👋 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

“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

“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

I’m delighted to welcome Daniel Doyon to the pod this week, co-founder of one of my favorite software services, Readwise. Every morning while I have my coffee, I look forward to checking out the daily email roll-up of five serendipitous snippets pulled from my entire library of Kindle highlights. In this conversation, we cover: how Dan and his cofounder handled the famous “hug of death” from Tim Ferriss recommending their service in his 5-Bullet Friday newsletter; the perils of premature optimization and why you should do things that don’t scale; what to do when you do slam against a scale ceiling; the benefits of running a mission-oriented business; how we’re handling the progressive atrophying of our attention for reading books, and our favorite page-turners that spark joy and as Dan says, “whisk you to the end.” More About Daniel: Daniel Doyon is the cofounder of Readwise, a reading tool that helps readers revisit the highlights from their ebooks by synchronizing and then sending a daily email resurfacing the best highlights from Kindle, Instapaper, iBooks, and more. He is also an expert in creative real estate acquisitions and partnerships, bibliophile, oenophile, and sailor. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways Be wary of premature optimization: Do things that don’t scale without trying to predict how your systems will break. Only once you “slam” against a ceiling should you work on solving for the next level of scale. Hire from your user base: You’ll find the most passionate, mission-based people to work with from your own community, people who already love what you’re creating and what you stand for. Minimize meetings by taking a page from Readwise’s playbook: No more than 1.5 recurring meetings per person per week. That means one weekly, and one bi-weekly—that’s it! 📝 Permission: Reset the expectations around whether or not you reply to inbound messages, and the amount of time it takes you to do so. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Sign-up for Readwise if you haven’t already! It’s a game-changer for carrying your favorite highlights forward from the books you read. Every day you’ll get a round-up email of five random highlights and a sixth suggestion from an adjacent book that you haven’t read yet. 🔗 Resources Mentioned Daniel on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Dan’s “whisk you to the end” book recs: Trader Joe’s Book, Doctor Dealer Jenny’s favorite true story page-turners about large-scale drug ops: American Kingpin by Nick Bilton (on the DPR/Silk Road build-up and bust), The Mastermind by Evan Ratliff (verticalized prescription drug and arms kingpin), Dreamland by Sam Quinones (decentralized drug trade, “Uber of heroin”) 📚 Books Mentioned Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson 🎧 Related Episodes RadReads x Pivot & Free Time 111: Building a Second Brain with Tiago Forte 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch 017: Serendipity as Business Strategy with Leanne Hughes 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 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 and share it with a friend: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/177 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Business, like life, is all about how you make people feel. It's that simple, and it's that hard.” —Danny Meyer, Setting the Table Danny Meyer is a famous restauranteur responsible for founding some of my favorite spots, including Gramercy Tavern, Eleven Madison Park, and the popular Shake Shack chain. He pioneered the philosophy of “enlightened hospitality.” That’s the thing about engineering surprise and delight moments in your business. Like the example I share in this episode, while they may seem small or spontaneous, the best ones have intention and strong systems behind them. It’s not hard to design a system to do this repeatedly and consistently for the people you love working with, encouraging more word of mouth referrals in the process, and reducing your reliance on marketing strategies that don’t align. Today I’m sharing some examples of small gifts that make a big impact and leave a lasting impression on the people and clients you care most about. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways: Surprise and delight moments don’t happen by accident; you can design them intentionally, and create systems to support them happening consistently in your business. Consider meaningful (and even functional) ways you can support clients at the beginning, middle, and end of an engagement to build the relationship, and spark joy and word-of-mouth referrals. Create a Gift Tracker if you don’t already have one: Track the life of a gift from idea of giving one, to collecting any missing info, selecting the gift and writing a message to go with it, to placing the order, tracking and confirming it was received, all the way to archiving it for later reference. 📝 Permission: To spice up the level of surprise and delight in your business. You can spend a little more than you think is reasonable, and trust that it will go towards building strong relationships, creating great experiences and a better, more joyful business. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Pick one person that you want to make smile: a team member, a client, a friend, and send them unexpected. 📘Books Mentioned Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Retention by John Ruhlin The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself by John Jantsch 🔗 Resources Mentioned NYC Restaurants: Gramercy Tavern, Locande Verde, Eleven Madison Park (and their delicious Eleven Madison Park Granola that also makes a great gift!) Gift Services: Goody, BoxFox, Giftology, Greetabl, SugarWish, Gift Mic: Yeti Nano (travel mic) Swag Services: Wizard Pins, Pens.com, Sticker Mule Community: BFF (apply promo code PODCAST) 🎧Related Episodes To Dine For — Will Guidara 179: Video-Free Business and Intuitive Writing with Jacqueline Fisch 068: Are You Running a Grumpy Business? 083: Breaking through Buyer’s Remorse—Never Lose a Customer Again with Joey Coleman 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review » ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/176 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“You are making a choice every time you undercharge.” How’s that for a splash of cold water to the face?! Bad pricing strategy puts your business—and your body—at risk. As today’s guest, Erin Haag says, when your prices are too low, “You are choosing to work an additional 10, 20, or 30 hours per week to generate the income you need to survive.” In this conversation, Erin shares what led to two hospitalizations from back-to-back stress-related illnesses, followed by her aha moment: doing the math to determine exactly what she needed to do to go from the brink of business collapse to becoming debt-free and selling her pilates studio for a 40x multiple. More About Erin: Erin Haag is the creator of Pricing Overhaul and a self-proclaimed math nerd. Using her over 20 years of corporate experience working intimately with numbers and pricing metrics, she created the Pricing Overhaul™️ method will help people shift their mindset around money and math, overhaul their pricing for profitability, and make more money inside their business than they ever dreamed possible. Her upcoming book, Give Yourself a Raise: The Mindset and Math You Need to Get to Your First Million, shares her story of hitting rock bottom, pushing her to overhaul her entire business. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways: You can charge more than your competitors (and what you can afford.) You can increase your prices without upsetting your best clients. Space creates more money: “A hectic schedule and tons of stress creates less money. I promise you that.” 📝 Permission: Give yourself a raise! And outsource everything you dislike doing. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Do the math to determine A) the monthly revenue your business needs to generate so that you have at least 30% profit (beyond what you pay yourself as the owner). “In other words, the total amount of money your business needs to generate each month to cover all expenses, pay your team, pay yourself, AND generate a profit on top.” Bonus: Next, determine B) your ideal monthly client capacity (how many people you want to serve given your available time), and C) the ideal client value (by dividing target revenue (A) by number of clients (B). 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Give Yourself a Raise: The Mindset and Math You Need to Get to Your First Million (coming soon!) 🔗Resources Mentioned: Erin on the web, IG: @pricingoverhaul, Facebook, LinkedIn Article: 5 Things You Should Do To Increase Your Financial Literacy Tools: ClassPass, Bench (bookkeeping), Alexandra Franzen’s Get it Done publishing services and courses 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 107: How to Know When You’ve Gotten Pricing Wrong with Jacquette M. Timmons 020: Pricing Psychology with Jacquette Timmons 122: My Top 5 Sources of Recurring Revenue 162: Should You Self-Publish? (Part One) 164: Let’s Talk Royalties re: Publishing Options (Part Two) 101: Run Your Business with Exquisite Greatness and Tiny Art Projects with Alexandra Franzen Pivot 183: Cultivating Opposites and Checklists with Alexandra Franzen 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/175 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

🎉 This week marks the one-year bookiversary of Free Time making its way into the world, and the two-year podiversary of launching this show. 🥂 As I reach these milestones, a question looms: Has the book writing, launching, and marketing been a success, as I would define it? In today’s solo, let’s ride the mindset rollercoaster of launching something new into the world, and I share specific one-year sales stats for those who are curious—similar to episode 096: Book Sales Stats—One Month Post-Launch 🎉 that I know many of you appreciated :) But first: there's an important detour that we need to take. Listen in to find out and join me for the journey. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways: Sometimes the “success” glass isn’t half empty or half full; remember, you created a glass! That’s the biggest accomplishment, no matter the external results. Be wary of the “bar is always raising” hedonic treadmill of business success. Constantly shifting your personal or business goalposts back can prevent you from enjoying the success you have achieved. Consider the creative’s journey as an infinity loop on its side: As waves of energy that ebb and flow across four phases; starting in the bottom left: rise, ride, release, retreat. You may cycle through these many times, even within any one part of the process (i.e. while in “marketing mode” for your work, you experience quiet moments and bigger surges of output and attention). 📝 Permission: Define success in a way that lifts your spirits, that helps you enjoy the vulnerable process of putting your creative work into the world. