Focused - 36: My App Story, with John Voorhees

Episode Date: December 12, 2017

John Voorhees of MacStories is a brand-new free agent, a lawyer who left his job in Chicago to set out on his own as a writer and app developer. He tells us how he decided to leave the legal profession and go full time as an independent worker.

David Sparks and Jason Snell spent their careers working for the establishment. Then one day, they'd had enough. Now, they are independent workers learning what it takes to succeed in the 21st century. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm Jason Snell, and I'm joined, as always, by my fellow host, David Sparks. Hi, David. Hi, Jason. It's good to be back.

This is another one of our interview episodes. So we're going to talk to an interesting person. We prefaced this, I think, last month with suggesting that you read his story that he wrote about his transition to being a free agent. But now we got him here. It's John Voorhees. Hi, guys. Thanks for having me. Hey, man.

This was destiny, John. I know. Well, you and I sat at WWC a lot this past year talking about free agency and about my plan jump, which at that point was pretty much set in motion. But, uh, yeah, that was, that was a lot of fun. I appreciated talking to you about that. Well, I mean, it's, it was planned, but you hadn't done it yet. And I was going to tell you at the time, we're going to have you on the show when you do it, but I didn't want to, didn't want you to feel a necessary pressure. If you change your mind, it's not an easy decision to make. I know. No, it's not.

Well, one of the things I like about John's story is, is, you know, he's kind of, you know, he's like us, he's got a family and kids and obligations. And I feel like that's a ninja level move to go free agent when you've got all those expenses in your life. Yeah, it's definitely a different situation. I've, you know, a lot of our friends, I think, who have gone this route have done it much younger at a much younger age in their mid-20s. The smart ones. Right, exactly. When they don't have a mortgage or a family and so forth. But I,

so far, I've been able to pull it off despite those things. So, let's talk about it a little bit. I mean, where do you know, you were a lawyer, right? I was a lawyer in Chicago town, right? Yeah, yeah. I was working as a corporate bankruptcy lawyer for about 25 years at a big law firm in Chicago. And, you know, it was a really great job for a lot of years. And I enjoyed it a lot because it was, it was challenging and it was different. Because in a corporate bankruptcy situation, you end up having to learn about all sorts of different industries, every new case you work on. So it was always changing and evolving. And I liked that a lot. But over the years, it changed mainly because of market changes and changes at the place I worked, where it really went from being kind of engaging

and different every time to being tedious and getting a little old hat, frankly. And I knew quite a few years ago, I guess by at least 2011 that I needed to change, but really figuring out what that change would be and then actually making it happen, you know, take some time. So it's been a while since I've been working on this. So you started thinking about what's next in six years ago. I did. And to be honest, I think I probably knew that there was there needed to be a change of some sort, even a year or two before that, though, I think at that stage, it was more, maybe the changes just going to work for another law firm, not necessarily, you know, toss, toss the legal career to the side and, and take up writing and podcasting and other things. Well, that is a long time. I mean, and I would imagine when you first started thinking about it,

writing for Mac Stories and doing the stuff you're doing now was probably not at the top of your mind. No, it really wasn't. And, you know, really the first thing that I tried when I was looking around and trying to figure out what I wanted to do when I really realized that it wasn't going to be law was I tried app development. And I'm still doing that, but it's taken a little bit of a backseat to the things I do with Federico and the team at Mac Stories. And that really just grew out of the app that I wrote, which is called Blink for making affiliate links for the iTunes store, because it was like any app. It, you know, it did pretty well at the beginning and then immediately dropped off the cliff and I wasn't making much money. And I realized that people were using it to make affiliate links for apps, but not things like movies and music, et cetera.

So I thought I'd write an article about how to do affiliate linking, and maybe that would help broaden the market. And I was convinced by Mike Hurley to send it to Federico, and he published it. And I just kind of, he sucked me in slowly and very organically into his web of sites and podcasts. And it's been great. I mean, I love it and wouldn't change a thing. But I really didn't start with that first article thinking, oh, I'm working for Mac Stories now. I'm part of the Mac Stories crew. It took a while and I've kind of eased my way into it. I'd like to go back a little bit because you said very offhand a few moments ago,

when I decided whatever I did next wasn't going to be a lawyer. So you spent seven years in school, 25 years working in a firm. And you decided, I am not going to do this anymore. Tell us how you did that and if it was difficult. That's kind of a monumental decision. Yeah, it is. It was hard because there's a lot of, you know, you fall into that sunk cost thinking where you think, well, I've spent all this money, all this time, all these years developing a career in a particular area. Makes it hard to just kind of walk away from.

