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内容由Jenny Blake提供。所有播客内容（包括剧集、图形和播客描述）均由 Jenny Blake 或其播客平台合作伙伴直接上传和提供。如果您认为有人在未经您许可的情况下使用您的受版权保护的作品，您可以按照此处概述的流程进行操作https://zh.player.fm/legal。
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243: Engineering Serendipity and Best Practices for Community-Building with David Spinks
Manage episode 384965216 series 2897178
内容由Jenny Blake提供。所有播客内容（包括剧集、图形和播客描述）均由 Jenny Blake 或其播客平台合作伙伴直接上传和提供。如果您认为有人在未经您许可的情况下使用您的受版权保护的作品，您可以按照此处概述的流程进行操作https://zh.player.fm/legal。
"For the first time in a decade, I feel free again." That’s how one of my earliest blogging friends, longtime community leader David Spinks, was feeling when I caught up with him in-person in the middle of his yearlong sabbatical, after selling his community-based business.
David and I discuss best practices for creating and nurturing communities, for engineering serendipity, what it’s like to build and run a conference (and later sell it), and the freedom that comes with taking a deliberate sabbatical.
More About David: David Spinks is the author of The Business of Belonging and a popular weekly newsletter for community creators. Previously he co-founded CMX, the leading network for community professionals that was later acquired by Bevy.
🌟 From David’s Post on How to Engineer Serendipity
A 2015 study set out to discover how serendipity occurs. Through in-depth interviews, they uncovered the 4-step process (edited for clarity):
- ⚡️ Trigger: A cue that sparks an experience of serendipity. (e.g. meet at an event, see a question in your Slack, get introduced…)
- 🧠 Connection: The recognition of a potential valuable outcome (e.g. learning, collaboration, friendship)
- 🤳 Follow-up: An action taken to obtain the valuable outcome (e.g. set up a meeting, plan a project, chat on AIM…)
- 🏆 Valuable outcome: The positive result of the serendipitous experience (e.g. form a meaningful relationship, learn something new, commit to build something together…)
And there’s one more factor. . . for serendipity to occur, there must be an 🧵 “unexpected thread” throughout the experience. The more unexpected each step feels, the more it will be perceived as serendipity.
📝 Permission
To say no to virtual meetings!
✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next
If you run a community, build a process to facilitate random encounters: Introduce mechanisms that encourage serendipitous connections among community members. For example, you can implement a "random pairing" feature that pairs members together for one-on-one conversations or create opportunities for members to showcase their work or expertise.
🔗 Resources Mentioned
- David on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn
- David’s Substack: David Spinks
- Articles: Substack—How to Engineer Serendipity
- How I Reduced Scheduled Meetings by 90%
📚 Books Mentioned
- The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive Advantage
- Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
- Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
- Life After College
🎧 Related Episodes
- Masters of Community with David Spinks
- Free Time: 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin
- 241: Finding Freedom and Financial Reciprocity through a Paid Newsletter with Nic Antoinette
- 093: How to Sell Your Online Business with Alexis Grant
- 167: Transform Your Approach to Community-Building with Gina Bianchini
🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review
✍️ Connect with me on Substack: http://substack.com/@jennyblake
❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners
💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for instant access to the Free Time Toolkit
💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey
☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask
🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts
📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/243
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
288集单集
分享Manage episode 384965216 series 2897178
内容由Jenny Blake提供。所有播客内容（包括剧集、图形和播客描述）均由 Jenny Blake 或其播客平台合作伙伴直接上传和提供。如果您认为有人在未经您许可的情况下使用您的受版权保护的作品，您可以按照此处概述的流程进行操作https://zh.player.fm/legal。
"For the first time in a decade, I feel free again." That’s how one of my earliest blogging friends, longtime community leader David Spinks, was feeling when I caught up with him in-person in the middle of his yearlong sabbatical, after selling his community-based business.
David and I discuss best practices for creating and nurturing communities, for engineering serendipity, what it’s like to build and run a conference (and later sell it), and the freedom that comes with taking a deliberate sabbatical.
More About David: David Spinks is the author of The Business of Belonging and a popular weekly newsletter for community creators. Previously he co-founded CMX, the leading network for community professionals that was later acquired by Bevy.
🌟 From David’s Post on How to Engineer Serendipity
A 2015 study set out to discover how serendipity occurs. Through in-depth interviews, they uncovered the 4-step process (edited for clarity):
- ⚡️ Trigger: A cue that sparks an experience of serendipity. (e.g. meet at an event, see a question in your Slack, get introduced…)
- 🧠 Connection: The recognition of a potential valuable outcome (e.g. learning, collaboration, friendship)
- 🤳 Follow-up: An action taken to obtain the valuable outcome (e.g. set up a meeting, plan a project, chat on AIM…)
- 🏆 Valuable outcome: The positive result of the serendipitous experience (e.g. form a meaningful relationship, learn something new, commit to build something together…)
And there’s one more factor. . . for serendipity to occur, there must be an 🧵 “unexpected thread” throughout the experience. The more unexpected each step feels, the more it will be perceived as serendipity.
📝 Permission
To say no to virtual meetings!
✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next
If you run a community, build a process to facilitate random encounters: Introduce mechanisms that encourage serendipitous connections among community members. For example, you can implement a "random pairing" feature that pairs members together for one-on-one conversations or create opportunities for members to showcase their work or expertise.
🔗 Resources Mentioned
- David on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn
- David’s Substack: David Spinks
- Articles: Substack—How to Engineer Serendipity
- How I Reduced Scheduled Meetings by 90%
📚 Books Mentioned
- The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive Advantage
- Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
- Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
- Life After College
🎧 Related Episodes
- Masters of Community with David Spinks
- Free Time: 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin
- 241: Finding Freedom and Financial Reciprocity through a Paid Newsletter with Nic Antoinette
- 093: How to Sell Your Online Business with Alexis Grant
- 167: Transform Your Approach to Community-Building with Gina Bianchini
🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review
✍️ Connect with me on Substack: http://substack.com/@jennyblake
❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners
💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for instant access to the Free Time Toolkit
💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey
☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask
🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts
📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/243
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 273: Navigating Time Anxiety, Reducing Inbox Dread, and Creating Ease Loops with Chris Guillebeau 50:18
👋 Hello Free Timers! While we’re still not resuming the podcast’s regular publishing schedule, I’m popping into your feed today to share a fun conversation with my friendtor of over fifteen years, Chris Guillebeau . We’re discussing his new book, Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and a Better Way to Live — it was too aligned with Free Time not to share! 📝 View full show notes with all resources mentioned at http://itsfreetime.com/episodes/273 . More about Chris: Chris is the author of several other bestselling books to help you live an unconventional life, think for yourself, see the world, and earn extra money, including The Money Tree , The $100 Startup (a global bestseller), and The Art of Non-Conformity , which was translated into 30+ languages. During a lifetime of self-employment that included a four-year commitment as a volunteer executive in West Africa, he visited every country in the world (193 in total) before his 35th birthday. Every day since January 1, 2017, his podcast, Side Hustle School , has offered a new idea, tip, or short story to help listeners create a new source of income without quitting their jobs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 272: Seth Godin on Publishing Strategy, Missed Opportunities, Sunk Costs, Social Media, and Smart Risks 48:27
“How do you decide who has the power to judge you? Who are you seeking to please? Is that validation directly in alignment with how you are rewarded and how you're organized?” Seth Godin is back with a brand new book, This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans , and if you loved Free Time , I know you will love this one for geeking out on systems thinking! We discuss how his author strategy has shifted over time, why he’s piloting a new type of publishing contract with this book, how he felt when asked to leave a weekly poker game for not taking big enough risks, and how The Innovator’s Dilemma relates to companies like Google, NPR, and Netflix (he was in the room as NPR purposefully missed the boat on podcasting). More About Seth: Seth Godin is a renowned author, entrepreneur, and marketing expert who has profoundly influenced modern business thinking through his blog , with over 9,000 daily posts and counting. Known for his innovative ideas on marketing, leadership, and personal growth, Godin has authored 22 bestselling books in over 39 languages. He is also the coordinator of The Carbon Almanac , which he calls “the most important project of my career.” 🌟 5 Key Takeaways from This is Strategy Social media: Avoid projects where the system is organized to take all the value you create. Building community: Create a strategy where the scale is the magic. Start by serving a small group of people who would miss us if we didn't exist. Pricing: Price is a story, a signal, and a symptom of your strategy. “Low price is the last refuge of a marketer who has run out of useful ideas." Decision-making: It's impossible to consistently have perfect outcomes. It's easier to imagine that we're able to make good decisions on a regular basis. Ignoring sunk costs : All of your assets and experiences are a gift from your former self. You're welcome to leave them behind. 📝 Permission Stop seeking authority and start taking responsibility. Time is ours; sooner or later, the story we tell ourselves belongs to us. That doesn't mean it's easy. It just means that given the situation you're in, you could make something better and no one can stop you. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next If you feel creatively stagnant, try switching up your environment. For example, Seth took train rides with no destination in mind to get into a writing groove. Bonus: Try asking Claude.ai to expand on a list or framework you’ve created. What might you be missing? 🔗 Resources Mentioned Seth on the web New Book: This Is Strategy Community : Purple.space Udemy course : This Is Strategy Publisher : Authors Equity Seth's articles : Books don’t sell and Firing the New York Times Bestseller List Rolling in Doh : Is Kevin Bacon in His Flop Era? 🚬 Smoking is Essential for Your Success, They Said 🙄 If Your Business Could Talk, What Would It Say? People : Shawn Coyne of Story Grid Tools : Claude.ai 📚 Books Mentioned This Is Strategy Song of Significance The Practice: Shipping Creative Work Visit the shop to see all of Seth’s books . . . Your First 1,000 Copies The Innovator’s Dilemma Atomic Habits Thinking in Systems Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Seth’s podcast : Akimbo Free Time : 092: Train the System, Then the Person 056: Set Your Compass—Systems vs. Goals 268: Strategies for Surpassing “The Magic Number” of Book Sales , and 271: Todd Sattersten Part Two Pivot : 254: The Practice—On Generosity, Peculiarity, and Showing Up with Seth Godin 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/272 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
Hi Friends! Although the podcast is still paused, I'm dropping into the feed this week and next with two very special conversations :) Today is a bonus episode from February for paid subscribers with Todd Sattersten , publisher and owner of Bard Press , and next week features Seth Godin and his new book, This Is Strategy . If you haven't already listened, check out part one here (episode 261) first. Todd is so committed to helping his authors succeed that he only publishes one book each year. Today he's sharing how to investigate and possibly reposition a book when a launch isn’t gaining traction, his three-sentence problem statement to attract ideal readers, and why the Table of Contents and first chapter are essential parts of the marketing process. 🌟 5 Key Takeaways Advance copies are a marketing event: Will they do something with the physical book? Two B’s for categories of people that can be most helpful: bulk and broadcasters. Most book launch activities don’t scale: You are the beacon for people to find the book. Title should always be a change function: show the change that they will experience reading the book with the title, subtitle, and book description. 1) State the truth. 2) What's the surprise? 3) Twist to drive the point home. The Table of Contents is marketing copy! It should read like sales copy to draw people in. Chapter one is also marketing copy, and be sure to include a quick win, because most people won’t finish (sadly). Write short chapters! Give the reader payoffs. 📝 Permission Drop the idea that your launch day is 24 hours. Taking a page from Tim Grahl’s Your First 1000 Copies , just do one thing a week. Use the HBO model of a little bit every week, not the Netflix binge release-watch. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next With the Free Time book approaching its three-year bookiversary on March 22, 2025, help 🎁 give the gift of free time :D Don’t miss the handy Chapter Summaries and Leader Kit (PDFs) Want to try before you buy? Read the free excerpt here » (Web) Check out my author toolkit here » Take the Free Time reader survey I sent, whether you’ve read the book or not VIP Day with Jenny: via Free Time Operations Dashboard 🔗 Resources Mentioned Todd on the web , IG , X , LinkedIn , Bard Press Todd's Articles: The Magic Number , and The Few, The Many, and the Reality of Power Laws McSweeney’s : MY COMMENTS ARE IN THE GOOGLE DOC LINKED IN THE DROPBOX I SENT IN THE SLACK What is Net Promoter Score (NPS)? Book Indexer : Michelle Guiliano — Line by Line Indexing (web) and This is indexing. (Substack) X thread by Jason Colavito: Publishing stats for 2022 EPJ Data Science: Success in books: predicting book sales before publication 📚 Books Mentioned The One Thing by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller American Kingpin by Nick Bilton Your First 1000 Copies by Tim Grahl The Snowball System and Give to Grow by Mo Bunnell Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Self-Publishing School : The Engineer Approach to Millions of Copies Sold with Todd Sattersten Billion Dollar Creator : 018: How to Write a Book That Sells for Decades with Tim Grahl Free Time: 268: Strategies for Surpassing “The Magic Number” of Book Sales 064: The Vulnerability of Launching 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch 103: How to Land a Literary Agent and Publisher with David Moldawer (Part One) and (Part Two) 203: 🎢 Riding the Emotional Rollercoaster of Launching with Natalie Lue Pivot : 207: How to Develop Your Book and Big Idea (Part 1) and (Part 2) 49: The (He)art of Book Publishing Excerpt: Land a Traditional Publishing Deal — Q&A with My Editor at Portfolio/Penguin Random House ✍️ Check out my personal business essays at Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h with Jenny Blake 💌 Subscribe to Free Time with Jenny Blake for access to the Free Time Toolkit Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
As I round the corner into this ninth year of podcasting and after over 700 episodes, today I’m announcing a pause for both shows. Listen in to hear what factors helped me reach this decision across time, money, energy, depressing industry articles , the pace of both shows’ growth, and mix of additional business factors that make this an important moment to pause and regroup. You might also appreciate the even deeper dive with my longtime friend (and first coach) Adrian Klaphaak in Pivot episode 360: 📦 Unpacking a Big Business Decision and Dissolving Related Doubts . While I will be sad not to bring fresh episodes to your earbuds every week, I truly want to say thank you so much for being here. This only represents a small fraction of listeners, but I was genuinely touched receiving the Spotify Wrapped for Podcasters stats at the end of 2023 after I knew I would be pausing once all the episodes “in the can” went live. Among Pivot listeners: for 681 this show is in your top ten on Spotify, for 373 it’s in your top five, and for 65 of you, this is your number one show (again, at least in Spotify’s podcast player)! Among Free Time listeners: for 423 of you this show is in your top ten on Spotify, for 247 it’s in the top five, and for 57 it is your number one show in Spotify—the highest honor!! I was shocked to see even one, truly, with so much other incredible audio content out there. There’s one thing I know for sure: I will miss you during this break 🥹 🌟 ;TLDR/L (Too Long Didn’t Listen) Top Takeaways: In addition to pausing my private community , I am pausing both podcasts for a bit (duration TBD) so I can clear financial and energetic space to listen to what my broader business wants to become. 🎧 Stay subscribed to both shows: Pivot with Jenny Blake and Free Time with Jenny Blake so that you still get episodes when I release them, even if a bit more sporadically (for now); I may switch to seasons if/when I resume 📧 Subscribe to any/all of my three Substacks if you’re not already: I hope to experiment with live tapings with interesting friends and guests, ones that are for paying subscribers where we can go into even more nitty gritty detail behind-the-scenes. 📝 Permission Pause and regroup on any of your creative projects so you can create space to hear what’s next. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h: 🏆 Time to Put the Trophies Away Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow . . . IF Rebuilding from Rubble 👟 A Strange and Wonderful Morning: Walking Photo Essay Dear 2024: A Letter and From 2024: A Reply What Works : Making the Content Math Work Edison Research: Podcasting’s Big Hits and Long Tail Adam Davidson : The Rise and Fall of Podcasting The Daily Beast: Malcolm Gladwell’s Media Empire is Being Torn Apart Podcast Production : One Stone Creative ListenNotes : Pivot , Free Time 📚 Books Mentioned Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes SPARKED : Jenny in Conversation with Jonathan Fields (Spotify Playlist) BFF Bonus : Upcoming Quiet Sabbatical + Important Membership Updates Pivot : 329: Five Types of People-Pleasers from The Joy of Saying No with Natalie Lue 342: “Whatever Comes Through Me Comes For Me First,” With Nicole Antoinette 360: 📦 Unpacking a Big Business Decision and Dissolving Related Doubts with Adrian Klaphaak Free Time : 042: How I Run My Business Without Social Media (Pivot Replay) 203: 🎢 Riding the Emotional Rollercoaster of Launching with Natalie Lue 250: Do what you love and the money will follow . . . IF you meet at least 3 of these 20 criteria 🦧 What to Do When You Lose Your Biggest Client, Part One and Part Two 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/270 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 269: 🏦 “I am not a bank” — Strategies for Getting Corporate Clients to Pay on Time with Joey Coleman 1:01:43