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Looking back on the last year, make a list to celebrate all the wins—large and small—that you’ve experienced in your business (or for any one creative project). Bonus: when you hit a big milestone or busiversary moment, do something fun to mark the occasion! Super bonus: submit your business and/or any products (like a book or podcast) for industry awards. Most of the time, they don’t just fall from the sky—my dad and I call these Gretsky’s, after hockey player Wayne Gretsky’s famous line that, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire, and How to Want What You Need by Luke Burgis The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World by Dorie Clark 🔗Resources: Join the BFF Community Free Time Operations Dashboard Get help writing an Amazon review BOGOGO promotion —Buy One, Get One, Give One MasterClass: Malcolm Gladwell Teaches Writing People: Jay Acunzo, Charlie Gilkey, Tosha Silver 🎧Related Episodes: 138: ⛵️ Stop Sailing the Sea of Shiny Shoulds 170: 🌈 “Imagine a World of Abundance” ✨ 172: Free Time Isn’t Just for the Fun Days 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch 035: The Long Game with Dorie Clark 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/174 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“How did you go bankrupt?" Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” —Ernest Hemingway That’s the kick-off quote from returning guest Khe Hy’s recent pivot-in-progress big reveal, taking us behind the scenes of his business in a recent post titled, “The $645,099 business pivot.” Khe is the founder of RadReads and former Wall Street managing director. Khe returns to the pod today (as our first three-peat Free Time guest) to share his experience from the belly of the Pivot beast. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Khe’s earlier Free Time appearances, linked in the Resources section below and in this Spotify playlist: RadReads x Pivot x Free Time. More About Khe: Khe Hy is the founder and CEO of RadReads, an online education company that helps professionals lead productive, examined, and joyful lives. Khe is creator of the $10K Work productivity method and teaches the popular cohort-based course Supercharge Your Productivity. RadReads provides guides, trainings, and coaching for over 36,000 professionals to help them gain back free time, scale their impact and make their little dent in the universe. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: You’re not alone: Don’t feel bad if you caught a momentum wave during the pandemic that has vanished since. It can feel like you’ve captured success in a bottle, and it will continue just the way you’re experiencing it now, but the same circumstances rarely last. Borrowing other people’s goals can lead to chasing arbitrary success metrics and other people’s work-life balance. Instead, follow the fun! Ultimately, it will be much more sustainable. There’s freedom and surrender in openly sharing your process. Many entrepreneurs are not straightforward about how difficult it can be to maintain and grow a business, and being outwardly transparent helps you be inwardly honest about what you really want to accomplish. 📝Permission: To feel. To cry. To fully experience and talk about what you’re going through. Your humanity in the situation is not at odds with who and how you want to be as a founder and CEO—they are perfectly intertwined. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Get quiet: What is it that you truly want? What part of my business is driven by ego and “borrowing other people’s goals,” and what part is driven by the pure magic of it? For any friction area where you feel stuck or drained, take a page out of Khe’s business playbook and “follow the fun.” What would following the fun tell you to do next?   📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One We Should All Be Millionaires: A Woman’s Guide to Earning More, Building Wealth, and Gaining Economic Power by Rachel Rodgers 🔗Resources Mentioned: Khe on the web, Instagram: @radreadsco, TikTok: @radreadsco, Twitter, LinkedIn Courses: Supercharge Your Productivity, $10K Work Accelerator, Life Operating System, Jenny’s Free Time Business Operations Dashboard Rad Reads: The Magic of Doing $10,000 Per Hour Work 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: Spotify playlist: RadReads x Pivot x Free Time 145: Tips for Training Part-Time Team Members with Kaneisha Grayson 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/173 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Free Time. The phrase connotes, leisure, fun, time off, vacation—as if we're skipping through meadows with butterflies! 🦋and unicorns!🦄 But if you’re a long-time listener, you know that I think of free time as a verb. It is a skill, a muscle we can build. Freeing Time is something we can get better at. By creating smarter systems and taking small steps today, we can set our time free far into the future. Today’s episode is a reminder about why it’s important to leave abundant margin on your calendar, especially for the days when you need it most (what previous guest Laura Vanderkam calls a “time emergency fund”), without punting problems to your future self. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways: Avoid a cascade of cancellations in case of emergency (or the need to rest) by leaving more space than you think you’ll need in any given week. Create a time emergency fund by blocking days of the week, weeks of the month, and months of the year where you have nothing at all. Set these to recur annually (and indefinitely) so you only make exceptions as these open windows approach. Before reflexively saying yes to a meeting, reflect: “Would I say yes if this were tomorrow?” Or replace it with a decision filter of your choosing, such as the classic question Derek Sivers popularized, “Is this a hell yes?” If not, it’s a no. 📝 Permission: Build abundant free time into your calendar. What would it look like if you reduced your meetings by half, only filling up to 40% full in advance? Then you can wait until closer to the approaching day or week to add things—only if/as they resonate in real time. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: When you’re feeling low on energy (or time), if you’re going to say yes at all, transition requests to meet with you (especially for “pick your brain” conversations) to asynchronous apps like Marco Polo, Voxer, or Vocaroo. After you’ve fielded more than one on the same subject, consider creating a public-facing resource, such as the Author Toolkit. As I say in Free Time, every question lives three lives: the original request, saving your response in your internal documentation, then adding it to your website to help clients and friends answer their own questions even before they have to ask you. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport 🔗Resources Mentioned: Tools: Calendly, Marco Polo, Voxer, Vocaroo Free Time Author Toolkit Dr. Dalton-Smith’s Rest Quiz 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  151: Calm Time Chaos with Laura Vanderkam 170: 🌈 “Imagine a World of Abundance” ✨ 150: 💸 3 Strategies to Set Your Time Free in 2023! 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/172 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“What’s the highest level I can serve?” That’s one of the driving questions that today’s guest, Melissa Hughes, helps business owners answer while building companies and making an impact on the world with grace and ease. She believes that the more of us who can shine our lights unapologetically, the better off we all are. In this conversation, Melissa shares how she knew it was time to leave corporate, launching and later shutting down her brick-and-mortar spa business and the “blessing wrapped in sandpaper” of declaring personal bankruptcy. She shares how she started rebuilding by leaning into intuition, her philosophy on giving from the overflow and backing it all up with practical systems that serve your values. More About Melissa: With us today is Melissa Hughes, founder of Live Rich, Spread Wealth—a business (and movement) that is all about helping people live richer lives as a result of becoming their best selves. Melissa is a best-selling author, speaker, and master business coach who became a self-made millionaire by the age of 31. Known as The Guru of Implementation®, Melissa’s success, and that of her clients, is a result of her practical, proven systems for business and life success. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Work Yourself Out math: How much revenue does your business need to generate to justify hiring someone to do one of the task areas on your desk? Finding and pursuing your Divine Assignment means being in purposeful alignment. When you’re there, you can use your gifts, be in flow and be of service to others. Systems for the sake of systems don't work. They need to be designed to specifically support your (and your company’s!) values and what you’re trying to accomplish. 📝Permission: Understand that whatever you want wants you, too. It can be both/and: Look at what’s working for you and lean more into that unapologetically. Allow yourself to explore new possibilities. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Take a page from Melissa’s reframe book. Instead of referring to exercise as “working out,” she calls it “snatching your sexy back!” Reframe (or restructure) something that feels like a chore by turning it into a life-giving system that serves you.  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business, Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One 🔗Resources Mentioned: Melissa on the web, Instagram: @IAmMelissaHughes, Facebook, LinkedIn, Live Rich Spread Wealth, YouTube Documentary: Live Rich, Spread Wealth Video: Join the Live Rich Spread Wealth Movement 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 003: Liberate Your Life Force with Christine Arylo 108: How to Run a Scaled Coaching Team with Notion 120: Transform Your To-Do List into a Results List — Leanne’s Favorite Time-Saving System Pivot 204: Radical Alignment: Getting to Hell Yes with Alex & Bob 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/171 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Feeling slow, stuck, uncertain, or in the midst of a morale dip? If so, today’s minisode is for you—or for a business bestie who might need a little pick-me-up. I share a surprising shift from an encounter with Serendipity Signage; a portal to gratitude on a random New York City train station wall under a set of shattered windows.  When you feel down, remind yourself (as I do) what Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century mystic, said: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”  🌟3 Key Takeaways: Look for the gifts that wash ashore when the financial tides recede, knowing they only show up if you resist the urge to panic and rush to fill the empty space. We all have dips in time, energy, money, and connection to our work that we need to ride out; give yourself space and permission to go into business maintenance mode during these times. As Tosha Silver says, abundance is not a “grocery list for God”—a list of material items like one you’d give to Santa Claus as a kid. When you remember, shift from feeling stuck to gratitude (for what is) and faith (in what will follow). 📝Permission: To sit in the unknown, not to solve everything right away, and to surrender to the higher purpose and picture unfolding before you. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Play a game of Serendipity Signage in your neighborhood or during daily travels: Frame a question or conundrum for the universe, and see what you notice. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  The Intuitive Way: A Guide to Living From Inner Wisdom by Penney Peirce Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich (quote is in Chapter 32) Tosha Silver’s books (and community Living Outrageous Openness): Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead  Change Me Prayers: The Hidden Power of Spiritual Surrender  It's Not Your Money: How to Live Fully from Divine Abundance 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  029: Funded By Source with Ksenia Avdulova  028: When the Financial Tides Recede 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch  090: Paying for Consistency and Accountability  051: How to Replace Yourself as CEO with Michael Bungay Stanier  Pivot [Best Of] Penney & Jenny 1: Intuition and Frequency; full Spotify playlist of The Penney & Jenny Show 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/170 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stephen Shapiro is a quintessential Free Timer. Throughout his 20+ year self-employment tenure, he has run a variety of experiments to optimize for freedom and joy. To name just a few: working one hour a day (for years!), clearing space for 15 weeks of travel and/or vacation each year, and week-long hotel stays for focused work sprints.  We also talk about the “existential meltdown” that led to a business model redesign, and why he doesn’t need or want to build a team right now, beyond an extended network of specialists, and why he’d rather sell 10 copies of his next book to the right readers (potential clients) than 10,000 copies to the masses. More About Stephen Shapiro: Stephen cultivates innovation by showing leaders and their teams how to approach, tackle and solve their business challenges. He sees what others can’t: opportunities to improve innovation models and the cultures that support them. He is the author of six books, including Goal-Free Living, The Little Book of Big Innovation Ideas, Personality Poker, Best Practices are Stupid, and his latest, Invisible Solutions: 25 Lenses that Reframe and Help Solve Difficult Business Problems. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Leverage is the key to working less. Ask, how do I do less and get more? Goal-free living: You may have aspirations, but detach from the outcome. Aim for a sense of direction, not a specific destination, then meander with purpose. Focus on leading indicators, not lagging indicators for day-to-day energy and effort allocation. Leading indicators are actions you take to create the results you want; for example, five networking calls per week typically leads to at least one new client. Lagging indicators measure what has already happened; for example, how much revenue you generated last month, or how many newsletter subscribers you added. 📝Permission: Do less and get more. Each day, imagine you only have one hour you can work. How would you spend that hour?  ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Try working one hour a day for one week. Each day ask yourself, “What’s the one thing I have to do that will have the greatest impact today?” You might end up working more, but if you shoot for that single hour, it will focus your thinking.   📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College Stephen’s Books Goal-Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW! Invisible Solutions: 25 Lenses that Reframe and Help Solve Difficult Business Problems 🔗Resources Mentioned: Stephen on the web, Twitter: @stephenshapiro, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube Stephen’s podcast: Invisible Solutions Video: TEDx NASA Innovation Keynote | Stephen Shapiro Concepts: Goodhart’s Law, the Cobra Effect, Leading vs. Lagging Indicators 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 018: Workcation in the City 166: Crashing into Quiet Time 🏝️ 035: The Long Game with Dorie Clark 091: Quarterly Planning with Charlie Gilkey 028: When the Financial Tides Recede 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/169 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the biggest lessons I learned from author Nassim Taleb is that whenever he finds himself bored with what he’s writing, he stops. His logic? Surely if you are bored as the author, your readers will be too. Taleb takes it as a sign to drop that direction or concept altogether unless he figures out a way to get excited about it again.  In Free Time, I share a similar sentiment: how we bake is as important as what we make. That means that working on your big ideas—whether a project as complex as a book or a single article or podcast episode—should be fun! It doesn’t have to be an overwhelming slog where you’re stuck staring at a blinking cursor on a blank page, though even the stress of that is being lessened every day by generative AI tools like ChatGPT. In today’s episode of the Author Toolkit Q&A series, I share five strategies that help me reduce overwhelm when writing (hint: which really means doing better thinking in advance). If you haven’t already, be sure to check out the free Author Toolkit here » 🌟5 Key Takeaways to Reduce Overwhelm When Writing: For harvesting ideas, make sure you have a cloud-based collection bucket Take a nonlinear brainstorming approach for topics and structure Prepare your mise en place before sitting down to write by collecting: personal anecdotes, data, concepts, how-to, stories, and examples from others Ignite the pilot light of motivation by writing just 7 sentences, approximately 100 words Consider that a book comprises of many short blog-post length essays (each Free Time chapter was 1,500 to 2,000 words). You might even end up with the problem of writing more than you need! 📝Permission: Stop writing if you’re bored with the topic. Notice what sparks your energy and start there instead. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Challenge yourself (even better to set up accountability with a friend) to write seven sentences or 100 words each day for one week, ideally about five different ideas you’ve been exploring. Send each other a green checkmark (like the one at the start of this paragraph) once you’ve done your thinking/writing/voice dictating for the day.   📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting by Tara McMullin (and her What Works podcast) 🔗Resources Mentioned: Free Time’s Author Toolkit ChatGPT Marco Polo Jenny’s Notion for Idea Collection Loom walkthrough Meal Kits: Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, Factor (pre-made meals I’m loving at the moment) 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  111: Building a Second Brain with Tiago Forte 163: Leveraging Idea Kernels to Create Compelling Content with Khe Hy 166: Crashing into Quiet Time 🏝️ 162: Should You Self-Publish? (Part One) 164: Let’s Talk Royalties re: Publishing Options (Part Two) 158: How to Decide on a Book (or Big Idea) Topic—10 Filters 156: 8 Idea Generation Strategies 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/168 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“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

How do we use technology to facilitate real relationships? That’s the big question driving Gina Bianchini’s epic entrepreneurial quest. Today we’re talking about the magic phrase that will transform what you’re building, the difference between social networks versus social media, why a course is not a community, how to avoid working too hard as the host, and why you might benefit from building a small, tight-knit group before trying to grow a bigger audience. More About Gina: Gina Bianchini is the CEO and Founder of Mighty Networks, where creators, entrepreneurs, and brands use cultural software to build digital communities. She’s also the creator of Community Design™, a proven strategy framework for understanding and growing communities online and in the real world. Today we’re talking about her new book, Purpose: Design a Community and Change Your Life. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Fall in love with the expression, “So that we can . . .” This will help you more clearly communicate the transformation you are working toward while building new features and services in your business and/or community. One of the worst things you can do is make membership about fandom, where members are active only in relationship with you as the host. A much more powerful value journey is facilitating connections with and for other members. Community questions evoke meaningful responses and spark a connection between people. Try Gina’s “question generator” formula with two key elements: an unlocking phrase (e.g. name one thing, how do you know when, what was an unusual, what do you value most in a…, etc.) and a topic tied to the purpose of your community. For example: What’s your favorite book about meditation? What’s the first time you remember hearing the phrase generational wealth? 📝Permission: You do not have to produce a lot of content! Flip the script from producing content to convening human beings towards a common goal. This is one of the most profound shifts any of us can make, not just in building communities but how we approach life. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Gina defines your Ideal Member as the person who needs your community right now. “Remember, you’re not building a generic community. Everyone is not welcome. By definition, your Ideal Members already have a lot in common.” Jot down the qualities of your ideal member (how they think, what stage of life/business they’re at, core challenges, what they’ve already tried) and write about the transition they are currently experiencing.  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Purpose: Design a Community and Change Your Life—A Step-by-Step Guide to Finding Your Purpose and Making It Matter 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Gina on the web, Instagram: @mightynetworks, Twitter: @MightyNetworks and @GiNab, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube What Works with Tara McMullin: What is the creator economy? with Gina Bianchini 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 125: How to Create Your Own CRM with Alex Sherwood 078: Creating Transformational Mastermind Groups 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/167 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How many times have you gone skidding into vacation, arriving exhausted from trying to “earn” it before you leave? Then feeling guilty for any loose ends you were unable to tie up in time, maybe even brooding the first few days because you’re so burned out that you aren’t even enjoying your precious time off nearly as much as you thought you would?  Research shows that we can experience diminishing returns when we have too much free time, which might explain the onset of vacation blues. In this episode, I’m sharing my rollercoaster that arises at the beginning of longer stretches of free time and a few strategies for settling in to find true peace and relaxation.  🌟3 Key Takeaways: Give yourself transition time on both ends of time off: switching from a pre-vacation work sprint to instant R&R is highly unlikely!  Sometimes you just need a day to float and not ask anything of yourself, including the pressure to relax (oh, the irony!).  Tune in: What’s sitting just below the surface? What are you noticing once the busyness and daily routine recedes? 