But I had really, over the years, I had realized that what I liked about being a lawyer wasn't necessarily the lawyering part. It was the kind of work. It was that it was difficult, that it was challenging, that I was learning new things all the time. And when those aspects of it started to go away, I could have tried to replicate what it was like in the early years at another law firm. Or I could try to do something else. And I really realized once I started building an app that programming had all the same aspects that I enjoyed about being a lawyer. It's a very different thing, but it was learning new things. It was really difficult. There was interesting business issues and marketing your app, those sorts of things.

So that's when it really clicked for me that I didn't really necessarily have to stay a lawyer as long as I found something that I found challenging and interesting. You know, I had the same experience when I decided to get out of being a litigate, a trial lawyer is just, well, what do I really enjoy about being a lawyer? Well, I enjoy helping people and, you know, helping things grow. That's, I always get a lot of satisfaction when a client has success and, and trials don't involve that at all. They're almost entirely negative. Right. And, and walking away from that and just focusing on the business development parts of helping people changed it for me. It made it, it made it, it made me able to not

walk away. Yeah. Yeah. And that, that's a very, that's a, it was another important aspect of being a bankruptcy lawyer is that I never really felt like I was making anything for anyone or really helping people. Mostly what I was doing was helping people lose less money, which if, you know, someone goes from losing a million dollars to losing $800,000, they're not particularly happy. They're still losing, you know, nearly a million dollars. So that was a big part of it. And once I had built an app and realized, you know, the people out there actually appreciate that this exists and it's helping them do their jobs, it was a lot more satisfying than being a bankruptcy lawyer. Well, I still think it took a lot of guts to do that. That's very impressive.

Well, thanks. I don't think I could have done it in the middle of my career. I mean, the timing was right just because I have three, and two of them are in college now. So I had gotten to the point working at a big law firm where I had saved enough for them to go to college. And I was ready, they were two of them were leaving the house. And I had more time on my hands that I could start experimenting around the edges of being a lawyer with other things. So I was doing app development and writing in the early morning and late at night and everywhere in between on the weekends. And I had the right set of circumstances that allowed me to put that whole thing in motion. I know for me, another part of it was I was unhappy and I didn't want my kids seeing associating a working life to being just always unhappy. Yes. And that that definitely that that was something that was on my mind as well, because I know there were times when I was in the final years of being a lawyer that my wife would say to me, you know, you're not happy when you don't have enough work and you're not happy when you have too much work. Are you ever happy in this job? And, you know, you're not happy when you don't have enough work and you're not happy when you have too much work. Are you ever happy in this job? And, you know, she was right. Uh, now, you know,

I may be really busy many weeks, but I don't complain about it because I'm enjoying everything that I'm doing. Uh, so that, that was a different, that was definitely on my mind as well. Some of it you, uh, that I know you did was, uh, you had this this I like to sometimes talk about like you had that moment where you take the walk in the woods you think back about like what you're doing and then it allows you to make that decision did you have that

did you have that moment of being able to self reflect that helped you realize that you made this decision or that you needed to make it? Yes, I did. There have been a couple of different times where that's definitely been the case. One was in 2011, I got farmed out to a bank client to work there for 18 months. And the bank had just bought another bank that was in trouble and had tons of bad loans.

And I was there just kind of to be a resource for the bankers who were dealing with that to ask questions. And so I was dealing with everything from farm loans in Wisconsin to big multinational corporate loans. It was just a wide spectrum of things. But the reality was they didn't need me as much as they thought they needed me. They really needed a security blanket. So I sat there with not a lot to do. That's part of the time I taught myself to code and also did a lot of traveling. And I went to Patagonia and hiked for two weeks with not much else other than, you know, walking down the trail and thinking about things. And that helped me decide that I needed a change and really get a sense for the fact that what I really liked about being a lawyer and what I could like about doing something else, even though I didn't know

what that something else was just yet. And then, you know, there've been a couple of other moments over the years, like in 2013, when I finally got the idea to do the app where I would just sit on Fridays for a couple hours in the morning at our local Starbucks before we go into the city. And I just brainstorm, I would think about things I might do things I might want to do things that might be interesting. And you know, most of them were went nowhere. But that's where the app came from. And that's also where the article that I ultimately sent to Federico ended up coming from as well. Now you mentioned, you know, being how programming reminded you of being a lawyer,

