Focused - 42: Learning Your Creative Rhythms, with Shawn Blanc

Episode Date: March 6, 2018

David and Jason go through the Free Agents Mailbag with observations about the legend of the man who outsourced his own job, taking a hobby to the next level, and the menace of Imposter Syndrome. Then we welcome our guest, Shawn Blanc, creator of The Sweet Setup and shawnblanc.net, to discuss building an independent business with collaborators, solid project planning, and sensible work hours.

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

We're going to be talking to Sean Blanc, who has been doing this for longer than we have. And he's built a whole business and works with lots of other people and stuff. And I think it's a really interesting perspective about going independent, but with a little more of that kind of entrepreneurial flavor to it that we don't talk about quite as much. Although last time you did point out that you're more interested in working with other people than I am, apparently.

But Sean has really got a whole thriving business and it's not just him. And I'm looking forward to talking to him about, about how, how that all came to be. He's got a system, man. I'm just, I'm just like reaching out in the dark, but John's got it figured out. He really, yeah, he's really got it together. It's actually kind of disturbing. Um, before we do that, we should, uh, uh, we didn't get a chance last time to talk about some listener letters that we got. And we should probably do that now.

And, of course, I will point out before we get started, you can always tweet at us with comments at FreeAgentsFM. You can go to relay.fm slash freeagents and click on the content link and send us an email. Or you can go to facebook.com slash groups slash freeagentsgroup and post there and also chat with your fellow free agents who are in that group. And those are places that we will look for comments to bring on to the show. So we have a few quick ones here. story before it's actually from 2013 i think but i am fascinated by it beyond the internet meme joke aspect of it this is the story about the developer who gets paid a six-figure salary and hires a chinese he's a software developer hires a chinese programming outfit to do his job for him and he pays them a fraction of his salary to do this job he outsources his own job and takes the profits which uh eventually the jig is up but uh on the guy and they figure out that there's a chinese ip address connecting to their vpn and it and it's

using his like he's got a one-time code for security that he has mailed to china for them to use it's just amazing um but but what what an amazing story on another level which is you know he's what he did was wrong but on another level it does say something about like who gets to benefit from the profit generated by a person's work and in this case he was basically skimming his share of of that of that benefit i mean you could also argue that the company could just eliminate the middle man fire him hire the chinese company and save itself 150 000 or whatever but it's a fascinating story it makes you think about the nature of work and uh yeah yeah what beyond just it being hilarious and it does follow up on the theme from last episode and and some of the stuff we'll hopefully talk with sean about that you know you can offload some of your work without

you know yes defrauding your employer and that was my thought about this guy was like i know maybe he's afraid he's gonna lose his job and obviously, he really did know that it was something that he was like getting over on his boss. But I keep thinking, how would I feel if he said, if he walked into my office as his boss and said, the way we do things here is inefficient. Let me make a proposal to you. Why don't you put me in charge of working with outside developers? of of working with outside developers and uh and we'll use some contractors from china or india or someplace like that and where it will be cheaper to pay them for it and the country or the company will benefit from it like there would be another way to approach this for this guy which was open about it which is to say i can provide the expertise of being in the office and knowing what our needs are and working with an outside client to do it. But instead, he just, you know, sat there and watched, you know, watch videos all day and then went home and cashed his paycheck. his hobby blog to the next level. And he was asking if anyone runs a full-time blog that's open to answering some questions. And he's been thinking about taking his relatively new blog into something more than a hobby. He said nothing full-time, but side hustle for sure. And what do you think about that? Well, Jason, you run a blog about technology.

I hear this about podcasts too. it's just like it's just super hard because uh the the fact is uh especially with stuff like blogging like the the era of getting ready ready you know advertising like easy advertising it has ended like it's hard to get for any site to get advertising at all it's all a volume game and a little blog is not going to have a lot of uh of audience and it's not going to generate a lot of advertising. I think the most important thing, I hate to be the, this person who talks about things like personal brands, but that's what it's about is like, people need to recognize who you are and, um, how do you do that? That's really hard. Like you need to, I always said, you know, back in the day, you raise your profile by appearing in places where there are existing audiences and exposing, you know, them to

your greatness. And that could be, I don't know, newsletter magazine. It used to be magazines, right? Websites, whatever. It might be useful to write for another website and say, if you want more about this, read my blog just to build an audience because you got to build an audience. And that's the hard part. And just putting your content out there does not build an audience. I mean, it can help. You got to have that content, but that isn't enough. And this is

the secret sauce that I don't really have an answer for. Like for me, I wrote a column in the front of a magazine with half a million people reading it for a few years and that people got to recognize me and I knew people and would appear on other people's podcasts. And I, I, you know, I did my own podcast and I did a whole bunch of stuff that even though I didn't necessarily know it at the time, I was kind of cultivating a personal brand and I was making connections with people who had their own audiences. And we were kind of moving our audiences back and forth a little bit to expose them to different stuff from different people. Didn't really think about it that way, but that's effectively what was going on. And, you know, there's no one right answer there, but it's very hard. I don't want to,

I heard from somebody who said, I'm thinking of starting a site or a podcast and quitting my job. What do you think about that? And my response was, oh boy, like, don't do that. You need to start this on your own and see if you can build an audience and grow it to the point where you would, you would leave. And the media business is brutal. It's brutal for all of, you know, we talk about it in our little place in it. It's, it's a tough thing to do and you can't just hang out a shingle and wait for the money to roll in. It doesn't work like that. So I think building your audience and growing the number of people who know who you are and what

you do, it's hard, but that's what you have to do. Yeah. And the one thing Jeff said that I thought made sense is he wants to treat it as a side hustle and that's different than saying quit my job. And, and my advice would be try it, you know, go out and put some great stuff on the internet and, you know, and the internet and do hustle. But it's not something that's going to be easy or necessarily your trip out the door from your day job. Exactly. Imposter syndrome from Mike. Mike wrote in.