📝Permission: To relax! Leave things undone. You do not have to “earn” your time off by working yourself into the ground preparing. You also hereby have permission to take a longer break than you think you need, allowing space for a slow unwinding when you arrive. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: For your next vacation or big block of free time, buy yourself extra time and mental margin by starting your email autoresponder a week early, and ending it a week after you return. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Grumpy Monkey, Bragging Rights by Lisa Bragg Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn Happier Hour by Cassie Holmes Goal-Free Living by Stephen Shapiro Invisible Solutions: 25 Lenses that Reframe and Help Solve Difficult Business Problems by Stephen Shapiro Outrageous Openness by Tosha Silver 🔗Resources Mentioned: Free Time’s Author Toolkit UCLA research via Cassie Holmes: Too Much Free Time? Blame Solitude or Lack of Productive Activity Article: The 7 types of rest that every person needs by Saundra Dalton-Smith MD 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 126: Creating Time Buffer—7 Strategies for Spacious Scheduling JB on SPARKED with Jonathan Fields 'White Lotus' Creator Mike White on Fresh Air podcast JP on the Good Life Project: How I Took a Month Off to Write & Make Art (then what REALLY happened), Jenny Blake | How to Create More Free Time 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/166 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here are a few food-for-thought reflection questions, inspired by today’s guest: Are you working with amateur clients or ones who bring out the best in you? Are you pricing the “aggravation factor” into your proposals when necessary? What about “throwing proposals over the fence,” creating self-inflicted stress when prospective clients ghost you as a result? Finally, are you stuck in the feast-or-famine cycle of your business? If any of the questions above resonate, you will love this conversation with Ilise Benun, who has been running her business helping creative professionals for over 35 years. Ilise shares The Proposal Oreo Strategy; how she stays consistent with content creation while walking the line between discipline and rigidity; why she sees word-of-mouth marketing as a result, not real marketing; and creating abundant interstitial time by embracing eigenzeit—the German term meaning “the time inherent to a process itself.” 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: Amateur clients are those who have not worked with a provider like you before and might have unrealistic expectations. The Oreo Proposal Method: Two cookies and a yummy center, comprising of a qualifying conversation to determine mutual fit, a live proposal walk-through, followed by a conversation about next steps. The best marketing is part of your day-to-day work, not an isolated set of activities. Consider three ongoing tools: strategic networking, targeted outreach, and content marketing. 📝Permission: Stop listening to the scolding voice in your head. See your business as a laboratory, where everything is an experiment. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Clear even more space in your calendar with interstitial time, space between events or obligations that you can use to prepare and reflect. Ensure that you have big blocks of time that you can use to let ideas marinate and develop. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One The Creative Professional's Guide to Money: How to Think About It, How to Talk About it, How to Manage It by Ilise Benun 🔗Resources Mentioned: Ilise on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube Ilise’s podcast: Marketing Mentor and Newsletter: Quick Tips Marketing the Invisible: How to Get Better Clients with the Proposal Oreo Strategy - In Just 7 Minutes with Ilise Benun 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 133: Hire People Who Are Better Than You with Terri Trespicio 117: Tiny Marketing Actions with Pamela Slim 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/165 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “A book is a business card.” That’s because what you don’t hear is that a book is a wonderful revenue generator! It isn’t — at least not directly. The extreme Time-to-Revenue Ratio of writing and marketing a book is not for the faint of heart, unless the book connects directly to a larger part of your business model, serving as lead generation for more profitable products and services. Some interesting stats for you: Even the big behemoth, Penguin Random House, reports that just 35 percent of books they publish are profitable. Among those that make money, just 4 percent account for 60 percent of those profits. In 2021, fewer than one percent of the 3.2 million titles that BookScan tracked sold more than 5,000 copies. Continuing on last week’s conversation about the three different publishing options and how to choose which one is right for you, today I’m diving deep into the mysterious royalty waters. How do each of the three methods — self, hybrid, traditional — stack up? Listen in to find out. For more data points beyond my own examples, check out The Transparency Project’s Publishing Paid Me crowd-sourced spreadsheet with nearly 3,000 responses. 🌟4 Key Questions: Have you published a book before? How much cash (and free cash flow) do you have available? What is your creative vision? What is your timeline? 📝Permission: To take your time and try to take the pressure off. Keep marinating on your book idea, and trust that you’ll be shown what to do with the process. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Reach out to your network to schedule 20-minute chats with authors (friends-of-friends) who have taken each of these three routes.   📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  Life After College The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever by Michael Bungay Stanier Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins 🔗Resources Mentioned: Articles: A Trial Put Publishing’s Inner Workings on Display. What Did We Learn?, The Random House Antitrust Suit Revealed How Out of it Book Publishers Really Are Self- and Hybrid Publishers: Page Two, Running Press Publishing, Portfolio Publishing, Ideapress Publishing, Amazon CreateSpace Calculator: When do I earn out? (Jane Friedman's calculator for traditional book deals) 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  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) 077: Happy Launch Day! Antonio Neves Guest Hosts (Part 1) and (Part 2) 158: How to Decide on a Book (or Big Idea) Topic—10 Filters 162: Should You Self-Publish? (Part One) Pivot 207: How to Develop Your Book and Big Idea (Part 1) and 208: Your Book and Big Idea (Part 2) 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community 🛠 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/164 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prolific punchy pontificator Khe Hy—creator of the $10K work accelerator and Supercharge Your Productivity—returns to the pod to share his strategy for collecting inspiring content, repackaging interesting tidbits, and regularly hitting “publish” on his newsletter, RadReads.  Today we’re talking about idea kernels: micro-ideas that can be elaborated upon and turned into different kinds of content that help you connect with your audience and your fellow creators. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out Khe’s earlier episode on 129: The $10K Work Framework. More About Khe: Khe Hy is the founder and CEO of RadReads, an online education company that helps professionals lead productive, examined, and joyful lives. Khe is the creator of the $10K Work productivity method and teaches the popular cohort-based course Supercharge Your Productivity. RadReads provides guides, trainings, and coaching for over 36,000 professionals to help them gain back free time, scale their impact and make their little dent in the universe. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: If you’re collaborating on making content, create rules for decision-making that your team members can follow. Are you telling yourself any stories that aren’t serving you? For example, can you only be a certain kind of creative or productive at a certain time or under certain conditions? Are they really true? If you have a large enough audience, social media sites, like Twitter and IG, can be a great place to test idea kernels. The feedback is immediate and can help you decide whether or not to develop a small idea further, repurposing it in a style best suited to the different platforms.  📝Permission: To not be consistent. If that consistency bugaboo takes over, it can suck the life out of the process for you. When you get stuck, create content based on kernels from other people's work to help them gain more visibility and to build a deeper relationship with them. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Set yourself up to find idea kernels that resonate with your audience by looking at what they’re consuming: their top ten podcasts or YouTube channels or Substacks. Follow the fun and look at what is interesting to you as well.  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber 🔗Resources Mentioned: Khe on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn Courses: Supercharge Your Productivity, $10K Work Accelerator Articles: The Magic of Doing $10,000 Per Hour Work, How to be the Chief Unblocking Officer, CNN: Meet Khe He, the Oprah for Millennials 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 129: The $10K Work Framework with Khe Hy and Pivot 313: What’s the pebble in your shoe? Pivoting from Wall Street to RadReads with Khe Hy Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy interview with John Mayer 156: 8 Idea Generation Strategies and 124: JB’s 5 C’s System for Content Curation 137: Attracting Clients Through TikTok (without Letting the Algorithm Drive You) with Inna Aizenshtein 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/163 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Should you self-publish? This is a big debate among aspiring authors, and there is no one right answer. Today I’m sharing my take on the three main publishing options you have to get a book into the world:  Self-publishing (including direct-to-ebook or audiobook) where you hire your own team of specialists along the way. Hybrid where you partner with an established publisher, while fronting the costs as an author (for the team they assemble and either print-on-demand or funding a larger print run), and  Traditional publishing with one of the “Big Five” publishing houses, where they give you an advance, and you get the cache of making it through the “gatekeeper” gauntlet. 🌟6 Key Considerations: Cash Flow Your Business Model Quality Speed Team & Process Platform size, connections, and “know that I tried” 📝Permission: Take one small next step towards publishing your book. Remember, you are a messenger. When you get overwhelmed, return to asking, “What is in the highest good for all involved? How can I move forward with ease and joy?” ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Check out the Author Toolkit, then draft a one-page query email highlighting the answers to: why me, why now, why this book, and your platform stats.  