but but you're not, you didn't just make the decision to switch from being a lawyer to being an app developer. What you're doing now is bigger than that, right? You're doing all sorts of different things that that this is something David and I talk about every now and then about how the job of being a free agent can be fulfilling because you, you aren't necessarily doing the one thing that our traditional job would want you to do. So you're doing some, you've got your apps and you've got writing that you're doing. And, uh, you know, I think you're doing some, some, uh, sponsorship stuff. I mean, you, you've got a pretty varied set of tasks that you're doing these days. I do. And it's really expanded quite a bit in the past year because at the beginning

of the year, Federico and I decided to do the App Stories podcast that we do every week. And I also took on sponsorship responsibilities, both for the site and for the podcast. So yes, that's been something. It's those two things plus writing plus app development. And you get to the point, I think, where you try various things and you try to figure out what works and what you're good at and you run with it. And I've tried to each year pick up one or two things and start out small and maybe grow it into something. I mean, app stories is a good example because that really grew out of WWC 2016, where I went without a ticket and I didn't really know what to do with myself. So I decided to sit in the hotel bar at

the park 55 and talk to developers. And I did like a series of half hour interviews over the course of four or five days, but with about a dozen people. And it was, I wasn't really thinking about it as, as being a proof of concept for a podcast at the time, but it ended up being that because it was people liked it. And we realized that maybe we should do something with, with podcasting for Mac stories. And that's by the end of WWC, Federico and I had decided to develop the show. It took several months after that, but that eventually came out this past April. So once you decided you were going to make this big move, what type of steps did you take? I just started working very hard all the time, uh, in every spare moment, trying to come up

with things that would work and trying to be patient about it. Because one of the things I've found hardest as I try to transition this and actually do it to a level that I can support myself and my family is that it's very easy to get impatient and try too hard at things, which I find you're not going to succeed if you try too hard. You have to be ready for the opportunities, but you also can't force the opportunities. So I've tried to keep my eyes and ears open for those and then grab them where I can and see what I can make of it. So the preparations were really just getting moving on the projects

and trying to avoid taking on too much work in my day job, because that was, that was definitely a tricky transition towards the end, coming up with, you know, making it work where I could do as much as I could on everything I was doing as a free agent, but also, also getting my, my law job done. And at some point, you know, I hit that tipping point where the day job was just getting in the way. And that's when I knew I had to point, you know, I hit that tipping point where the day job was just getting in the way. And that's when I knew I had to actually, you know, I had to jump ship then. But you still had certain things that needed to happen. I remember, I think it was at, because I saw you last year in Chicago at release notes. And then I saw you,

then I saw you at WWC in both cases, each time you were getting increasingly towards wanting to get out, but you just weren't quite there yet. That must have been so difficult for you. Yeah, it was. And I think, you know, this year, the thing that really tipped it for me was picking up a couple of extra things. It was adding doing the sponsorships and the podcast. That was enough more that I knew that the end was in sight. I still feel, you never feel like you're quite ready for when you actually make the leap, and I didn't feel quite ready when I made the leap, but I was close enough.

And having worked for 25 years, I mean, one advantage of being in the position I'm in is that unlike someone who's maybe in their early 20s, I do have savings. So I do have some runway. I mean, I don't want to bleed my bank accounts dry, but I do have a cushion to help myself as I transition into this full time. This episode of Free Agents is brought to you in part by FreshBooks. To all the freelancers out there, you know how important it is to make smart decisions for your business. Our friends at Fresh Books can save you up to 192 hours with their cloud accounting software for freelancers that's ridiculously easy to use. By simplifying tasks like invoicing, tracking expenses, and getting paid online, Fresh Books has drastically reduced the time it takes for more than 10 million people

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an unrestricted 30-day free trial as a listener of this show. You don't need to give them a credit card. All you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash free agents and enter free agents in the how did you hear about us section. Thank you to FreshBooks for supporting free agents. So how's it going? It's going really well. I mean, I did not. One thing I didn't realize is the burden off my mind not going into the city every day was going to be.

