Focused - 63: Lessons Learned

Episode Date: December 26, 2018

Mike and David wrap up the Free Agents run with a discussion of depression and Free Agency and David has some overall thoughts on free agency as they transition the show to "Focused".

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 David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Excellent. It's weird. This is the last episode of Free Agents.

We talked about it in our last episode. We are going to wrap up Free Agents today, but we're going to continue the show and this feed with a new show called Focused, which is going to be more productivity based. We kind of explained it in more detail back on episode 62, but we'd like to broaden the show a little bit to not just talk about people that are working for themselves because we discovered so many people listening to the show are not working for themselves. And it is a little bit of a different flavor on productivity. And I think we've got some really great ideas, but it's a little also sad, you know, finishing up free agents today. Yeah, the podcast formerly known as free agents. There we go. There we go. But we've got some good content for today. And we've got even better content starting in two weeks with a new show. So please give the new show a try as it hits your

feed. Don't be shocked when you see different artwork next time that says focused instead of free agents. And I guess we should get started talking about free agents. Yeah, I am really excited, by the way, about some of the new stuff we're going to be able to cover in the focused show, how that's going to expand what we're able to talk about on the show. And also, I think just looking through the free agents forums, we talked about this a little bit last time, but a lot of people who listen to the show really don't identify as free agents. And so I think there's a lot of people who maybe are just don't even tune in because they see the name free agents.

So I'm excited about being able to help a bunch of other people. On the topic of helping people, by the way, I'll throw out another plug for a goal setting workshop that I'm doing on January 5th, which is a Saturday at 12 p.m. Central Time. Link will be in the show notes if you want to sign up. I think space is limited based on my webinar software, but I just want to help as many people as possible not be part of the 92% that aren't going to achieve their New Year's resolutions. So that's going to be free. Really? 8% of people actually achieve their New Year's resolutions? That's a bigger number than I expected. I know. Well, obviously the statistics, you got to take them with a grain of salt. You can make them say just about anything you want.

But the main idea is that there's a lot of people who set goals and never achieve them. So I want to help people not be a statistic. Yeah. I think that's going to be a great seminar. It's the first Saturday in January. So no excuse. Yep. Love to see you on there. All right. So, um, uh, so we're very excited about this change and we have put a lot of time and effort. It was not a small decision to, uh, to change things up a little bit, but I think we're gonna have some great content for you. Uh, but that made this show special in my mind because I wanted to kind of wrap up today. There's a big thread in the free agents forums about depression and free agency. We want to cover that and talk, give that some,

some time. And also I just kind of want to talk about, because as we're finishing this show up, I'm hitting my four years now as a free agent and lessons learned and thoughts about that. So we've got some good stuff to cover today. And it starts with this really touching post in the forum about free agency and depression. Yeah, this is definitely going to pull on your heartstrings. You know, most of the stuff in the forums, somebody shares something that I consider really helpful and a couple people will like it. This one's got 28 different likes. And I won't get personal with this, but somebody basically went in here and bared their soul. And it was really cool to see the response. Man, we have some awesome listeners to this post. And really, the thing that comes out of this

is that when you are a freelancer specifically, but if you could probably apply this in a lot of different ways. Freelancing, I think typically you're the person who's trying to make something work. As a free agent, you're the person who is ultimately responsible for whether there is food on your table. And so that's a lot of pressure. And everybody deals with that pressure a little bit differently, but we've all found ourselves in a dark place. You were asking me before we recorded, David, if I've ever dealt with depression. And I don't think I've formally dealt with it. I've never been prescribed anything like that, but I've definitely been in that place and been on that path. And I told you there have been

several people throughout the course of my career who have said the right thing to me at the right time. And that has been enough to pull me out of it and put me back on the right path. But I can totally see how if you don't have anybody in your world who is able to do that sort of thing, how this can be a definitely very negative downward spiral. And I think it's something that a lot of people will brush under the rug when it comes to free agency and productivity. We like to see the pictures of success, the person who stepped out there and made something happen and look how successful they are now, whatever that success looks like for you personally. But it's not always like that. Success is never a straight journey. And there's a lot of things that are going to come up along the way. And there's a lot of times when you're going to question to yourself, is this really worth it? Or can I even do this? Well, I think the other thing is even success isn't necessarily enough to beat off the demons. And I'll tell you, the one thing I'm hesitant about covering this on the show is like, Mike,

I've never faced the type of depression that I'm reading about in the forum. And some of our, some of these people are my friends that I know personally, and some of them I know are listeners and they're dealing with, with depression. That is, you know, that it really needs medical treatment. It needs a lot of help.

And I've just never, I've been lucky enough that, you know, among my many problems, that's not one of them. And I have several friends that have dealt with it though. And I've just never, I've been lucky enough that, you know, among my many problems, that's not one of them. And I have several friends that have dealt with it, though. And I haven't experienced it to the level that they have that darkness. And so I don't want to be little, I don't want covering this on the show. And talking about how we deal with it to in any way discourage someone

from getting professional help if you're really facing something you know i and i so i i have a a more limited experience with with you know these dark feelings than than some of the people i'm reading about here and i i'm certainly not trying to say this is how you should solve these problems but but i do think you know on the in terms of free agency, I think free agency can be a trigger for these things because it's all on you. And I think it's easy to let it drag you down. And if you're going to decide to go out on your own, and this is something you've dealt with in the past, or you know deep down that it's something that you've got to deal with, I'm not saying it should prevent you from becoming a free agent, but I think you should recognize that and make sure you have a

plan to deal with it. Definitely. And I also want to address something that you just said, because I've fallen into this trap where you compare yourself to somebody else and you say, I don't have it as bad as them, so I should just shut up about my own problems. That's not healthy either. So you don't necessarily have to be dealing with a truly medical issue. And I'm glad that you called that out too, because I don't want this to come across as we know everything about this topic or we're giving any sort of medical device. I'm not a doctor. You're not a doctor. And so there are definitely things that we know nothing about that they are much better to help with those problems than we are. But I do want to call this out too, because there are going to be, this is something that people tend to think, oh, it's not that big a deal. It's not that big a deal. And then all of a sudden, it is a really big deal. And regardless of where you find yourself on the spectrum of how much help you need. on the spectrum of how much help you need. Let me see who said this. It was TJ who said that admitting that you need help is a sign of strength, not weakness. Recognizing that you cannot do this