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  Life After College Published.: The Proven Path From Blank Page To 10,000 Copies Sold by Chandler Bolt Write Useful Books: A Modern Approach to Designing and Refining Recommendable Nonfiction by Rob Fitzpatrick Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives—Including Your Own by A.J. Harper 🔗Resources Mentioned: Free Time’s Author Toolkit Article: New York Times’ How to Get Published—One Book’s Journey Related Podcasts: Self Publishing School, The Creative Penn Podcast Publishers: Page Two, Running Press Publishing, Portfolio Publishing, Ideapress Publishing, Amazon CreateSpace Audiobook Publishing: ACX, Findaway Voices 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  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) 077: Happy Launch Day! Antonio Neves Guest Hosts (Part 1) 079: Behind the Launch with Antonio Neves (Part 2) 096: Book Sales Stats—One Month Post-Launch 🎉 028: When the Financial Tides Recede 045: Behind the Free Time Brand with Adam Chaloeicheep 158: How to Decide on a Book (or Big Idea) Topic—10 Filters 070: Rough Drafts vs. The Writers Room 035: The Long Game with Dorie Clark 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/162 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Processing email and social media inboxes is overwhelming enough for one person — can you imagine creating an entire company to help entrepreneurs do this at scale?! Communication curmudgeon that I am, I most certainly cannot. That’s why I invited today’s guest, Yaro Starek, to share the systems and approaches behind Inbox Done, his company that helps clients tame the never-ending email beast. More About Yaro: Yaro Starak is the co-founder of InboxDone.com, an email management company with a team of 45+ serving clients, including restaurant owners, venture capitalists, accountants, doctors, lawyers, real estate agents, car retailers, online coaches, and more. He is the host of the Vested Capital podcast, author of Blog Profits BluePrint, and angel investor. Yaro has been featured in SkyNews, Forbes, Entrepreneur Magazine, Huffington Post, Business Insider, Foundr, and hundreds of media outlets and events. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Yaro believes it’s best to have two team members entirely dedicated to email, not just a fraction of one VA’s time, which often just replicates the problems you have with staying on top of it yourself. Build in redundancy for handling communications.  Determine where you most want to receive different kinds of information such as daily summaries, details about leads and inquiries, personal matters, time sensitive client requests, etc — then create SOPs for how you get the information you need where you can most easily deal with it.  If your inbox is your to-do list then you are at risk of two things: You will not be able to fully delegate it, and it might not be the best way to prioritize your work. 📝Permission: To be involved in — not responsible for — your inbox. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Check out Jenny’s Stuck Email Categories template and start observing what the most common types of emails are (and subsequent processes to document) that you might be able to delegate in the future.  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Blog Profits Blue Print by Yaro Starak A World Without Email by Cal Newport Unsubscribe by Jocelyn Glei The Tyranny of Email by John Freeman 🔗Resources Mentioned: Yaro on the web, Instagram: @yarostarak, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook InboxDone.com Yaro’s podcast: Vested Capital and course: Laptop Lifestyle Academy Article: How To Hire, Test And Train A Virtual Assistant To Handle Your Email  Tools: Yesware, SaneBox, Calendly, HelpScout (what JB uses for team emails), HubSpot, Slack 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 002: Eliminate Email with Cal Newport 006: Going Pro on Podcasting with Jordan Harbinger 019: Most Valuable Activities with Dave Crenshaw 145: Tips for Training Part-Time Team Members with Kaneisha Grayson 104: Save Someone Next Steps 035: The Long Game with Dorie Clark and Pivot 298: Networking in a New Niche and Becoming Broadway Investors with Dorie Clark and Alisa Cohn 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/161 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do you ever feel like you’re just not good with systems? If so, then this episode is for you. The more efficient we can be in our operations, the more time we can set free. Today, I’m sharing five questions to keep in mind while working to increase your awareness for potential automation opportunities. Automation is a skill, and this episode will help you get better at it. For more help and inspiration as you set your time free in 2023, I encourage you to join us in BFF, my private community. If you join before March, you’ll be in time for a special workshop on Trademarking and IP with a Heart-Based Business attorney. Learn more and enroll at ItsFreeTime.com/BFF. Apply promo code PODCAST for 50% off your first month. 🌟Five Questions to Get Better at Spotting Automation Opportunities: Does this repeat? Is something falling through the cracks? Would more communication help? Is my data centralized where I can reference it easily? Do I need two or more different software tools to talk to each other? Bonus: What can I put on subscription? 📝Permission: Not to be a software expert or an engineer!  ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Become an observer: Where are you repeating yourself? What’s falling through the cracks? Where would extra reminders be helpful? Get creative and start automating more! 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling 🔗Resources Mentioned: Free Time Toolkit and Quiz BFF Community Free Time Operations Dashboard Subscriptions: Trade Coffee, Lola, Factor Tools: Kajabi, Zapier, Notion, HelpScout, Slack, TripIt Pro, Typeform, Squarespace 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  062: Made By Monday 🐸 On Content "Frog" Batching 156: 8 Idea Generation Strategies 102: 12 Systems-Thinking Steps for Moving from Friction to Flow 094: Top 5 Tools That Power My Business 088: Why I Moved from Asana to Notion for Task and Project Management 148: How to Build a Business Operations Dashboard 125: How to Create Your Own CRM with Alex Sherwood 018: Workcation in the City Pivot 077: 21+ Travel Tips, Tools and Apps — with Jenny Blake 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/160 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Juggling a schedule for one person is tricky enough; for a two-entrepreneur household with kids, it’s another thing altogether! Learn how Jess and Dave make time for each other, for themselves, and for their deep work in today’s conversation about creating free time together as a family. More About Jessica: Jessica Marati Radparvar is a social impact strategist motivated by the belief that doing the right thing should be as easy as humanly possible. She is the founder of Reconsidered, a boutique consultancy and content platform that helps impact leaders drive bigger, bolder, more sustainable change. More About Dave: Dave Radparvar is an entrepreneur, father, and amateur skateboarder. In 2009, he co-founded Holstee, a company that offers inspiration and tools to help you live a more meaningful life. In 2020, he co-founded Reflection.app, a guided digital journal for mental wellness. Dave lives in Amsterdam with Jess and their son Shilo. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Revisit things that don’t feel right. As you and your company grow, regularly check in to see what feels right and what should stop or change. Clear communication and clarity around task ownership make it much easier to anticipate and enjoy the work you are in charge of. Is the best or right thing to do also the easiest one? Think about how you want to show up for your business and family; block time in advance for what matters most individually and as a unit. 📝Permission: Jess says, “For entrepreneurs who are new parents: accept where you are in your journey, you might not be able to accomplish everything you used to be able to. Be compassionate and loving to yourself. This time is temporary.” From Dave, “Do the things for yourself in the morning that set you up for mental and physical wellness. Work can wait until you have spent some time on what makes you feel happy and energized.” ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Give yourself, or your business, a haircut. What is no longer working or serving you? Find something that needs to go or change to make room for something new. (Or just enjoy a new look!) 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life Admin: How I Learned to Do Less, Do Better, and Live More by Elizabeth Emens 🔗Resources Mentioned: Jessica on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn Dave on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn Holstee Reflection.app Reconsidered: Newsletter, courses, private LinkedIn group Newsletter: Dense Discovery People: David Goggins, MBS, Sarah Peck’s Startup Parent 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 143: Exploring Time, Money, and Energy Capacity with Tara McMullin and Charlie Gilkey (Replay) 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin 157: Downshifting to a Delightfully Part-Team Team with Laura Roeder 093: How to Sell Your Online Business with Alexis Grant 104: Save Someone Next Steps 098: How to Build Your Minimum Viable Team (MVT) 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/159 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of the most common questions from those accessing the Author Toolkit (an assembly of my best-open-sourced templates and processes from 14+ years and three books) is a variation on: How can I decide on a topic? How do I narrow down my idea? How do I know if/when I have landed on the right idea? Today I’m sharing ten filters to help you narrow down your book idea — or, if you’re not an aspiring author, perhaps your next “big IP” area that will best serve your body of work, your business, and your future audience.  🌟10 Filters: How do I decide on a book topic? BookRx: Does it solve a problem people know they have? Would two friends at the coffee shop talk about the idea the way I’m describing it?  Is it evergreen for the market? Will there always be new people interested in the topic? Is it evergreen for me? Will I be able to maintain interest in the idea over time? Is it specific and yet still a big idea? It needs to be unique enough to attract attention and broad enough to have a large audience. Is it missing, or has it already been done? Some topics are more crowded than others, so spend some time researching other books and authors. Is there a trend, a hook, a twist? What is my unique take on this topic, and how will it benefit my audience? Does it serve an audience I’m excited to attract? Who do I want to work with, and will the idea help you connect with them? Does it serve my broader business/career goals? How does the book fit into my business or career? Am I uniquely qualified/positioned? Do I have the expertise and background to create a book on this topic? Why me, why now, why this book? What is my platform? Do I have the reach and connections to make a business case for the book?  📝Permission: Ditch dull ideas! No matter how good (or should) they seem on paper. Stay committed—and surrender throughout the process—to ideas that make your heart sing. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Once you’ve narrowed down your BookRx (or BigIdeaRx), create a one-pager answering: Why me? Why now? Why this book? What’s the timely hook or the unexpected twist? Bonus: Draft a mini-conversation about the problem it solves, with one friend lamenting to another over coffee, and the second one answering, “Ahhh, I know just the thing — you have to read this book!”  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business, Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  🔗Resources Mentioned: Free Time Author Toolkit Adrian Klaphaak’s Career Pathfinder Course (promo code PIVOT) Jenny’s LinkedIn Learning Courses 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  156: 8 Idea Generation Strategies 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) 036: Shaping Big Ideas — Notion Walkthrough #2 038: Tracking Progress Toward Finishing a Book (or Big Idea) with an Essay Tracker — Notion Walkthrough #3 031: Eleventh-Hour Creative Gremlins Pivot 207: How to Develop Your Book and Big Idea (Part 1), 208: Your Book and Big Idea (Part 2) 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/158 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