Now, strangely enough, in October, during the month of October, right after I quit, I ended up leaving my law job on September 30th. And in the first three weeks of October, I was in the city more than I was probably the preceding two months because I had already started working from home a lot of days and transitioning to working full time at Mac stories and on other things. But that was because of release notes primarily, but also other things that were going on in the city that I was, I was going in for. Well, I mean, it's, it's, you know, life does continue once you leave it. It's, but, but you're right. I're right. I think the loss of the commute for me was massive. Yes. And it's just not the loss of the commute.

For me, it was like thinking about how much time you spend every morning getting into the suit and tie, driving through traffic, getting to the office, getting to the office and then having the initial cup of tea and then having to deal with all the talky talk that happens in the morning at the office and then having the initial cup of tea and then having to deal with all the, you know, talky talk that happens in the morning at the office. It was always, even though I'd be waking up at 6am, I wouldn't get to the office and actually start working. It felt like until nine 30 or 10 sometimes. Yeah, definitely. And now you can just hit the ground running when you're home. Right. And there's, and there's also kind of a mental cost of switching between being a lawyer and, and being an internet person. I mean, there's also kind of a mental cost of switching between being a lawyer and being an internet person. I mean, what I was doing was so different. It was like a split personality. The cost of switching from one to the other was kind of hard. lot of mental baggage that went along with having responsibilities at a day job, but also trying to make the most of what I could with everything else. And once that was gone and the commute,

I had a relatively short commute here. It wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't terribly productive. So at the end, it was definitely nice to be staying home, be able to hit the ground running and not waste a lot of time commuting, but also just to have the burden off my mind of dealing with the day job, because now I've got, you know, just more focused on exactly what I'm trying to accomplish. What, what are the big surprises for you since you've gone, you know, you're home now? Well, I think that that was one of them. The fact that I, you know, it's definitely more relaxed in most ways because I don't have the overhead of that transition anymore. Instead, I just get up, do what I have to do, and move on. It's also surprising, though, that it's not like I have a lot of extra time, more time, just because I'm not commuting to the city anymore. It does free up

a certain amount of time each day, but I still feel like I don't have enough time to get everything done. And that's, I suppose, in part because I took on more this year. And it's just, you know, I'm still kind of adjusting to all that, I suppose. I think that's really common for people who start their free agency as a side thing. Because you think once you get rid of the day job, you're going to have all this time open up. But what really happens is before you left, you were just working to the limit, you know, your side thing plus your day job. Now, when you just turn it into your side thing, it's still a busy life. It's not like you suddenly have big four or five hour holes every day that are just suddenly open. Right. And I have fortunately

been able to rest a little more. I was in a very bad habit of getting up at 4 a.m. every day and working basically until I went to bed. And that has eased up on that a little bit, which is good because it's just not healthy to do that for long periods of time. Yeah, it's not sustainable. You're going to know it's right. Exactly. Eventually you burn out on that and it's not sustainable. You don't, life doesn't stop, but the other part of your life does stop and it gives you that time back to choose how you use it. And you can put your foot on the gas and use it all on the new thing or you can reclaim some of that time, right? And use it in a different way. And the same with the commute time. Right, exactly.

It's a combination of the two for sure that has made it a little more easy to be rested and relaxed and get things done at the same time. Have you had any issues with working at home? Have there been things that you've had to deal with? We talk about this a lot on this show. You discover that there are changes you need to make because being home all day is different, and it may affect other people in your house and how you live your life? Yeah, it is different. It's worked out really well so far. I have my office in my basement, which I built over the last summer, a little area to record and work down there. And my wife

works in the morning. She works from home and the afternoon she's out of the house. So I have the afternoons, it's quiet around the house and the morning she works upstairs. I work downstairs and we just basically keep out of each other's hair and get our things done. So it's, it's worked out just fine. Uh, but, but every now and then, you know, you're, you have the temptation, I suppose, to, to do things that, to procrastinate, like go do the laundry or empty the dishwasher or run out to the store and pick up a sandwich. You know, that kind of thing is easy, I suppose, to fall into, but I haven't, I haven't had to done too much of that yet. It's, it's been, I've been pretty good about staying disciplined and just sitting down in my little dungeon office in the basement and getting everything done. Well, you used to go to a big law firm with a lot of people and a lot of social, you know,

