Focused - 50: Bet on Yourself

Episode Date: June 26, 2018

Mike Schmitz joins as the new Free Agents co-host. In this episode, we get to know Mike better, learn about his journey, and discuss the show format going forward.

David Sparks and Mike Schmitz spent their careers working for the establishment. Now, they've had enough. They've rebelled against the status quo and are now seeking success on their terms. They are free agents. Welcome back to Free Agents, a podcast about being an independent worker in a digital age. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my new fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hi, Mike. Hey, David. So, everybody, the new co-host is here, Mike Schmitz.

Mike is a writer and podcaster. He does a lot of work over at Asian Efficiency. He does screencasts for Screencasts Online. He's an author. He's written a book. Podcaster on things like Bookworm and The Productivity Show. But I've known Mike for quite a while, and he's just a really sharp guy and super passionate about helping people. Mike's got his own kind of free agent journey. He's a little earlier on the path than Jason was and me, frankly. But I think that's kind of cool, too.

So I'm really excited about having Mike on the show. And when Jason decided his time was up, I spent a lot of time thinking about who I'd bring in. And Mike just always came to the top of the list. So, Mike, thank you so much for joining me on The Free Agents. Absolutely. I am very excited to join the podcast. I feel like I've got some pretty big digital shoes to fill, but I'll do my best.

Yeah, exactly. Don't think of yourself as filling Jason Snell's shoes. That is not something really any of us can do. Right, right. And I'll tell the listeners, Mike told me before he started that he's kind of nervous about this. So you guys got to like, you know,

give him some love in the comments or whatever, because he's a great guy. But I thought today, we've got some format changes for the show. We're going to try and change things up a bit, but not a lot. And we're going to tell you all about that at the end of this episode.

But for today, I thought maybe we should all get to know Mike a little bit better. So Mike, tell us a little bit about your free agent story and how you got started. Sure. I want to preface this a little bit because like I told you, David, when you reached out to me about the idea of joining the show, that I was a little bit hesitant at first because I'm not a true quote unquote free agent. I've not stuck it to the man, left a big corporate job, and now I'm living the dream independently. But I'm living the parts of

it that I want to live. And I think that that's kind of unique. And it also is going to bring some perspective for people who listen to the show who maybe aren't free agents. In fact, prior to this show, I was listening to some of the other shows that you had published just to get feel for exactly how the format's going to go. In episode 47, you had a guy, I think his name is Paul, who wrote in and he says, I'm a 52-year-old person who's never going to go. In episode 47, you had a guy, I think his name is Paul, who wrote in and he says, I'm a 52-year-old person who's never going to be a free agent, but I can apply a lot of the stuff that you talk about here and I can live my version of the dream, basically. And I think that that's kind of what I've done. No, yeah. And let's, you know, not mince words here.

You're a hustler, Mike. You've got, you're doing work for like four or five different companies, uh, to put bread on the table. So I think you're a free agent, whether you want to admit it or not. But, uh, I do understand that you, you didn't work for IBM. In fact, you started working in a family business, right? Yep. That's right. So I grew up in a small family business. Uh, it's a software company that was never really big. It was probably at most about 10 to 15 people. And it's been about that for like the last 30 years or so since my dad started it way back when in the farmhouse in a small town in Wisconsin. In fact, I've always had an affinity for technology. I've loved computers since I was

really little. We sold software to special education. He used to bring me on his presentations and bring an Apple IIe. He set it up in the corner of the room. I'm three years old at the time. He's presenting to a bunch of teachers who think that special education students are never going to be able to figure this out. And I'm sitting over there booting the software and running it myself, and it just blew them away. So it was kind of cool because I grew up in this stuff. I loved this stuff. And I really liked working in the family business because I really liked making a positive impact in people's lives. So you're running the command line at three? That's impressive. Yeah, basically. I've built a website since I was like 10 years old. Basically, as soon as you could do that sort of thing, like that was just interesting to

me. I grew up, like the computers were right there. There was a copy machine in our kitchen. There were Apple IIe's, 3GS, the Mac SE when it came out, like we had all that stuff right there. And, um, when everybody left for the day, I would go down and I would, I would play with this stuff. And I just, I just loved it.