What type of business would you build if you no longer needed the money? After a life-changing exit from her previous company, Meet Edgar, Laura Roeder’s answer: a fun one.  She is now more focused than ever on building a business that is bootstrapped, agile, asynchronous, joyful for all involved, and powered by part-time team members who love what they do. In this conversation, we discuss why Laura downshifted from a structure with 30 full-time employees to one that’s leaner, saying no to the Business Ops Police, the perks of part-time team members (for you and them), and why “winner take all” markets are a myth. More About Laura: Laura Roeder is a lifelong entrepreneur and founder of several multi-million dollar bootstrapped companies. Her current two focuses are Paperbell and CoachCompare; prior to that, she built and sold MeetEdgar, co-founded Marie Forleo’s B-School, and ran LKR Social Media. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Look for people who get tremendous satisfaction (even if not passion) from the work you need done. What types of problem-solving and projects do they find inherently fun? “Your business is your utopia” (Derek Sivers): The reason you work for yourself is to have greater control and freedom. “The inside of your business should be as beautiful as the outside.” How can you build systems and employ software that engenders a sense of relief for all involved? 📝Permission: To enjoy your business! Drop any shoulds you’re carrying from the Business Ops Police. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Is your current software stack causing stress or making you sigh with relief? Make sure each tool is helping more than it’s hurting, replace any that aren’t, and even better still—see if any new tools can combine what separate ones are doing. 📘Books Mentioned:  Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't by Verne Harnish 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Laura on the web, Paperbell, CoachCompare, Instagram: @laurakroeder, Twitter, LinkedIn Article: Exactly How I Cold Emailed My Way to A Life-Changing Exit (and You Can Too) Videos: The Pre-launch Strategy That Built MeetEdgar a 100k List - Laura Roeder at Converted 2016, Laura Roeder: How She Grew MeetEdgar Into A Multi-million Dollar Business speaks at LTV Conf 2018 Tools: MixPanel, SalesForce, Meet Edgar, HelpScout, ClickUp, Notion, Dubsado, Kajabi, Practice, DuckDuckGo, Hootsuite Podcasts: Laura Roeder on They Got Acquired, Built to Sell #344: How to Make Your Email List Worth 7-Figures, The Art of Newsletters 069: Laura Roeder – Building the Best Brand in Your Niche 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  093: How to Sell Your Online Business with Alexis Grant 061: Scaling Boutique Businesses with Greg Alexander 145: Tips for Training Part-Time Team Members with Kaneisha Grayson 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️Consider joining Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/157 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I had high hopes for the first couple of weeks of the year, but I rang in 2023 in bed, completely uninspired by goals or ideas—anything beyond a desire to get healthy and feel human again, let alone any loftier business aims. Taking a (very loud) hint from the universe, I settled on the theme THRIVE as my focus to start the year. One of the most common replies to my “wave a magic wand and fix one thing in your business” question when people access the Free Time Toolkit is for help with idea generation. In a meta move—seeing as I was in need of those very strategies myself to create this episode—today I am sharing 8 of them here with you! Don’t forget, you can always share a question or your favorite time-saving system by leaving me a voice memo at http://itsfreetime.com/ask. 🌟8 Idea Generation Strategies: Maintain a collection bucket for when you’re reading, watching or have-on-the-go ideas.  What is true now? Look for Truth While It’s Fresh or Share When Solved moments. Always Be Listening (ABL). Systematize your listening through forms and ongoing input. Synthesis: Introduce a new concept by fusing different ideas together through metaphor. Be a contrarian: What is everyone talking about right now, and what is your take? What tropes or industry cliches drive you crazy?  Be a trend spotter: What is happening now that you have a heightened sensitivity to? Get quiet: What can come through only me? How can I serve as a messenger?  📝Permission: Lean on your audience and friends when creatively stuck. Explicitly ask for Q&A submissions, or get quiet and tap into the collective consciousness to create what you most need to hear in this moment. What’s the “love letter” you want to write or say if you were sitting across from one of your business besties (or your ideal reader or listener) in a coffee shop? ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Create an “always be listening” form (or field on an existing form asking about your audience’s biggest question or challenge) if you don’t already have one. For more on this, get your copy of Free Time and check out Chapter 13!  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking by Sönke Ahrens Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte The Way to Wealth: Ben Franklin on Money and Success by Benjamin Franklin (Benjamin Franklin) 🔗Resources Mentioned: Free Time Toolkit, Free Time Operations Dashboard Videos: Matthew Dicks’ TEDxBerkshires Talk: Homework for Life, Curb Your Enthusiasm: Bad Middling YouTube Channel: The Deep Life with Cal Newport Article: New Yorkers Sick of Being Sick Notion web clipper: https://www.notion.so/web-clipper Jenny’s Loom walkthrough on Notion, and Notion for Collection Buckets 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  111: Building a Second Brain with Tiago Forte 142: 🍉 Pick the Low-Hanging Watermelon 124: JB’s 5 C’s System for Content Curation and Production 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/156 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s the right thing to do, and how do we do it quickly? In this conversation with Strategy Sprints founder Simon Severino, we cover: Why you shouldn’t start with your ideal avatar; setting daily, weekly, and monthly strategy planning (and measuring) habits; how he scales his business through certified Strategy Sprints® Coaches; creating self-healing loops, and greater resilience by tying roles to revenue. More About Simon: Simon Severino helps business owners in SaaS and services discover how to be able to run their company more efficiently, which results in sales that soar. Simon is the CEO and founder of Strategy Sprints which is a global team of certified Strategy Sprints® Coaches that offers a customized strategy to help clients gain market share and work in weekly sprints, which results in fast execution. He is also the host of the Strategy Sprints podcast, a Forbes Business Council Member, an Entrepreneur Magazine contributor, and a Duke Corporate Education member. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: A 90-day sprint consists of 12 one-week sprints, each with 3 key measurement goals: one each for sales, operations, and marketing. Work backward to determine your ideal avatar: start helping people solve problems, then review what was the most fun and the most profitable. To build a lean, resilient process that can scale easily, make sure to establish self-healing loops and self-correcting mechanisms — with costs coming directly from profits, rather than being front-loaded. 📝Permission: Drop the idea that you have to do more. You don’t. Follow your process, and good things will result.   ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Think about your next 90 days and identify daily, weekly and monthly habits you want to institute. Bonus: choose one numerical goal for each of the three key categories: marketing, sales, and operations. 📘Books Mentioned:  Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Strategy Sprints: 12 Ways to Accelerate Growth for an Agile Business by Simon Severino Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson The Road Less Stupid: Advice from the Chairman of the Board by Keith J. Cunningham 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Simon on the web, IG: @strategysprints, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Simon’s Podcast: Strategy Sprints Jenny’s 2-Day Strategy Sprint Template ISO Certification 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  061: Scaling Boutique Businesses with Greg Alexander 016: IP Licensing with Lee LeFever 140: How to License Your IP (Intellectual Property) 122: My Top 5 Sources of Recurring Revenue Pivot: 126: How We Ran Our 2-Day Strategy Sprint (with Template)   💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ You’re invited! Join Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/155 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As I shared in last week’s solo episode, Free Time isn’t about time management or productivity, or even simply doing work more efficiently. It is about setting time free.  If our time is trapped like a bird in a cage, unless we break free of shoulds and obligations, there it will remain. We achieve this through smarter systems, and that includes getting better at saying no.  My own tendency to say yes — in an effort to be liked, to please others, to be accommodating, or even to continue trying to “do right” by my work in promoting it — leads to burnout and resentment when to many “yeses” create time confetti and tiredness. In this episode, I’m sharing strategies that I’ve picked up along the way for doing the very hard thing of disappointing others by saying no.  🌟 Key Takeaways Do’s: Ask, “Is my focus done?”, create blanket rules, celebrate space, trust in timing and your own inner compass Don’ts: Punt something you don’t actually want to do to your future self, spend too many thinking cycles mulling a decision, beat yourself up, cave to FOMO 📝Permission: Treat indecision as the decision that it often is: no! Separate the guilt or shoulds you feel from what your intuition is saying to you. Would you initiate this request with joy, unprompted, or are you saying yes out of obligation?    ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Craft a graceful reply for a decision you’re facing, and don’t over-explain or defend your decision. Save your “graceful no” replies in the same place (I use Notion and TextExpander) so that you can return to them when facing the next tough no.  