options, you know, ability to talk to people about the game or whatever. And now you're, as you said, in your dungeon. Yes. Is that, does that bother you at all? I mean, are you, how are you dealing with that? It hasn't been too bad. I mean, I don't mind working by myself in solitude for the most part. I do like to have some human contact and my family's around enough that that helps. And then, of course, I'm on things like Slack all day with the Mac Stories team. So I'm chatting with those guys all day long. long. And, but it's, I think it's still a little early for me to really definitively say how that all shakes out because it's, you know, it's only been a few weeks that I've been doing this full time at home. And one of those weeks I was downtown Chicago for the release notes conference all week, which is very social. So I haven't really settled into, you know, a long period of a month or two where I'm just kind of doing my usual thing from home every single day. So as a baby free agent, what are you most excited

about? I mean, now suddenly your life has just been turned upside down. What's got you jumping out of bed in the morning? Well, I'm excited to try some more new things. I knew by mid-year, I knew with what I had taken on at the beginning of the year, mainly in the new doing the sponsorships and the podcast, that I really didn't have the capacity with my day job to do anything else at all. I was barely handling all of that. year because with Federico off doing his iOS 11 review, Ryan and I primarily are picking up extra writing assignments in order to keep the site going. So it's summers tend to be very busy as well. But I'm hoping now that things are kind of returning to the more easier, the easier pace of the year for us that, and, and also being home, that I'll be able to pick up some new things. I'm not sure what those are yet. I've been starting to think about it and I really do need to take one

of those breaks and just do some brainstorming and figure out what I'm going to do. I know you're new with this, but I'm sure you've got some ideas about what you could get better at right now. What are those things? Yeah, I think one thing that I really need to start doing is planning my time better. I've been starting to try to do that. One thing is just getting a little more rest. And the other is planning. Stop going from crisis to crisis and start planning out my week a little better.

Most of my week is fairly scheduled. I just need to, you know, I have too many times during the week where I wake up and think, oh, today's an easy day. I can take it easy. So I don't do as much. And then I realize, oh, but tomorrow's a really bad day. You know, I need to plan that kind of thing out a little bit better, I think. Yeah, I think free agency, just crises is just part of the job. I don't know that we talked to anybody that can avoid those entirely. Yeah, I think the issue is, is if you use the crisis as you know, crisis to crisis as your agenda system, right, then you're never doing anything but crisis management. Yes. And I have fallen into that a few times, usually recover

from it pretty quickly. But if if all you're doing is writing down a list of things that you have to do today, or else the world explodes. That's not a good way to get through, through the week. As you were planning your move, I mean, did you do like, did you figure out insurance and all that other stuff as you were figuring out when you, when you left the firm? I did some of it. I didn't do enough of it. Um, fortunately, because as I said, I've got a little cushion. I, I deferred a little bit of it, But I got an accountant, started looking at health insurance, and I'm in the process of signing that up now as I've started. Decided to go with Cobra for a couple of months, which is pretty awful and expensive, but worth doing if you're not quite decided as to what you want to do with insurance.

And yeah, that's the kind of thing I did. Yeah. Figure that out before the end of the year, I think is probably good advice. Yes. Yes. It's that time of year when people get to pick their plans and everything if they're in the ACA. So looking at all those things. What about the firm? How much did you tell them when you left? I mean, did they know what you were up to, or was it a secret? They did not know. I didn't keep it a secret. I mean, it's hard not to, all you have to do is run a Google search of my name, and it's pretty clear very quickly what I'm doing. I mean, it's not, you know, you can't really write on a website and have a podcast and be on Twitter all day would not be discoverable

but lawyers aren't i mean at least the lawyers the firm i worked at weren't exactly tech savvy yeah they wouldn't think to do that no and i don't think it ever ever entered into their imagination that any would anyone who worked there would ever want to do anything other than be a lawyer at a big law firm yeah so i worked out, you know, it became clear that I was, I had decided to leave and I told them that I was going to leave, but that I needed a transition period. So I worked out a transition period with them, but I never really told them what I was going to do. They, they assumed that I would go and look for another law job and that was fine. I didn't really, if, if anybody had asked me,

I would have told them what I was doing. But no one ever actually asked. No one ever asked. Therein lies the problem with big law firms. It is. And it was quite, you know, that was, it was an interesting process, but no one ever asked. I never told them and it was all there for them to find. And I had an end date that we had agreed upon. And when the end date came, I left. And as far as I know, none of them know what I'm doing. How long was that process? And were you just working full time until it ended? Or was there more of a transition period where you were kind of sloping down with the one and ramping up the other? It was definitely more of a sloping down and ramping up because it was, it was in total, it was about a six month period. And I'd say for the last three months, uh, ending at the end of