He said, if you're entering an area where you don't have a lot of experience, how do you get over imposter syndrome? That feeling that you're not qualified to do the work at the price you're asking. David, do you ever experience that? I deal with that. I mean, in my family, the Sparks family motto is fingus dumb vincus. We actually looked it up once. It's Latin for fake it till you make it. And it's a joke in my family with my kids and my wife, you know, But I encourage my kids to go out and try things that they haven't done before. And I say, just go for it, you know. When you start charging people money, you better know what you're doing. But, you know, everybody has to start somewhere.

And for Mike, for me, it depends on what part of my life you're talking about. For the legal stuff, I don't do anything like that. I have to, you know, I'm taking people's problems into my hands. I got to solve them right. But for a lot of the stuff I've done with Max Sparky, every once in a while, I get an itch and try something. I mean, as this show has gone up, I have now got a YouTube channel. I'm doing some YouTube stuff. And that's because I decided I wanted to try it.

And some of those experiments work. I think that the trick is when you do something new like that, give yourself permission to call it an experiment. And just try it for a while. And maybe it works and maybe it doesn't. And if it doesn't, don't punish yourself. But just look for the next thing. Yeah, that's right. My statement about imposter syndrome is almost everybody feels it.

And in fact, I might even argue that if you don't feel it, you're doing it wrong. That to a certain degree, if you think that you are great and you don't have moments of self-doubt, there might be something wrong with you. Like, I think, seriously, I think maybe you are doing it wrong. don't have moments of self-doubt there might be something wrong with you with you like i think seriously i think i think maybe you are doing it wrong if i and and that's the the the classic statement i forget there's a name for it but it's the idea that the only true only the true incompetent do not understand their incompetence everybody who has any amount of knowledge about how hard it is to do something will always question their ability to do it.

It's the people who have no idea who don't, and that's not a position you want to ever be in. Yeah. It's either that you have no idea how, how far out of your league you are, or you're not even trying, you know, you're not stretching yourself to something new. So either one of those, either side of that spectrum is bad. Yeah, exactly right. This episode of the free agents is brought to you by Casper mattress. You can get $50 towards select mattresses by visiting casper.com slash free agents and using free agents at checkout. Did you know one of the most important

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agents. We thank Casper for all of their support of this show. Well, that's the feedback we got behind. We're caught up now. Let's go talk to our guest. Who is our guest? It's our pal, Sean Blanc. Welcome to the show, Sean. Thanks, guys. It's a pleasure to be here. For those of you that don't know Sean, he's been a free agent since 2011, right? Yep. February 2011. You're an old man among us. I am an old man. And Sean's over at SeanBlanc.net. He's got a great website, the sweet setup. He's got the focus course to help you do some productivity. And Sean, you just make some great things on the internet and we're so happy to have you on the show. Thanks. It's fun to be. I mean, you guys are some of my heroes, so it's fun to be

here. Maybe I can pick your brain a little bit. I'm not sure about that. That's very nice to say. I think it's just the opposite. I've been impressed with the stuff that you've been doing for a long time and yet I didn't know how to pronounce your name until I was on a podcast and I said it wrong. So I still feel bad about that but now i know well it's because you got mel blank who's the famous yep you know voiceover guy and so that there's that's just kind of a common pronunciation but it's blanc like mont blanc or yeah like the pens that stuff like that but yeah now once you know it's like super it's super smooth it's like a much better sounding name than how i thought it was pronounced but i just didn't i just didn't think about it

because it's the internet you know and you just got you've got seanblanc.net so i would refer to it all the time because you're you are one of these people who you are your own brand uh or at least you've got that domain and that's very impressive that that you just say oh i read it on uh on sean blanc's blog what's that called? SeanBlanc.net. That's what it is. It's his. It's him. It's his name.

Name's right on it. Yeah. Exactly. I mean, it's like you're in a club with Daniel Jalka and Dave Chartier. It's like all these guys. You see their names written, and you have no idea if you're getting it right until you can go to the source. Yeah.

Excellent. That's a good club. It's a good club to be in. Yeah, it is. It is a pretty good club. Throw Marco in there and the source. Yeah. Excellent. That's a good club. It's a good club to be. Yeah, it is. It is a pretty good club. Throw Marco in there and Kotki. Everybody knows how to say Kotki. That guy's an institution. He is. This is true. So, Sean, when did you, I mean, where were you before you became a free agent and how did you

come to the idea that you were going to bust out? Oh, boy. So, I was the marketing and creative director for a big ministry out here in Kansas city. And I was doing that for quite a while. And my wife and I decided we want to have kids. And so I was like, well, I think I'm going to start my business so that I can have more free time to spend with my kids was basically the gist of it. And I'd been doing Sean Blanc.net. I've been doing that sort of on the side for about four years up to that point. So I started it, I think right around 2007. And so I had some sponsorships that were going, some, some advertising stuff, a little bit of Amazon affiliate, and it