“I don’t get on the airplane—and definitely not the stage—unless all invoices are paid in full.” When my friend and fellow keynote speaker Joey Coleman said this to me over coffee, I started drilling him for details: Really?! How do you have the nerve to say that to a speaking client?! How do you avoid caving in to make sure their event doesn’t fall apart if they haven’t paid in time? What about clients who work for highly bureaucratic companies that insist on their “standard” net-120 terms? In this illuminating conversation, Joey shares his best practices for getting paid on time—every time by setting, stating, and upholding better boundaries (and contracts) with clients. More About Joey : As an award-winning speaker for over twenty years, Joey Coleman works with organizations around the world ranging from small startups to major brands such as Volkswagen Australia, Zappos, and Whirlpool. His First 100 Days® methodology fuels the remarkable experiences his clients deliver and dramatically improves their profits. 🌟 4 Key Takeaways “You should care a lot about what a few people think.” For Joey, it’s his wife, his children, his closest business advisors, longstanding clients. “I don’t want my creativity hampered by one person’s feedback.” “You need to know how to ask for the money.” Gem from Joey’s dad growing up on the most important thing to know when running your own business, about having confidence when you state the price and terms of your services without wavering. Don’t raise your prices just for the sake of raising them; however, as your expertise and capabilities and the cost of living and costs of running your business increase, there is a necessary understanding that prices will go up. Right before he hit send on a proposal, he would stop, go back to the original contract and raise the fee by ten percent. Price is something you pay at the grocery store; investment is something you are going to do to grow your operation and make it better. You will invest with me to grow your returns, and it will continue to pay dividends. As a speaker, you need to be clear on the return on investment that you’re promising. 📝 Permission It is unbelievably challenging to start and run your own business. Because you are so bold to do that, give yourself permission to courageously set your boundaries. The more clear and comfortable you are stating how to work with you and holding firm when pushed, the happier you will be as a business owner, and the longer you will be in business. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Try Joey’s approach to sharing the investment for working together. List a range on your website, and the first time your desired client learns how much it costs to work with you should be hearing it from you, not reading a document. 🔗 Resources and Books Mentioned 📚 Joey on the web , X (Twitter) , LinkedIn Never Lose an Employee Again: The Simple Path to Remarkable Retention Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One 🎧 Related Episodes Joey’s podcast: Experience This! Free Time : 083: Breaking through Buyer’s Remorse—Never Lose a Customer Again 201: Never Lose a Team Member Again with Joey Coleman Pivot : 155: Becoming a Successful Speaker with Grant Baldwin 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/269 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
What mysterious ingredients make a book launch successful? What number of first-week and first-year sales truly make a difference to a book’s longevity? What can you do to turn lagging numbers around? In a flagship illuminating post for the industry, Todd Sattersten , publisher and owner of Bard Press , shared his findings in The Magic Number . In this behind-the-business conversation from October 2023, you’ll hear him generously talk me through how I could help Free Time get there—with a much-needed morale boost at the end. More About Todd : Todd Sattersten is the publisher and owner of Bard Press , a book publisher that works with authors to create best-selling books in business, personal development and technology. Before Bard Press, Todd served as general manager of IT Revolution and president of business book retailer 800-CEO-READ. He is the author of Every Book Is a Startup and the co-author of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time (Portfolio, 2009). Todd lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Amy and their three awesome kids. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways A book launch is a set of activities to engage people and create momentum, and there is no common blueprint for success. “Each book is different—in its approach to a problem and delivery of solution. Each author is different—in what they bring to the launch. And the world itself is different every time you bring a book into the world.” The Magic Number: The data says is that if you can get into the 10,000 to 25,000 copy range for first year sales, you have a 42% chance of selling more than 25,000 copies in lifetime sales. If you get past that 10K mark, there is a 4 in 10 chance of getting beyond 25K copies sold. Endorsements should triangulate the reader to think this book is for them. Who is the highest comp author? A practitioner (someone doing the work or even a related recognizable company), a reader who demonstrates utility. 📝 Permission Put your ego down. Remember, you want your readers to be better, to improve their lives. Our job is to find more people to help, and there are still so many opportunities for that. You don’t actually have to stop promoting the book after it’s launched—there is nobody stopping you! ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Send a survey out to your readers and community, ideally 90 to 120 days after the book comes out. Check out the one Jenny sent here —and please take it if you can at the same time! 🔗 Resources Mentioned Todd on the web , IG , X , LinkedIn Publisher : Bard Press Take the Free Time reader survey Jenny sent here , whether you’ve read the book or not! Bard Press Articles: The Magic Number and The Few, The Many, and the Reality of Power Laws Net Promoter Score (NPS): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score Technology Adoption Life Cycle : Innovators → early adopters → early majority → late majority → laggards BookBub and The Fussy Librarian for ebook promotions Jenny’s Author Toolkit and Free Time Leader Kit 📚 Books Mentioned The One Thing by Jay Papasan and Gary Keller Atomic Habits by James Clear Your First 1000 Copies by Tim Grahl Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Self-Publishing School : The Engineer Approach to Millions of Copies Sold with Todd Sattersten Billion Dollar Creator : 018: How to Write a Book That Sells for Decades with Tim Grahl Free Time : 249: Systems for Selling Over One Million Books and 012: Generating Personal MBA Momentum with Josh Kaufman 117: Tiny Marketing Actions with Pamela Slim Pivot : 207: How to Develop Your Book and Big Idea (Part 1) and 208: Your Book and Big Idea (Part 2) 49: The (He)art of Book Publishing Excerpt: Land a Traditional Publishing Deal — Q&A with My Editor at Portfolio/Penguin Random House 📝 Check out full show notes and share: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/268 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 267: Insights from Google's Productivity Expert—On Saying No, Cozy Corners, The Laundry Method, and More with Laura Mae Martin 40:14
Laura Mae Martin has a fascinating role as the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google in the Office of the CEO —one that she helped create six years ago (with big thanks to Jenny Wood for introducing us!). ****She coaches Google’s top executives on the best ways to manage their time and energy and sends out a weekly productivity newsletter that reaches over fifty thousand employees. Today we’re talking about her forthcoming book, Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing. We discuss what the most senior-level executives do differently when it comes to time management (and what they still struggle with), five strategies for saying no, taming inbox stress with The Laundry Method, cozy corners, pairing activities with certain locations (hot spots and not spots), and what differentiates truly excellent executive assistants. More About Laura: During her nearly fourteen-year tenure at Google, Laura Mae Martin has worked in sales, product operations, event planning, and now executive coaching. She holds a bachelor of science in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and three children under five. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Laura’s 5 C’s of Productivity : Calm, Create, Capture, Consolidate, Close. Create a system that you truly trust: where new tasks get captured and where you know you will see them again. No matter when or where a loop comes from (i.e. on a walk), ensure you have systems in place for the entire loop lifecycle from capturing to closing. Five Ways to Say No to Incoming Requests: ask more questions to better understand the time commitment and see if it aligns with your top three priorities; say you’ll think about it or don’t respond right away to buy yourself time and prevent a knee-jerk response; imagine two scenarios playing out for yes and for no (to help you decide); say no, but _______ (send helpful resources); say no, because _______ (give a little context). The Laundry Method: Think about your inbox the way you think about your dryer. You would never process clothes one item at a time—whether drying, folding or putting away—and yet that’s how many people tackle email. Process in batches instead. Treat sorting, reading, and answering as separate activities. If you have only twenty minutes, pick one of those activities. 📝 Permission Give yourself plenty of down time in order to have highly productive uptime; drop the guilt! Rest leads to better overall productivity. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Stop wasting energy points! Eliminate any emails from your inbox that you don’t need to see: the unread, notifications, newsletters (Jenny uses SaneBox for this), and make sure you help the things you need to see stick out. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Laura on the web , IG , LinkedIn Articles : Business Insider— 6 tips a productivity advisor gives Google executives to better manage their email, meetings, and workload Google Blog— 5 things I learned from Google’s productivity expert CNN— She helps Google workers be productive. Here are her pro tips . Video : Top 3 Google Workspace tips Apps : SaneBox , TextExpander , HelpScout 📚 Books Mentioned Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 019: Most Valuable Activities with Dave Crenshaw 154: The Hard No 027: Time Management for Mortals with Oliver Burkeman Pivot : 289: Stealing Wi-Fi as Career Strategy with Jenny Wood 307: Pivoting from Google to Launching People Playbook with Tony McGaharan 318: The Beauty of Late Bloomers with Jenna Valovic 309: Wayfinding and Developing Identity Agency with Ciela Hartanov 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/267 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
While the title of this episode, The Framework Framework™ is tongue-in-cheek, I’m pulling this out of the BFF bonus vault because it’s one of the community’s favorites. I’m sharing the first steps to how you can set up a framework to help bolster your IP and your business; either by scaling through programs like certification and licensing, and to make your material more memorable and accessible to the groups you care most about reaching. I shared this in June 2023 as a follow-up to the fantastic workshop that Pamela Slim did for us on Certification and Licensing . You can access over 100 bonus episodes and that workshop by joining Free Time as a paying subscriber. You’ll get instant access to Stephanie Huston’s How to Batch Create and Customize Your Annual Content Calendar , with an epic multi-tab template in Google Sheets. Be sure to also check out the resources below, including Wes Kao’s detailed LinkedIn post on how to turn your ideas into frameworks . 🌟 3 Key Takeaways of the Framework Framework™ S olves a problem (people know they have), answers a question (BookRx) A ction-oriented → Transformation Journey or Comprehensive (Whole body/self/org). Name your process M emorable, concise name and stages (ideally 3 to 4 stages) Bonus: Tie-in a metaphor, hook, and/or story 📘 From Built to Sell : TED’S TIP # 3 Owning a process makes it easier to pitch and puts you in control. Be clear about what you’re selling, and potential customers will be more likely to buy your product. TED’S TIP # 6 Don’t be afraid to say no to projects . Prove that you’re serious about specialization by turning down work that falls outside your area of expertise. The more people you say no to, the more referrals you’ll get to people who need your product or service. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Here's a photo of my journal where I first started trying to piece the Free Time Framework together, brainstorming themes before eventually shifting from Mind/Time/Team to Align -> Design -> Assign :) Articles : Martha Beck’s Growing Wings: The Power of Change TED— The 7 types of rest that every person needs Wes Kao’s detailed LinkedIn post on how to turn your ideas into frameworks 📚 Books Mentioned Built to Sell The Referral Engine Finding Your Own North Star E-Myth Revisited The Power of Full Engagement The Lean Start-up Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes BFF Bonus Workshops : Pamela Slim’s Certification and Licensing Stephanie Huston’s How to Batch Create and Customize Your Annual Content Calendar Free Time : 189: Jay Acunzo's walkthrough of his Intellectual Property (IP) Development OS — check out the diagram here 256: Behind-the-Business: 1:1 Voxer Coaching Summer Pop-Up—Structure, Systems & Pricing 135: How to Rapidly Prototype a Course (Pivot Replay from Dec. 2019) 187: Licensing 201 — Q&A on Pricing + Packaging, Train-the-Trainer, Delivery, and Legal 186: Licensing 201 — Q&A on Product Development, Attracting Clients, and Sales Process 185: How Licensing Helps Serve the Queen Bee Role + Stop Keeping up with the EntrepreJoneses with Mike Michalowicz 140: How to License Your IP (Intellectual Property) Pivot : 281: Feeling Impostery? Become a Qualified Curator Instead of an End-All-Be-All Expert 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/266 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
What do you do when you lose your biggest client? If you haven’t already, listen to part one for some answers— 264: What to Do When You Lose Your Biggest Client — and save these links for a rainy day :) The next time you’re going through something challenging in your business, remember: you are not alone! I hope you find comfort through the voices of some of my dearest friends, former podcast guests, and favorite Heart-Based Business owners who are speaking from experience about how they've handled situations just like this. If you want the full scoop on what founding BFF member Leanne Hughes calls “business reality TV” on how I have been handling losing my biggest favorite client, I encourage you to check out the full series of posts at Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h . Thank you for listening, and huge thanks to our contributors to this series! 📝 Contributors & Permission Slips: Stephanie Polen, founder of The Polen Group : “Give yourself permission to be emotional and recognize that that's your humanity - that is the thing that makes you special and the work that you do. And it's probably why that big client hired you in the first place.” Khe Hy, founder of RadReads : “View these challenges not as a death of identity, but an opportunity to recalibrate your emotional resilience.” Marisol Dahl, cofounder of Together Agency : “When you part ways with a big client, give yourself permission to take a beat so that you can reflect and digest on your own experience with this client.” Chris Wilson, founder of Simplify Your Why : “Try more experiments with your business; give yourself the chance to iterate and fail (it helps if you live below your means!). It's rare that your first business model will work.” Maya Middlemiss, founder of Remote Work Europe : “Give yourself permission to do something for yourself in terms of your interests and professional development. Don't let anybody own so much of your time.” Check out the other half here, from Kelli Thompson, Kristoffer Carter, Pamela Slim, and Charlie Gilkey: 264: What to Do When You Lose Your Biggest Client (Part One) 🔗 Articles Mentioned Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h This is a Wonderful Day An Honest Accounting : Part One , Part Two , Part Three Am I Running a Zombie Business? Part One and Part Two Ghost Self : Part One , Part Two , Part Three 📚 Books Mentioned The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks (mentioned by Chris Wilson) Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 264: What to Do When You Lose Your Biggest Client (Part One) 173: Cut Your Losses—Even While Pivoting in Public—with Khe Hy Check out our full Rad Reads x Pivot Spotify Playlist Pivot : 355: Building a Brand Strategy from Scratch with Adam Chaloeicheep of Together Agency and 356: Four Brand Personas with Adam Chaloeicheep Future is Freelance with Maya Middlemiss: From Freelancing to Delightfully Tiny Teams: Embracing Automation, Empowerment, and Emojis with Jenny Blake 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/265 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