all by yourself. So we talked about free agency and how the belief is that if it's going to be, it's up to me. I'm the one who's responsible for putting bread on my table, but maybe I can't do it all. Maybe I need some help. Maybe I need somebody who can show me this is the real giant that you are facing. And these are the tools that you need in order to overcome it. And that is going to be different for everybody's situation. But those obstacles are very real. And I like that idea of the giant, I think personifying it, making it a villain, like that makes it a lot more real and a lot more palatable to talk about. It's not just, oh, this issue, this mental thing that I'm having to deal with. No, this is something that is coming

against you. And admitting that you maybe don't have everything that it takes, that's not necessarily a bad thing. You can maybe develop the skills that you need to get to the point where you can take down that giant, or maybe you can have somebody who can point out this is the thing that you need to fix and to get in alignment, whether that's medical or not. But recognizing that there are other people who are facing similar things, who know maybe more than you do, and learning from their experience, that is a sign of wisdom. And I think that that's an essential success skill. Yeah. And I like that, you know, the world today, there's not a stigma attached to this.

You can get help. You can talk to your friends about it. I would say even in my lifetime, this has got much better. I remember when I was a kid in the 70s, we knew someone who was dealing with depression. And people, there was a certain stigma attached to it. And I don't think that's true anymore. I don't know if you ever watched the Harry Potter series, Mike, but I read this article once where they interviewed Joe Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. And she was talking about the Dementor characters.

And the Dementors are these characters that basically suck all the happiness out of the room. They just send you to the worst memories that you have, and they stick you in them. And it's like this morass you get caught in. And they visualize it very well in the books. Less well in the movies, but it's still there. And in her mind, because she dealt with depression at one point, and she told this journalist that the dementors in her mind were the embodiment of depression. And it really did a great job for me of kind of visualizing how hard it can be to deal with these things.

If you get caught in that, how do you get out of it? I've not read the books. I like the description of that character, though. I think it speaks to something in the original post where you can have on the surface, a lot of things can be going right, but you can still find yourself in that dark place where all the happiness and all the joy that should be there is gone. And all of a sudden you wake up, quote unquote, all of a sudden, you know, and you ask yourself, how did I get here? Why don't I enjoy this thing that maybe this was my dream. I became a free agent. I'm able to do all the

things that I've always wanted to do. And yet I still feel this heaviness. I still feel depressed. I still feel dark. Like that's not the way it's supposed to be. And you can get so consumed with this is the next thing I got to do. I got to wrap up this project that you don't even notice that you're feeling those things. That's one of the reasons that I think journaling is so valuable because it makes you, if you create a habit out of it, it makes you take stock of where you're at every single day. And I've, my own experience, when I ask my question, how am I feeling? I may not even realize that I'm upset until I ask that question. And then I'm like, Hey, I'm really upset. Why am I so upset? And you untangle those things and you establish, well, this is the root cause of this, and then you can deal with it. But it's so easy just to get sucked up in that

whirlwind and you don't even think about it until all of a sudden you're in this place where, oh my gosh, the ceiling's coming down. What do I do now? Yeah. So I think there's a potential trigger for depression and the effort of becoming a free agent or becoming a successful free agent. I think there's another trigger point when you are a successful free agent and you look back and it's not enough and the demons are still there. And I think there's just a lot of ways that this stuff can surface and we should all be aware of it as we head into this. Now, granted, I'm lucky enough that I haven't had to deal with it to the extent some of our listeners have in the post.

I can tell you I still feel this sometimes. And there are days where I feel down and I feel like a fraud and all these other things that we all have. But even beyond that, sometimes I just feel down and I don't even know why. And I think we all have that. I can tell you how I deal with it. Maybe Mike, we should just share kind of how we grant granted. We don't have, we've been lucky enough that we haven't faced it as bad as some of our listeners have, but how do we deal with it in our free agency when we see it?

Sure. Well, I kind of mentioned the journaling thing for me really helps a lot. And then another aspect of journaling that has had a profound impact in my life is the power of gratitude. I don't know all of the science behind this, but I can say that practicing gratitude definitely changes my state. And it's fairly instant and seems pretty magical when it happens. Let me give you an example. One of the things that I do is my wife and I try to have our

family meeting every week. And as part of the family meeting, we verbally express gratitude to each other and say, I am thankful to you for this specific thing. Sounds super cheesy, okay? Yeah. You know what? I have to say, Mike, the whole family meeting thing, every time you talk to me about it, I feel like it's like, is that real? Does this guy really do that?

But having met you, I absolutely believe it. And it probably works for you. So there you go. Yeah. Well, I have to confess here publicly, I guess. I'm kind of in this weird stage where I'm trying to get this next thing off the ground. And so I've fallen off the wagon a little bit. We're going to talk about some of those struggles in a little bit here. But up until that point, yeah, it was every single week. But getting back to the gratitude

thing, I'll just paint this picture because I'm sure other listeners have been in this place where your significant other, your spouse, the person that you live with, can make you the happiest and can also make you the angriest. We judge ourselves by our intentions, but we tend to judge others by their actions. And so when somebody close to you does something that you don't like, you tend to project this meaning behind the action. And a lot of times that's not really the case. But so I'll just pick on myself for now. And listeners, you can apply this to yourself if this applies to you too, where you have your significant other, your spouse, and they've done something and it's made you upset. And if you don't deal with it, you brood on this thing,

and then they do something else, and they on this thing and then they do something else and they do something else and they do something else. And pretty soon you're just furious at this person. And I can tell you that even in that state, when you verbally express gratitude and you have to pick something positive that they have done in the last week, that completely changes the atmosphere almost instantly. And the verbalization of it is really the key part. So I do actually journal in day one, my gratitude every single night. And a lot of times it is for something that my wife has done or who she did, not even what she's done. I mean, that's not the thing that I'm grateful for. I'm grateful for who she is. But when you physically say something, it has this power behind it where just the fact that it's leaving your lips