So, so your family has a software business. You love software. It seems like a natural fit. Why aren't you doing that now? Well, my role in the family business evolved over the years. And when I first started working, with the family business, I was creating videos and things like that. And I enjoyed that. As I went to college, I went to St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, which is near Green Bay. It's a small liberal arts college, got a business degree. And I came back and started working at the family business. I was doing primarily sales for quite a while. And it was okay. It was something that I was

able to do. And if you looked at it on the surface, you would say that I was pretty good at it. But it wasn't something that I really enjoyed. And I found myself a lot of times not wanting to pick up the phone and make the calls, which is my first clue that this really wasn't a great fit. And unfortunately, that's what was required, especially in a small business where you've got to make sales to pay the bills. You just got to do what you've got to do sometimes. And that kind of wore on me. There's also a dynamic with working in the family business that you don't have when you work in a bigger company. I personally just didn't like the fact that every time I got together with my family

The discussion was always about business My wife and I got married we started having kids and I wanted to just be able to go Hang out and my mom and dad could hang out with their grandparents or grandkids And not have to talk about you know, what's going on at the at the office which that just kind of dominated and I know that it is possible to create those distinctions, but it's hard. And I just decided after a while that this really wasn't a great fit for me anymore. I wasn't feeling challenged. I wasn't growing like I wanted to. And so I started, like you mentioned, I'm a hustler. I started getting up at 5 a.m. to write because I got this crazy idea that I was going to

write a book and I had never written anything before. I didn't like English class growing up. So it was kind of weird that I had this dream, quote unquote, to write this book. But I was looking at my current situation. I'm at the office from eight till five. We're involved with our church. We've got extracurricular activities. Kids are in stuff. So only time I've got to work with is early in the morning. And I just decided, you know, I'm going to embrace some of these productivity strategies

that I've picked up from other places, including one of the places in Asian Efficiency where I'm product director now. But I was going to get up early and I was going to just consistently show up every day and I was going to write. And I did that for a little while, got in a habit. And that's the thing that not only allowed me to publish the book, but just the process of doing that is what got me connected with the Asian Efficiency Company. And then from there, that opened up a lot of doors to a lot of the other things that I'm currently doing. Yeah, I mean, we talk often on the show about, you know, if you're thinking about making a move, that you start with that side hustle, you know, you start with something, don't just quit your job, first get something rolling on the side. And that's exactly what you did. Yeah, exactly. And it doesn't have to be

something that you're absolutely sure this is the thing I'm going to do forever. It just has to be something that in the back of your mind, you have questions about. And if you entertain that long enough, eventually it gets to the point, for me anyways, where the pain of not doing it hurts more than the pain of getting up early and doing it. No, I totally get that. And you minimize the fact that you work for a family business as opposed to like a jobby job. But in some ways, I think that could be a lot harder to leave than a jobby job. You know, it took me 22 years to figure it out. And I think you did it quite a bit faster than I did. And you had to deal with the angst of telling your dad, this family business you've been building presumably for your children all these years, I don't want anything to do with it.

Yeah. I mean, I know that was tough for him. Really, the thing that kind of helped me through that was a podcast that is no longer around anymore. I think it was called Unstuckable. And there was an interview with somebody, and I forget the person's name even, but they were in a similar situation that I was where they're struggling. They're like, I'm expected to take this thing over. This is going to be my parents' legacy. And it's not something I really want to do right now anyways. And what they had said basically was that they came to the realization that they were their dad's legacy, not the business that their dad founded. That was a tipping point in my mind because it was like, yeah, I know that this is going to be

difficult for my dad if I walk away from this right now. But I know that still, he's proud of the initiative that I'm taking. And I also think that it helped him a lot because he's always been a quote-unquote self-made man. He's a hustler too. And he's always been a very good provider. And I think that even to this day, he views himself as the provider for his family, his children, even though all my brothers and me are grown up and we're doing our own thing. I've got a brother who's a coder for a company out in Silicon Valley. I've got another brother who runs a creative marketing agency. That really is my dad's legacy, not the fact that he created this business. That's the thing that kind of got me over the hump. That's what gave me enough courage, confidence, whatever you want to call it, to say, you know, this is really the thing, dad, that I need to give this a shot. Because I've learned a lot from my dad.