What do you do when you lose your biggest client? That was my Spotify search query for podcast episodes on this topic in the summer of 2023. It came up empty—there was not a single podcast episode on this topic. Of course not. Who wants to admit out loud and in their archives that they've lost their biggest client? In the past, I probably wouldn't have fessed up to this either. Except for the fact that now it's what I wish I could see, read, and hear. Today’s compilation episode is here to fix that! If you've been reading Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h , you know that the origin story for my new-ish paid Substack was losing my biggest, most beloved corporate client in the summer of 2023. Getting The News shook me up so much because not only was it one of my longest-running favorite licensing clients, but it also represented at least six figures of income for the next six months being instantly wiped off the table. Now, at least, we will all have something to turn to (and return to). My goal is not to provide advice but rather to offer some comfort through the voices of some of my dearest friends and favorite Heart-Based Business owners who are speaking from experience about how they've handled situations just like this. Maybe you don't need this episode right now, but if something does happen in the future (even if we hope not), you'll remember that you can come back and listen on a proverbial rainy day. Please share with any fellow business owner friends who might be going through a tough time, and enormous thanks to the wonderful group of friends and former podcast guests who shared their stories for this two-part episode! 📝 Contributors & Permission Slips: Kelli Thompson , author of Closing the Confidence Gap : “Diversify your business income and give yourself permission that you can do a lot of things that align with your mission, but offer it in many different ways that feel good for you.” Kristoffer ‘KC’ Carter , author of Permission to Glow : “Drop the self-judgment, give yourself more self-compassion, and just get back to work with creating the next even better client.” Pamela Slim , author of The Widest Net : “Give up the idea that you are in control of the success of your business. When you release that idea, then you can be more curious about how to step in and fix things that aren't working.” Charlie Gilkey , author of Team Habits : “Do not take the client loss personally. Stand tall, take care of yourself, and go get your next client.” 🔗 Articles Mentioned Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h This is a Wonderful Day An Honest Accounting : Part One , Part Two , Part Three Am I Running a Zombie Business? Part One and Part Two Ghost Self : Part One , Part Two , Part Three 📚 Books Mentioned Closing the Confidence Gap by Kelli Thompson Permission to Glow by Kristoffer ‘KC’ Carter Escape from Cubicle Nation , Body of Work , and The Widest Net by Pamela Slim Start Finishing and Team Habits by Charlie Gilkey Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes — Part One Free Time : 188: Energy Capacity Planning, Pricing, and Finding Resonant Masterminds with Kelli Thompson 039: Permission to Glow with Kristoffer (KC) Carter 117: Tiny Marketing Actions with Pamela Slim 143: Exploring Time, Money, and Energy Capacity with Tara McMullin and Charlie Gilkey 091: Quarterly Planning with Charlie Gilkey Pivot : 315: Intuition-Building, Spotting Pedestal Syndrome, and Closing the Confidence Gap with Kelli Thompson 136: Start Finishing—Pricing, Projects, and Momentum Planning with Charlie Gilkey 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/264 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 263: Finding Product-Market-Founder Fit and Launching Downhill Sales Snowballs ☃️ through Relationship-Marketing with Michelle Warner 44:33
“I am great in the early, messy days and I know that about myself, so I designed my business around serving others in that stage.” In this conversation with business strategist (genius!) Michelle Warner, we cover the three growth stages most relevant to tiny business owners, how to fix broken business models, validating product-market- founder fit, the difference between traffic-based versus relationship-based sales and marketing, borrowing aligned audiences, leading a free monthly Q&A to “catch” their interest afterward, imagining sales as a downhill snowball, and how to scale while still staying Delightfully Tiny. More About Michelle : Michelle Warner designs tiny companies that are built to last. With an MBA from one of the world’s top business schools and 15+ years experience growing small businesses, Michelle focuses on layering real world experience on top of classic business fundamentals to design businesses that are sustainable and scalable in the long term and resilient and adaptable in the short term. It’s the way she grew her first business to 7+ figures, and it’s what she’s used to help 300+ CEO's create businesses that work for the important stuff: profit, energy, passion + time. She’s also the creator of Networking That Pays , the introvert-friendly, always awkward-free connection system that brings in reliable leads, consistent referrals and meaningful connections for your business - in 5 minutes a day. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Three small business stages most relevant to tiny business owners (adapted from HBR ): Validate—product-market-founder fit; Sell—repeatable and predictable marketing and sales; Foundation—process, team, culture) Relationship- versus traffic-based sales and metrics : Relationship-based business are going for smaller reach, with ideally at least a fifty-percent conversion rate on sales calls. Traffic-based marketing aims at bringing in much bigger audiences, with smaller conversion rates for things like selling digital products (pushing a boulder up hill). Three marketing stages: Awareness (imagine a snowball running downhill—people need to have a really big moment with you; you’ve made 80% of the sale by blowing their mind during the awareness stage) engagement, and sales. 📝 Permission Focus on sequence over strategy: you can execute strategies perfectly, but if you’re doing them in the wrong order, it’s not going to do a thing for you. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Take five minutes a day to reach out to one person across any of these four themes: thank you’s (be specific!), connections, asks, and catch-ups. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Michelle on the web, IG , Twitter , LinkedIn Articles : HBR— The Five Stages of Small-Business Growth Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h — Climbing Down the Entrepreneurial Ladder , An Honest Accounting (Part One) People : Margo Aaron , Pamela Slim , Jay Acunzo Tiny + Strong Table Talk: Michelle’s free monthly Q&A if you need a good idea, fresh perspective or to get inspired by what others are thinking and doing. Register here. 📚 Books Mentioned Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Off the Grid : Leaving Social Media Without Losing All Your Clients — Relationship Marketing with Michelle Warner Free Time : 042: How I Run My Business Without Social Media 181: Be Irreplaceable with My Creative Coach Jay Acunzo 117: Tiny Marketing Actions with Pamela Slim 261: Cringe-Free Launches and Evergreen Sales Considerations with Anne Samoilov 165: Are your clients bringing out the best in you? Engineering the Evolution of Your Business and 229: How (and When) to Trust Yourself and Others with Ilise Benun 138: ⛵️Stop Sailing the Sea of Shiny Shoulds 136: Why I Stopped Exploring Selling the Pivot Brand and Business 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/263 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“Things today are waaayyyyy better than Things have ever been. Cavemen had sticks. In the Middle ages they had typhoid. We have iPhones and Hermann Miller chairs and shoes with air in the soles. Inside the soles! How do they get the air inside the soles??? We are living in the Golden Age of Things, in the Golden Empire of Things.” — Shalom Auslander's Fetal Position via Beckett Drove a Deux Chevaux I first encountered the Apple billboard a few days after Christmas. I was walking down Fourteenth Street in the Meatpacking district, and there it was—an Apple ad declaring “Newphoria!” in enormous print. We don’t need newphoria . We need oldphoria , the joy in what already exists. We need simplephoria , the joy in streamlining. We need enoughphoria , the celebration that what we have and who we are is already enough. Newphoria , at least as it relates to running a small business, is not always all it’s cracked up to be. Today’s post is a crossover from Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h—you can read the post and reply in the comments here: Climbing Down the Entrepreneurial Ladder . 📝 Permission Celebrate your own -phoria, the joy in running your business in the way that works best for you ! 🔗 Resources Mentioned D🤦🏻♀️h Articles : Love That! For You 🙄 , COnTenT cReaToRs exist and subsist in the verrrrrrry looooooooooooong tail’s trough, 🤬 Rant From the Wound: Why This Platitude Meme Engraged Me , Serendipity signage Katherine Raz on closing the second location of her Fernseed business in Tacoma Emily McDowell ’s experience of running a small business that blew up—in a good way—but also led to burnout: The truth about going mega-viral, part one and part two . Nathan Barry’s The Ladders of Wealth Creation Jonathan Field’s The Unfortunate Middle JB for CNBC: Treat your career like a smart phone, not a ladder NYT : Climbing Down the Corporate Ladder . Big thanks to Rob Walker for including me in this Workologist column! It’s still a career highlight. He’s now here on Substack at The Art of Noticing Video : If you want to geek out further on idea gathering process: here’s a Loom walkthrough of my Collection Bucket in Notion . Recent Free Time workshop by Stephanie Huston with a template for creating and batching content for the year ahead. Apps : Substack 📚 Books Mentioned I’m not immune from status-chasing—none of us are. In his book, The Status Game , Will Storr categorizes these games into three types: dominance, success, and virtue. My two all-time favorite books on this topic are Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety and Wanting by Luke Burgis who is on Substack at Ride or Drive and Anti-Mimetic . Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Listen to the audio version of Jonathan Fields reading “The Unfortunate Middle” here , and check out our series of 12 SPARKED episodes (Spotify Playlist). Pivot : 305: Is What You’re Wanting Actually What’s Best For You? With Luke Burgis Pivot x RadReads conversations on status with Khe Hy (Spotify Playlist) Free Time : Here are some of my favorite Free Time conversations with small business owners who downsized their operations: 016: IP Licensing and “No Full-Time Employees” with Lee LeFever 131: Scaling Joy While Streamlining Business Overhead with Kaneisha Grayson 157: Downshifting to a Delightfully Part-Team Team with Laura Roeder 173: Cut Your Losses—Even While Pivoting in Public with Khe Hy 205: Turning Down a $200K Two-Book Traditional Publishing Deal with Paul Millerd 241: Finding Freedom and Financial Reciprocity through a Paid Newsletter 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/262 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
If you’re anything like me, you may find conducting online launches for your programs or events exhausting and sometimes even cringe-inducing. Thankfully, today’s guest, Anne Samoilov , is here to help! Anne is a long-time expert in the space who has helmed product launches for Laura Roeder, Marie Forleo, and Jonathan Fields. Today, we’re talking about why some of us find big, splashy launches so draining; how to set up automated or evergreen launches (and her take on the pros and cons of these); how to find non-cringey launch strategies; be willing to take on clients or projects that have nothing to do with your business. More About Anne : Anne Samoilov is a launch strategist and VFX Producer. She started her work online as the creator of Fearless Launching, an online training program that teaches impact-driven entrepreneurs how to create simple, streamlined, and standout launches without relying on templates or cookie-cutter strategies. She has also led the VFX teams for TV shows on Paramount Plus and Starz. Check out Anne’s podcast, The Fearless Launching Show , where she shares insights and tips on how to have an amazing product or business launch—your way. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Evergreen or Automated Launches: a person who is interested in what you do → signs up for a free interactive event (a webinar, challenge, email series, video series, etc.) → at some point, you make an offer by sending them to a sales page. They can do all this on their own schedule. Do people actually know what you offer? Three ways to make sure: communication (webinar, mini-course, offer in your thank you pages, newsletter P.S.), website updates (bio, announcement bar, pop-up, work with me page), other people (free workshop for their audience, podcast guesting) Get in front of other audiences by doing a workshop (webinar) tour: You can offer the host an affiliate commission for sales. Give both audiences a heads-up that you have a relationship. 📝 Permission To take on clients or projects that have nothing to do with your business; it can bring in revenue and reconnect you with latent skills. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Spruce up your thank you pages! Put your bio, mention ways to work with you, offer a freebie. Bonus: create a launch library with some of the copy that has worked best from previous launches. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Anne on the web , IG , Twitter , LinkedIn , Facebook Content Sprints : Stephanie Huston BFF Workshop: How to Batch + Create Your Annual Content Calendar with Stephanie Huston People : Catherine Just , Marie Forleo , Jeff Walker Tools : Notion , Deadline Funnel 📚 Books Mentioned The White Space Solution: Make Room For Your Best Life & Work Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Anne’s Fearless Launching Show BFF Workshop: How to Batch + Create Your Annual Content Calendar with Stephanie Huston Free Time: 064: The Vulnerability of Launching 157: Downshifting to a Delightfully Part-Team Team with Laura Roeder 107: How to Know When You’ve Gotten Pricing Wrong and 020: Pricing Psychology with Jacquette M. Timmons 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch 069: Evergreen Email Sequences with Allan Dib Pivot : 047: Live Fiercely, Study Deeply . . . While Earning a Living — with Jonathan Fields 358: Crossing the Cringe Chasm when Taking Career and Creative Risks with Henna Pryor 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/261 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“Whenever you have a choice of what to do, choose the more interesting path." In honor of our upcoming Free Time x Long Game IRL event in Miami on February 1 and 2 (it’s not too late to join !), today I’m bringing you a favorite episode from the earliest days of the Free Time pod. In this conversation with Dorie Clark—aka “DC”—one of my closest friendtors, we discuss how she "optimizes for interesting," says no to good opportunities, builds relationships by following her "no asks for a year" rule, and when to call on trusted advisors to ensure you don't quit something too soon. We're discussing her bestselling fourth book, The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World —be sure to grab your copy for even more insights on how to apply strategic thinking to your biggest vision. This episode originally aired on September 28, 2021. More About Dorie: Dorie Clark helps individuals and companies get their best ideas heard in a crowded, noisy world. She has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50, and was honored as the #1 Communication Coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith Leading Global Coaches Awards. She is a keynote speaker and teaches executive education for Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and Columbia Business School. Dorie is the author of The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World , Reinventing You , Stand Out , Entrepreneurial You . 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Building and Maintaining Relationships: Dorie doesn’t make any significant asks from new connections for at least a year. This strategy is aimed at building genuine, agenda-free relationships, nurturing them over time, rather than using them for immediate benefits. Optimizing for Interesting Opportunities: Pursue what genuinely interests you rather than feeling pressured to follow a predetermined passion or path. Balancing Opportunities and Saying: It’s a skill to decline opportunities, especially alluring seemingly “free” ones. Evaluate opportunities based on alignment with your long-term goals and the true cost of saying yes, including opportunity cost, time, and energy. 📝 Permission “You don’t have to do this,” for types of events that you hate attending! Decline joyfully. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next What decision would you make about a current or future project if you were optimizing for interesting? 🔗 Resources Mentioned Dorie on the web , Instagram: @dorieclark , LinkedIn Articles : Dorie on HBR Video : TEDx— How to Future-Proof Your Career Free Time Miami on Feb 1 and 2 : Learn more and register here » 📚 Books Mentioned Dorie’s Books: The Long Game , Reinventing You , Stand Out , Entrepreneurial You Decoding Greatness by Ron Friedman Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Russel Brunson's The Marketing Secrets Show Pivot : 298: Building a New Network and Becoming Broadway Investors with Dorie Clark and Alisa Cohn 268: Decoding Greatness with Ron Friedman 58: Monetize Your Ideas with Dorie Clark 66: Create Multiple Streams of Income with Dorie Clark 33: Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following with Dorie Clark 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/260 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
Before you post anything, ask : Why am I posting this? Is this within my brand guardrails? Even still, you may find yourself in hot water someday, and it’s important to think through how you will respond (and the pop-up team you will assemble to help) in advance. Today, we’re breaking down the tricky art of crisis communications and apologies with Aliza Licht, author of On Brand , who brings two decades of PR experience to the conversation. More About Aliza : Aliza Licht is an award-winning marketer, bestselling author, podcaster, personal branding expert, and the founder of LEAVE YOUR MARK, a multimedia brand and consultancy. She advises businesses and mentors individuals on brand building and career development. Licht leverages over two decades of expertise in marketing, communications, and digital strategy in the fashion industry. She was named one of "America's Next Top Mentors" by The New York Times. Her new book, On Brand: Shape Your Narrative. Share Your Vision. Shift Their Perception is a comprehensive roadmap to building your personal brand. As a social media pioneer and one of the first fashion influencers, Licht created and was the voice of the anonymous social media phenomenon DKNY PR GIRL. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Brand Guardrails: What kind of point of view do you have? What will and won’t you stand behind? What is central to who you are? Plan for Crisis Communications before you have a crisis: What team will be involved? An attorney, an HR person (if a bigger business), certain savvy friends. Put that “bat team” together, almost like your to-go bag in an emergency. You won’t be thinking clearly in the middle of a crisis when your brand is everywhere, and not in a good way. Social media is very siloed: If a fire starts on one platform, don’t spread your own wildfire by responding to it across every channel. Contain a fire where it started first. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next If you are faced with a crisis, first understand where you messed up. What did you do that pissed off your community? Second, how quickly can you respond to that? Finally, are there actions you need to take in addition to your words? 📚 Books Mentioned On Brand: Shape Your Narrative. Share Your Vision. Shift Their Perception Humans of New York and Humans of New York: Stories by Brandon Stanton The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🔗 Resources Mentioned Aliza on the web , IG , Twitter , LinkedIn Humans of New York : web , IG , book Articles : DKNY Responds to Accusations that it Stole Photos from ‘Humans of New York’ Photographer , CBS New York— DKNY, Photographer Settle After Store Uses 'Humans Of New York' Photos Without Permission Streisand effect: An unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead backfires by increasing awareness of that information. The New York Times— Is Empowering Corporate Women Enough? The New Yorker— The Journalist and the Murderer by Janet Malcolm 🎧 Related Podcast Episodes Leave Your Mark : Jenny Blake on Quietly Unsubscribing From Burnout, Harnessing Free Time, and Why We Should Stop Sailing the Sea of Shiny Shoulds Free Time : 005: Brand Obsessed with Emily Heyward Pivot : 236: We're All In This Together—From Blame to Belonging with Mike Robbins 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/259 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