and it's audible now, it's like that's enough for your brain to actually believe it. And so no matter how cranky or agitated I happen to be before I express this gratitude, like as soon as I express it, like it completely changes the atmosphere in the room. So that power of confession, obviously that's applying to gratitude with my relationship. But that's also how I deal with some of this depression stuff. Because I have these, not that I say them every day, but I have thought through these positive confessions about who I am, what am I here for? I've talked about my life theme,

you know, that sort of stuff. And I do confess that stuff. Occasionally, I have them written down. And when I do, it reminds me and it kind of snaps my mind and my body out of that negative place. And it's like, no, this is the reason that you're here. This is the reason that you're doing these things. This is the good that's going to come of this. So that's one of the ways that I deal with it. Yeah, I, you know, I've got a couple ways, and I'm just going to call it feeling blue. I'm really not, I don't know, I'm going to make somebody mad. I knew when we talked about this. But I'm trying to say, look, I feel like I haven't dealt with this as badly as some people have, but I do occasionally feel down. And some of the things I do is I've had

this lifelong meditation practice. I was looking, I think I started meditating when I was a freshman in college. So that was 1987. So that's 31 years now I've been doing it. And it allows me to be very, very comfortable with my brain and just kind of observing thoughts that go through my head and realizing that most of them are not valid. That's the thing you don't realize is the stuff that goes through your brain quite often is hogwash. You know, it's stuff that your brain is a rebellious organ, as somebody once told me. But then picking that apart, you know, and I think that that meditation practice has given me the ability. And sometimes I will literally just go sit if I suddenly found myself feeling down and I'm not sure why. I'll just kind of sit and observe what's going on in my head and figure it out. And often there's an underlying emotion involved. For a lot of people,

it's anger. For me, it's generally fear. I guess we're all different, right? But, uh, when I get down to the bottom, I'm afraid of, you know, not getting, not being able to financially support my family or, or, you know, I'm afraid of something usually at the, whenever I'm feeling down. And then once I start picking that apart and really getting the basis of it and deciding whether it's a rational fear or not. And if it's a rational fear, uh, my brain immediately starts saying, okay, how do I fix it? How do I prevent it? If it's an irrational fear, I do, I have a better chance of letting it go. I'm not saying I do every time, but, um, but just kind of like sitting down with whatever it is. That's, that is, um, that's got me spinning out of control. That's, that's what helps. Um, sometimes it is anger and sometimes it's other stuff, but often for me

personally, it's fear at the, at the, at the ground of all of it. Yeah. Related to that, I'll say that having a support group, having people that you can go to when you are feeling a certain way is, uh, there's a phenomenal value in that. It does a couple of different things, depending on the specifics of your situation. Number one, I've found that if I find myself in a bad place and I'm upset about all these things that have happened, just having people who express some empathy and say, you know what, we're here for you if you need it. Just the fact that they're willing to listen, that's very comforting. Other times, they are able to help me see things the right way. I've got a group of people that I meet about once a month.

As we're recording this, I met with them this morning. We call it a mastermind group. And mastermind maybe sounds like a crazy title, but it's basically just a bunch of people that we've agreed to let each other hold us accountable to what we say we're going to do. We've given them permission to speak into our lives and correct things that we're not seeing, right? So you can't see sometimes your own blind spots. And you might be looking at your situation a certain way and feeling a certain way. And that's valid. That feeling is valid. You are feeling that feeling and you don't have to make a judgment about that feeling per se. But that feeling may be based on an improper view of the situation. So I've been in those meetings too where I've been sharing, you know, I've been feeling this and

I'm frustrated with that. And then they say, well, you're kind of doing this to yourself because you could do this other thing, but you continue to do this thing. And that takes, by the way, that takes a lot of courage to be willing to say that I maybe am doing things wrong, but that's also that personal responsibility and taking ownership and control. That's a big thing is the control. That's really a limiting belief that needs to be overcome for a lot of you. And again, this isn't, I'm not dealing with this at the level of some other people. So I'm making it sound maybe way too simple. But there is an element to that that is really empowering. Maybe you can't control all the specifics of your situation. That's okay. Figure out what you can control. I did that for Bookworm one time. I made a list of the things that I couldn't control, and I made a list of the things that I could control. surprise as I went through it, there were a lot of things on that can control list that ended up being a lot longer than I thought it was going to be. And when you give yourself permission to take control of whatever is within your sphere of influence, whatever you have the ability to

control, that can give you a little bit of peace and calm that, you know, you're not just along for the ride and at the whims of whatever is going to be happening to you. Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, uh, I, uh, I think having friends you can call when you're feeling down is, is so important and, and the right kinds of friends. Um, I've always, whenever I meet people in my life that are up, there's two, you know, there's two kinds of people that you meet quite often. I mean, there's the kind that are uplifting that always are looking to help you or just, you know, they just want to, I'll just use that are uplifting that always are looking to help you or just, you know, they just want to.

I'll just use the word uplifting and I think you'll know what I'm talking about. And then there's the kinds of people that look at everything and they are, you know, the half empty crowd. And I feel like when I get around the half empty crowd, it does. I'm susceptible to that, to getting caught up in it. I'm susceptible to that, to getting caught up in it. So I very much try to really put that pedal down on spending time with people who are uplifting and avoid those who are not. And, you know, I'm not, you know, just for my own benefit. And so when I'm feeling down, I always make sure to talk to friends because I really, I feel like my friends are pretty self-selected group of uplifting people. I mean, Mike and I have had

calls with each other where we're not talking about show business or careers or anything. We just want to talk. And I feel like we always kind of bring each other up and that's, that's, that's a great way to help you get past the more mild version of what we're talking about here. And, um, and then the second one I would say is, you know, change of scenery or change of focus. Uh, one of the reasons I love having my saxophones in the room with me is when I am getting frustrated and angry or just losing focus, changing to creating in some other way really helps me kind of like blow the cobwebs out and then get back to work