My dad's a great man. He instilled a lot of disciplines in me and showed me the value of working hard, having a spirit of excellence in everything that you do. But I also learned from working with my dad that as much as he loves me, he can't tell me what I'm here on this earth to do. It's up to me to figure that out. And really, no one can tell you this is the thing that you're supposed to do. Even if you look at what is your quote unquote passion, what are your skills, what are you really good at? You have no idea until you try some things because your calling or your vocation has to be discovered. And you may find something like me, you know, when I started

to sit down and write, that writing was cool. I like this. As I do it more and more, I get better at it. But writing isn't even really the main thing. I mean, from there, I started creating videos. From there, I started doing webinars. From there, I started speaking. From there, I started podcasting. I mean, there's a lot of twists and turns along this journey. But the important thing is that if I never step out in the first place to say, hey, I'm going to try being a writer, I don't discover that stuff. So I want to encourage anybody who's listening to this, if you think your current situation is pretty good, don't settle for pretty good. Figure out what is the best. One of my favorite authors

is Ed Cole. And he said that good is often the enemy of the best because you settle for pretty good and you think this is pretty good. I'm just going to maintain here. I'm going to plateau. And I feel like there's a lot of people who they have something bigger inside of them. And I think it's a shame they're robbing themselves and they're robbing the world of their contribution if they don't give it a shot. Yeah. And the challenge always is, you know, especially as you get go on in your life, you have children, you have commitments and, and those things, a lot of times in your mind become bigger than, um, you know, getting yourself out of a situation at work. And it's just really hard for people to adjust those things. So I like

what Mike did. I mean, you said, all right, well, you know, I'm going to start this side hustle. I'm going to wake up early every day. And that was your first step and you had some success with that book. Yeah. And the book, I mean, really the thing that got me going on the book, and this is kind of the common theme in everything that I do, is that I take my faith very seriously. I went to Bible college. I actually have a Bible college degree. So my book is A Biblical Approach to Productivity. And another way to say it would be something like stewardship. I believe we've all been given a certain measure of talent, time, whatever. You have certain resources. You have certain

dreams, visions that are inside of you regardless of your belief system. And you got to let those things out. But for me, the whole idea of productivity and stewardship, really, this is the spiritual why behind all the productivity things. Everything that I do is I want to make the most of what I've got. I've got a short time here on this earth. I want to make the most of what it is. And it doesn't mean that I am going to walk away from my job and go spend full time. You know, I'm going to be a writer because that's all of a sudden the thing. I'm going to start where I am with what I have, but I'm going to do everything in my power to make the most of my time, talent, energy, focus, whatever. And I think that that's a principle that everybody needs to click into. Like I said, regardless of your belief system, the power of the why is really, really important.

If you can figure out why you want to do these things, that's going to provide the motivation for you to stick with it long enough to get some results. So, Mike, at what point did you get to the tipping point where you said, okay, this needs to be more than a side hustle for me? Yeah, that was, I have in the notes here, the moment of clarity. I was on vacation with my family at a lake house and it was like day four of that vacation. And my wife looks at me, we're just hanging around at the house and I'm enjoying being with my kids. And she says to me just an offhanded comment, but it really hit me. She said, that's the first time I've seen you smile, like really smile in months. And that was kind of like the reality check for me. It caused me to think like,

well, I've been happy, haven't I? That that, that can't be true. But as I thought about it, you know, I had been carrying a lot of stress from all the development and stuff that just went along with the business and how we were running it and where we were. And like I said, there's some things you just, you just got to do. So I had gotten in the mode of this needs to be done. I'm going to do it. And we were working with some developers who were all over the world. So I was checking my email at night. First thing when I woke up in the morning, I was putting out fires pretty much all the time. And I didn't realize the impact that all of that stress was having on me until my wife called it out. And at that point, my eyes

were open and I'm like, something's got to change here. So again, like I've got kids, I've got responsibilities, got a mortgage, got to put food on the table. So what can I do right now? And for me, it was going back to that dream I had to write that book that I had been suppressing for probably years at that point. I'm like, you know what? This has been there for a long time. I got to give this a shot because who knows where this is going to lead, even if it's just a couple hundred bucks. It's additional income that can help get me going. Once you start moving, once you create a little bit of energy, I believe that that will carry on. And you have no idea what doors are going to open from that. But I needed to do something.