all added up to about, I think maybe a thousand dollars a month, maybe 1200 bucks. So it wasn't a ton, but for a little side hobby, it was, I was pretty decent. I thought to myself that if I gave a full 40 hours a week to the writing on the site that I'm like, I'm sure I could bring the traffic up enough to start charging more for sponsorships that I could get a full-time salary from this. So I thought, well, I got to do something to subsidize in the meantime. So I did this membership drive and had enough people sign up for it that I was actually able to take the site full time. I pretty much right away when I decided to, like I did this announcement, like, hey, I'm going to quit my job and start writing for a living and things like that. And so a bunch of people signed up and supported me at the $3 a month mark. And it's kind of just kind of grown since then. But it was that family stuff was kind

of the main transition point for me. Yeah. It's interesting when you say I decided to do it because I wanted to spend time with my kids. I mean, so often it's more businessy, but you had a completely different motivation. Well, I was working 70 or 80 hours a week at my old position and it was, I loved it. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed what I was getting to do. Uh, but I was like, there's no way I'm going to do 70 hours a week as a, as a new dad. There's no way. And I wanted to, so I actually wanted to scale back my time and also have a little bit more autonomy for just what my schedule might look like and things like that. Um, of course, little did I know that starting your own business, kind of going indie is equally as demanding, if not more demanding than even in a

difficult corporate position or anything like that. So it definitely took me some time to learn how to manage my schedule for sure. And I was reading some of the stuff you were, you were writing at the time as you were making that transition. And I was reading it kind of intellectually. It was at the time when Jason and making that transition. And I was reading it kind of intellectually. It was at the time when Jason and I were having our breakfast, trying to convince each other to quit our jobs. But it's funny. Now I go back and read some of the stuff you've written over the years,

and it has more impact on me now. It's just like the stuff your parents told you when you were growing up, you know, that you didn't really listen to, and then all of a sudden you really need it. So, uh, why didn't I listen? Yeah. So it's great. Uh, some of the stuff you've been writing over there and, um, and, and you, you really have evolved it since you started as a membership blog. I mean, tell us a little bit about where you've gone with it. Yeah. So I did the membership drives. There was a bunch of people that were supporting it, three bucks a month. And then I felt like there was more stuff I wanted to write about than just the tech stuff that was going on on shambong.net.

And I thought, well, maybe I should have another site for all these other things I want to write about, which is basically just gear, like cool stuff that I come across and neat, interesting items related to grilling or backpacking or music and things like that. Just other interests. And I was like, I can, maybe I'll start another site. So I called it tools and toys and that sort of, that was this other site. But then I realized now I have two websites that I have to write for instead of just the one. So I reached out to a mutual friend of ours, Stephen Hackett, and I was like, Hey, can you help me with this other site? And my, this was my first sort of foray into slowly starting to build a team. And I thought, well, and I, I didn't know any, in hindsight, this is all just normal business stuff. But to me, it was so new. I just completely felt like I was making it up as I went along, only to realize that that's just sort of how everyone's been doing it for centuries.

But my thought was, well, if Steven can write for the site and I can pay him a little bit less than the overall income of the site that it generates, then this could be sustainable. My thought, right, is this, this crazy idea that maybe they would make more money than what it would cost me to run it. And then I could keep it going. So anyways, that, that proved to be true. So we had the tools and toys. And then over time, there was this other website that we ended up launching called the sweet setup that focuses on Mac apps. And so we kind of focus on helping you find the best apps for your Mac or for your iPhone, your iPad. And then we also do sort of this workflow training for how to use

those apps as well. And that kind of came because I used to do these setups, these, these kind of sweet Mac setup interviews. And I would just, you know, really similar to like, you know, your home screen posts on Mac Sparky and just, Hey, you know, what's, what kind of gear do you use? What apps do you use? And stuff like that. And we just had a whole bunch of them over on my site on shambunk.net. And I thought it'd be cool to have a whole website that was devoted to the gear that people use and then helping people find and use the best gear as well. So kind of this hybrid of here's what other people use and here's what we recommend and here's how to use it and stuff like that. So we launched that website. Yeah. In my head, that's like wire cutter for apps for Mac apps. Oh, totally. Yeah. Yeah. I love the wire cutter. It's such a, it just makes so

much sense in terms of, cause I've been writing hardware and software reviews for years. That's sort of part of the gig. If you're going to be an Apple blogger, as you, you write reviews. And so i'd write a review about this new app that would come out and people would always say well should i get this one or should i stick with the one that you reviewed a week ago you know and and it's it's hard to it's one thing to say here's everything this app does it's another thing to say and when you compare it to the landscape here's where i think it falls in so if you want my advice because you can't use 12 text editors, you can really only use one.

I mean, well, some people could use 12, but if you want to just pick one text editor that you would recommend, what would it be? And so that was kind of the thought when we saw how the Wirecutter was doing. I just loved that approach. It just felt more sane. It felt just more, I don't know, just helpful.

And so we, yeah, definitely went that direction with the suite setup. This episode of The Free Agents is brought to you by FreshBooks. Get a free 30-day trial with no credit card required. Just go to freshbooks.com slash freeagents and enter freeagents in the How Did You Hear About Us section. To all you free agents out there, there's something near and dear to your heart, or at least it should be, and that's getting paid. We even did a whole show on it here on The Free Agents.

