening like this i brought this up to my wife especially you know mike when you texted me and said, Hey, you want to be on the show, you know, like in three days, two days, like, uh, sure. Like, great. And I mentioned it to my wife and told her she doesn't, she'd never heard of free agents before, but I, I mentioned the show

and you know, the, the concept of it. She's like, people need to hear your story. Like people need to know about this. So I hope it's been helpful. That's, that's my hope. Yeah. And honestly that when I knew you were making this change, I said, we've got to get Joe on soon because I think this is something that we all think about. And it's something that, especially if you're contemplating going out on your own, it's something you need to keep in mind. So anyway, we've got some links in the show notes so you can go find the great stuff Joe makes and does. And thank you so much for coming on the show, Joe. Are there any particular links we should point people at?

I don't think anything specific. I mean, if you want to find me, joebuley.com is an easy way to do it. But yeah, I appreciate you taking the time and letting me join the show. All right. Thanks to our sponsors, Squarespace and Timing. And we'll see you all in two weeks.