What’s on your business owner to-do list? Here’s a peek at mine, full of items large, small, and existential. This is another crossover from Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h , a recent essay that was an unexpected runaway hit—the most popular to date in the six months since I started on Substack. I had no idea (as usual) whether it would resonate or not when I hit “publish,” until my friend Adam texted to say how much he could relate. “Your comments are blowing up!” he said, sending a screenshot of other people letting me know that I wasn’t alone in my itemized anxiety. Enormous thanks to those of you who have already subscribed, read, commented, and shared—it means the world to me! 📝 Permission To reward yourself with something fun after you complete the most annoying #adulting item on your to-do list. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Delegate one thing you are dreading on your own to-do list. 🔗 Resources Mentioned NaNoWriMo cofounder Grant Faulkner Rolling in Doh : To Do—One Small Business Owner’s Checklist ; An Honest Accounting Part One , Part Two , Part Three—Emojij Balance Sheet Articles : Jennifer Egan’s “ To Do ”, Todd Sattersten’s publishing magic number for book sales, Julia Cameron’s Artist Dates Cartoon : “Alice in Responsibilityland” by Liana Finck for The New Yorker Apps : Substack 📚 Books Mentioned The Art of Brevity by Grant Faulkner Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 238: Why Revenue Goals Don’t Work (For Me) 226: Is your business a hot mess? If yes, let's celebrate — Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h 236: Ignore the Odds — Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h 250: Do what you love and the money will follow . . . IF you meet at least 3 of these 20 criteria 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/258 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“We don’t want our time to be spread thin like peanut butter on a slice of toast. You will have greater impact when you concentrate your efforts on work that is closely tied to winning—however you define it.” Are you working in a frustration factory? If so, it’s important to recognize that not all friction is created equal. Some is good, to slow down decision-making in crucial moments, and some is bad, getting in the way of progress. You’ll need to tap into your inner “grease” and “gunk” sides to address both. In the introduction to their book, The Friction Project , coauthors Huggy Rao and Bob Sutton share a quote from Ed Catmull, former president of Pixar. He believes that if Pixar followed overreaching executives’ advice to wring maximum efficiency and scale out of the organization, it would “kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.” "The goal isn't efficiency, it is to make something good or even great,” Catmull says. “We iterate seven to nine times, with friction in the process.” More About Huggy : Huggy Rao is the Atholl McBean professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Science, the Sociological Research Association, and the Academy of Management. He has written for Harvard Business Review, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Market Rebels and coauthor of the bestselling book Scaling Up Excellence . Today we’re talking about his new book, also coauthored with Bob Sutton, The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder . 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Think of yourself as a trustee of others’ time: Don’t forget that your company is a product too. Be intentional about how customers (and team members) interact with your business at every step. Grease people vs. gunk people: Grease people are connectors—like WD40—they like to make things easier. Gunk people are more rule and procedure-bound. These are two different aspects of ourselves. Think of your role as Editor-in-Chief of a newspaper: Take away stuff that bores and distracts readers. You also need to do your due dilligence: fact check, interview sources. What’s the cost of serving a large, friction-filled client? Is it really worth it? Are they the right people for you to serve? Don’t be customer compelled, thinking you have to chase every customer. A great company says yes to some customers, and no to others. 📝 Permission Start simple: get rid of stupid stuff. How will you do this every day? Can you have one decision-making rule that a ten year-old would understand? ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Do a simple test of friction forensics. Ask: is this a one-way door decision I’m making, one that’s very costly to reverse? There are other decisions where the cost of failure is very low. When you’re making a one-way door decision, put in good friction to slow you down. For the latter, make things very easy for people to do. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Huggy on the web , Twitter , LinkedIn Articles : Our to-do lists can’t grow forever. It’s time to try subtraction Video : Huggy Rao on Scaling Up Excellence 📚 Books Mentioned The Friction Project: How Smart Leaders Make the Right Things Easier and the Wrong Things Harder by Huggy Rao & Robert Sutton Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less by Leidy Klotz Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Friction with Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao Free Time : 169: Running a Goal-Free Business with Stephen Shapiro Pivot : 326: Fool Me Once—How to Avoid Accidental and Righteous Fraud with Kelly Pope 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/257 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 256: Behind-the-Business: 1:1 Voxer Coaching Summer Pop-Up—Structure, Systems, and Pricing (Listener Q&A from Renee) 26:46
I'm so excited to bring you a listener submission today from Renee Rubin Ross about my summer Voxer coaching pop-up . I've done these two summers in a row now, and I've learned so much every subsequent time. In this episode, I’ll share the structure, systems, and pricing that help me create a joyful asynchronous program that keeps our calendars free of “tiny boxes” (as my friend Sarah calls them). More about Renee: Dr. Renee Rubin Ross is a recognized leader on board and organizational development and strategy and the founder of The Ross Collective , a consulting firm that designs and leads inclusive, participatory processes for social sector boards and staff. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Structure : Cohorts are nice so that you can make yourself energetically available (and make extra space on your calendar for replying) for the program duration. Ask participants to put their one question for the week in big blinking lights! Ideally as text underneath their voice memo (Voxer caps memos at 15 minutes, which is a good thing!) Systems : Create a “how this works” program overview page that participants can reference throughout the program. Keep a participant tracker where you note their question and your answer each week, so you don’t repeat yourself (and so you can easily reference resource links that another participant might ask about later). Pricing : Offer your current active, paying clients and community members the first chance at enrollment and at a discounted rate. I also grandfather in their pricing for life. 📝 Permission Design programs that are as joyful for you to facilitate as they are for others to join! At the inaugural Business Bestie Brunch we came up with the mantra, “We get to call this work.” What is your ideal “I get to call this work” format for delivering client services? ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Consider your own Voxer coaching experiment! Make sure it’s limited in scope (ie not rolling admission) and that you set clear parameters up front. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Join the waitlist : Voxer Coaching with Jenny and Business Bestie Brunch Apps : Notion , Substack , Loom , Voxer 📚 Books Mentioned Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes BFF Bonus : 100: Three Ingredients to Fill a Program Faster Free Time : 023: Determine Your True Capacity with Ashley Gartland 100: Top Ten Lessons from 💯 Episodes 106: Splatology—On Clearing Time Clutter Pivot : 277: Expansive Impact and Spacious Scheduling with Sarah Young 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/256 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 255: Operationalizing Kindness and Absolute Excellence while Building Birch Coffee with Paul Schlader 38:06
“It wasn’t about being better than others, it was being ourselves, and true to our ideals in our work.” That’s just one of many gems from today’s guest, Birch Coffee co-founder Paul Schlader, who says, “I don’t accept anything less than absolute excellence.” In this conversation we talk about how he stands out in the New York City noise by hiring for kindness; getting bought out when the Gershwin Hotel closed and thereby ending the lease on their first location, then parlaying those funds into two new stores (and the growing pains that followed); and the moment he had to tell his entire team they were furloughed indefinitely when New York City delivered the shut-down order; losing four stores but bouncing back to 14 (when so many other coffee shops closed down). More About Paul: Paul Schlader co-founded Birch Coffee , a New York City-based coffee company, in 2009. Since then, the company has grown to fourteen locations and is doing 10x the revenue by the end of year three. Paul and his business partner Jeremy have been focused on bettering the industry through their work in coffee and service over the past fifteen years. Paul's work directly focuses on quality of product. As a licensed Q grader, he manages all of Birch's green coffee purchases, and oversees their roasting, wholesale program, and espresso training. Though the coffee side is important, leadership is where Paul spends most of his time, building teams and working to teach their leaders to follow the mission, "Serve our customers every need, every time, knowing every moment counts.” 🌟 3 Key Takeaways A sample interview question to screen for kindness: What do you like most about working in the coffee industry, and what has drawn you to this industry? Individual has to talk about something positive. Through their tone, what they are sharing, we make an assessment about whether they are being truthful, honest, and open—or whether they are blowing smoke. From one store to two was far more challenging than two stores to four: Building trust, and making sure all systems are written out and tracked, everything memorialized. “One of our core values is ownership, up and down the chain of command. We all do the dishes, we all do what is called upon us at any time in the business.” Learn along the way: “Not knowing is the best part of the adventure of entrepreneurship, and the greatest teacher. There’s no button you can press to accelerate your ability to be better. You can’t do it until you go through it. 📝 Permission Drop being hard on yourself—give yourself grace as you learn and grow, and make mistakes. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Operationalize one of your business values by crafting an interview question or manager manual entry that describes how you show up as {quality}. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Paul on the web , IG , LinkedIn HQ: Birch Coffee Blend : Emma’s Espresso Articles : Eater— 4,000+ Restaurant Closings in New York City since the pandemic , Forbes— Nvidia Founder Admits: ‘Wouldn’t Start Company If I Had To Do It Over Again’ Video : Acquired— Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang 📚 Books Mentioned Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey by A.J. Jacobs Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 177: “Don’t scale too soon” — On Books and Mission-Based Business-Building with Readwise Cofounder Daniel Doyon Pivot : 353: Pain, Purpose, and Portals—Pivoting from Massage Therapist to Coach with John O'Connor Acquired : Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/255 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
Today is a crossover episode from the Pivot podcast celebrating eight lessons learned from over eight years of podcasting. The Free Time podcast is now approaching its third birthday—I launched it on March 21, 2021—a year prior to the book coming out. I encourage you to grab your copy if you haven’t already, or even better—🎁 give the gift of free time to a loved one in your life for 2024! As we start to plan the year ahead, I hope that you can apply some of these pointers to the creative projects that you're working on. Happy New Year, and I'll see you on the other side! 🌟 8 Key Takeaways Ride out the inevitable dips and plateaus: Ask, how can I fall in love with this again? Keep the bar high—strive for jump-out-of-the-chair-with-glee-to-record level of guests and topics. (Re)connect with the even more meaningful metrics: Don’t obsess over download numbers or charts. They can be instructive, but they don’t have to be the one-and-only indicator of whether or not to continue. 51/49 : My antidote to inexplicable nerves and overthinking: 49% fear and anxiety, 51% take one small step forward. Just tip the scale toward action by two percent. Eyes on your own paper : Don’t get lost in what other people are doing or how fast they are going. Remind yourself what’s in it for you, regardless of what “the competition” is up to. There may even be downstream benefits of having others in the same space. Keep up with new software, don’t worry too much about sunk costs: While you want to avoid chasing shiny software objects, don’t be afraid to jump from one lily pad to the next when it improves your systems and process. Hire help! To truly achieve consistency escape velocity, hire a team so that someone else owns the outcome and you can show up and do what only you can do. Go your own way: Be aware of diminishing returns on shiny shoulds that, if you were to chase them, would stop you from doing the creative thing you enjoy altogether. Keep experimenting—one might say pivoting ! There is no there there. The project will evolve alongside you, even when you lose steam for a little bit. You will always find a new way forward. And if you’re so stuck you truly can’t see straight, it’s okay to call it quits too. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Articles : Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h— The Business Yips & 51/49 Tools : Substack app , Kajabi , Notion , Riverside.fm , Descript Loom Walkthrough : Day in the Life of a Podcast Episode 📚 Books Mentioned Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Pivot : 281: Feeling Impostery? Become a Qualified Curator Instead of an End-All-Be-All Expert Pivot x Career Pathfinder podcast episodes with Adrian (Spotify playlist) 346: Finding Clarity While Navigating Change with Marc Lesser 342: “Whatever Comes T hrough Me Comes for Me First,” with Nicole Antoinette Free Time : 241: Finding Freedom and Financial Reciprocity through a Paid Newsletter with Nic Antoinette 181: Be Irreplaceable with My Creative Coach Jay Acunzo 223: The Confidence Trap: Why You Don’t Need It to Do Big Things (SPARKED Crossover) 180: 📉 Diminishing Returns and the True Costs of Shiny Shoulds 138: ⛵️Stop Sailing the Sea of Shiny Shoulds 196: 🍩 What Do Donuts, Coffee, Conversation, and Energy Cliffs Have in Common? 130: Day in the Life of a Podcast Episode + How I Prepare for Guests 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/254 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“’Something I always say: at the very least, do it for the plot. Do it for the story. Be bold in life, mostly because not being bold is boring as hell.’ Margot tipped her head back in glittery laughter and I felt my chest expand in hope.” That’s just one of many glittering conversations that the main character of Jamie Varon’s debut novel, Main Character Energy , has with her Aunt, a guiding light who helps her find her voice and pursue her publishing dream. In today’s conversation, Jamie and I go behind the book to talk about how fiction differs from nonfiction, working with a writing coach, the importance of giving yourself permission for a “zero” draft, moving past the mental machinations of envy and the desire for logical explanations for others’ success, and so much more. Be sure to check out our previous conversation for the Pivot podcast 278: Radically Content with Jamie Varon . More About Jamie : Jamie Varon’s writing has been seen across the internet for over a decade, from her early days of personal blogging all the way to features in publications such as Teen Vogue, HuffPost, GOOD, Complex, and many more. Over the years, both her long-form essays and short-form prose have garnered millions of reads and views, using her signature style of combining personal story with universal themes. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Where are you holding yourself back before you even try? Part of Jamie’s motivation for focusing so much on the interior journey within Main Character Energy was her own experience as an aspiring author: “I was the first person to reject myself, to tell myself no.” Read your draft out loud to see what feels natural and what doesn’t, especially for dialogue. What excites you to do the work, not just for the results? Recognize that writing the book may be every day for three years, while releasing a book happens on a single day. 📝 Permission Drop the perfectionism. Let it be messy and uncertain. Let yourself discover how you work, what you’re good at, and what you need to improve upon. There’s so much wisdom in action. Give yourself permission to write Novel Zero. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Envy and comparison doesn’t go away through logic, even though our mind craves answers and formulas to “figure it out.” Return to your spiritual practices. I do my best, at my pace; I accept and love where I’m at; it always makes sense, it’s always working in my favor. Trust that. Bonus: Take a break from social media. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Jamie on the web , IG , Twitter , LinkedIn , Substack Articles : Jamie’s writing for publication Plot Twist: Being offline Rolling in Doh — Ignore the Odds Writing Coach : Savannah Gilbo 📚 Books Mentioned Authors : Blake Crouch , Ann Patchett , Rebecca Yaros Main Character Energy: A Novel by Jamie Varon Radically Content and Radically Content: The Journal by Jamie Varon Jamie’s favorite craft books : Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Fiction Writing Made Easy : 91: Student Spotlight: How She Went from First Draft to Landing Her Dream Agent with Jamie Varon Barbara Kingsolver on Armchair Expert , The Shift , The Ezra Klein Show Free Time : 203: 🎢 Riding the Emotional Rollercoaster of Launching with Natalie Lue Pivot : 278: Radically Content with Jamie Varon 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/253 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