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done by Jocelyn K. Glei Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less by Tiffany Dufu 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  152: Do Less — On Entropic Bloat and Business Haircuts 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin 052: Perceived Capacity vs. Actual Capacity 106: Splatology—On Clearing Time Clutter Pivot: 293: 🍝 Are you a Spaghetti-Twirler or a Spaghetti-Thrower? 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/154 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Imagine my surprise when, on the Saturday before I was set to be interviewed on a podcast last summer, my phone dings. It’s Door Dash. Huh?! I didn’t order anything . . . Turns out it was a surprise delivery from the producer of that show, Matthew Thompson. Next thing I know, my husband Michael and I are enjoying iced coffee and yummy treats with our Sunday morning reading—I have never felt so taken care of prior to guesting on a podcast! That’s Matt, and he’s all class (not to mention a fellow systems aficionado). When he suggested we flip the mic to talk more about my podcasting process, I leaped to say yes :) We talk about increasing the surface area of serendipity, saving time, improving interview quality with pre-surveys, and what we both learned from conducting three-month daily podcasting sprints. More About Matt: Producer Matt helps entrepreneurs around the world unlock the power of podcasting. Over the last five years, he's built a system that protects founders from the pain of podcasting so they can focus on having conversations that add value, build relationships and grow their business. Email him here » 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Be discerning about diminishing returns. If your content doesn’t feel perfect, how much effort would it be to make the tweaks and changes you need, and is it really worth it for the difference in outcome you would get? If you have a podcast, transcribe your episodes and make sure that those transcripts are easily searchable so that you can quickly review your podcasting history for guests, key ideas, and quotations.  Thoughtfully giving gifts to guests can be a small investment in your process that pays huge dividends in your relationships. Consider how a gift can help digitally replicate some of your experiences in real life.   ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Review your tech stack: Look at the different tools and software you use to run your business and see if there have been any updates, changes to functionality, or new integrations you might be able to use to save yourself time and clicks.    📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect  🔗Resources Mentioned:  Matthew on the web, Best of Belfast podcast Tools:Notion, Descript, Zapier, Hourglass gift, Auphonic, Riverside.fm, Yeti Nano mic, Elevate coaching with Jay Acunzo, Loom walkthrough of Jenny’s podcast production process 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  Best of Belfast podcast: Amilra De Silva on Serendipity & the Chemistry of Everything, Isabel Woods: The 93-Year-Old Record-Breaking Cyclist Depression Cure podcast: ADHD 101: Superpowers, Myths & Unexpected Causes 130: Day in the Life of a Podcast Episode and How I Prepare for Guests Pivot 197: Should You Start a Podcast? "It's A Love Game" — Interview by Petra Kolber Pivot 300! 🎉 3 Creative Lessons Learned from 7+ Years of Podcasting  Pivot 41: The Progress Paradox with Gregg Easterbrook Pivot 307: Pivoting from Google to Starting People Playbook with Tony McGaharan   💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️Consider joining Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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  ☎️ 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 links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/153 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As I share in Free Time, nowhere is entropy more visually evident than in older homes or ones in nature. I remember staying at a cabin in the Catskills, where I could see right before my eyes all forms of plants and animals encroaching on the once-pristine house.  Without upkeep, a dead tree teetered precariously toward the roof, weeds started overtaking the grass, spiders made themselves comfortable in bathroom corners, giant carpenter ants traversed the kitchen counters, and we spotted a garden snake crawling into the crevices of the outdoor hot tub. Entropy, defined as a gradual decline into disorder, is intrinsic to all organic systems, and it’s happening in your business, too. In this episode, I’m talking about entropic bloat and why we need to actively decide to do less, giving our business regular “haircuts” along the way. 🌟 Key Takeaway: Due to entropic bloat, you need to actively eliminate aspects of your business that are no longer serving you. Ways to give your business a haircut: Raise prices Stop doing custom proposals Don’t negotiate Reset your boundaries Sell only one flagship product or service  Aggressively block your calendar Choose two focus areas for the year Tighten your filter Say no more, even when you’re excited Rethink contract terms Create content assets Shut down stale services Double check: eliminate before you delegate Create automations that eliminate future steps and friction 📝Permission: To be selfish in service of your business. Do less so you can say yes to producing more of your best work — the work you’ll look back on at the end of the year and be most proud of. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Conduct an audit of all the projects and recurring tasks you have delegated to team members in your business and reconsider if they should be done at all. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Unsubscribe: How to Kill Email Anxiety, Avoid Distractions, and Get Real Work Done by Jocelyn K. Glei Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time by Brigid Schulte What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting by Tara McMullin Drop the Ball: Achieving More by Doing Less by Tiffany Dufu Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time and Energy Management for Ambitious Women by Kate Northrup 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin 143: Exploring Time, Money, and Energy Capacity with Tara McMullin and Charlie Gilkey 091: Quarterly Planning with Charlie Gilkey 140: How to License Your IP (Intellectual Property) 052: Perceived Capacity vs. Actual Capacity 106: Splatology—On Clearing Time Clutter 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/152 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If life is a circus, then maybe there’s a way to get better at performing in it. As Laura shares in this conversation about ways to calm time chaos, “Nobody gets shot out of a cannon at the wrong time in a circus . . . it’s a miracle of precision.” In this week’s episode, you will learn how to shift from a sense of time scarcity to spacious serenity, how to overcome “horror vacui” and guilt when creating a more open schedule, the importance of margin and creating back-up slots (”rain dates”) for building a resilient a calendar, and committing to time that’s just for you. More About Laura: Laura Vanderkam is the author of several time management and productivity books, including Off the Clock, I Know How She Does It, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, and 168 Hours, and her newest book, Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters. She hosts two podcasts Best of Both Worlds and Before Breakfast. Her 2016 TED talk, How to Gain Control of Your Free Time has been viewed more than 12 million times. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Plan on Fridays: Create a 3-category priority list for the upcoming week for career, relationships, self. Create back-up slots: Build in “rain dates” for important events makes it more likely they will happen, even when unexpected events arise. Laura’s mantra, ‘If I plan tight, then light.’ Having space in a schedule is the psychological equivalent of sitting on a large emergency fund.” Do effortful fun Before effortless fun: When you get an unexpectedly free moment, make the effort to do something more meaningful to you than screen time on social media or Netflix. As Laura says, “Daydreaming counts, whereas wasted time is time spent mindlessly on things we don’t care about.” 📝Permission: Give up the idea that you need to book yourself solid and that the busier you are, the more important you are. Leave room for things to come up, whether they are interesting ideas or full-blown opportunities.  ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: List some activities you’d like to do regularly. Choose one for the next week and aim to tick the “three times a week is a habit” box. Bonus: Create a 100 Dreams list with items large and small. Super bonus: Take one night (or full day!) just for you, just for fun. No working, care-taking, or people-pleasing for anyone else. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done Tranquility by Tuesday: 9 Ways to Calm the Chaos and Make Time for What Matters 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Laura on the web, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook Laura’s Podcasts: Best of Both Worlds, Before Breakfast Articles: Laura’s NYT Op-Ed — There’s a Better Way to Reclaim Your Time Than ‘Quiet Quitting’ TED Talk: How to gain control of your free time 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  003: Liberate Your Life Force with Christine Arylo 027: Time Management for Mortals with Oliver Burkeman  123: “Pricing is Branding” — Anti-Time Management with Richie Norton   💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️Consider joining Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/151 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome Deep Questions with Cal Newport listeners! I had so much fun recording the "Help me do less!" episode — check it out here if you haven't already :) This episode originally aired on January 7, 2022. 🎁 We're bringing back BOGOGO! Give the gift of free time to yourself and others in the new year by participating in our Buy One, Get One, Give One bonus—back for a limited time. Here's how it works: Buy One: Order the hardcover edition and submit proof of purchase at http://itsfreetime.com/bogogo Get One: Within one business day, you'll get audiobook access via private feed and the Free Time Toolkit Give One: You will get details on how to gift audiobook access to a friend :) [ 03:28 ] Shifting from specific goals toward surrender, surprise, and serendipity [ 06:07 ] The problem with the Druckerism that "You can't manage what you don't measure" [ 06:49 ] Why I find systems much more motivating; Scott Adams on goal-setting people vs. systems people [ 08:07 ] James Clear: "You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems." [ 10:45 ] Book sales as an example of balancing intention, vision, and systems [ 13:48 ] Setting a compass for the year ahead — Healthy, Wealthy, Wise, and Grateful — did I add something to every bucket every day? [ 16:15 ] Also experimenting with Traction's EOS with my team by creating a weekly metrics scorecard so we can run split tests and improve our systems [ 18:00 ] Closing reflection questions and Thoreau quote 📘 Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One How to Be, Do, or Have Anything Outrageous Openness How to Fail at Almost Anything and Still Win Big Atomic Habits Traction 🔗 Resources Mentioned: Author Toolkit Scott Adams on The Tim Ferriss Show James Clear on Brené Brown's Dare to Lead podcast: Part 1, Part 2 Featured on CNBC: Kick-start your new year with a mind map like this Adele on Oprah: "It was never about losing weight. I'm an athlete." 