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There's no credit card required. 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. Go sign up for FreshBooks. It makes us look great and more importantly, will help you get paid faster. As you did this stuff, Sean, it became more than a single guy writing a blog with some membership and advertisements. You grew a team while you're doing it. Yeah, right now I've got one full-time guy here in Kansas City with me. And then we've got four other contractors that are sort of on retainer that help with a lot of just the regular contributing to the website and editing and editorial and stuff like that. So it's been, it's been cool. Like with Stephen Hackett kind of coming on as the first

sort of contractor that I ever worked with on a regular basis and then slowly added some more people. We have Chris Gonzalez that helps write with tools and toys as well. And then over on the suite setup, we've got Bradley Chambers, Jeff Abbott, Josh Ginter, and then Isaac Smith's the guy that works for me full time here in Kansas City. And it's kind of been this slow process of just as sort of the business gets to a spot where I feel like we could have additional help and have it improve the overall quality, improve the overall vision of what we're doing, help more consistent output of the work that we're doing, but not in a way that hinders a business. I can see the challenge of as you begin to grow, you can grow faster than you can sustain. And now you've got all this liability for all these people that you're trying to pay. And I know we've seen that a lot on the internet with sites and whatnot that have kind of grown up and then they get too big

for their own britches or just as just the landscape is changing with advertising and income and different models of revenue on the web. It's really hard at times to maintain profitability with a large team. So we've been really fortunate to grow in a way that's been, I guess, it's just been profitable for us. And it's, I don't know, I love, I love working with the team. I like having other folks as part of the, as part of the mix. So it's interesting to me because I, you know, I am a control freak. So the only thing I can seem to offload to people is busy work. And Jason, well, we talked on the last episode, still has his battle scars, his manager battle scars. And when I was talking to you on the phone in preparation for today, you said, oh, you always wanted to be building a team when you started this process.

And that didn't occur to me. I'll tell you when I left. Yeah, for me, it's been, you know, I was super extroverted. So on the scale, I think I'm right around 100% for extroversion. So I really enjoy having other folks to collaborate with, to bounce ideas around, to just to work together as comrades and friends and people working together in a team. So for me, that was always part of the goal was to not just be doing stuff on my own, but to have other people that we could work together with. Because I feel that for me, when I'm with a team, just the end product, the end result of what we're

creating in terms of it be whether it's an overall site that we're building together or a specific product or some sort of training piece or whatever that may be. I feel like when I'm working with other folks, just end results better. So that was always part of my vision of when I went indie, it was like, I was hoping to eventually get to a spot where I had a handful of folks that were working together. I just, it's just more fun for me that way. I think it's a great idea. And I would like to see myself get better at that. But, but it is inspiring to see how much you've grown with this team over the last few years. Thank you.

The delegation part has definitely been, like you're saying, I can be a control freak as well. And that's something I've really had to learn to let go is allowing other folks. If they can do it almost as good as me, then I should let them do it because chances are they'll actually end up doing it even better than me. And it's so just my own mindset of perfection and trying to let that go. And then having, you know, with some stuff we'll have check-ins. And so before certain things go out the door, I'll have a chance to check it out or be involved in certain areas. involved in certain areas. And, um, and then that way, if it's not up to our standards in terms of just quality or excellence or whatever, then, you know, I'll be able to help push it over the edge to where we want it to be. But most of the time, almost all the time, the stuff that's coming out

the door is better than what I would have done if I was on my own. And so it's, it's been awesome. That's been a realization for me. I hired my college daughter to lay out my next field guide in iBooks Author because iBooks Author makes me crazy. And I knew that I'd be going through and making changes. And as I'm looking at her work product, she's doing things. And some of the stuff she's doing, I'm changing. But some of the stuff I never would have thought of that is actually better than I would have done. And that's eye-opening for me. I mean, that would be true for anybody that I would work with, I would assume.

It's been great. And I think another advantage too, with the team is that it's more for me, I can work less hours now. And when I originally kind of went indie back in 2011, 12, 13, some of those early years, I was still working 40, 50, 60 hours as kind of the norm. And now with additional people helping where I feel like not only are we doing better work, it's with the shared workload, it's more sustainable for the long run. And so being able to kind of dial back and have just a healthy work schedule of that right around the 40 hours, 35, 40 hours a week is so it's, I'm able to focus more on things that I'm good at and I've got more time with my kids, which was kind of the whole point from the beginning. Anyways, do you have any moments along the way where you, where you think, you know,

I'm not out on my own so much as I am in this, in this larger group. And do you have a moment, any moments where you kind of get frustrated and think this would be better if it was just me? No, because if I have those moments, I'll just jump in and do it. I'll just take over something. And so that's one of the reasons why I enjoy being the boss is I still have 100% autonomy. But I have had, it actually brings up a really good point. So I'll have those moments where I say, okay, here's what I want to do. I want to go this route. I want to completely change the direction or whatever. And Isaac, who works with me, he'll say, okay, well, why? And he'll say that. Well, who cares? I'm the boss. That's why. And I had like this initial rub to that question and they'll have

to have an internal dialogue with myself and say, okay, well, wait a minute. If I can't answer his question for why, then do we, should we even be doing this? Am I just having some sort of emotional, I'm excited about a new idea. And so I just want to put everything else on pause and pursue my idea because it's exciting. Or can I actually justify why this is a good shift in the direction that we're going or whatever. So it's actually has helped me to have more clarity about the stuff that we do, better to articulate the direction that we're going or whatever. Um, so it's actually has helped me to have more clarity about the stuff that we do, uh, better to articulate the work that we're doing. And it's helped me, I don't know, just as I try to lead that, lead the team, uh, make sure everyone enjoys what they're doing, that they feel valued, they feel respected, that they know that