or even just go out and take a walk or go to the park and just do something to change your, your either your location or your focus to something else. Hopefully creative, I think, is actually what helps me. Like if I just go watch TV, it doesn't solve my problem. I just, I can't, I continue to dwell on my, on my mood while the TV and I don't pay attention to the TV. mood while the TV and I don't pay attention to the TV. You know, a Zen teacher told me once, you know, they were talking about eating and how like, can you just focus on eating like a delicious meal and enjoy the taste of the meal? Or are you actually eating your problems? Are you sitting there thinking about your problems, sticking delicious food in your mouth that

you don't even appreciate? So, so I really try to go create something else. And quite often, that helps me get out too. So like I said, I don't have any answers to all this stuff. I really try to go create something else. And quite often that helps me get out too. So like I said, I don't have any answers to all this stuff. I really think if you're really facing demons, you know, get some help. But as a free agent, this is something we all need to be aware of. And we all need to have a plan for. Yeah. And I do want to go back to one specific point, which is the people that you surround yourself

with. So one of the people in that thread mentioned that it was actually their significant other that was a source of the negativity and they went through divorce proceedings and things got a whole lot better. And that's an unfortunate situation on a lot of different levels, but it's also a positive thing in that particular scenario. And it illustrates the point that I want to make. You have control about who you allow to speak into your life. Maybe not everybody, but there are people that you can select. I want them to speak into my life. And there are other people who you need to choose. I'm not going to let them

speak into my life. Jim Rohn one time said to ask yourself a couple of different questions regarding the company that you keep. Number one, who are the people that are speaking into my life? Number two, what effect is that having on me? And number three, is that okay? So if there's people who are speaking negativity into your life, you have to get to the point where that's not okay anymore. And maybe you grew up with them. Maybe you went to high school with them. Maybe you're married to them. And in some situations, you know, you have to be willing to make a tough decision and say, this is not okay anymore. And when you eliminate the source of a lot of negativity, that for me has had a profound effect. Again, I haven't dealt with this stuff to the level of some people, but I do know that just choosing the people that you're going to allow to speak into your life and not allowing other people to have a platform anymore can make a significant difference. Remove the dementors.

I mean, remove the dementors. Yeah. And also, I mean, this whole thread is in the free agents forum. So if you're looking for a place to surround yourself with good people who can speak positivity into your life, there are so many options. This is a great place to do it, but there's a lot of other places that you could go to online. Just because you are in a physical situation doesn't mean that you have to stay there. You know, I'm in Appleton, Wisconsin. I'm not connected with anybody in the online productivity space. I never even met you, David, until you came to MacStock this last summer. But because of the tools that are available to us, you can find different communities and different groups of people who are going to speak the right words over you and encourage you.

And you just got to look for those groups of people. over you and encourage you. And you just got to look for those groups of people. Actually, to me, that's one of my fundamental tenets as a parent is like in dinner conversations, I'm always hammering away at that with my kids. And I'm very honest with them. I'm like, you know, the people, I talk about friends and I say, well, this is the friend that I like because he or she always helps me, you know, see my best self and helps uplift me. And then I've told them about people that enter my life that are DIM mentors and why I try to get them out of my life because I just can't have that. And I hope without lecturing the kids, just kind of telling them how I'm dealing with it. And I'm hoping that it sinks in with them as they go through their lives.

I'm just going to finish this up on one last point that was made in the thread I thought was great by Tim. He said, being a work-focused podcast and a forum, I can't reiterate that point enough. The quest for productivity is futile if your body and mind won't come with you. So that's why we thought this was important enough to put in the show. And I hope, I wish you all the best of luck in dealing with this stuff and would tell you you're not alone. And there's a lot of us out there that would love to help support you. Um,

so just hang in there and do not let this be a barrier to becoming a free agent. Just make sure you have a plan. Yep. Protect the golden goose. All right. Just take a break for our first sponsor. Yeah. All right. Just take a break for our first sponsor. Yeah.

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make your next move, make your next website. So at the beginning of the show, we talked about the fact that we're going to transition the show to a little bit more broad focus and the new title focused. But I thought, you know, I'd like to take today to kind of talk a little bit about the free agent journey and just some thoughts I had on it. You know, I feel like as we're wrapping up free agents, I'd like to really focus on being a free agent a bit on this last show. And lessons learned and, and just thoughts that I've had. And, and Mike, please feel free to hammer in here as you hear things. I'm heading into four years now. It's been almost four years that I've been, since I stuck it to the man and left in February, you know, just a couple of months from now,

it will, will be four years. And I wanted to talk a little bit about lessons learned and thoughts about it. And some of the stuff we've talked about over the course of the show, but I thought it's worth just kind of recapping some of this stuff. And maybe even a few points here are new. Can I go off script here for a second and just ask you, what is the biggest surprise for you from now, from when you started the journey four years ago? when from now from when you started the journey four years ago? For me, I think the biggest surprise is, is that it worked. And how happy I am. I mean, I, I just, you know, in my mind, I felt like there's no way this is ever going to actually work out. And I think that was me being kind of too negative about it. But I had a lot of fear coming into it. You know, I, as I talked to Jason,

we talked about our origin stories many episodes ago. My parents were depression era. They, my dad worked for a company until they decided they didn't need them anymore. And, you know, they got sick and died. So it really didn't, you know, just, it's just that, that whole idea for me growing up was no, you, you go, you get a job for somebody, and you work until you're done. And that's what you do. And you be just great at it. So they keep you. And the thought of going out on my own wasn't really something that was emphasized ever.