September, I was doing very little legal work at that point. Uh, this was in a way their form of severance because I don't have any, I didn't get any kind of, you know, it's not like they would offer any kind of package or anything, um, to me because as far as they knew, I was leaving to join another law firm. So it wasn't that kind of situation. So, but they, they knew it was going to take me a little time to find something because I had told them I wanted, you know, I was unhappy. I wanted to try something else. And so they gave me the time to do that and when the last three months of that period there was just not a lot going on so i was able to just ramp up mac stories and and finish off what little i had left in terms of legal work wow so different than my experience interesting yeah it was it was

weird and i'll tell you there was definitely a lot of over the years i've had a fair amount of angst over whether i should tell them more about what I was doing or whether they would discover what I was doing and be upset. I mean, I think in some respects, some people there might be upset if they knew the extent to which, because I think big law firms would, a lot of people would view that as a sign of disloyalty, perhaps. You know, that how could you ever want to do anything other than commit 24 hours, 365 to us? And I think they knew in their hearts, if you ask them, that I was not committed to them because I clearly wanted to leave. And so there were signs that I didn't care enough to stay there.

But they also didn't really care why or or what i wanted to do so it was that was convenient i mean i actually i used that to my advantage but it also was a certain amount of stress that i had to go through all the time this episode of free agents is brought to you in part by squarespace enter offer code free agents at checkout to get 10% off your first purchase. Make your next move with Squarespace. Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea, your next big business move. It's a free agent. You can have a unique domain. There are award-winning templates and much more. If you want to create an online store, a portfolio, a blog, pretty much anything you can think about, Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that will let you do it. There's nothing to install, no patches to worry about, no servers to be

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I know you and your wife have kind of got the work arrangements, but has it changed the relationship or with your kids? A little bit, because a lot of times I'm working down here and my son wants to play on the PS4 and I say, I've got to record a podcast. Daddy's got to work. Exactly. Fortunately, we face different directions. I face the opposite way from the television. So he can be down here if I'm not recording and it doesn't bother me. I was put on headphones or something.

So that's a little bit of a change. I'm available to do things that come up during the day, like today, before he has to leave school early to go to the orthodontist, my wife's not done working yet. So I'll be the one to pick him up, which in the past, we wouldn't have had that flexibility because I'd still be downtown. So that's, you know, that's a nice benefit. And it just has, there's just more flexibility that we've got as a family now. But at the moment, it's just my wife and I and my youngest son, because the other two are off at college. You know, it's funny because I, I feel, you know, it is tough to leave when you have kids and commitments and financial obligations that come with it.

But part of me is so happy I did it when I did, because I do have more time with my kids now. And looking back on all those years when I was in trials and always at the office or always at court, I really feel like I missed out on something. And being around now is great. Even though my kids are much older, we do find ways to spend time together that we wouldn't have otherwise. I bet you find the same thing as you get down this journey a little bit further. Oh, yeah, definitely. I've already noticed. I mean, it just gives you more flexibility and control over your life, right? I mean,

yes, there are a lot of things to do. And I always feel like I've got more to do than I can quite get done. On the other hand, I've got a lot more choice in terms of when I get it done. And I can decide if something can be deferred a little bit and make time for whatever's going on with the family. How about you, Jason? Has that changed much for you? I mean, it's all, yeah, it's all different now. I mean, I think I've talked about it before, but I mean, being here, being present, my kids are younger. So, you know, in middle school and high school. And so I have been able to be around.

That also does turn me into the taxi service from time to time. But, you know, I'm present when they get home and I do have to balance the fact that I'm working with them being home like the the struggling with the thought of should i be helping my son with his homework at 3 p.m and i can do that but like i'm in my work day and there's an expectation that i'm going to be more available when it comes to be dinner time right and so there's this question like well i can't stop working at three o'clock every day and become a parent, you know, attentively helping his son with his math homework if there's also an expectation that I'm not going to go back to work all evening,

which I'd really rather not do myself. And so that's some of the, some of it is just sort of juggling those those things but it's i'm definitely feeling you know i'm i i feel much more present with my kids and now my daughter is a junior in high school she's becoming less present because she doesn't want to be around her parents anymore but i did get a couple good years there yeah that does make it easier to get your work done fortunately i suppose but yeah that that i i have had a similar experience. And it's also why I still get up fairly early in the morning, because that is the one quiet time in my house when everybody's still in bed and I can get a couple of hours work done that is probably a little more interrupted when it gets to around three o'clock and everybody's