I needed to get the ball rolling. And so I was just going to give this a shot. Eight months later, I'm getting up every day at 5 a.m. writing. And eight months later, I published my book. During that process, actually about two weeks after I started writing, I saw on social media that Asian Efficiency was hiring. I approached them not about a job, but about an opportunity to guest post because, like I said, I really wasn't thinking I was going to leave the family business yet. And they said, well,

it's not something we normally do, but if you have anything, send it our way. I'd just been blogging for about two weeks, so I sent them my blog and they said, this is really good. We see that a lot of similar mindsets. We want to give us a shot. So that led to a bigger project that led to a part-time position. And at that point, you know, I've got some regular income coming in from this side hustle that I had no idea what was going to happen when I started to sit down and write. That gave me the confidence to think like, yeah, I really can do this. And so once you

get some momentum in the side hustle, that makes it a lot easier to get off of one train and get on another. You know, once you start having some, some success of some sort and it just does, just takes a little step. My friend, Jean McDonald, uh, runs the app camp for girls and it was a passion project of hers. She didn't know how to get started. And a friend of hers gave her, I think it was something like $100 and said, look, here's $100. I want you to take one step towards AppCamp for Girls.

So what she did was she took $100 to a designer friend and the designer friend made the little cute owl logo that if you go to AppCamp for Girls, it's on their website. And that's what she did. She made a logo. And from there, now you look, it's this massive thing that's in all these cities and helping all these girls learn how to code. And it just takes that step a lot of times.

And one of the things I think that's inspirational about your story is you didn't start it with the intention of leaving. You just started it because it's something you knew you had to get out of your system. And I think so often that's such a great vector to get yourself on this path. Yeah, exactly. In my book, I share some of the stuff that I've learned from going to Bible college. And one of them is the root of the word passion is the Latin word petit, literally means to suffer. So when people say, I've got this passion project, a lot of people think on the outside, they think that that means this is something that's really fun for me. And it's

something that I'm just going to do forever because I really enjoy it. But often when you're starting a side hustle, it's not fun at all. It's scary. But that passion, that's the thing where like it hurts for you not to put this thing out into the world. To get this thing birthed, whether it's a business, a book, whatever, to get this thing out there takes a lot of effort. But passion is being willing to suffer through some things to see that happen. That's the feeling I had when Jason told me. He says, look, I think I've got this out of my system. And I realized I didn't. Free agents is something that I feel like I have to do. And that's at FreshBooks can save you up to 192 hours, which is a whole lot of hours.

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I want to encourage you now is the time to try it. FreshBooks is offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of this show. 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 a section. Thank you, FreshBooks for supporting free agents and RelayFM. You know, Mike, for almost everybody that goes through what you have, there's usually a point somewhere, you know, where they realize, oh, wait a second, I'm actually going to quit my job and take this on full time now. And you talked about being at the cabin, that's kind of what inspired you to get the book writing and start tipping your toes.

But at what point did you realize, no, this is now going to be my thing? That's a good question. Well, I think when I started doing work with Asian Efficiency, that gave me a lot of confidence. As I was working with Asian Efficiency, I was helping update the OmniFocus premium post product that they sell. That led to me being able to present at the MaxDoc conference. Now, I guess it was three years ago. While I was there, I presented and I got some fairly positive

feedback from the people that were there. So that gave me enough confidence to walk up to Don and be like, hey, I want to create videos for you. And really just these doors that have opened along the way, I felt like I've had to walk through them just to see if I could do them. Now, obviously, that can be dangerous, too, because you can get to the point where you're overcommitted, you're doing too many things. And so one of the things that I'm always considering is, OK, has this thing run its course yet? And there have been a few things that I've had to say, you know, this is something that I can't do anymore. And that's okay. But I guess the more that I see the opportunities that come before me, I mean, this podcast is one of those opportunities that like, I never thought I would have this opportunity. And it's like, I got to give this

a shot. I got to see if I can do this. And then every time that you do it, you develop more confidence. And that makes it easier to think of yourself as, yeah, I am a writer. Yeah, I am a screencaster. Yeah, I am a content creator or a podcaster. And yes, I can do this. And then at some point you said, hey, dad, we got to talk. Yeah, exactly. Uh, one of the books that I had read a while back, I forget the name of the book, but the author was Eric Fisher and Jim Woods. And, uh, Jim Woods, I know in particular has mentioned this a couple of times. He's, he said at one point, your side hustle has to become your main hustle. And I agree with that. If you are doing something on the side, and this is the thing that you're quote unquote,