they're contributing. Um, it's helped, I don't know, it's, it's kind of helped me. And then those moments where I, I want that full autonomy to just do it myself I have that ability I mean because I'm on the boss I can totally just take over if I want now you you said you're saving you time overall but you are doing some degree of management to what extent is that kind of getting in the way of of you producing hardly at all, we have some just basic editorial calendar with the suite setup, tools and toys, the focus course. So we kind of have this cadence of what gets published and when, and everyone has certain areas that they're responsible for. So we've got our contractors that, you know, these are the articles that

they're going to write. And this is, you know, how many a month that we're expected to get from them. And this is the timeframe that we'd like them by. And so we've, we kind of just have everything just running pretty smoothly. So I don't spend very much time managing people. Uh, I'm mostly, if I'm managing something, it's usually a project and I'm, and everyone's working together and I'm saying, okay, here's the direction I'd love to go with this. Here's what we're gonna try to work on. Here's the structure for it, the milestones, whatever. And we'll spend time doing that. And then I've got my piece of the work that I'm in charge of. And other people have the pieces that I've asked them if they're willing to help contribute.

And then I'm back to doing the actual work. And so I'm able to still spend probably 90% of my time doing the work and focusing on, on the creative work itself, which is actually more than I used to spend when I was in my early days. I used to spend maybe 50% if I was lucky of my time creating. And then the other 50% was on administrative work, um, finding advertisers, hunting down sponsorship stuff, um, bookkeeping, record keeping all of that stuff. And now a lot of that has been delegated or contracted out. And I actually spend more time creating than I used to, which is awesome because I love it. That's the dream. It's the dream. It's true. It's true. Sometimes I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. Yeah. I, I, I'm right at the point

where I'm starting to bring people in and it is, um, I'm still doing with kind of the upfront cost of that, but, but I see what you're talking about. And in my head, I'm going to get there, but I'm not quite there yet. Um, so what has, uh, over the years that you've grown this team, have you ever had anything that you wish you didn't do or things you wish you knew before you started doing that? Because some of the stuff that I wish I would have known before I started it, you could never own, right? It's a catch-22 question because you can't know it unless you've learned it. Some of the lessons that I've learned. So here's a huge one.

Last year, I finally hired a bookkeeper or outsourced all of our books. Yeah. So we have a gal that runs that stuff. And that saved me between five and 10 hours a week of bookkeeping time, which I used to do on Sunday. So I used to always spend my Sundays balancing our books, making contractor payments, all of that stuff. And it was a lot of work. And I did it for six years on my own. And so I know our books, I know our numbers inside and out. And I feel like that was a huge component for me of growing the business slowly and being able to grow. You know, they say like growing at the speed of cash and stuff like that, where as the business

would get a little bit more profitable, I'd be able to reinvest that back into areas that I felt would be great for us, you know, in terms of growth or whatever it may be. And so by being really familiar with the numbers, I was able to make really good decisions about just transitions and different things with the business. But then at the same time, now that I've got someone else doing that, I just feel like this huge, just, just burden is just gone. Like all that I just hated doing the books. It was just not fun at all. And so I love that I don't have to do that anymore. And so part of me is like, well, it would have been nice to have delegated some of that stuff earlier on and known,

you know, telling myself, you don't have to do it all yourself all the time and being able to delegate. But at the same time, by having done all these different stages of the business and doing it myself before I delegate it, then I know what's expected. I have a better picture of sort of the ins and outs of how that works. And I feel like it's informed me, helped me be a better business owner. So I don't know, like I would definitely go with the delegation and just letting go a little bit of that perfectionist mindset to a degree. But at the same time, part of that is what helps you build and establish your voice, your brand, the systems that work well for your business on the internal stuff that helps you maintain just your efficiency and stuff like that. So it's, I don't know, it's a hard question to answer. I don't even know if that's a good answer.

No, I think it is. And I do think that the accounting thing is like a particular one that a lot of people struggle with. We had Andrew on the show, I don't know, about a year ago. And my advice to people is not everybody is Sean, really. I think you should have someone help you with that stuff very early, because if you don't know what you're doing with it, not only do you give up your Sundays, you can actually get yourself in a lot of trouble.

So that's a good one to hire somebody on early. That's what I did. I don't, I mean, I'm a lawyer and I'm supposed to know all this stuff. But when it comes to the accounting, I don't want that to be a specialty. I probably could figure it out too, but I have books to write and I have kids to play board games with. And that's not something I want to be a specialist at. Yeah. I didn't do my taxes on my own. So I do have a CPA that helps me with all of that stuff and making sure that everything was legal that regard. But all of the bookkeeping in terms of the budgets, just paying the bills,

transferring money around and stuff like that, I was doing all of that myself. So yeah, I would absolutely have a CPA, like 100%. Yeah, huge investment there. Yeah, but worth it. And like you said, you've gone out on your own for a reason because you've got some skill or talent you want to share with the world it is very easy for all the administrative stuff to get in the way of that yeah this episode of free agents is brought to you in part by squarespace enter offer code free agents one word at checkout to get 10 off your first purchase make your next move with squarespace squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea with a unique domain award-winning templates and. Maybe you want to create an online store or a portfolio

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trial with no credit card required by going to squarespace.com. When you decide to sign up, use this offer code, freeagents, and you'll get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for this show. Thank you to Squarespace for their support of free agents. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. You know, another thing you do that I think is fascinating, and I just discovered that you did this recently. I don't know how long you've been, you've got that sprint schedule. And why don't you just tell us a little bit about it? Yeah, it's these eight-week work cycles. And okay, so about a year ago, as we're recording this, so January 2017, I went up to Chicago and there was a Basecamp workshop. So

Jason Freed and his team, they hosted this one day event. It wasn't even one day. It was, I think it was about four hours long, five hours long. And it was a Basecamp, the way we work workshop. And he basically just unpacked all of the different ways that Basecamp, the company, works. And they're a fully distributed team. They've got all these remote workers. And they do these things. They have these project cycles. And they will take six weeks.