”In a society that glorifies titles, visibility, reach, and the grind, taking a beat to opt out of all that isn’t easy,” today’s guest Mel Dizon writes in the origin story to her pop-up Substack. Mel shares how she defines an accidental sabbatical ; the energetic urgency and pent up ambition that let her know it was time to leave her job; the permission she needed to give herself; navigating the fears that followed; how publishing her process out loud has helped with courage and accountability; and trusting herself to make important decisions when it’s time, while also not rushing that process. More About Mel : Mel Dizon is a writer and editor; a runner, CrossFitter, pickleballer, and efficiency fanatic; a former therapist, consultant, and coach; a dog, pool, and scalding-hot-dirty-chai lover. She started writing words for dollars back in 1993. She’s written thousands of articles, ghostwritten many books and essays, facilitated hundreds of video interviews, and written copy for everyone from NYT best-selling authors to companies like Google. Melani dreamed about taking a sabbatical for years, and the universe finally conspired to light the way. Turns out she’s a big fan. She currently writes life & dying on Substack for those in the middle of the reinvention mess, seeking to “live a life worth writing about.” 🌟 3 Key Takeaways An Accidental Sabbatical is about not knowing what's next and how to live more comfortably in the void or liminal space. When you feel blocked by fear or worry, ask yourself: What if X were no longer important to you, what would you do? Don’t babysit your work (or your budget) : “Don’t do it. Write the thing, publish it, post it, paint it on a mural, or do whatever you need to do with it and move on. Forgive yourself for being terrible or unreadable, or boring or derivative and just keep going.” 📝 Permission Who am I doing this for? If it’s for anybody other than yourself, pause and reconsider. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Take a page out of Mel’s post, On Calling People Out for Being Awesome and her book, The Hand Written Letter Project : Go to your favorite stationary store and pick out at least 30 notecards or long-form letter pages and envelopes . Or make your own. Buy a pen that will make you feel smarter, funnier, and more brilliant each time you touch it to the page. Sit down in your favorite chair with your dashing new pen and a piece of paper, and write down the names of the first 30 people that come to your mind. Don’t overthink it. The first time I did this, someone I had not talked to in 10 years came to my mind. When she received my letter, she called me immediately and told me that receiving my letter was one of the best moments of her entire year. We talked and laughed for hours. Just go with whoever comes to mind. There’s a reason they will. Address all of your envelopes . I recommend doing this a few days before the start date because, inevitably, you’ll be missing some addresses, and you’ll need time to track them down, send emails, ask friends and family, etc. Then, put a cool stamp on each one— there are plenty to choose from here . Now go ahead, make someone’s day! 🔗 Resources Mentioned Mel on Substack , IG , LinkedIn Articles : Babysitting the Rusty Nail Is your sabbatical on the chopping block? Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h : A Strange and Wonderful Morning: Walking Photo Essay Elizabeth Gilbert’s Letters from Love BFF December Mailer : Important Community Announcement—Please Read! Tools : Substack , Future Me 📚 Books Mentioned The Handwritten Letter Project by Mel Dizon Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 193: Sabbatical Planning with DJ DiDonna BFF Bonus : My Upcoming Quiet Sabbatical 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/252 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 251: Simply Put—Reducing Friction on Sales Pages and in Business Communication with Ben Guttmann 36:13
Just because you use pretty words that sound nice doesn’t mean they are effective . Although we know what we do because we do it all the time; it’s hard to separate that from what your audience wants and experiences. Thankfully, today’s guest is here to help. Ben Guttmann is a marketing and communications expert and author of Simply Put: Why Clear Messages Win — and How to Design Them. We discuss why business owners often muck up their sales pages (what I call invitation letters), how to reduce friction when attracting clients and customers, and the toll that writing too much takes on the receiver. More About Ben: Ben is former co-founder and managing partner at Digital Natives Group, an award-winning agency that worked with the NFL, I Love NY, Comcast NBCUniversal, Hachette Book Group, The Nature Conservancy, and other major clients. He’s an experienced marketing executive and educator on a mission to get leaders to more effectively connect by simplifying their message. Currently, Ben teaches digital marketing at Baruch College in New York City and consults with a range of thought leaders, venture-backed startups, and other brands. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways It’s most effective to communicate to one person, rather than imagining an ambiguous thousand (or ten thousand). Strong communication is not about how many (or few) words you use; it’s about reducing friction, or offramps , from your message. “This and that” versus “this so that”: Test the cohesiveness of your message by replacing and with so. 📝 Permission Not to spend money on paid advertising. Focus on making your business more referable instead. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Look at one of the most important pages of your website. If each word costs you $10, how many can you cut? What about $1,000? If you had to distill your message down to a road sign, what would it look like? 🔗 Resources Mentioned Ben on the web , IG , Twitter , LinkedIn Articles : NYT— My Delirious Trip to the Heart of Swiftiedom Meme: I aint reading all that 📚 Books Mentioned Simply Put: Why Clear Messages Win―and How to Design Them Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes The Tim Ferriss Show : Managing Procrastination, Predicting the Future, and Finding Happiness with Tim Urban Reply All: Email Debt Forgiveness Day Free Time : 181: Be Irreplaceable with My Creative Coach Jay Acunzo 227: 🎁 The Best Gifting Strategies and Biggest Mistakes with John Ruhlin Pivot : 70: Build a Referral Engine with John Jantsch 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/251 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 250: Do what you love and the money will follow . . . IF you meet at least 3 of these 20 criteria (Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h) 20:02
The phrase is emblazoned at WeWorks across the globe: in large neon lights across lobby walls, bedecking laptops via swag stickers, and printed in playful cursive on the mugs that facilitate bottomless free coffee—with the addition of always in small print at the top. But what becomes of the adage to do what you love when the company blasting it everywhere declares bankruptcy ? What about the rest of us? Today’s essay is a crossover from my paid Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h . I encourage you to join us there if you haven’t already! 🧐 Do what you love and the money will follow . . . if you meet more than three of the following 20 criteria: The economy is booming. Actually booming, not “ soft landing ” or “ immaculate disinflation ” “booming.” 😉 You are clear on what you love in the first place. You’re not still in the Tinker Dabble Doodle Try phase. You love teaching other people how to teach other people how to make money online. You have enough money in long-term investments —index funds and the like—to live off the interest alone, keeping the principal tucked safely aside for retirement. You are already independently wealthy . See #4, trustafarian , or #6. You have a spouse AND said spouse earns a robust living with solid health insurance and a thick paycheck every two weeks. You have abundant financial runway AND you don’t mind that runway crumbling beneath your wheels as you try to get the 747 of your passion off the ground. Continue reading » 📝 Permission To pause doing what you love if the money isn’t following and you need to regroup. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next What did I miss on the Top 20 list? Share in the comments and let me know :) 🔗 Resources Mentioned Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h: Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow . . . IF (and updated Top 20 here ) What Works : Making the Content Math Work Khe Hy’s RadReads: ** The $645,099 Business Pivot AP : WeWork declares bankruptcy , economic BS: “ soft landing ” or “ immaculate disinflation ” Edison Research : Podcasting’s winner-take-all industry Video : Steve Martin in Conversation with Charlie Rose Podcast Production : One Stone Creative Reese’s Book Club Apps : Substack 📚 Books Mentioned Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins Born Standing Up by Steve Martin So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin 143: Exploring Time, Money, and Energy Capacity with Tara McMullin and Charlie Gilkey (Replay) 173: Cut Your Losses—Even While Pivoting in Public—with Khe Hy 183: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt with Madeleine Dore Pivot : 326: Fool Me Once—How to Avoid Accidental and Righteous Fraud with Kelly Pope ; 29: Deep Work: Ditch Cognitive Junk Food with Cal Newport ; 122: Digital Minimalism with Cal Newport 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/250 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“The biggest breakthroughs came from the random side projects that I had no expectation would turn into anything.” Josh Kaufman is a longtime friendtor (13 years and counting!) who I admire for his streamlined approach to running his business in a way that supports family life and creative solitude. In our last conversation we spoke about releasing the ten-year anniversary edition of his bestselling book, The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business , that has since surpassed the one million books sold milestone. Today we’re diving into the systems behind that success. Check out 012: Generating Personal MBA Momentum with Josh Kaufman if you haven’t already! More About Josh : Josh Kaufman’s research and books focus on business, entrepreneurship, skill acquisition, productivity, creativity, applied psychology, and practical wisdom. Josh's unique, multidisciplinary approach to business mastery and rapid skill acquisition has helped millions of readers around the world learn essential concepts and skills on their own terms. Josh's TEDx talk on The First 20 Hours is one of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks published to date, with over 37 million views on YouTube. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Sign up for the Audible bounty program to generate affiliate income for audiobook sales. Get Josh’s Personal MBA book for free here , and Free Time on Audible (if you’re not already a member). If you set-up SEO-optimized topic pages for discoverability with excerpts from your book, do not create a central navigation page that might detract from book sales. The pages don’t need to be linked together, but you can link to a few related concepts. Include ways to purchase the book across all formats, as well as a small bio and newsletter sign-up embed. Figure out where your people are, figure out what they want, how to talk to them, and then just keep doing it day after day after day. The more you invest that effort in creating, the more your work will last. 📝 Permission Try more random experiments, things where you don’t know whether or not it will work. Things you’re curious about, that pique your attention. “The biggest breakthroughs come from the random side projects that I had no expectation would turn into anything.” ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next From Josh: To build skill from scratch, you need to know How to Climb A Ladder . But how do you know which ladder to climb? Try the Explore / Exploit process (here’s the overview from the Personal MBA: Exploration / Exploitation 🔗 Resources Mentioned Josh on the web , IG, Twitter Articles : Personal MBA (website) SEO-optimized book excerpt: What is the Iteration Cycle? Video : TEDx— The First 20 Hours Conference : Book Expo America Tools : Audible’s bounty program , ACX (Amazon) audiobook publishing, Findaway Voices (now acquired by Spotify), Amazon’s KDP publishing (for self-publishing) 📚 Books Mentioned Josh's Books: The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything...Fast! How to Fight a Hydra (don’t miss the Audible edition Worldly Wisdom: Collected Quotations and Aphorisms Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business by Jenny Blake Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One 🎧 Related Episodes Otherppl : How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature Free Time : 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch 103: How to Land a Literary Agent and Publisher with David Moldawer (Part One) 105: “Don’t write the wrong book!” with David Moldawer (Part Two) 162: Should You Self-Publish? (Part One) 164: Let’s Talk Royalties re: Publishing Options (Part Two) Pivot : 49: The (He)art of Book Publishing Excerpt: Land a Traditional Publishing Deal — Q&A with My Editor at Portfolio/Penguin Random House 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/249 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
Are you running a Franken-Brand? A quick, inexpensive logo here. And then someone a few months later tries to write the brand strategy. And then another junior hire adds in graphics and you don’t even know where they came from. Suddenly, you have this brand that is cobbled together, and no one on the team is feeling compelled. Today, returning guest Adam Chaloeicheep and I are picking up where we left off in episode 259: Has your Business Brand Become a Liability , diving into Together Agency’s four personas of clients who are ready to do brand work, the three types of clients that are deal-breakers for Adam, and the perils of navigating the brand strategy process with a CEO who is in the midst of a spiritual awakening. Be sure to check out our previous conversations, 045: Behind the Free Time Brand with Adam Chaloeicheep and 247: Has your Business Brand Become a Liability? How to Know When It’s Time for a Tune-up . More About Adam : Adam Chaloeicheep is co-founder of Together agency with his wife, Marisol Dahl, who I had the great pleasure of working with for five years in the early days of JBE. Adam is a creative business leader with over a decade of experience in a variety of startup areas including product and service concepting, building teams, operations, and brand-focused design and digital solutions. He is one of my closest friends (12 years and counting!), and a creative business leader with over a decade of experience in product and service concepting, building teams, and brand strategy. Together Agency is behind every big brand I have launched into the world including Pivot and Free Time . 🌟 4 Brand Stages Blank Canvas —You have a business idea and nothing else. A branding exercise is helpful at this stage because you’re getting down, on paper, the core of what this business is and how it’s showing up in the world. It’s a really nice opportunity to align from the very beginning in a brand-forward way, from the name, to the strategy, to the identity. Jeckyll/Hyde —Your brand has only gotten you so far, and now it’s holding you back. You’ve got some traction, got something really special, but you are losing out on bigger opportunities and need that rebrand to launch your business to the next phase. Frankenstein —Piecemeal elements from different contractors, but no cohesive strategy. You have a brand that is cobbled together, and no one on the team is feeling inspired by it. It’s confusing, not inspiring and everyone hates working with it because there’s no clear way in how to use it. Tune-up —The foundational strategy is strong, now there is an opportunity to see what is out of date, what elements can be refreshed or tightened up. 📝 Permission “Judge the crap out of anything you want for five minutes!” ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Adam says, “If you’re feeling spiritually lost, go figure that out before starting the brand strategy process.” 🔗 Resources Mentioned Adam on the web , IG , Twitter , LinkedIn Go Together Agency , Instagram , LinkedIn Together Portfolio Feature: Free Time Brand Strategy Substacks : Mind Brew , Re:Brand Articles : Missing Missy , Worst Client Comments Turned Into Posters Jenny’s Substack: Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h 📚 Books Mentioned Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 045: Behind the Free Time Brand with Adam Chaloeicheep 247: Has your Business Brand Become a Liability? How to Know When It’s Time for a Tune-up 005: Brand Obsessed with Emily Heyward 003: Liberate Your Life Force with Christine Arylo Pivot : 12: Belly of the Pivot Beast: On Bouncing Back from Zero with Adam Chaloeicheep 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/248 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 247: Has your Business Brand Become a Liability? How to Know When It’s Time for a Tune-up with Adam Chaloeicheep 46:53
Has your business brand become stale, perhaps to the point of being a liability? After a few years, especially with major pivots, you may run the risk of losing clients and credibility. Sometimes it’s time for a tune-up and fresh tires, and sometimes, it’s time for a whole new brand engine. As today’s returning guest, my good friend and part of the team behind the award-winning Free Time brand, recently featured on Behance . Adam Chaloeicheep says, “It’s about building the relationship with your customer. First impressions are really important.” If you haven’t already, I suggest listening to our previous conversation first, 045: Behind the Free Time Brand with Adam Chaloeicheep , for a foundational overview of how Adam and team think about brand strategy more broadly. Today, we’re diving into how to know when you’re due for a rebrand. More About Adam : Adam Chaloeicheep is co-founder of Together agency with his wife, Marisol Dahl, who I had the great pleasure of working with for five years in the early days of JBE. Adam is a creative business leader with over a decade of experience in a variety of startup areas including product and service concepting, building teams, operations, and brand-focused design and digital solutions. He is one of my closest friends (12 years and counting!), and a creative business leader with over a decade of experience in product and service concepting, building teams, and brand strategy. Together Agency is behind every big brand I have launched into the world including Pivot and Free Time . 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Three key signs it’s time to rebrand: your brand is a liability to your business, your business model has shifted and you’re growing out of it, your brand name no longer works Brand therapy: Sometimes it’s hard to let go of attachments to aspects of the old brand or business model. Stay focused on the bigger picture. Tune-up moments: Customers and clients also get really excited to see something new. It reinvigorates interest and can become a moment where you show the world, “We’re still here, we’re still growing, and we’re refreshing and refining and polishing.” 📝 Permission Be vulnerable; take some risks to put your whole self out there. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Sit with one of the creative questions from Together Agency’s client intake/exploration survey: What texture is your brand? If your brand were a plant, which one would it be? A song? 🔗 Resources Mentioned Adam on the web , IG , Twitter , LinkedIn Go Together Agency , Instagram , LinkedIn Together Portfolio: Free Time Brand Strategy Substacks : Mind Brew , Re:Brand Articles : Free Time feature in Print Magazine , Activate Your Brand: From Idea to Reality Jenny’s Substack: Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h , Rebuilding from Rubble Apparel : my favorite cozy cashmere sweats by Naadam Tools : Upwork , Behance , Canva , Working Not Working , ChatGPT , Substack 📚 Books Mentioned Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes BFF Bonus : Certification and Licensing Workshop with Pamela Slim Free Time : 005: Brand Obsessed with Emily Heyward 045: Behind the Free Time Brand with Adam Chaloeicheep On licensing: 140: How to License Your IP (Intellectual Property) 186: Licensing 201 — Q&A (Part One) on Product Development, Attracting Clients, and Sales Process 187: Licensing 201 — Q&A (Part Two) on Pricing + Packaging, Train-the-Trainer, Delivery, and Legal Pivot : 12: Belly of the Pivot Beast: On Bouncing Back from Zero with Adam Chaloeicheep 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/247 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