So it took me a while to get over that. And my biggest surprise is how easily I adapted to it and how much fun I'm having. Yeah, it's great to hear you say that because as we've talked about in the last episode, I'm kind of at a different place in my own free agent journey. I am a now free agent for reals. And it's encouraging to hear that four years into it, you know, things are better than you maybe pictured them when you started. It's a lot of fun for me right now because I'm cranking on this quote unquote passion project, something that I really believe in. But kind of the question in the back of my mind is once this thing is launched, am I going to continue to enjoy doing this or am I going to

start to view this as the job? Yeah. And also the other question is, will this pay the bills, right? I mean, you have five kids, you got obligations. And right now you're not worried about whether it makes money because you just want to make it great. But at some point, you got to pay the bills. And I'm sure, at least for me, that's always an issue. Yeah, a lot of pressure there for sure. Yeah, no kidding. So what are some of the big lessons that you've learned from being a free agent? Well, the first one that I realized, and I don't know why it didn't occur to me, but I spent several years kind of thinking and moving myself into a position to become a free

agent. And that was such a big goal that I thought once I achieved that, then that was the end of that journey. And what you realize once you actually get out on your own is that immediately after becoming a free agent, you have a new goal that is just as deep down and that is to remain a free agent. So you don't win. It's not like a finish line. You get there and you're like, I'm a free agent now. Now I can rest. Everything's great. No, actually, it's just like you just went from the sprint to the marathon and now you got to figure out how you're going to survive the marathon. Interesting. Yeah. The, uh, there's a saying that life is a marathon, which I actually have a little bit of an, an issue with cause I think life is more a, a series of, of sprints and that there's, there's rest and recovery built in there. I think viewing it as

a marathon from a certain perspective is kind of a recipe for burnout. But the point you're making definitely is valid, is that you're in this for the long haul. It's not something that you're just going to do for a little bit and then you're going to coast. You do have to continue to put forth consistent effort. Yeah, and for me at least, planning into the position where I could get out and make a living, you know, good enough living to support my family between the geek products I make and the legal work I do and find a balance that I was happy with.

Um, that was the short-term project. And once I got out on my own, I realized I also need to think long-term. I mean, thinking long-term as a free agent is just as important as thinking short-term and, you know, there's already in this four years, um, in this four years, when I started out, I did a lot of litigation. Now I do almost no litigation, which is the most lucrative work you can do for the type of lawyer I am. But,. But I gave up a big pile of money because I wanted to be able to spend more time on Mac Sparky stuff and things like this, this podcast. So I've almost completely removed that from my life. The, you know, the iBooks author book model that I had thought that I'd be using for many years, kind of fizzled, you know, Apple hasn't shown a lot of interest in it. So I had to pivot that business model to this new video line.

And I've got that done now. And just in four years, I've already seen the Apple cart get turned over several times. And now I'm thinking forward, well, can I make this go for another 20 years? And if so, how do I do that? And I feel like long-term planning and, and paying attention to what's going on around you is super important when you're on your own. You know, when you're working for somebody, you rely on someone else to do that sometimes to your detriment, but when you're on your own, you've got no excuse. It's all up to you. Yeah. Yeah. Regarding the different points

of, of crises that you, you mentioned and crisis maybe is is a bad term now since we just spent a lot of time talking about freelancing and depression. But the point being that there'll be those different points in your free agent journey when something outside your control happens. And you can either get really upset that this thing happened and view it as, oh no, the sky is falling. The thing that I was using to deliver these books, which is how I'm making my max barkey income is now gone. What am I going to do? But you can also kind of view those points, I think, as opportunity. And I'm curious, based on your experience, maybe you can speak to the iBooks thing specifically. Like, what was your thought process when something like that

happens? Do you freak out for a little while and then figure out and then say, OK, I need to figure out a way to make this work? Or do you say, well, that doesn't work anymore, there's got to be something else? Do you kind of view it as an exciting thing? Like I've always wanted to do more video and find a different model for this. And now I can because I have to. Well, I mean, there were several challenges I was facing with the book distribution model. I mean, I mean, there were several challenges I was facing with the book distribution model. I mean, people outside of countries that didn't have an active iBook store couldn't get them. So I had this really goofy PDF video bundle I would send. And Apple was taking 30% of all my income, which is a significant number. And so I looked at it as an opportunity, as I saw it.

number. And so I looked at it as an opportunity, as I saw it, you know, if they had continued to really like support it strongly, or even just, I just, you know, as Apple is so secretive about what they're going to do in the future. But I mean, there was a, it was, it wasn't just, I woke up one day and say, this isn't working anymore. I have to change it. To me, it was kind of like a very slow realization. That's the way it usually works for me. Frankly, that's how I realized I was going to become a free agent. It wasn't, I just woke up one day and said, I'm going to quit my job. It was just kind of a slow realization that I'm unhappy with pieces of this. So, you know, my general attitude when I deal with that is like, okay, let's fix it. I don't get hung up on it. And in this case, most cases, I feel like I fix things for the better.

Like giving up the litigation stuff was hard for me to accept because I knew that I would make enough money off of that, that that was like my ace in the hole. If the Max Barkey stuff failed miserably, if I'm doing litigation, I'm still making enough money to support my family. If the Max Barkey stuff doesn't do well right now with me not doing litigation, support my family. If the Max Bergesen doesn't do well right now with me not doing litigation, we got a problem. And so having the confidence to say, I can do this and it'll work was essential to me. And I'm much happier now because I honestly, the litigation was dragging me down, super time intensive, taking me away from stuff I'm passionate about. And, um, I'm not looking to become a millionaire, you know, uh, I am looking to, to take care of my family and,

and, you know, not be in a poor house, but, uh, and once I accepted, oh, wait, I am willing to give up some portion of money for happiness and to spend the years I have left doing things I really want to make for this world. It was a good move. Yeah. The tricky part I think is not knowing exactly what the cost of that happiness is going to be, especially at the beginning. I had a pretty good idea. It cut my legal income down by over 50%. Yeah. So yeah, it's a lot of money. A little bit different for me, I guess, because I'm still not sure what exactly this can look like. What does faith-based productivity being successful actually entail? And the unknown is definitely scary, especially when you've got other people who are depending on you for their livelihood. But yeah, I think that you do have

to get to the point where you're just unhappy maybe with the way things are. Maybe unhappy is the wrong term there, but you're kind of dissatisfied. You believe that there's more to this than what you've seen. And so even if you can't see exactly what the future holds, it's kind of like, I got to give this a shot. I got to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. Yeah. I mean, you and I offline had had this conversation. It's like, okay, so you're a free agent now and you have a plan. I have a plan that I think is going to work at least for the next couple of years, you know, where I do have a smaller legal practice and I have this thing where I make