home. So what's the hardest part about this, this big transition for you? Well, I think sometimes it's just the relentlessness of everything I've had. It's just, I have a lot going on and it's very hard to turn it off sometimes and just relax. That's, you know, I think that just kind of comes par for the course, but I'm getting better at that. It's also, it's, it's constantly changing and that's, it's kind of one of those things that I both love and hate about it because I enjoy that everything is new and that I'm learning new things all the time. But sometimes you just want everything to be easy for a couple of days. Yeah. And it's not always just easy.

And that, that can be a little frustrating at times, but, but, you know, by and large, I, I don't really have many complaints. Well, when you figure out how to not make it relentless and nonstop, please let me know. I'd like to hear about that. I know. Well, you know, it's one of those things because you realize that if you just stop working, the money just stops coming, right? Because you're not making anything.

Nobody's paying you to do anything. And it's just different than having a paycheck that shows up every two weeks when, all right, maybe you had a couple of weeks where, you know, you didn't, you didn't do much of anything, right. You kind of mailed it in, but, but you still got paid. So that's all right. It is, it is eyeopening. I mean, when you realize that it's up to you now and, you know, and for so long when you're working for the man, you're like, well, if I was on my own, I could, I could manage this better or I could handle my time better. And it's fun. Uh fun when you get the cold, hard reality of that. It's like, okay, now it's time to prove, you know, prove that every day.

Right. And you have to actually very quickly start looking at things as to, well, is this worth my time? Yeah. You know, what does this lead to? Is this actually going to, is this, is this productive time in terms of, is it going to create income or income or is this something that I'm just going to do because I want to do it, which is fine. But if you did that eight hours a day or 10 hours a day, very quickly, your bank account would dry up. Are you happy? Yeah, I'm very happy. Very happy. I've enjoyed it a lot.

And in some respects, even though I've only been doing it about a month, I've been writing at Mac Stories for almost two years now and built the app before that. So I've had enough of a taste of this leading up to the last month that it doesn't feel super new, but what feels new is that it's a little more relaxed and I just enjoy what I'm doing a lot more than I used to. Have you had that dream where you had to wake, go to work and put on the suit and go back to the old firm and just wake up like sweaty yet? No, I haven't. I hope I don't have that.

I did. It'll happen. It'll happen. Oh no. Still happens once in a while to me. I hope, I hope I don't. Um, I, you know, I, it, I literally don't think about the law stuff at all ever anymore. That, that is one of the best pieces of advice I got when I first left is a friend, a good, a very dear friend of mine said, now you need to turn the page and not think about what you've been doing the last 20 years or don't have any ax to grind or, you know, whatever your story is, just, just turn the page and do your thing. And I really tried to do that when I left and it really helped. I think it really helped me focus on what's important. Yeah, I think so too. I mean, I, I, you know,

there were aspects of my old job that I didn't like and, you know, I could, I could feel bad about, but it's really not worth it. What's worth it is making the most of what I'm doing now. I mean, your life to this point has got you to this place and it's happened for a reason. So, you know, make the most of it. Right, right. And I don't regret actually having been a lawyer, even though I'm not a lawyer now, because it, as you said, that's what got me where I am. And it's what paid me enough money to be able to make this jump when I did. Well, John, thank you for sharing your baby free agent story with us. Thanks.

I enjoyed being here. I'm looking forward to seeing how your career develops because I expect big things now that you're free and able to pursue your passion. Thanks, David. And you can find John at Macstories.net, right? That's the best place to find you. That is. Where are you on Twitter? Where can people find you there?

I am at John Voorhees. That's J-O-H-N-V-O-O-R-H-W-S. You got your whole name on Twitter. That's pretty good. I do. It's a lot of letters. Probably not the best choice, but I got to stick with it. Take that all other John Voorheeses.

Yes. And thanks to everybody out there for listening to this episode of Free Agents. You can always get in touch with us at relay.fm slash freeagents, or you can tweet at us at freeagentsfm, or you can go to facebook.com slash groups slash freeagentsgroup. And we'll be back in a fortnight to talk more about our journeys as independent workers. But until then, David, thank you very much. See you next time, Dave.