And so they've got whatever project they want to do. They want to add a new widget to the homepage of Basecamp.com. Or they want to implement some sort of new time tracking thing with the tasks or whatever it is inside of thecamp.com or they want to implement some sort of new time tracking thing with the tasks or whatever it is inside of the software. And they will take one or two designers, one or two developers, and those guys will team up and they'll be in charge of this one specific project. And they have to go from start to completion within six weeks. We got to ship something by the end of six weeks. And he said, the concept behind that is that work just takes as long as you give it. So if you give yourself six months to complete a project, it will take you six months. And if you give yourself six weeks to complete it, it will take you six weeks to complete it. And then what you've learned by

the time that that project is completed and it's now out the door, you've learned so much about that process, about the piece of work that you're doing, how it fits into the big picture, all that stuff that now you're just more informed to work on the next thing. And so maybe it's coming back and reiterating on that same project or version two, right, right off the bat or realizing, Oh, we spent a lot of time on this. Now it's out the door. And actually, it's not as critical as we thought it was. Let's move on somewhere else. Let's pivot to something else. So that's kind of their mindset or their structure to the way they work with these six week cycles. And then I have a really good friend, Sean McCabe, who runs a website over at seanwest.com. And he does this thing where every seventh week of their business, they take a sabbatical week.

So they do six weeks on one week off, six weeks on one week off. And I'm like, I like these two approaches. I like the idea of having forced time off because that's something I've always really struggled with as a business owner is just never, just rarely would take time off rarely. And I just felt like that wasn't healthy. So I need to have some sort of structured, scheduled time off. So I'll take that time off and rest. And then I really like this idea of the six-week work cycle. So we kind of mashed the two together and it turned into this eight-week sprint that you're talking about. And so we'll do six weeks as a focused work cycle where we have a project or specific

sort of goal or some sort of measurable outcome that we're trying to have done by the end of the six weeks. And then we have, we'll take one week and we call it a buffer week. And so we'll take that one week and we'll review the six weeks and say, okay, how did it go? What was our initial goal? How do we do regards to that? And then knowing what we now know, what's our next project. And so we'll kind of review the past six weeks and then we'll plan for the next project time. And we'll sort of spend that buffer week. And then we also just have sort of, you can do work on whatever you want. Sort of that Google, I think does this where you've got one day a week or you have 20% of your time is free time to sort of work on whatever you

want. And so that also is part of that buffer week where we've just got, do a little bit of review, a little bit of planning, but then also just, hey, what's, you know, do you have a cool idea you want to work on? Whatever, like it's sort of up in the air. So Isaac and I can both work on sort of whatever we want during that time. And then that eighth week, the last week of the whole cycle altogether, we take it off completely. So we shut down the office.

We put our emails into autoresponder mode. And we just take a week off. And then we come back and we start the whole thing over. So then we'll do six more weeks, one week buffer, and then another week of time off. And then we just repeat that throughout the year. It gets a little fuzzy at the end of the year with all the holidays and stuff like that. So we kind of fiddle with the schedule at the end of the year with all the holidays and stuff like that. So we kind of fiddle with the schedule at the end of the year, but it works out all in all. We ended up taking a full two months of paid time off during the year. And we did this for the first time in 2017.

And it was amazing. Like it was just so amazing because you're, you're easily able to compress seven to eight weeks worth of work into a six week timeframe. So we're getting the same amount of work done in the same amount of time. We're just compressing it a little bit because we have a little bit of extra focus. And when you see that light at the end of the tunnel, when you know this has to be done after six weeks, and then you also know I'm going to get a break, you just, you're just working more efficiently. You're able to say no to things that don't really matter. And you're just better able to focus on what really is essential. And it's a lot of fun and it's super liberating. And we're, we were just more productive and also had more time off than ever. So it's really, it was a really cool way

to bring those two things together. So you don't find yourself working more, just more effectively? Because I hear that and I immediately think that what you're doing is you're actually working for the equivalent of seven weeks or eight weeks in a seven week period. But what you're saying is that you're actually just more focused and more productive and you're not working a 50 hour week or 60 hour week with a week off. No, I work about 40 hours a week and then I take that week off and I don't work weekends. So I'm pretty much always done. Uh, you know, I start working at eight, eight, eight 30 in the morning. I take an hour for lunch. I'm done at five in the evening. And yeah, I don't, I, I've worked a couple like this last week. We've got a huge new product

that's coming out on Tuesday and I'm a little bit behind on it. And so I've been working a couple evenings this past week, but it's some of the first evenings I've worked in the last 16 months. So, yeah, we're not that extra 40 hour break week. Those 40 hours aren't then being distributed somewhere else. They're at work. We're working normal hours. I think we're just focused more is, is a huge part of it. We're, we're saying no to stuff. So, um, I used to do this all the time, especially as an indie, when you can do whatever

you want, you do whatever you want. And I used to do everything. I would have a new idea and I'd want to work on that. And then the next day I would have another new idea. And so I want to work on that too. So now I'm working on two ideas at the same time. And what we do now is that if you have an idea for something or this or whatever it may be, you have to write it up. And this is something we stole from the Basecamp guys as well. So I write up an idea brief, so to speak, and we'll put that into Basecamp and say, Hey, I thought of this and this would be cool. And here's why I think it would be cool. And here's what I think it would look like and et cetera, et cetera. And you just plan it all out and map it all out.