these videos that people buy and I make money off of those and I can support the family. But is that going to scale out 20 years? I mean, from 20 years from now, are people still going to be buying my field guides? How about five years? I don't know. You know, and if that, if that ever falls apart, I need a new plan. And that is one of the panic inducing, fear inducing moments, you know, when you start thinking about like, what happens if this ends, and when you're a free agent, you have to be responsible for this kind of gets back to that future planning thing. But you actually gave me some great advice. You're like, you know what, just have confidence in yourself that you'll be able to see that far enough in advance. And that, you know, you'll use your brain to figure out a

way around it. You said it more artfully than I did, but that's true. And you're really no different when you work for a company. You don't know that the company isn't going to get knocked out of business next week by some new invention out of Silicon Valley or whatever. So you just have to have faith that, you know what, I'll figure it out as I go along. And that's part of it. I think you have to be willing to deal with that if you want to make this free agent thing work. So other than faith to overcome the obstacles that are going to be there and the fear of the unknown, what are some of the things that you think you need in order to be a free agent? Yeah, you know, I had some thoughts on that, you know, because I've done this show now for several years and I talked to a lot of people. Um, I get emails from a lot of

people and then like I go to conferences and bump into people who are thinking about making the jump. And that's a common question. It's like, what does it take to get out, you know, to do this? And, um, and I, I think the first thing is it's okay that it's not for everybody. Um, the first thing is it's okay that it's not for everybody. Um, yeah. So sometimes, you know, having the job where you, like my wife is now working at Disney and she gets benefits. Um, somebody tells her what to do and she's totally happy with that. You know, she's got, yeah, you're not, you're not telling her you got to go become a free agent. No, exactly. And you know, she's got her activities at church and, uh, being a mom still and other things going on in her life. She's happy to go get a paycheck, get benefits, you know, and be part of something big.

She loves Disney so much. Of course, she loves being a part of that company and playing a small role in its success. So it's a very fulfilling thing for her, you know, and, and there's a lot of people out there that are doing things that they have the same impression. And I don't think you have to be a free agent. And I also think sometimes the fear of the unknown, the stuff we were just talking about is enough for some people that just don't want that in their life. You know, they would rather just take a job for a company and not have to worry about that stuff. Um, I realized that that's not always a, a true statement. I mean, that, that they're, the fact they're not worried about it doesn't

mean that there isn't necessarily risk for them, but, but I think there's a lot of people who feel that way and I think that's fine. So the first thing I tell people is it's okay not to do this. I feel like because we talk about so much on the show, a lot of people are like, well, then I have to figure out how to do it myself. No, you don't. You know, it doesn't have to be for you. I struggled with that for a while listening to the show. I liked what you and Jason were talking about. I'm like, I'm not really a free agent. It's almost like I shouldn't be listening to this. Like I don't, I don't have the credentials to listen to this podcast.

Well, that's why we're changing the show too, because there's a lot of stuff we cover that helps people that fall into that category. I think we can help a lot of people. But the other thing, I think what you need, you know, so let's say you do want, you have the drive, you want to get out and do it on your own. I think I was thinking of, you know, there's a list of three things, right? I think you need to be self-motivated is one thing. Because if you're successful at this, there's nobody that's checking their watch when you show up for work.

You know, it's all on you. You have to be willing to get up and do the work and do all the work. And there's substantially more work at this than there is working for somebody else. I mean, you're responsible for everything in the company. So you need to be self-motivated. If you're not self-motivated, you're not going to be a free agent very long. Second thing is I think you need passion. You need to be on a mission.

I think being a free agent for something that you're not super excited about, just kind of a cranking widgets job just to pay the bills, I don't think that's going to work ultimately because you have to have that passion to keep it going and to adjust to change. If you're not passionate about that, you might as well get a job for a company, in my opinion. And then the third one, the controversial thing I think you need is a little bit of paranoia. I know that sounds weird, but you do. I mean, you've got to be thinking, you know, like, and this is kind of a repeat of what I said earlier, but you've got to think long term and short term. And you've got to just be thinking about all the things that could happen that could turn things upside down for you. And then how are you going to deal with that?

And if you don't, and you get blindsided, you could get knocked out of this very easily. Yeah, I like the term that you use there, paranoia. Maybe for some people that sounds a little bit too negative, but I... Is it healthy paranoia? Is that such a thing? Healthy paranoia. There we go. Sure. I do think, though, that that is a critical component. I remember seeing a TED Talk by Tim Ferriss a while back, and he taught this idea kind of based off of the stoicism philosophy of fear setting. And the basic idea is that you take your goals that you want to achieve, whatever, and you envision a worst case scenario.

And then once you've clearly identified the absolute worst thing that could happen, if you try to achieve this goal, it's kind of like, well, whatever happens that's better than that is going to be like, that creates the incentive to follow through because it's like, well, the worst case scenario isn't going to happen. So whatever ends up happening, it's going to be better than that. It's going to be a net positive sort of a thing. You know, that's funny. That's funny.

You say that because like when I talked earlier about dealing with depression, I said, I do this meditation where I, I dig into the emotion. And one of the things I do during that practice is I take it to the full conclusion, whatever the fear is, you know, what's the fear? Well, the fear is that nobody will buy my books and suddenly I won't have any income. And I just go there mentally and say, okay, then what would you do?

And then I suddenly start coming up with ideas. Maybe I'd go get a job. Maybe I'd start digging ditches. I don't know, but I've got theories and ideas. And then once I realize that, you know what, I'm up to this. If everything goes foobar, I'm going to have a solution and I'll figure it out. just go there and just kind of because the issue with you know getting hung up is you don't go to the logical conclusion you just have the anxiety without getting to the source of it like going to the source as soon as you name it the anxiety goes away exactly it's just like taking it to the end actually does kind of like it's like when you pull an icon off the dock on your mac and it just poofs

you know it almost it's almost that magical. So, so anyway, I do that too. Interesting. I didn't have to watch that. Yeah. And I think like he's got an actual format for it, which you can follow, but I think the, the real value there is just from a free agency perspective, talking about healthy paranoia. And you mentioned like, let's just use podcasting as an example. What if tomorrow podcasting was done? There were no more podcasts. All the pods are gone. What am I going to do then?