What do you do when a business area becomes energetically draining, or the income isn’t flowing? Today’s guest has many intuitive superpowers, and one of them is “following the data points of truth.” In this episode, Erin Weed and I discuss why you shouldn’t just stick with something that is no longer aligned; the tragic event that launched her journey into entrepreneurship; the moment she knew it was time to release her first business; how she came up with her unique process, The Dig®️ (then later trained a dozen facilitators to help conduct sessions); volunteering as one of the best ways to try on new business ideas; and setting intentions with a word of the week and for the year, in addition to your core word at the center of who you are. ⛔️ For listeners who wish to avoid sensitive content: This episode contains a story about violent crime. More About Erin : Erin Weed is an intuitive communications expert with a passion for truth and storytelling, dedicated to helping leaders discover their purpose and express it succinctly. With a background in PR and documentary production, she has a wealth of experience. Erin's journey took a transformative turn when the tragic murder of her sorority sister inspired her to launch Girls Fight Back! , a global women's safety education company. Erin is also renowned 22-year professional speaker who coaches TEDx and TED speakers using her unique approach, The Dig® , to distill their messages down to simple words. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Core values are something you’re choosing, and how you want to show up. The Dig is about excavating the past and remembering who you already are, deprogramming what’s getting in the way of expressing that. Why do you do what you do? Erin’s Dig process boils down to one word, a frequency. Your word is not a descriptor, it’s about the life path you’re here to learn and teach about, the lens through which you see the world, stories or our life so we can be better teachers. Resonance meter: 0 to 100, how true does this feel? No one is authentic or inauthentic; the more we’re authentic, the more we will be aligned. The authentic truth of who you are is always moving. The work is to know thyself so deeply that when your resonance meter starts to dip, you’re so attuned to it that you’re able to stop and ask why. What’s happening? 📝 Permission Be radically honest with yourself. Try Erin’s Head Heart Core framework: Pick a topic that is alive for you, or one that has been challenging for you. Share your truth by naming the factual truth, what is undisputedly true. Then name your emotional truth, then name what you really, really, want. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Take out a pen and paper and reflect: When is the last time I was out of alignment, and how did it feel in my body? How did it show up in my thoughts? How did it show up in my life expression? 🔗 Resources Mentioned Erin on the web , IG , Twitte r, LinkedIn Private Community : The Speakeasy HeadHeartCore.com Clairvoyance School : Psychic Horizon Center in Boulder Video : TEDxBoulder— Dare to be Authentic 📚 Books Mentioned Girls Fight Back!: The College Girl's Guide to Protecting Herself Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes The Hoffman Podcast: Episode 1 with Erin Weed The Penney & Jenny Show (Spotify playlist) Free Time : 191: Structuring Free Time as a Single Parent while Grieving and Rebuilding with Karen Allen 157: Downshifting to a Delightfully Part-Team Team with Laura Roeder Pivot : 327: 🐺The Wolf You Feed — On Addiction, Recovery & Codependency — and What We Get Wrong About All Three with Eric Zimmer 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/246 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
How can you get paid for who you are, not just what you do? Today’s guest, Terry Rice, is teaching us his Golden Link Strategy for creating a steady stream of potential clients, without giving them (or you) “the ick” through cold outreach misfires. He also shares speaking and marketing tips he pulled from one of his mentors, Daymond John, how he reframes business development activities, why it’s vital to get your offer right before you focus on branding, how he makes time for 12 hours of creating each week (even with four kids), and the sacrifices he made after his business started taking off. More About Terry : Terry Rice is a performance coach and business development consultant. He is a staff writer at Entrepreneur magazine and host of Launch Your Business , a podcast that helps entrepreneurs make money, save time and avoid burnout. Terry is also the author of Start Your Own Consulting Business: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Success . A recognized marketing expert, Terry’s previous experience includes internal consulting roles at Adobe and Facebook. Terry is an instructor at New York University, and has been featured as a subject matter expert by Good Morning America, Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal. Terry is based in Brooklyn; he is a husband and father of four children. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways The Golden Link Strategy: Learn how to borrow other people’s audiences, especially if you don’t have the money to buy paid ads. This could include joining local organizations Biz Dev before branding: Instead of posting on social media and creating content hoping people will see it and reach out to you, reach out to people you want to work with and show how you add value. Identify gatekeepers, ask questions on their posts, and then it can move to DMs, then meetings. Practice strategic patience and give first: Whenever you project lack or scarcity, that’s when things won’t work out well. Start now, knowing it may be a long game. Solve a real problem for someone, subscribe to their newsletter and reply, What can I create with this person instead of what can I get from this person? 📝 Permission Be unreasonable. Go from needing to wanting, even without a justification why. As George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Conduct a time audit: How much time do you need each week to create content for your business? Client follow-up? Business development? Add those as recurring blocks to your calendar. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Terry on the web , IG , Twitter , LinkedIn Articles : Terry’s articles on Entrpreneur.com Video : Pitching & Proposals with HoneyBook Pro and Business Consultant Terry Rice Tools : Apollo.io 📚 Books Mentioned Start Your Own Consulting Business: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Success by Terry Rice $100 Million Offers and $100 Million Leads by Alex Hormozi Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday Vivid Vision by Cameron Herold Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Terry’s podcast: Launch Your Business Grow your business with the Golden Link Strategy Daymond John: Money Mastery Playbook for Entrepreneurs Free Time : 061: Scaling Boutique Businesses with Greg Alexander 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/245 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“What am I pretending not to know?” There is tremendous power in asking better questions, whether it comes to ideal day design, creating systems in your business, or teaching someone how to help tame your inboxes. Today’s conversation with Claire Giovino covers all that ground and more. We talk about what qualities make email so vexing for many business owners, how to reduce fear and friction when delegating replies, and the importance of asking better questions—of yourself and in your business. More About Claire : After an extensive career in academia, Claire Giovino began optimizing inboxes for industry leaders, launching InboxDone in 2017. She and her cofounder Yaro quickly scaled the business 10X in three years with no startup capital. Her proprietary recruitment, training and onboarding process ensures that each client is matched with a carefully-selected Inbox Manager and represented with a superior level of communication. These clients now check their inbox just once per month — or not at all. Claire has always been a seeker, maneuvering her way through life with constant questioning. She now has the lifestyle freedom to seek out her dream podcast guests and to start conversations at her Better Question Dinners. She cherishes books , quotes and good listeners. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways If you’re hesitant to delegate thinking, “But my emails are special!” Claire says the same patterns exist, no matter the industry, the business model. We can systematize and template every single inbox. No one will serve your client like you, but there is plenty that you can train others to do. You’re not outsourcing tasks , you’re delegating decisions . Start with the smallest micro-decisions, then move into higher stakes relationships and messages incrementally by drafting. Be willing to accept five percent of mistakes in service of your larger vision of lifestyle independence. Each time you give feedback, have that team member update their Role Description document (RD); review that on a monthly or quarterly basis. 📝 Permission Drop even things that you’re very good at. Ask: is this nourishing me or depleting me? ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Go back to the ideal day drawing board ( here’s a template for that! ): If you could spend your day however you wanted, what would that look like? Where would the parts of your business show up on a daily basis? For each area ask, “Am I the one who should be doing this?” Create a time budget for a single work week, starting by tracking how you are currently spending time. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Claire on the web , LinkedIn , IG: @thebetterquestions The Better Questions Company : Inbox Done 💬 Quote "But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!" —Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland 📚 Books Mentioned Rocket Fuel by Gino Wickman Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Ben Hardy The Emyth Revisited by Michael Gerber Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes The Better Questions with Claire Giovino Free Time : 161: Inbox Taming with Yaro Starek 002: Eliminate Email with Cal Newport Pivot : 061: Virtual Freedom: Overcome Superhero Syndrome and Start Outsourcing with Chris Ducker 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/244 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
"For the first time in a decade, I feel free again." That’s how one of my earliest blogging friends, longtime community leader David Spinks, was feeling when I caught up with him in-person in the middle of his yearlong sabbatical, after selling his community-based business. David and I discuss best practices for creating and nurturing communities, for engineering serendipity, what it’s like to build and run a conference (and later sell it), and the freedom that comes with taking a deliberate sabbatical. More About David: David Spinks is the author of The Business of Belonging and a popular weekly newsletter for community creators. Previously he co-founded CMX , the leading network for community professionals that was later acquired by Bevy. 🌟 From David’s Post on How to Engineer Serendipity A 2015 study set out to discover how serendipity occurs. Through in-depth interviews, they uncovered the 4-step process ( edited for clarity ): ⚡️ Trigger: A cue that sparks an experience of serendipity. (e.g. meet at an event, see a question in your Slack, get introduced…) 🧠 Connection: The recognition of a potential valuable outcome (e.g. learning, collaboration, friendship) 🤳 Follow-up: An action taken to obtain the valuable outcome (e.g. set up a meeting, plan a project, chat on AIM…) 🏆 Valuable outcome : The positive result of the serendipitous experience (e.g. form a meaningful relationship, learn something new, commit to build something together…) And there’s one more factor. . . for serendipity to occur, there must be an 🧵 “ unexpected thread ” throughout the experience. The more unexpected each step feels, the more it will be perceived as serendipity. 📝 Permission To say no to virtual meetings! ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next If you run a community, build a process to facilitate random encounters: Introduce mechanisms that encourage serendipitous connections among community members. For example, you can implement a "random pairing" feature that pairs members together for one-on-one conversations or create opportunities for members to showcase their work or expertise. 🔗 Resources Mentioned David on the web , Twitter , LinkedIn David’s Substack : David Spinks Articles : Substack— How to Engineer Serendipity How I Reduced Scheduled Meetings by 90% 📚 Books Mentioned The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive Advantage Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Masters of Community with David Spinks Free Time : 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin 241: Finding Freedom and Financial Reciprocity through a Paid Newsletter with Nic Antoinette 093: How to Sell Your Online Business with Alexis Grant 167: Transform Your Approach to Community-Building with Gina Bianchini 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Connect with me on Substack: http://substack.com/@jennyblake ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for instant access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/243 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 242: From Commoditized Content to Visionary Quests + Digital Doppelgängers with Andrew Davis 48:45
“The world doesn’t need another expert.” So says today’s guest, Andrew Davis. Experts rely on hacks, tips, tricks, teaching, preaching, and over-promising. Visionary leaders a) tend not to call themselves that and b) focus on the quest for knowledge itself, with enough humility to admit what they don’t know, or the problems they are exploring even while still in process. In today’s conversation, you’ll learn how to move past commoditized content toward launching a quest that builds trust and brings your audience along for the ride—while embracing digital doppelgängers to help you get there. More About Andrew : Andrew Davis is a bestselling author and internationally acclaimed keynote speaker. Recognized as one of the industry's "Jaw-Dropping Marketing Speakers," Andrew is a mainstay on global marketing influencer lists. Wherever he goes, Andrew Davis puts his infectious enthusiasm and magnetic speaking style to good use teaching business leaders how to grow their businesses, transform their cities, and leave their legacy. He is the author of Brandscaping , Town Inc. , and The Referable Speaker . 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Move from Expertville (commoditization, tips/tricks/hacks) to Visionary Town (new ways of thinking and approaching things), by starting at the crossroads: investigate advice from other experts that bothers you, focus one one small story and universalize it, and/or share something you have tried that didn’t work, and try to understand why. Andrew’s cube of creativity comprises four constraints to come up with any idea faster and with better results. Define the Outcome → Limit the Options → Raise the Stakes → Eliminate the Unnecessary. Digital Doppelgängers: In the future, maybe when you hire someone for a position that requires creativity, you’re also hiring all the AI that they have trained to write and think the way they think, so they can deliver better results faster. You can have many doppelgängers, in the form of ongoing ChatGPT threads, each with very narrow parameters of what you are asking it to do. 📝 Permission Every time you start something new, stop doing two other things. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Start an ongoing thread with ChatGPT and name this version of your digital doppelgänger. What “squirrel-sized task” do you want to train it to do, that it can grow better at over time? For example, Andrew’s Drewdini helps him write promotional video scripts for upcoming keynotes. Each time he gives feedback, it gets better at the task. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Andrew on the web , IG, LinkedIn , Twitter Articles : Time Well Spent— Why I don’t call myself a content creator , Gillian Ortillian on Medium— I Spent $166.66 on Amazon Ads for my First Book. Here’s What I’ve Learned. , PCMA— How the Cube of Creativity Can Save Your Business Video : There’s Something About Mary— Six-Minute Abs 📚 Books Mentioned Andrew’s books: Brandscaping , Town Inc. , and The Referable Speaker Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Unthinkable with Jay Acunzo : Leaving Expertville Free Time : 210: ⛵️Knot a Care—Sailing the Free Time Seas with Joy and Ease and 181: Be Irreplaceable with My Creative Coach Jay Acunzo Pivot : 281: Feeling Impostery? Become a Qualified Curator Instead of an End-All-Be-All Expert 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join 🛠 Get instant access to the Free Time Toolkit: http://itsfreetime.com/toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/242 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
1 241: Finding Freedom and Financial Reciprocity through a Paid Newsletter with Nic Antoinette 1:03:15
“You do not need to cannibalize your healing for content.” Today, I’m in conversation with longtime blog-turned-IRL friend Nic Antoinette, diving deeper into her decision to shut down her Patreon community (taking a $30,000/year haircut to do so), then pivoting to a private paid Substack while she navigated her way through decisions about what might follow. We discuss the generosity of being honest, the trap of wanting to be special, knowing where to draw the line on how much or how little you share, and much more. Be sure to also check out our earlier Pivot conversation in episode 342: “Whatever Comes Through Me Comes for Me First,” with Nicole Antoinette . More About Nic : Nicole Antoinette is a writer, long-distance hiker, and former indoor kid who never imagined she’d wind up spending months of each year pooping in the woods. In 2017, stuck in a loop of codependency and people-pleasing, Nicole set off to find her self-belief and inner resilience by doing something she did not for one second believe she could actually do. The results are two adventure memoirs, How To Be Alone: An 800-mile hike on the Arizona Trail , and What We Owe to Ourselves, and a weekly Substack newsletter called Wild Letters . 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Spirals of intimacy: who has access to which parts of you, and when, and why? Before posting, ask: What am I hoping to gain from sharing this? Is it coming from a place of your ego seeking validation, or does it feel “true and good” to share? Remember: (Almost) all deadlines are arbitrary! 📝 Permission Go your own way: if you are going to use a certain platform or give a certain type of offering, you don’t have to opt into the ways other people are using that offering. ✅ Do (or delegate) this next For an existing program, reflect on how you might realign with your strengths, energy, and values. Ask, “What does this offering really want to be?” 🔗 Resources Mentioned Nicole on the web , IG: @nic.antoinette Adventure writing : Backpacking Books Substacks: Wild Letters , Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h Patreon : Honest Conversation Club Coworking : Get Sh*t Done Club Jenny’s BFF Community 📚 Books Mentioned How To Be Alone: an 800-mile hike on the Arizona Trail What We Owe to Ourselves Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Nicole’s podcasts: Real Talk Radio and The Pop-Up Pod Good Life Project: Ann Patchett | On Solitude, Writing & Indie Bookstores Pivot : 342: “Whatever Comes T hrough Me Comes for Me First,” with Nicole Antoinette 327: 🐺The Wolf You Feed — On Addiction, Recovery & Codependency — and What We Get Wrong About All Three with Eric Zimmer 302: Moving Beyond Burnout with Dr. Susan Biali Haas 338: Is Midlife Messing with Your Enoughness? With Mandy Lehto 305: Is What You’re Wanting Actually What’s Best for You? With Luke Burgis 341: Pivoting from Prestigious Consulting Jobs to the Pathless Path with Paul Millerd Free Time : 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin 042: How I Run My Business without Social Media 183: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt with Madeleine Dore 205: Why Paul Millerd Turned Down a $200K Two-Book Traditional Publishing Deal 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: http://itsfreetime.com/episodes/241 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