And then you, you publish it to the team inside Basecamp and then anyone can comment on it if they want, but you're not allowed to start it in the middle of a current work cycle. So this idea or whatever it is has to wait until our next work cycle before we can do it. And even then it's not even a guarantee. And because there's going to be a lot of other ideas that we might be interested in. And so it's helped us to just be more intentional with the work that we say yes to and what we're focusing on. And we really try to focus on stuff that's going to be somewhat low complexity. We can pull it off within six weeks with the team that we have and also is going to have a really high return on that time and energy spent in terms

of it being either a new product that we're creating, some sort of new training course, or a new section of the website, or a new design approach, or whatever it may be that we're working on. We're like, okay, what's going to have the most impact on the work that we're trying to do for our readership, how we're trying to serve these people or grow the business or develop new streams of revenue, whatever it is that we're going to focus on, what can we wrap up within six weeks and is also going to have the biggest impact toward the goal that we're trying to move towards. So that focus has really helped us because then we're not saying yes to everything. We're just saying yes to this one thing and not thinking about anything else. Yeah. It seems like that's the alternate. I mean, if you're going to say, I'm going to do this in a certain amount of time, I'm going to take a week

off. I'm either, that means either you have to compress time somehow, which you probably can't, or you have to work longer hours, or you just have to do less. And maybe cutting out the nonsense is the trick. Exactly. And that's the thing we all struggle with because nonsense is kind of sexy sometimes. Yeah, no, totally true. And that's one thing with the buffer week. So you got that one week for the buffer. And so if you got something silly you want to do during that time, then that's a

great time to do it. And I'll still spend my sabbatical week or my, my break week. I'll still spend time writing. I just don't come into my office. I'll take my iPad with me because I still enjoy writing. So I'm still thinking about stuff. I'm still doing photography. I'm still doing nerdy stuff, but it's only the things that

I want to do. And I'm just spending my time the way that I want. And I'll usually then also take that time and I'll, I'll volunteer for school pickup and drop off during that week. So I'm spending a little bit extra time with my kids and seeing them in a context I don't normally see them in and stuff like that. And it's, it's just really, it's, it really is liberating and helps you realize, okay, this is the stuff that's truly important for moving the needle forward and everything else can just wait for later. And then over time, just the stuff that felt important in the moment that I say, okay, this is going to wait for later.

When later comes around, that stuff doesn't feel so important anymore. And it really helps us to realize that the ideas that really matter are still going to be important four, five, six, seven weeks later from now. And the stuff that didn't really matter, it's a good thing we never spent any time on it anyways, because it wasn't going to be important. Well, what was some of your biggest surprises after you went independent? I know it's been a few years for you, but I'm sure you remember a few. I think one of the biggest surprises for me was, especially in the beginning, was how little time I was going to have available for doing the creative work. Because I've been doing my blog on the side for years.

And then once I took it full time, I thought, hey, now I'm going to have, instead of 10 hours a week, a couple hours here and there on the evenings, I'm going to have 40 hours a week. But what I really had, I got about 15 or 20, maybe, because I stopped working in the evenings, which was one thing, because I really cut back my, the amount of time I was giving to work-related stuff. But then also, just so much of the business was the admin and, you know, chasing down sponsors. I spent a lot of time chasing down sponsors and, you know, you spend an hour recording a podcast and then you spend three hours around that one hour of material in terms of the preparation and then the editing and the publishing and promotion and all that stuff. And so how little of my time was spent on actually doing the creative work itself was really surprising to

me. And it, it, it took me some time to become a little bit more efficient with the extra stuff, as well as learning to delegate and things like that. So that was a huge one. And I think the other big surprise was that you, I mean, maybe in hindsight is you, you not going to run out of ideas. I was really afraid that I would just run out of stuff to write about or talk about. Or I would just be like, oh crap, I'm done. I wrote those four articles that I've been thinking about before I went indie. And now that they're written, now I don't have any more articles to write. And that was a huge fear.

I was concerned. I'm like, what's going to happen? What's next? I don't know what I'm going to do with all this time. And the, the, just that create that creativity stuff was producing more creativity. Like the, the ideas beget additional ideas. And so, but I was really nervous about that now in hindsight, I don't, I'm not nervous about it anymore. That has just never been a concern for me. I have so many ideas of things I want to do, but, but I'm still with you in that first step. I am, I am still kind of in the fog a little bit as to how I get more time for the true work and less time for the admin stuff.

But, you know, it's a, it's a journey as the listeners know, and I keep whining about. Yeah, for sure. So Sean, if you think back to that time again you know you you can use a time machine and go back and tell yourself something you know give yourself some advice or more practically since there aren't time machines for our listeners who a lot of them are thinking about going out on their own you know any advice like advice you wish you had advice that you would give to people who are thinking of of starting out on their own man it's hard i think the advice that i would give to people who are thinking of starting out on their own? Man, it's hard. I think the advice that I would give myself is to kind of slow down a little bit and focus on what's really working with the creative work and just learning your creative rhythms and stuff like that. I was just hustling and spending a lot of my time just doing busy work and finding work for myself that didn't need to be done.