passionate about at some point, if that thing continues to grow, you've got to make that switch. I think that if you've got a side project and you've got an outlet for this thing and you're doing this thing, but it's successful and you're holding it back because you're so committed to this other thing over here, but your heart's really in this thing that's on the side, at some point, you've got to be willing to make a leap. So regardless of how secure the situation looks, I think even if you've got a bunch of different side hustles going on and they're all successful, there's still going to be that moment where it's scary and you're going to have to make that jump and you're going to have to let some things go. And that for me anyways, was terrifying because like I said, I've got kids

at home, I've got a mortgage to pay. I take that responsibility very seriously. And I didn't, I didn't want to, I didn't know exactly what was going to happen. In fact, after I joined the Asian efficiency team, shortly after that, one of the co-founders left the company and there was a state of flux there where we didn't know what was going to happen. Is this going to fold up overnight? And then what do I do? And I feel confident sharing that because we've shared it on the podcast, things like that. I won't go into all the details, but it was a little bit of a turbulent season, but I stuck with it. We've made it through. we're on, on an upward trajectory now,

but for, for a while, like, you've just got to have the confidence that like, okay, I'm going to give this a shot. I'm going to give it a fair shot. I'm not going to try this thing once. And then if it doesn't work, you know, go back to the other thing. I think that regardless of what you're going to try to do, there's going to be, there's going to be a couple ingredients that are required. One of them is going to be consistency. You've got to do it long enough to create a habit and see where that is going to take you because that's going to leverage the compound effect. And, uh, you know, if you don't see the results after a couple months, then, then maybe you say, okay, this isn't, this isn't going to work, but.

You know, I would think that a common trait among a lot of people that, um, that are interested in becoming a free agent is that they're hard workers. I mean, I think that, you know, getting up two hours early to write a book or do whatever your side hustle is, I'm sure there's a, a lot of stories with our listeners right now that are doing something just like that. They have a job where they're making a salary. Maybe they've got a wife or a husband and kids and they've got commitments, but they've also got this passion thing they're pursuing. And I don't know if I'd agree that you have to make that your main thing eventually. I think for some people, it may just not be possible, or maybe it's just, it's a bridge too far for them.

I don't think you have to, but I understand the sentiment of it. But the other thing I would say is for, because so many people listen to our show are really hard workers. I think that they, they forget the fact that if they try something, they can still go back to the old thing if it doesn't work. Um, like you, I mean, you were in an ideal situation in some ways. I expect your dad, if things had not worked, your dad probably would have hired you back. And for me, I know that I was a good lawyer. And if things didn't work out, I could probably go find a job somewhere. And I think that's true for a lot of our listeners,

too. I think it's a difficult thing. Like I say on the show all the time, I hate it when I get these emails from people saying, oh, I quit my job because of you. I can't wait. And it makes me so nervous for you. But at the same time, I love getting those emails because it tells me people are willing to take that risk too. So it's really hard, but the, um, uh, it is a, um, it is a, it is a very stressful time when you make that decision. And when you go to the existing employer, I can't imagine how much harder it would be if it was your father, honestly. Yeah. The thing I would advise everybody is, like you said, you want to not burn any bridges. You want to leave a way back if this thing doesn't work out. And honestly,

the main point that I'm trying to make is you have to be willing to bet on yourself. Honestly, the main point that I'm trying to make is you have to be willing to bet on yourself. So I got to the point where I'm working full-time at the family business. I'm working part-time with Asian Efficiency. And I really like the work that I'm doing at Asian Efficiency. I'm growing a ton here. This is just the perfect culture fit for me right now. And so I had to flip those two. I started working full-time with Asian Eiency, part-time with the family business.

And truth be told, I still help out a little bit here and there because I was a big part of everything that went on in the family business. So it took quite a while to shift things over. I didn't want the business to just disappear because now I'm not there anymore. So training up people to do things and creating systems so that people can do this stuff that I was doing. But the main point is you got to be willing to bet on yourself. I think a lot of people, speaking from my own personal experience, that's where I was, where I've got this thing which is safe. I've got this other thing which, if I really believe in

myself, could be huge and could really just like a perfect fit and could really be fulfilling, could help me be more successful on every single level, not just monetarily, but like I really want to grow myself. One of my big things is Jim Rohn had mentioned at one point, work harder on yourself than you do on your job. Okay, well, that's what I do at Asian Deficiency. I mean, like I can expense books to the company company. They sent me to Entree Leadership a few weeks ago. They're invested in me as a person because everything that I do to better myself translates into everything that I create over there. Interesting, with my perspective here as free agents is, yeah, I'm doing all these things. I'm developing my skills. Am I going to be at Asian Efficiency in five years, 10 years? I don't know. But I've gotten enough confidence from doing this thing and they've invested in me enough