And then you think it through and you identify the things that you can do to replace that. And you're like, oh, that's not so bad. And then all of a sudden you're not worried about it anymore. Yeah. So that, I think, healthy parenting is a piece of it. So, so that I think healthy parenting is a piece of it. But, but, you know, coming up on four years, it's honestly been the best four years of my life, which is weird. From someone who I'm, you know, believe it or not, to myself, even as I'm in my middle ages, you know, and a lot of people feel like their best years are much younger than I am now. I feel like this has been the four best years of my life. I'm like the, you know, I, the master of my domain. I am. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not super rich, but I'm doing well enough. My relationship with my wife and my kids is better than it's ever been

because I can be there for them more. When something comes up that needs to be dealt with, I can deal with it. But at the same time, I can make a living. The people that I'm serving as a lawyer are getting the best service I've ever given because I'm in complete control of it. The products I'm making as Max Sparky are the best products I've ever made. It's just been, you know, I feel so privileged. I don't know what I did right to get it, but I feel like the luckiest guy in the world right now. So that's a pretty good feeling. Success on your terms. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so enough of that navel-gazing hippie stuff. Free Agents has been a great comfort to me to be able to talk to on the mic every two weeks.

And I really enjoyed having you guys along for the ride. We talked about it. We are not going to just abandon free agents as we move into this broader show. A lot of the stuff we're going to talk about is going to be very applicable to free agents, but we're going to change the focus. And I hope that your free agency journey is as fortunate as mine has been. So with that being said, we got to pay the bills. Let's talk about our next sponsor, and that's our friends over at FreshBooks. Everyone likes to save time, but it's especially important when you're a free agent. Our friends over at FreshBooks can save you up to 192 hours with their super simple cloud accounting software for free agents.

By simplifying tasks like invoicing, tracking expenses, and getting paid online, FreshBooks has drastically reduced the time it takes for over 10 million people to deal with their paperwork. FreshBooks is the perfect solution for free agents because this is something that used to be really expensive and time-consuming. They usually used to have very fancy software and accountants and CPAs to get your bills out. But now with FreshBooks, you can track your time, track your expenses, and then send your bills out right from your computer. They've got some great features like the notification center that's like your personal assistant. You'll always know what's changed in your business since you've last logged in and what needs to be dealt with pronto.

And it's also like that assistant is like always reporting back to you who's paying, who hasn't paid, who's seen their bills, who hasn't seen their bills. They also automate late payment email reminders. That's always a pain in the neck. Nobody wants to deal with it, but you need to get paid and your clients can't, you know, get your work for free. That's one of my favorite sayings to clients. If they don't pay them, I'm like, look, I could either be with my kids for free or I could be doing work for you. Which one do you think I'm going to do? And FreshBooks helps you avoid that because they automatically send those reminders so you can spend less time chasing payments and more time working your magic. It's just a great

service. And if you're listening to this, not using FreshBooks now, it's the time to try. So they're offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of the show. No credit card is required. All you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash free agents, that's one word, and enter free agents, that's all caps, in the how did you hear about us section. So get your billings taken care of, start getting paid right now, save yourself a ton of time and help remain a free agent as we've been talking about throughout this show by using FreshBooks. We thank FreshBooks for their support of this show and RelayFM. So Mike, what are some of the challenges you've been facing?

My main challenge has been getting this thing off of the ground. I am finding that the more progress I make, the more work I have to do. And it's exponentially greater than the work that I'm getting done. And that's probably if I were to sit down and take a good long look at everything that's required to launch a product and build a brand and all that type of stuff, I should maybe see some of these things. But I'm in the arena, as we talked about, so I don't have that time for adjusting the perspective. I just got to do it. And that has resulted in me breaking a lot of the productivity rules that I have been preaching for a very long time. My inbox now, as we record this, has over 700 unread messages in it. My OmniFocus is a disaster. And it really just illustrates the point that I know this is a

temporary season. I need to get this course done. I need to get it published. Once that is done, I know there's going to be another project for me to do, but I really do believe that at that point, that is done. I know there's going to be another project for me to do, but I really do believe that at that point, I'm going to be able to take a little bit of a breather. In the meantime, I am failing every which way. And it's a little bit difficult talking about that. But I also think it's important because a lot of the other podcasts and people that you see talking about this type of stuff, they will share something like these are the three things you got to do. This is the seven things, seven steps to reclaiming X number of hours per day. And all you see is success. But the truth is that everybody on their own productivity and free agent journey is going to fall down, is going to make mistakes, stuff is

going to break. And what's really important is not the fact that that stuff happens, but what you do when that stuff happens, your mindset that you apply to those situations. But that's where I find myself right now. So my challenge is just trying to get through the current state of things, getting the course out there, and then going back to the drawing board and reevaluating all of the systems that we talked about in the last episode and, and fixing and plugging the holes and, and making things work again. And, you know, it's funny you should say that because earlier when I was talking about how this free agency thing has worked out so well for me, I'm getting the best, making the best stuff I've ever made. Um, at the same time, November on the legal side was the worst month I've had in four years in terms of actual production. And we had a serious illness in the family and I spent a lot of time dealing with that. And even when I wasn't dealing with it, but I was thinking about it and it may just made it very hard to get work done. You know, when someone dear to you is very sick, it's just really hard to, to, you know, to put on your, your brain hat and get, you know, get to work. So I was looking at, you know, the numbers, I was 60% less than a normal November for me. It was just,

you know, if I had three or four months like that together, we'd be the Sparks family would be in serious jeopardy. Right. And, and I had the same thing, you know, like Mike, I had, I fell off the wagon in terms of daily planning, in terms of, you know, OmniFocus preparation and just all the things I do, the most important little things I do every day, just to keep everything ready, going all the you know the pins in the air um fell apart in november for me and i'm digging out now and you know how you do that you know just a little bit every day yeah eat the elephant one bite at a time and it also occurs to me as we're talking about this stuff because we recorded an episode not too long ago about the morning routine and the habits that you create can really help you when you're in these states. So I've got a couple of habits that are a part of my morning routine. And even when things are falling apart and there's just so much work that needs to get done, those habits I can kind of fall back on and they give me comfort and they