If you have been in business for any amount of time, then you know the feeling when a launch just isn’t working. The sales are crawling, you start doubting yourself, wondering if you created the right thing in the first place, if you built a big enough audience to sell anything at all. All kinds of additional questions and insecurities follow when sales aren’t flowing: is that the offer that’s off? Your sales page invitation letter? The pricing? Is it you? It’s so hard not to get a big morale dip in the middle of the sales dip during a launch. So this month’s bonus is on a few strategies that I’ve picked up over the years. This is a replay of our bonus episode 💯 for the BFF Community. ✨ If you have the means and it feels joyful to support me and this new body of work, you can subscribe as a paid or Founding Member here 🙏 Huge thanks to those of you who have already joined and commented — it means the world to me! 💬 What helps you “sweeten the pot” to get momentum when launching? What helps you get over any morale dips or vulnerability hangovers along the way? ⭐️3 Key Ingredients Once you have an irresistible offer, try adding a: Deadline Discount Limited number of spots 📝 Permission To defy the Business Police and trade time for money if it helps you fill the first crucial spots in a program. Everybody wins! Your early enrollees will be thrilled, and you’ll get key insights to help design an even better experience with their needs in mind. 📚 Books Mentioned $100 Million Offers and $100 Million Leads by Alex Hormozi Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 064: The Vulnerability of Launching 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch 203: 🎢 Riding the Emotional Rollercoaster of Launching with Natalie Lue 148: How to Build a Business Operations Dashboard 058: Look for Measurable Loops Pivot : 108: Penney & Jenny Show Returns! On Spirituality and Small Business 🔗 Resources Mentioned Join us in the private BFF Community for small-business owners → sign-up for a year in advance at a discounted rate by joining as a founding member here » Join the waitlist: 1:1 Voxer Coaching , Business Bestie Brunch + Pop-up Mastermind VIP Day with Jenny: via Free Time Operations Dashboard 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/240 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“I only write books for problems I can’t otherwise solve,” Nir Eyal says. “I don’t write my books for my readers; I write my books for myself.” Driven by curiosity to fix his own problems, Nir’s books have sold over one million copies. Listen to today’s conversation on how he weathered the criticism storm around his first book, Hooked ; the one essential skill to being an entrepreneur; how to turn your values into time, and turn time into traction; and if you’re an aspiring author, why the fear of not being qualified should not be one of your fears. If you haven’t already, check out Pivot episode 131: Indistractable with Nir Eyal . More About Nir Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. He is the author of two bestselling books, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life . In addition to blogging at NirAndFar.com , Nir’s writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review , Time Magazine , and Psychology Today. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Distraction is not something that happens to us, it’s something we ourselves decide to do. Traction is prioritizing the right things, on your chosen schedule. Reactive work vs reflective work : you have to put time in your schedule to think. 📝 Permission Live out your values without regret. There is no distraction you can’t overcome if you plan ahead, even if you can’t guarantee the outcome. You do control your time, and your attention. We need to stop moralizing or medicalizing normal behaviors, as long as you do them on your schedule. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Map out a time-blocked calendar that includes time with loved ones, a bedtime, and anything else that fits your values. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Nir on the web , Twitter , LinkedIn , YouTube , Facebook , IG: @neyal99 Nir’s free tools : Habit Tracker , Schedule Maker Indistractable bonus content and summary Articles : **** Why the Illusion of Control Is Hurting Your Goals Jeff Bezos’ Regret Minimization Framework Nir’s top articles —including on timeboxing , values , and FOMO Tim Urban’s Wait but Why 📚 Books Mentioned Hooked and Indistractable Stolen Focus by Johann Hari Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes The Tim Ferriss Show with Tim Urban (#283) Diary of a CEO : No.1 Habit & Procrastination Expert: We've Got ADHD Wrong! Break Any Habit & Never Be Distracted! Free Time : 203: 🎢 Riding the Emotional Rollercoaster of Launching with Natalie Lue Pivot : 131: Indistractable with Nir Eyal 281: Feeling Impostery? Become a Qualified Curator Instead of an End-All-Be-All Expert 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ❤️ Join our BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/239 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
Abundance was my word of 2019. I’d love to tell you I meant abundance in the broadest possible sense, appreciating the bounty already in my life, financial and otherwise. But mostly, my theme was about money. Specifically: to surpass one million dollars in revenue by the end of the year. I was going to build the sexiest small business rocket ship to achieve time-and-money escape velocity with my Delightfully Tiny Team. *Today's post is a crossover from Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h . Check out my profile page to see what I’m publishing across ‘Doh, Free Time, and Pivot at [ http://substack.com/@jennyblake.](http://substack.com/@jennyblake.*)* 📝 Permission Not to hit—or even set—super specific revenue targets. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next See what fellow Free Timers have to say on this topic and join us in the comments here » 🔗 Resources Mentioned Statistics : Census Bureau’s latest data , nonemployer business constitute nearly three-quarters of all businesses , Chartable’s top 50 entrepreneurship podcasts Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h Articles : Why Revenue Goals Don’t Work (For Me) , Mutually Assurred Rejection , An Honest Accounting + my emoji balance sheet , the Self-Imposed Pressure to be an Expert , Love That! For You 🙄 What Works : The Money Always Goes Up Gizmodo : The untold story of Napoleon Hill—the greatest self-help scammer of all time An Accidental Sabbatical : It Might Feel Safe, But It Won’t Feel Good Term : Limerence Zen parable: “ We’ll See ” Songs : We Are Young by fun., Unanswered Prayers by Garth Brooks Apps : Substack 📚 Books Mentioned My favorite spiritual financial reads: Creating Money , It’s Not Your Money , Happy Money , and one forthcoming by my longtime friendor Penney Peirce :) Loving What Is and The Work by Byron Katie also changed my life For a quirky one, check out Dollars Flow Easily To Me by Richard Dotts Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel by Kate Bowler Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 226: Is your business a hot mess? If yes, let's celebrate — Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h 236: Ignore the Odds — Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h Crossover The Examined Life with Khe Hy : Should You Play Status Games? With Jenny Blake The Dream : Think and Grow Duped (S3 E4) 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: http://itsfreetime.com/episodes/238 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
What is your relationship to rest? How about your caretakers’ relationship to rest while you were young? What examples did they set? What attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors did they hold, and how does that still influence you today? Today I’m talking with Ximena Vengoechea about the five rest profiles, productivity dysmorphia, “tiny transition time,” why paid work (no matter how much you love it) doesn’t count as pure play, and how she designed the book to deliver a restful experience beyond just the words themselves. Listen to our previous conversation on the Pivot podcast, 263: Conduct a Relationship Audit with Ximena Vengoechea . More About Ximena : Ximena Vengoechea is a researcher, writer, and illustrator. She previously worked at Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and currently advises select startups and executives on user research, executive communication, and resting well. She is the author of Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection , and today we’re talking about her new book, Rest Easy: Discover Calm and Abundance through the Radical Power of Rest . 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Leisure time used to be a highly coveted status symbol in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The wealthy used their time to entertain and be entertained—not work themselves to the bone. Leisure was the status symbol, not busyness. The five rest profiles (on a spectrum of embracing rest to rejecting rest): intuitive resters, functional resters, gold-star resters, anti-resters, deprived resters There are many flavors of rest: active, passive, solo, social, calming, energizing. Ximena defines rest as “a state of being in which nothing is required of us. It is a time where we can just be. ” 📝 Permission Play! Try an activity you loved as a kid, and do something for no reason other than pure enjoyment. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Honor Tiny Transition Time by leaving your phone in another room when you take mini-breaks throughout the day (getting a snack, taking your dog out, going to the bathroom). Resist the urge to check notifications as you walk from one room to the next, and be present instead. Let your thoughts and observations emerge. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Ximena on the web , IG , LinkedIn Articles : Refinery29— Do I have productivity dysmorphia? Newsletter : Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing 📚 Books Mentioned Rest Easy: Discover Calm and Abundance through the Radical Power of Rest Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Podcast : Rest Easy with Ximena Vengoechea — coming soon! Free Time : 193: Sabbatical Planning with DJ DiDonna , 199: Creating Happier Hours and the Diminishing Returns of Too Much Free Time With Cassie Holmes , 169: Running a Goal-Free Business with Stephen Shapiro Pivot : 263: Conduct a Relationship Audit with Ximena Vengoechea 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/237 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.” —Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things We are not meant to compare ourselves to eight billion people. I know I’m not the first to remind you that social platforms are status games on globalized steroids. With so much exposure to people who are (actually) smarter, funnier, prettier, and/or fill-in-the-blanker, the logical conclusion would be not to jump in. Right? In Zero Sum Logic, this is correct. If you can’t be the best author, the best podcaster, the best thinker about your topic, the prettiest/skinniest/curviest/strongest in physical appearance, why try? Today's post is a crossover from my newest project, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h: Divine disaster diaries from a bread-winning business owner living in New York city . This is a paid Substack where I share personal essays about the nitty-gritty aspects of running a business, especially when sh*t hits the fan. My friend Leanne calls it “business reality TV.” Check out my profile page to see what I’m publishing across ‘Doh, Free Time, and Pivot at http://substack.com/@jennyblake. 📝 Permission To be magnificently in the middle. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Publish something you’re unsure about, especially if you’re overthinking it; let your audience give feedback on whether it was helpful or not. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Articles : Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h— Ignore the Odds Gnostic Gospel of Thomas New York Times— Tip of the Iceberg (A Litany of Clichés) Apps : Substack 📚 Books Mentioned The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz My Body by Emily Ratajkowski Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 223: The Confidence Trap: Why You Don’t Need It to Do Big Things (SPARKED Crossover) 226: Is your business a hot mess? If yes, let's celebrate — Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h The Examined Life with Khe Hy : Should You Play Status Games? With Jenny Blake High Low with EmRata 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: http://itsfreetime.com/episodes/236 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
You can calm chaos at work, but it starts with a reality check from Charlie Gilkey, delivered with his signature wit and generosity: You might not have a team problem, you have a you problem. It’s time to stop catering to air sandwiches, Crisco watermelons, broken printers, ghost plans, and other corrosive practices, and start implementing Charlie’s finely-tuned, road-tested systems instead. Today we’re talking about his new book Team Habits: How Small Actions Lead to Extraordinary Results . We also talk about scaling from maker to manager (and sometimes back again), accounting for those who don’t want the added social overhead of that (often due to some combination of hoarding control, people-pleasing, introversion, and empathy). More About Charlie : Charlie Gilkey has advised hundreds of teams, from Fortune 100 companies to tiny nonprofits, through Productive Flourishing, the coaching and training company he founded. Charlie is a former Army logistics officer and near-PhD in philosophy living in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done , and today we’re talking about his new book, Team Habits: How Small Actions Lead to Extraordinary Results . 🌟 4 Key Takeaways VUCA : Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. Operating in VUCA environments can be frustrating for free timers with a “thing for control.” At the same time, the status quo “broken printers” get thrown out too—it forces us to reimagine how we work. Shrink the scope of your world enough so that you don’t have to fix everything, everywhere, all at once. What small team habit can you examine and improve this month? i.e. Leaving five minutes at the end of meetings to capture action items and next steps. The $300,000 speed bump: If you’re stuck getting over this revenue hump, you may need to decide whether you want to scale or not. Bigger teams have social overhead and hidden costs at work that aren’t dollarized. DRIP : Decision, recommendation, intention, and/or plan. Take off the Chief Question Answerer hat by asking team members to come back to you with a DRIP before punting a “thoughts?” question onto your plate. 📝 Permission Center your needs and wants into how you build your business and your teams. Build so that you want to show up and do the work. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next If you’re getting overwhelmed by uncertainty, pause and ask: What are the gifts of not knowing? What constraints are you willing to accept? What permission slip do you need to give yourself to build a business that meets your needs in a sustainable way as the owner? 🔗 Resources Mentioned Charlie on the web , IG , Twitter , LinkedIn , Substack Articles : Better Team Habits— Share your guide to working with me and What are your team’s broken printers? , Paul Graham— Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule Video : Office Space— Printer Scene 📚 Books Mentioned Team Habits: How Small Actions Lead to Extraordinary Results Company of One by Paul Jarvis The Dollarization Discipline by Jeffrey Fox and Richard Gregory Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Charlie’s podcast : Productive Flourishing Pivot : 136: Start Finishing—Pricing, Projects, and Momentum Planning with Charlie Gilkey Free Time : 052: Perceived Capacity vs. Actual Capacity 091: Quarterly Planning with Charlie Gilkey 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin 143: Exploring Time, Money, and Energy Capacity with Tara McMullin and Charlie Gilkey 016: IP Licensing with Lee LeFever, author of Big Enough 228: The Burdensome B’s—Four Red Flags Signaling it’s Time to Make The Big (Delegation) Leap 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/235 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“As long as we settle for thinking inside the brain, we’ll remain bound by the limits of that organ. But when we reach outside it with intention and skill, our thinking can be transformed. It can become as dynamic as our bodies, as airy as our spaces, as rich as our relationships—as capacious as the whole wide world.” —Annie Murphy Paul, The Extended Mind In this second half of a two-part solo series, I’m sharing 6 more strategies that have helped me build (and trust) my intuition at increasingly subtle levels. If you haven’t already, be sure to listen to Part One here first. As always, I would love to hear from you! How do you practice the skill of following your intuition? Leave a voice note for a future listener-submission episode at http://itsfreetime.com/ask . 🌟 3 Key Takeaways When making a decision, look for a “whole body yes,” that includes your head, heart, and gut. Or take a page from Internal Family Systems (parts psychology): Which part of you is speaking/steering? How can you ensure you’re listening to your core self / highest self? Pay attention to persistent thoughts or feelings: For example, after you have drafted a piece of writing, to remove something, or change something. Notice and give credit to how you feel when interacting with someone, seeking additional information if needed. Note “yellow” flags even if they aren’t bright red. From Penney - Let go of needing things to be nailed down in advance. “You can still have a vision and goals, you can still make plans, but let it all be fluid. Visions and plans evolve constantly. Affirm to yourself: “I know what I need to know exactly when I need to know it.” In any given moment, there’s just one piece of information, one urge, one action, that’s a perfect fit.” 📝 Permission Follow your next intuitive hit when speaking with (or coaching) someone. Ask, “Is it okay if I share something that just came to me? You can tell me I’m completely off-base . . .” See if what you shared (an image, a metaphor, a “hit” of guidance) resonates. Even if it doesn’t, it might move the conversation in an interesting direction as the person bounces off of what you said. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Make one decision this week based on a muscle test: it could be whether to say yes or no to a meeting request, whether to reach out to someone, or what topic to write about next. Stand up and close your eyes. Frame a question that results in yes or no by starting with: “Is it in the highest good for . . . ?” Notice if your body naturally leans forward or recoils back. That’s your intuition speaking to you: forward means yes , backward means no . 🔗 Resources Mentioned Articles : Penney Peirce— 7 Tips to Improve Your Intuition Catherine Carrigan— 5 Easy Ways to Muscle Test Yourself Mind Body Green— How To Develop The 4 'Clairs' Of Intuition Oprah.com — Get a New Leash on Life by Martha Beck 📚 Books Mentioned Finding Your Own North Star and Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck The Intuitive Way and Frequency: The Power of Personal Vibration by Penney Peirce The Psychic Pathway by Sonia Choquette Outrageous Openness and It’s Not Your Money by Tosha Silver Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 234: 11 Practices to Strengthen Business Intuition (Part One) 198: Book Club ✨ OUTRAGEOUS OPENNESS: Letting the Divine Take the Lead by Tosha Silver 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch Author Toolkit: Jenny’s Behind-the-Book episodes (Spotify playlist) Pivot : The Penney & Jenny Show (Spotify playlist) 328: Accessing Your True Self Through IFS (Part One) 332: IFS Part(s) Two—Understanding Our “Not Enough” Exiles with Adrian Klaphaak 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/234 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