as a person that I've seen the growth in myself over the last several years that I now have the confidence to say, you know, if Asian Efficiency were to sell tomorrow, they're going to disappear, whatever. I now have enough confidence that I could go out on my own and do something. And I think that that's the important thing for anybody who's considering, quote unquote, making the leap is bet on yourself, but control the things that you can control. And the one thing that you can control is whether you're approaching things through a growth mindset. How do I get better? How do I tweak this thing? How do I become more excellent? How do I make my skills more valuable to the marketplace so that I can charge more for them or whatever,

so that I can go live my dream, my ideal future? That's the thing you can control regardless of where you are. And how that manifests, that really depends on what you're looking to get. What does your ideal future look like? For a lot of free agents, I think they probably think, I want to have flexibility in my schedule. Someone like me, they want to have the ability to spend time with their family. I'll take a day off, go to the museum if they want with their kids. I have the ability to do that. So my situation, even though I'm technically working for a company and doing all these other things on the side, like I'm living the life that I want. I've,

I've designed the life that I want. Uh, and that's possible for everyone. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why I actually wanted you as a co-host, Mike, because see, for me, it took me over 20 years of working in the corporate environment to finally get, you know, get the strength to bet on myself. And when I did my, you know, almost immediate reaction was, damn, I should have done this like 10 years ago or more. And you started relatively early in your career. So I think that's an interesting voice to have on the show, especially as we talk to guests going forward. But another reason I thought you'd be a good co-host is that, you know, you're not a guy living in your parents' basement. I mean, you have real stakes in your life. And, um, well,

let's just talk about that a little bit. I mean, you have five kids, Mike. I do. I've got five kids, four boys who are 10, eight, six, and four. Uh, in fact, at one point I was a guest on, uh, Brett Terp turp show systematic and he he is kind of funny because he's like you have four kids two four six eight every two years we procreate not the goal but we've got four boys and then a little girl who's eight months old as we record this and uh the realization i had was that they grow up really fast i know everybody says that until you've got kids and you see them growing up before your eyes, though, like you don't really get it. And like I said, I wanted to have the flexibility to take the day off if I wanted to.

I really believe in the power. I hate the term, but the idea of like teachable moments where recognizing what's going on and you can tell your kids a thousand times, pick up your room. They're not going to get it. But you can tell because kids, you can read their faces. You can tell exactly what they're feeling,

at least until they get to be teenagers. And you can tell when, okay, now's the time to really talk about this thing because it's really going to stick. I wanted to be able to do that. I want to be able to have a platform in my kids' lives as they get older, as they become teenagers, as they go to college or get a job or whatever they're going to do. And I realized that I need to be able to build it. I need to be building that platform right now. I can't wait until it's convenient for me. So I was trying to

figure out how am I going to do this and just put that thing first. I mean, what it comes down to for a lot of people is that you can do and have really anything that you want, but you have to put it first. You have to prioritize it. It's the Stephen Covey idea of the big rocks. Like you have to figure out what's important to you and you got to put it into your jar and you got to be okay with all the other stuff that doesn't fit. And so that was it for me is like I wanted to be able to have that time with my kids. I also wanted to discover who I really was, you know, find my unique ability as Dan Sullivan

would put it. And I knew it wasn't going to be as a salesperson. And, uh, I do believe by the way that the, the sales salesperson persona gets a bad rap a lot of times. A lot of people think of the salesperson as a used car salesman. But really, if you want to be a leader in any area of your life, you've got to be a salesperson. I tell everybody who's been married, you've sold yourself at least once. I even tell young lawyers, I said, you've got to realize you're a glorified salesman as a lawyer. If you're going to go and stand in front of a jury and try and explain the case to a way to get them to go along with you, you're selling. I mean, it's just that that's what it is. Yep, exactly. And so I've always believed in the power of leadership. And as I have tried to