allow me to check the boxes for the personal stuff. We talked about protecting the golden goose a little bit earlier. You know, I'm able to follow through and do those things because I've established those habits. If I were to try to establish those habits now, it would be a complete disaster. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Um, so on the ground, the stuff I've been doing is like OmniFocus. I'm, it fell apart for me for a short period while I was in the thick of dealing with the thing. But very quickly, that was one of the first things I fixed is like I still want to manage what is on my plate every day and what has deadlines attached to it because I can't just let that linger. You know, there's deadlines of things that I have to handle. And if I'm not on top of that, then there's real problems. But where the places I let it slide with things like

email, and because I have that SaneBox account, I do see the most important emails and those usually get handled. But all the other stuff that I used to deal with on a daily basis just didn't get done. And now I'm digging out of that. I give it 30 minutes a day. And I'm now to the end of November. I've caught up with all the December stuff as we're recording this in the middle of December. And I'm working on the end of November, but I still have the whole month of November to drive through. And it's probably going to take me the rest of December to finally get caught up with all that. But I'm not going to do it in one day. And that's just the way it's going to be.

Because getting productive for me doesn't mean spending two days dealing with an email backlog. Yep. Yeah, exactly. You got to pick your battles sometimes. And so I'm finding the stuff that really has to get done. And I am falling back on my habits and my routines to try and, you know, get the trains rolling again. And, uh, it's working for me, but it's, uh, I also, the thing I always also realized is, and it was really helpful that I had that kind of downtime

earlier this year when I did the office construction where I also lost a bunch of time and some listeners gave me great advice about, Hey, you know, sometimes that's just the way it is. And that's, you know, that's just the way it is. And that's an investment in the future. This was an investment in my family. And that's just as important. And I realized that came with a cost. And it's a cost that I'm gladly willing to pay.

And now that I'm past that, more or less, I can pay attention to this other thing and get it kind of put back together. And that's just the way it is. And it's funny, but it took me like three weeks to get to that conclusion. You know what I mean? Sure. I was beating myself up about this the whole time. And I realized, oh, wait a second, that's the way it is. And that's one of the advantages of being a free agent is I can drop a lot of commitments suddenly to deal with something very important in my family. So why am I complaining? Yeah. I mean, when something happens, not to get into the specifics of your situation, but when something happens like in a family

situation like that, it instantly adjusts your priorities sometimes. And you can, you can instantly see what's really important and that's's okay. If the work stuff has to take a back seat for a certain amount of time, that's okay. It can be difficult in the moment because you can be so focused on, well, this is the thing. And especially if you're doing something like the 12-week year and you've identified, this is the one thing for me this quarter. And then something happens, you're like, oh, that's no longer the one thing. I got to figure something else out. You know, recognizing that that that crisis, there's that word again, maybe that's the wrong word to use, but that that season of change. And it's not something that you anticipated or planned for or even wanted,

but you find yourself there. What do you do in that moment? That's really important. Going back to the Tim Ferriss thing and the stoicism, that whole philosophy is kind of built on this idea that like whatever happens, happens. It's not good. It's not bad. It's just, it is what it is. And then you can look at the thing and maybe it's an obstacle that's standing between where you are now and where you want to be. Maybe you do want to be able to write those field guides and get things out there. But this is just something that happened. And it's not a negative thing that's keeping you from achieving your goals. It's just something that happened and you got to deal with it, but overcome that obstacle.

And then, like you said, the trains will start moving again. Yeah. In fact, just yesterday, because I had announced already publicly, I was hoping to release my next field guide in early January. And I realized, you know what, that's just, next field guide in early January. And I realized, you know what, that's just based on what's what I've been through. That's not going to be done. And, um, that's okay. You know, it'll be maybe the end of January or early February. And, uh, there's a good reason for that. And that's just the way it is, but it took me, you know, essentially six weeks of going through this whole process to, to realize that deadline has to move too. And that's okay. And I just have to reset my expectations and continue, you know,

continue getting the work done. Yep. Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. Exactly. And you're dealing with the same thing on the productive side of trying to get your new thing off the ground. And I can tell you that it is maddening as you're getting started, but you will get past that and you will get back in the rhythm again. It's hard for me because I'm in the productivity space. This is who I've been for so long. So it's kind of like, I'm such a hypocrite now. I've got all these unread messages in my email inbox. I created a product while I was at Asian Efficiency on inbox zero. I don't know. But overcoming that and just recognizing that this is the way it's got to be. And it's not that I'm not

quote unquote being productive. I think there's a lot of ways to define productivity. We're going to get into that when we shift the focus of the new show. But it's not just the efficiency. It's not just having zero messages in your inbox. It's being effective. It's doing the right things. If I look back at what I've accomplished in the last month, I've got two courses now that are just about done.

By the end of the week, I should have the videos done for the faith-based productivity thing. And I also just finished the personal retreat handbook that I shared with you before we started recording. Yesterday, set up with the help of Joe Buelig, friend of the show, a community site to go along with faith-based productivity. I signed up for the webinar software and set up the workshop stuff that I'm going to use. stuff that I'm going to use. There's a lot of positive stuff that is happening, but in the moment it can also be overwhelming because as much as I get done,

it feels like you don't even make a dent. There's just so much more that there is to do. Yeah, I mean, we're not going to be making this focused productivity show because we're the most productive people on the planet. I think I want to be real clear going into this. We have so many mistakes that we can probably help you learn a few things. Yeah, but everybody else who confesses to be an expert in that area, they're all liars.

They make the same mistakes we do. That's all good. Well, listen, everybody, thank you so much for going on this free agent journey with me and Mike and Jason over the last few years. And we're heading now into a new chapter for this podcast. So in a few weeks, when you get the focus download, please download and check it out. Mike and I have done a lot of planning. We've got some great guests lined up. And I think we're going to make something special. It's not going to be just another productivity podcast. It's going to be something special. So give it a chance. And we look forward to seeing you on the other side. Yeah, I'm really excited about this, this new show. I feel like we're going to be able to help a lot of people and not just with the advice, but also what not

to do. Like we talked about when things fall off the rails, how do you get back on track? That's, that's something that's not really talked about. Agreed. All right. So see you all in two weeks with a new show. And in the meantime, happy holidays to all of you.