I’m excited to bring you this crossover episode with Rose Cox , founder of The HSP Business School and host of The Sensitive CEO Show ****podcast. She is one of the people I have been most excited to connect with across the globe the last few years, even though we have yet to meet IRL! In this conversation, we dive into the world of highly sensitive people (HSPs), empaths, and introverts in the business world, with plenty of permission slips to stop doing what drains you. We discuss how to build a sustainable, soulful business that aligns with your energy, while embracing the strengths and challenges of being a sensitive CEO. Finally, we touch on Rose’s decision to pause her podcast (at least for now) after a year of releasing weekly episodes. More About Rose : Rose Cox is an ICF-credentialed and Certified Human Potential Coach, 3 Brains Coach, Business Coach + Strategist, Advanced Rapid Transformational Therapist, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Energy Practitioner. Rose's unique blend of soul, science, systems and strategy combines her 20+ years’ experience in the fields of online business, hypnotherapy, coaching, and psychology to help her clients build a successful and sustainable business that is aligned with their energy and their soul. She works with highly sensitive people, empaths and introverts who have amazing gifts to share with the world but struggle with both the business strategies and mindset to fully step into their own. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Do business in a way that serves you: For example, just one or two days for clients each week, alternating on A and C weeks of each month (so you always have two no-client weeks) Work with fellow sensitives , even as an overt niche market for your clients and community: Working together because we understand each other, share the same values, have a similar nervous system. Batch activities so that you group similar types of work together: For example, client-facing, podcast interviews, admin, day off. 📝 Permission Remove email and other social apps from your phone. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Try a guided meditation to speak with your higher self, or do free writing as if it’s a letter from your higher self to you. For encouragement around this, check out Elizabeth Gilbert’s new Substack, Letters from Love . 🔗 Resources Mentioned Rose on the web , IG: @therosecox , Twitter , LinkedIn Course : The HSP Business School Video : The Human Upgrade— #928 How to Revamp Busy Work, Overcome Boredom and Fix Burnout 📚 Books Mentioned The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Sensitive CEO Show : An HSP’s Guide to Podcasting , and Awakening Intuition: Empowering Sensitive Entrepreneurs through Trusting Your Inner Guidance Pivot : 172: Self-Care for Empaths and HSPs with Sarah Santacroce and 257: Gentle Business Revolution with Sarah Santacroce Free Time : 203: 🎢 Riding the Emotional Rollercoaster of Launching with Natalie Lue 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin 193: Sabbatical Planning with DJ DiDonna 200: 🎉 20+ Free Time Permission Slips for Small Business Owners (Part 1) 202: 🎉 20+ Permission Slips for Small Business Owners (Part 2) 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join 🛠 Get instant access to the Free Time Toolkit: http://itsfreetime.com/toolkit 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/233 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
Intuition is always speaking to you in subtle ways. Are you listening? Intuition isn’t a gift that is only bestowed on a special few; everyone can strengthen this muscle—how loudly you hear these signals, and the trust in yourself to take action on the information you’re receiving. In the comments of a recent ‘D🤦🏻♀️h post , Claudia asked: I read your words “all-in on myself” and how you consciously cho(o)se to believe that the Universe was/is redirecting you, and can’t but think “Jenny’s so in tune with her intuition. No matter what comes, she has this trust muscle that allows her to keep going, to keep betting on herself and her ideas” and I wish I was “better” at it. Is this something you’ve gotten better at with practice? And is there any advice that you would share with us here about how to cultivate this way of being? In this two-part solo episode, I’m sharing eleven strategies that have helped me build (and trust) my intuition at increasingly subtle levels. As always, I would love to hear from you! How do you practice the skill of following your intuition? Leave a voice note for a future listener-submission episode at http://itsfreetime.com/ask . 📝 Permission Trust your intuitive hits, even if you do not have a verbal or rational explanation ( yet! ) to validate the “memos” or make sense of your insights. Oprah says, “Your life is always speaking to you. It speaks in whispers guiding you to your next right step.” Are you listening? What is your life whispering to you right now? ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Review your intuition history: Reverse engineer previous intuitive hits and the action you took; times you listened, times you didn’t. Times it “worked,” and times it didn’t — even then, you don’t always know what the bigger picture might have been. How did your intuition speak to you in these moments (a whisper, a feeling, an image)? 🔗 Resources Mentioned Articles : Penney Peirce— 7 Tips to Improve Your Intuition Catherine Carrigan— 5 Easy Ways to Muscle Test Yourself Mind Body Green— How To Develop The 4 'Clairs' Of Intuition Oprah.com — Get a New Leash on Life by Martha Beck Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h —Mutually Assured Rejection: Part One and Part Two Website : Work with Source (via Graham Duncan in Tribe of Mentors ) Quiz : 4 Types Of Intuition: Which Are You Dominant In? Course : Become an Expert Intuitive: Trust What Your Deep Self Knows with Penney Peirce 📚 Books Mentioned Finding Your Own North Star and Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck The Intuitive Way: The Definitive Guide to Increasing Your Awareness and Frequency: The Power of Personal Vibration by Penney Peirce The Psychic Pathway: A Workbook for Reawakening the Voice of Your Soul by Sonia Choquette Outrageous Openness and It’s Not Your Money by Tosha Silver The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel-Shinn Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss (Graham Duncan, pages 56-63) mBraining by Grant Soosalu and Marvin Oka Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One 🎧 Related Episodes Free Time : 198: Book Club ✨ OUTRAGEOUS OPENNESS: Letting the Divine Take the Lead by Tosha Silver 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch Author Toolkit: Jenny’s Behind-the-Book episodes (Spotify playlist) Pivot : The Penney & Jenny Show (Spotify playlist) 277: Expansive Impact and Spacious Scheduling with Sarah Young 319: Who’s Sitting in the Board Room of Your Brain? With Adrian Klaphaak 328: Accessing Your True Self Through IFS (Part One) 332: IFS Part(s) Two—Understanding Our “Not Enough” Exiles with Adrian Klaphaak Pivot x Career Pathfinder podcast episodes with Adrian (Spotify playlist) 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/232 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“Let’s build ESPN.com for strength, and convince everyone they can lift weights.” With this mission in mind, the first six months of building the BarBend platform were a blur for today’s guest. By the end of the first year in 2016, they had had 1.4 million readers. By 2022, they had over 31 million registered users, allowing them to sell the business in 2023. In this conversation, we cover David Tao’s take on the media landscape and how to build a profitable content-based business; raising a seed round of funding from friends and family after getting rejected from every venture pitch; the biggest mistake he made while experimenting with monetization strategies; and how he navigated a successful acquisition with a shared vision at the new parent company, Pillar4. More About David : David Thomas Tao is an entrepreneur and writer based in NYC. He's the co-founder and former CEO of BarBend.com , the world's premiere strength sports and strength training media platform. A proud Kentucky native, David is also a Forbes 30 Under 30 Listmaker, Kentucky Colonel, and a noted whiskey/spirits writer and judge, appearing yearly on national tasting panels. BarBend was recently acquired in a thrilling deal that included hiring all employees and the executive team has chosen to stay on as well. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Burnout and bottlenecks are two red flags that you need to hire team members who can help. Don’t be afraid to kill something promising if it’s not what you are best at, and if it’s not what you’ve built your team to be best at. When you have moments of fleeting clarity, pay attention: they aren’t flukes. Write them down; for example, when you wish you were doing something else with the business. 📝 Permission If you’re bad at business development and partnerships, delegate that! ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Consider what kind of help you could get on the “biz dev” front: what would be one small next step? Even if it’s something like employing the Cyrano Strategy for Delegating Important Comms so you aren’t the only one interacting with potential clients. 🔗 Resources Mentioned David on the web , IG: @davidthomastao , Medium , Twitter , Muck Rack , BarBend Pillar4 Media Articles : BarBend— How We Built (and Sold) the Next Great Content Brand NYT— Vice, Decayed Digital Colossus, Files for Bankruptcy Axios— BuzzFeed News to shut down, as CEO cites missteps They Got Acquired— Niche strength site BarBend sells to Pillar4 Media HR Tool: Justworks 📚 Books Mentioned Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz So Good They Can't Ignore You ****by Cal Newport Born Standing Up by Steve Martin Built to Sell ****by John Warrillow Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes BarBend Jenny Blake Knows How To Help You Make Twice The Money In Half The Time Built to Sell Radio Invest Like the Best with Patrick O’Shaughnessy Free Time : 093: How to Sell Your Online Business with Alexis Grant 045: Behind the Free Time Brand with Adam Chaloeicheep 185: How Licensing Helps Serve the Queen Bee Role + Stop Keeping up with the EntrepreJoneses with Mike Michalowicz 086: The Cyrano Strategy for Delegating Important Comms Pivot : 290: May Cause Side Effects—Life After Antidepressant Withdrawal with Brooke Siem 12: Belly Of The Pivot Beast: On Bouncing Back From Zero With Adam Chaloeicheep 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review ❤️ Join our BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join 💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes from this episode: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/231 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” —Maya Angelou Earlier this summer, I arrived late one day to the podcast studio, laying on the floor in lieu of actually recording anything. Should I take that as a sign to reduce my creative output? Not necessarily. Aside from big one-off projects like writing a book, where I pour incredible time and attention to detail into (that I tackle every five years or so), I seem to do better with ongoing creative work by sticking to a stretch-worthy production schedule. These days I’m running a Delightfully Tiny media company that produces the following on a monthly basis: 14 podcast episodes across Pivot, Free Time, and BFF Bonuses ~14 essays or newsletters: 8 ‘Doh posts, 4 Time Well Spent newsletters, 2 PivotList round-ups, and 1-2 BFF mailers This does not include guest appearances on other people’s shows By stretching myself to show up in these ways, I have discovered that there’s not always an inverse relationship between consistency and quality—at least for me . 🌟 5 Key Takeaways Check your assumptions about causation vs. correlation. For example, more time doesn’t necessarily equal more money (or higher quality); maybe less time requires firmer boundaries, smarter systems, increasing delegation Keeping up with a stretchy level of creative output doesn’t mean caving into the downsides of quantity: throwing in the kitchen sink to keep up with shiny shoulds or client demands out of insecurity Nothing needs to be forever: Trust yourself to be creative and resourceful in the moment if/when you need to slow down or take a break. Align your production schedule with what you will be proud to produce , and look for secondary benefits of each creative output such as networking, catching up with friends, reading books Do beware of burnout: Look for alignments to make things easier (cross-posting bits of the same content across multiple places), and put a Delightfully Tiny Team in place who can help take the pressure off. 📝 Permission Aim for consistency even over quality (knowing that “ babysitting the work ” doesn’t always help anyway), and permission to keep publishing even through energetic highs and lows. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Look back at your creative history: do you do better work with more constraints or fewer? What’s your sweet spot? There is no right answer. Bonus: Put a team and/or resources in place to help bolster accountability, take responsibility off your shoulders, and that raises the stakes (in a good way) of missing a deadline. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Articles : Emily McDowell’s Unqualified— Paid Subscribers: READ THIS! Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h : Mutually Assured Rejection Part One , Part Two ; Morning Rush, Afternoon Crushed , The Business Yips & 51/49 , Love That! For You 🙄 Video : Ira Glass— The Gap Between Taste and Talent Podcast Production : One Stone Creative Apps : Substack 📚 Books Mentioned Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes BFF Private Feed (with free preview) : Substack Q&A with Linda Lebrun from the Writer Outreach Team Pivot : 123: Peeking Out From The Plateau — My Latest Pivots Free Time : 222: Why I migrated my three email lists to Substack (BFF Bonus Replay) 138: ⛵️Stop Sailing the Sea of Shiny Shoulds 060: Triangle of Tradeoffs 130: Day in the Life of a Podcast Episode ✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/230 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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Free Time with Jenny Blake
When we say trusting ourselves, which self are we talking about? Which parts of ourselves can’t be trusted? That’s what we’re exploring today with returning guest, Ilise Benun . We discuss how confidence is a byproduct of action, what made her so angry that she decided to start her own business 35 years ago, building tolerance for silence and small experiments, and why she puts her phone number in her newsletter, on her website, and in the “from” line of her emails. If you haven’t already, check out our previous conversation in episode 165: Are your clients bringing out the best in you? Engineering the Evolution of Your Business with Ilise Benun and episode 467 of Marketing Mentor on How to Free Your Time . More About Ilise : Ilise Benun is the founder of Marketing-Mentor.com , the go-to online resource for creative professionals who want better projects with bigger budgets, through which she offers business coaching. She is also a national speaker and author of 7 books, including " The Creative Professional's Guide to Money ," three online courses via CreativeLive and Domestika.org , and The Simplest Marketing Plan – all tailored to the needs of creative professionals. She has also been hosting the Marketing Mentor Podcast since 2008, with over 465 episodes at the time of this recording. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Drop the belief that “I need to know” — what I’m doing, what my niche is, have all the ducks in a row. Approach life and business as an experiment. You’ll know what’s not working much earlier than what is. Absence blindness: we don’t see what’s not there, but in the silence things are happening Be careful about taking advice from someone who has too much at stake in terms of the decisions you’re making. 📝 Permission To listen to someone else. Find someone you trust, and just try something that they suggest—then see what happens. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next Make a list of various selves; for example, the old self vs. the new self; rational self vs. the irrational self; the critical self vs. the compassionate self; the morning self vs. the afternoon self. Note who you trust most with business decisions, and which ones might be better to sideline. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Ilise on the web , Twitter , LinkedIn , YouTube Ilise’s Quick Tips newsletter (with Magic Money Formula) People : Terri Trespicio , Jenn Lederer Jenny’s Substack Tools : Vocaroo.com , LinkedIn mobile app , How to add LinkedIn’s audio intro (10 sec) 📚 Books Mentioned The Creative Professional's Guide to Money: How to Think About It, How to Talk About it, How to Manage It Unfollow Your Passion by Terri Trespicio Atomic Habits by James Clear Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Ilise’s podcast : Marketing Mentor Free Time : 165: Are your clients bringing out the best in you? Engineering the Evolution of Your Business with Ilise Benun 223: The Confidence Trap: Why You Don’t Need It to Do Big Things (SPARKED Crossover) 133: Hire People Who Are Better Than You with Terri Trespicio 185: How Licensing Helps Serve the Queen Bee Role + Stop Keeping up with the EntrepreJoneses with Mike Michalowicz Pivot : 269: How to Stand Out When Everyone is Peddling the Same Sh*t with Terri Trespicio 294: Confidence Conundrums and Attention Budgets with Terri Trespicio 319: Who’s Sitting in the Board Room of Your Brain? With Adrian Klaphaak 328: Accessing Your True Self Through IFS (Part One) and 332: IFS Part(s) Two—Understanding Our “Not Enough” Exiles with Adrian Klaphaak 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join ☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/229 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices…
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