develop my leadership skills, I realized that leadership is really sales. And so it's really selling people on the idea, whether they are people in your congregation and you're the pastor or whatever, the priest, or if it's your kids, your wife, and your family, you've got to sell them on the idea that you can help them get where they want to go. And so that's kind of what I discovered along the way as I'm trying things and figuring things out is, you know, what is my unique ability? What am I really good at? Kind of what is the reason that I'm here? What I've kind of landed

on based on like the core values, the mission statement, the stuff like that, which I know you mentioned a little bit ago, David, that you were working on that sort of thing is I want to help people answer the question, why am I here? By inspiring, encouraging, and teaching them how to discover their destiny, connect to their calling, and live the life they were created for. And I think that in order to do that, obviously, I've got to be willing to step out there. Well, you did it. You did it with five kids and all these commitments, and it's been working for you. I mean, we've talked about this throughout the show, but I mean, so what Mike's doing these days, he's, he's a writer and I guess an administrator over at Asian efficiency where tons of good productivity content and other good content.

You're making screencasts for Don McAllister over at screencasts online on software products. You've got your book, you've, uh, you're a podcaster. You've got three, Mike, you a podcaster. You've got three. Mike, you wrote in the notes you have two podcasts, Bookworm and Productivity Show, but you actually have three now. You're on the free agents. So I'm so happy to have you. I'm going to have to get a fracture from my wall.

There you go. Oh, by the way, Mike mentioned that he's going to MaxDoc. Turns out I am too. So if you're listening to this show and you're a Mac nerd and you're going to MaxDoc in July in Illinois, both of us are going to be there. And I have ordered stickers. So if you're nice to me, I will give you a free agent sticker. All right. Let's take a quick break. There's some more stuff I want to talk about. But before that, I want to mention our second sponsor today. And that's our friends over at Casper. This episode of Free Agents is brought to you by Casper. Casper is the company focused on sleep, and they're dedicated to making you exceptionally comfortable one night at a time.

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I sleep on it every night. And with over 20,000 reviews and an average rating of 4.8 stars, Casper is very quickly becoming the Internet's favorite mattress. So they've got that 100-night risk-free sleep on it trial. You don't have to go to some creepy store and lay on a mattress for like two minutes while other people are walking around you and try and decide if this is going to work or not. Just order one. They deliver it to you directly at your door. They've got this cool box that comes in and you open it in the room and it just expands. We've got the queen size.

It was great. I carried it upstairs by myself. It's just an awesome experience. But the best part about a Casper mattress, in my opinion, is they're really nice to sleep on. So we, like I said, we've been using ours for a long time. We tried a couple different mattress technologies, never were really happy. And now I've got the Casper and it solves all my problems. I was up in San Jose a couple of weeks ago, Mike, and I had, I stayed at a pretty nice hotel, but I couldn't wait to get home and get back on my Casper. It's like my body is just used to that great mattress. And

when I have to sleep on something else for a few nights, I feel it very quickly. You can get $50 towards select mattresses by visiting casper.com slash free agents. That's one word, casper.com slash free agents, and using free agents in all caps in one word at checkout. Terms and conditions do apply. So once again, that's casper.com slash free agents and offer code free agents. And thank you, Casper, for all of your support of this show. Mike, so you've been at this a little while, and I think the listeners are already getting a good feel for what you're passionate about and what brings you here. But I thought I'd just ask you a couple questions.

I know that you're early in your journey, but what's the biggest lesson you've had so far going through this? Biggest lesson so far, I think, is that you don't know what you're capable of. Like I mentioned a couple of years ago, I wasn't a writer. I became a writer. And then I wasn't a video producer. I became a video producer. I wasn't a writer. I became a writer. And then I wasn't a video producer. I became a video producer. I wasn't a screencaster. I became a screencaster. I wasn't a speaker. I became a speaker. I wasn't a podcaster. And that was a very short period of time that all of those individual steps took. But it required being intentional and applying myself to whatever

thing happened to be next on the journey. I was okay with the fact that things were changing and it wasn't exactly what I quote unquote signed up for. But being willing to push yourself to try the next thing, you'll surprise yourself. One of the big things I learned was when I joined the Toastmasters group, at the time I joined the Toastmasters group, I really wasn't a podcaster yet. I had helped start the productivity show at Agent Efficiency, but I wasn't the host yet. There was another guy who was the host of the show for the first 100 or so episodes. And I was just like anybody else. I was terrified of public speaking, but I was like, I just have to see what this does. And I got up and I gave a couple of speeches and I saw pretty immediate and rapid growth. Toastmasters is a great environment because everybody there is supportive

anyways, but I really got some positive feedback and I could see myself, the growth and the confidence that I was gaining from doing that. And that translated into success, not just in webinars or speaking when I had a given presentation, but in podcasting. I didn't really expect that, but it really did help. So a long version of saying, you know, and sharing my experience. But the biggest lesson is don't be afraid to try something because you have no idea where it's going to lead. So as a free agent today, what's your biggest worry? My biggest worry is kind of unfounded because it's the biggest worry that you would have if you were in a quote unquote company too. But just what if this goes away tomorrow?

