Focused

Agile Tortoise's Greg Pierce discusses what he's learned in a decade as an independent developer and consultant.

Not all clients are good clients. If you don't manage the herd, you could lose the farm. This is why it's important to consider the right time, and right way, to fire a client. We discuss fireable offenses both obvious and subtle, and the best approach to take when firing a client.

Jason and David discuss their home-office set-ups and the challenges they face when working in a house they share with other people. When do you lock your doors? How do you "go home" at the end of the day? What gear do they use? And do they admit to their clients that they're working in their pajamas?

You can't earn a living as a Free Agent if you don't get paid. In this episode we discuss why the sign of a true professional is ensuring that they're being compensated. Why is getting paid so hard? How do we handle billing? When you're on your own, you're the one who has to make sure that the money is flowing in. If you don't get paid, you won't be an independent worker for very long.

A new year brings accounting and tax challenges for independent workers, so we asked accountant and financial advisor Andrew Carroll to join us. Andrew recently went out on his own and now provides tax and financial advice to free agents and entrepreneurs.

Being good at what you do isn't enough. You also need customers, clients, or whatever else you need to pay for shoes. That may mean you have to do a little promotion of your own. But you can be really great at what you do and still terrible at self-promotion. Tricky stuff!

Very recently David's Mac Power Users co-host, Katie Floyd, left her law firm and went out on her own. We ask Katie about making the move, her workspace and work habits, and the issues of adding support staff and partners versus staying entirely independent.

One of the best things an independent worker can do is invest in both belts and suspenders. We discuss cultivating and managing multiple income streams, and both the risks and benefits of getting your money from a bunch of different places.

We discuss planning and taking vacations as an independent worker. How do you set client expectations? How do you set boundaries with the people you're traveling with? What's the best way to get prepared for taking a trip? Most importantly, we talk about the importance of taking time off and meaning it.

In a wide-ranging episode, David and Jason answer your letters and tweets.

Email can be a vital communication mechanism, but it can also be a black hole of lost productivity. David and Jason discuss managing email and setting rules about how you use it.

So you've decided to leave the nest. What can you do to prepare while you're still working for the man? What's the right way to give notice, and prepare for the aftermath? David and Jason discuss getting set up, preparing your loved ones for the change, rehearsing your big break-up speech, and the importance of not panicking when everything goes sideways.

PlayStation veteran Shahid Kamal Ahmad left Sony to become an independent game developer. We discuss why he left and how he schedules his workday in his garden shed, the ShaShed.

Clients: Getting them (by marketing yourself), keeping them, and the dangers and rewards of taking them with you from your previous job.

Deciding where to get your work done can be a difficult challenge for an independent worker. Can you work out of the house? Does renting office space make sense? What about co-working spaces, or that long wooden table at your neighborhood Starbucks? There are a lot of options.

Myke Hurley, co-founder of Relay FM, discusses transitioning from his bank job to a full-time podcaster, including the inherent contradictions in working a dream job that never lets you take a vacation.

Just because you're independent doesn't mean you don't need a schedule. This episode is about building (and breaking) routines.

In our very first episode, David and Jason discuss narrowing scope and taking on too much work.