And I just felt scared that if I stopped moving, that everything would just fall out from underneath me. And this concern of if I don't publish something every single day to my website, everyone's going to stop reading it right away. And it was just that fear of almost like a scarcity mindset towards the work that I was doing and my audience. And that mindset didn't take, you know, it took my audience for granted and it made, it treated them as if they were just fly-by-night readers as opposed to people that actually cared with what I had to say. And it took my time for granted because then I'm constantly just looking for something to do to spend my time on to keep the wheels moving in that fear that everything would just fall apart. So, that would definitely say

to kind of slow down. But there's also the other side of that where, especially in the early days, that hustle and that just that energy and that movement is also you're building a momentum that you can build on top of. So, you want to have that balance of make sure you are doing the work and you're really spending your time on the things that matter. You know, obviously not being lazy, but you're not creating work for yourself and you're not just doing something to stay busy and allowing yourself to take some of those breaks. I think there's a natural tendency that we all have to sort of start sprinting and, and not knowing that you have to pace yourself, right? That,

that happens. And I felt when you said that, like, slow down a little bit, I felt that too, that when I started on my own, I was so sort of desperately, like, I can't let any stone be unturned. I need to say yes to everything. I need to do every single thing that comes to mind because I'm out here now all on my own and I need to do this. And in hindsight, it's like, wow, that was too much. And then you never get a chance to stop and think about the bigger picture and plan long-term projects when, you know, when you're working that, that hard and that fast. Um that fast, and so that what you said just really resonated with me.

That sounds, that's good advice. I endorse this advice. I got the Jason Snow seal of approval. It's like, I mean, I just, it sent a shiver through me. I'm like, oh boy, like it took me right back. That feeling of like, I got to keep doing this. I got to do everything I possibly can. I got to keep doing this. I got to do everything I possibly can. And telling yourself easy,

like you can't, you can't win it in the first week or even the first month. You got to be, it's got to be sustainable and you got to give yourself enough space to figure out, you know, what the right things are to do and don't say yes to everything. And absolutely. You know, we hear Apple talk about that all the time, you know, for every yes, there's a thousand no's and you're like, yeah, that's so cool. And, but if you were to apply that to your own life and if I were to say, okay, I want to say yes to writing an article on my website every day. Well, what 1000 things do I have to say no to in order for that to happen? And, and it's hard, it's, it's, it's cool to see it in regards to some little stuff like, Oh, I made this design design decision. I said yes to Siri. So I'm going to say no to

buttons or whatever. Right. But when you applied it to your, even to your own day-to-day life of the things that you have to say no to, it's really, really hard to say no to stuff, especially when you're an independent, cause you've, you're excited about it. It feels cool. And oh, these are my friends. And this idea would be so great. And maybe I could make some money from that and all that stuff. And it just takes time to figure out how to slow down without, I don't know, without losing momentum and losing your focus on the things that truly are moving the needle forward, helping your business, doing the quality work, stuff like that. First time I saw the musical Hamilton, there's this great song in there where he talks about why do you write like you're running out of time?

This goes on and on. And I remember watching going, yeah, that's me. I was proud of that. And then like a second later, I thought in horror, yeah, that's me. Well, Sean, thank you so much for coming on the show. I would recommend everyone head over to Sean Blanc.net. Um, if you, the, the ideas that Sean's are talking, Sean is talking about, I would recommend a couple of things. Uh, uh, sweet setups. Great. Can go buy some gear there. Uh, but I really like the stuff you're doing on your productivity courses. I've watched a couple of them.

You've got a new one coming out. It came out right before the show published. You want to tell us just a little bit about that? Yeah, it's called All the Things. And it was my wife's idea for the title. So it's a two-part course. And on one part, we give a lot of training for using the productivity app things three, which I'm a huge fan of. There's this whole other part because I think the tools are neat. I love using cool tools. Like I'm a huge software aficionado. So I want to use the best software. And

I've got this notebook. I'm like, I want the best notebook and I want the best pen to go with my best notebook. Um, so the tools are fun. I will, I will geek out about this stuff all day long, but at the end of the day, the tools actually don't matter. And so we have this whole other portion of the course that just hits on mindsets and some best practices and structure for being productive on a day-to-day basis and sort of managing all the things, managing that sort of inbox overwhelm, uh, staying on top of your projects, learning how to like what we literally, what we were just talking about, how to calm down and sort of focus on just the few things that are really going to matter. So I break a lot of that stuff down for how I do that on a

weekly basis, on a day-to-day basis. And so we just go through a lot of structure that you can implement. Uh, if you use OmniFocus, Todoist, Reminders, or even if you don't use an app at all, we talk about a lot of just this stuff that's helpful in terms of building momentum in your work life. We talk about just a bunch of cool stuff. So it's just fun. Yeah, a lot of this stuff has been on my mind lately. I did watch the course. I would endorse it. I mean, it was affirmation for me in some ways, and it was new knowledge. I think that no matter what system you use, if these things are on your mind, I would recommend that course.

Thank you, David. I appreciate that. So you get the David Spark seal of approval, too. You got two. Look at that. Man, this is the best day of my life. You guys are awesome. It's like two thumbs up.

So thank you. And so where can you find that course, Sean? If you go to thesweetsetup.com slash things, it'll be right there. All right. Well, thanks, Sean, for coming on the show. And thanks for all the great stuff you've been sharing with the internet. Thank you, guys. Thanks for blazing the trail for guys like me. You guys have been doing this for so long.

I really, yeah, I appreciate being on the show. It's a pleasure to talk with you guys. And that's it, David. It's been a pleasure as always. We'll be back in a fortnight again. You can tweet at us at FreeAgentsFM and that's maybe the best way to send in your feedback

and we'll try to include it on the next show. But I'm really glad we got a chance to talk to Sean and thank you for setting that up. That was good stuff. I thought so, too. And we'll see you all in a couple weeks. Bye, everybody.