With the internet, especially a lot of stuff that's on there, like you don't really know what the next thing could be that could suddenly wipe out whatever you happen to be doing. And, but if you think about it, I mean, I'm in more control of my situation now because I've got several of these things going on and I've been developing my skills, which can translate to other areas, as opposed to if I had been in a company, even if it's a family company and I'm doing this thing, you know, markets are going to change. Even in that situation, you don't have a guarantee that you're going to have a job a year from now, two years from now, five years from now. So again, bet on yourself and develop your skills.

Yeah. A running theme through this show and even go back into the shows we did with Jason is you need to be willing to pivot and adjust if you're going to do this, if you want to survive. And in fact, having worked on the outline for the episode in two weeks, I'm about to make a significant pivot in my business. So it's just the way it goes. Um, so anyway, going forward, what are we doing with the free agents? Uh, uh, as you can tell, I think Mike's going to be a great co-host for the show. I'm so happy again, once again, Mike, that you said yes, when I asked you to come on and, and do this show with me. Um, the, uh, uh, you know, the,

I feel like free agents is, is in good shape. We covered kind of the basic inventory shows already with Jason about things like getting insurance. And we talked to a tax guy and, you know, a lot of the basics and that stuff is still relevant. Occasionally we're going to go back and hit one of those single topics again, when we think things have changed enough that we need to update them. But the real model for, we're going to, we're also going to continue with the guest shows. And the idea is every month we're going to have a content show and a guest show, just like we did with Jason. And the next episode 51 is going to be a content show today. I just wanted everybody to get to know Mike and how great he is. But so going forward, we're going to add something to the

content shows. We're going to try and have a themed topic going forward. And like, for instance, the theme in episode 51 is going to be about eating a frog. And don't search it on the net. The information is out there. I want you to be surprised, but it's going to be fun. We're going to talk about eating frogs. But we're also going to talk about our own continuing challenges like Jason and I did.

And we're going to continue to include your feedback. So please keep it coming. On the topic of feedback, the Free Agents FM Twitter account is still operating and running. In fact, I got some notes on it today. My plan is we're leaving the Facebook group up temporarily, but that is eventually going to go down and we're going to set up a discourse forum. I just, I'm not comfortable with Facebook anymore and I just don't want to be part of it. So blame me, but the, but I think the discourse forum is going to be great and it's going to be a better resource. It's going to be more searchable and give you a lot of good stuff. For guest shows,

we have many excellent guests planned. I got a note on Facebook from a listener saying, Hey, you should get a female co-host. And I totally appreciate that. I've a note on Facebook from a listener saying, hey, you should get a female co-host. And I totally appreciate that. I've got female co-hosts on some of my other podcasts. But Mike was just such a great, great fit for the show. But I will tell you that we are making big efforts to bring in some really smart women. And we've done that always on the show, and we will continue to do so. And that's kind of the plan going forward for free agents. Mike, you got anything to add to that?

No, I'll echo the not on Facebook thing though. So you can blame it on me if you want. Okay, well, whatever. I don't think there's any reason to blame, but,

but we're going to make something better. That is a true resource for free agents. And I'm looking forward to doing that, but just with timing and some travel with the summer, it's going to be a couple months before we really get that launched. Uh, but anyway, that's it again.

Uh, I'm so happy to have Mike Schmitz on the show. Now we're starting a new era and we have much to look forward. Uh, we are the free agents. You can find us on Twitter at free agents, FM, uh,

Mike, what is your Twitter handle? I'm bobblehead Joe, which is a long story, but easy to spell. At some point, we're going to get that story out of you? I'm bobbleheadjoe, which is a long story, but easy to spell. At some point, we're going to get that story out of you. I'm Max Barkey. We'll see you in a fortnight. Thank you.