🎙 Related Episodes: 012: Generating Personal MBA Momentum with Josh Kaufman Check out the full Free Time podcast archives here » 🎁 Give yourself (and a friend) the gift of Free Time as we head into 2022: Preorder and submit proof of purchase to get early access to the audiobook as part of the Buy One, Get One, Give One holiday bonus! ❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. Consider becoming a podcast BFF and you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call with Jenny, along with a private feed and community forum 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 links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/056 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"I never serve from my reserves" is just one of countless gems from one of my wisest friends, Christine Arylo. It is time for us to unhook from the over-culture operating system that produces burnout. Christine teaches us how to lead from the heart with a “pace of grace” by changing our relationship to time, energy, and flow (focus + fluidity). This episode originally aired on March 21, 2021. More about Christine: For more than a decade, through her transformation-based consulting company, Expanding Possibility, Christine Arylo has been a catalyst, mentor, and advisor for established and emerging leaders on 6 continents. The author of three previous bestsellers, her latest book is Overwhelmed and Over It: Embrace Your Power to Stay Centered and Sustained in a Chaotic World. ❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. Free Time is listener supported—consider donating to become a podcast Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call with Jenny. 📘 Books Mentioned: Pivot, Overwhelmed and Over It, Choosing ME Before WE, Madly in Love with ME, Reform Your Inner Mean Girl 🔗 Resources Mentioned: Christine on the web, Instagram: christinearylo, Podcast: Feminine Power Time, Am I Overgiving? Quiz: Overwhelmed & Over It Self Care Quiz 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com 💸 Enroll in the Mini-Course: Free-up Founder Time 💬 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 ‘casts: http://pod.link/freetime 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! http://itsfreetime.com/episodes/003 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Free Time for Your Future Self: For any area of your business that causes friction, run through these systems-thinking questions to inspire small steps today that will save time far into the future.  This is from our BFF community’s private feed, with an excerpt from the Free Time book and toolkit. If you want to join a group of smart, heart-centered, generous and successful business owners who are committed to our “take a penny, leave a penny” Brilliance Barter philosophy, I encourage you to learn more and join us! This episode originally aired on June 17, 2022. 🎁 We're bringing back BOGOGO! Give the gift of free time to yourself and others in the new year by participating in our Buy One, Get One, Give One bonus—back for a limited time. Here's how it works: Buy One: Order the hardcover edition and submit proof of purchase at http://itsfreetime.com/bogogo Get One: Within one business day, you'll get audiobook access via private feed and the Free Time Toolkit Give One: You will get details on how to gift audiobook access to a friend :) 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Prioritize designing processes for the critical systems in your business, and let the ‘nice to have’ systems be good enough for now.  Break your calcified habits by stepping back (or jumping back in!) and looking at your processes with fresh eyes at least twice a year. Freeing time is a muscle we build. It takes practice and adopting a way of thinking about how you document and delegate. 📝Permission: To take a break or a walk. Solutions to our most vexing challenges don’t often come to us while we’re sitting at our desk, so get up and drop a bucket into the wishing well of your brain, then trust that it will pop up with solutions when it’s time!  ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: If this, then what? For friction area in your business, consider what the trigger action is, what next step needs to happen first, and whether it can be automated through a service like Zapier.  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business, Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  🔗 Resources Mentioned:  Free Time Toolkit, Private BFF Community Automation tools: Zapier, IFTTT Publishing Company: Get it Done Related Podcast Episodes:  002: Eliminate Email with Cal Newport 042: How I Run My Business Without Social Media (Pivot Replay) 062: Made By Monday 🐸 On Content "Frog" Batching 092: Train the System, Then the Person 101: Run Your Business with Exquisite Greatness and Tiny Art Projects with Alexandra Franzen  Pivot 076: On Plan Z, Creative Finish Lines and the Graceful No—with Alexandra Franzen Pivot 183: Cultivating Opposites and Checklists with Alexandra Franzen 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  ❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. Consider becoming a podcast BFF and you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call with Jenny, a private feed, and access to a community forum with fellow 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/tools 💬 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 links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/102 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“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

What is your relationship to information? Scattered and chaotic, or clear and navigable? Do you have streamlined systems for saving, distilling, and crafting original thought-leadership from what you encounter and store, or are you stuck when it comes time to create order from the chaos? Our guest this week, Tiago Forte, is here to teach you how to develop a second brain—a mindset that transcends toolset—through information-wrangling habits that will change the way you think and create. This episode originally aired on July 19, 2022. More About Tiago: Tiago Forte is a leading productivity expert who has taught thousands of people around the world how timeless principles and the latest technology can revolutionize their productivity, creativity, and personal effectiveness. Today we’re talking about his new book, Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. Learn more at Fortelabs.co, and subscribe to his Building a Second Brain podcast. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways: Building a Second Brain is not about any one piece of software; it is about acquiring a new set of tools in your relationship to information, such as the practice of distilling marginalia or highlights after you read a book or clipping articles you find interesting even if you don’t plan to do anything with them yet. Apply the “campsite rule” to information in your business—leave notes better than you found them. You can do this by adding things like commentary, highlights, bullets a heading, etc. “Only start projects that are already 80 percent done.” By the time you sit down to make progress on something, all the work to gather and organize the source material should already be done. 📝 Permission: Not to be everywhere on all channels. Pick just one place that best fits your personality and style. Treat that channel as a place for your unique artistic expression. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: What do people ask you about most? Build out an FAQ by answering that question thoroughly, and posting it somewhere on your website, in Google Docs, or Notion. Then send future inquirers the link instead of one-off email messages. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Building a Second Brain 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Tiago on the web, Instagram: @fortelabsco, Twitter, LinkedIn Building a Second Brain Book Resources Building a Second Brain Course Tools Mentioned: Readwise, Notion, Evernote, Instapaper, Pocket, Loom 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  034: Organizing Research and Ideas - Notion Walkthrough #1 036: Shaping Big Ideas - Notion Walkthrough #2 038: Tracking Progress Toward Finishing a Book (or Big Idea) with an Essay Tracker - Notion Walkthrough #3 101: Run Your Business with Exquisite Greatness and Tiny Art Projects with Alexandra Franzen Pivot 135: The Bliss Engine with Jim Blake (aka Daddy-O!) Pivot 281: Feeling Impostery? Become a Qualified Curator Instead of an Expert Pivot 183: Cultivating Opposites and Checklists with Alexandra Franzen   💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️Consider joining Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/111 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This best of episode is a replay of the 100th episode of this show since launching on March 21, 2021. I gave myself the tricky task of pairing down the top ten lessons learned this last year and a half. I wish I could’ve pulled an excerpt from every single guest, but alas! These are the lessons that stuck most, sparking new insights and ahas.  This episode originally aired June 10, 2022. 🎁 We're bringing back BOGOGO! Give the gift of free time to yourself and others in the new year by participating in our Buy One, Get One, Give One bonus—back for a limited time. Here's how it works: Buy One: Order the hardcover edition and submit proof of purchase at http://itsfreetime.com/bogogo Get One: Within one business day, you'll get audiobook access via private feed and the Free Time Toolkit Give One: You will get details on how to gift audiobook access to a friend :) ✨ Top Ten Lessons from 💯 Episodes ✨ #1: See yourself as a star performer, and challenge yourself to delegate ever-more of the rest. [01:54] 006: Going Pro on Podcasting with Jordan Harbinger 011: Pitching Shark Tank with Sarah Apgar 019: Most Valuable Activities with Dave Crenshaw #2: Focus on building process, not reactive replies, to reduce incoming noise. [04:39] 002: Eliminate Email with Cal Newport #3: An abundance mindset is bigger than money; remember, we are “Funded by Source.” [07:27] 029: Funded By Source with Ksenia Avdulova #4: Zoom out to see brand as an investment, not a cost. [09:53] 005: Brand Obsessed with Emily Heyward 045: Behind the Free Time Brand with Adam Chaloeicheep 093: How to Sell Your Online Business with Alexis Grant #5: Build redundancy by stepping back from being the bottleneck; if you’re running a “body shop” find ways to leverage your IP to create greater scale and reach. [14:24] 057: You vs. You 2.0 with MBS 061: Scaling Boutique Businesses with Greg Alexander #6: Say no to people-pleasing and invitations that don’t spark joy. [19:57] 003: Liberate Your Life Force with Christine Arylo 035: The Long Game with Dorie Clark 071: Cues - On Charisma with Vanessa Van Edwards #7: Go beyond a launch project (after which energy inevitably fizzles) to create a more sustainable sales system. [24:59] 012: Generating Personal MBA Momentum with Josh Kaufman #8: Buyer’s remorse is inevitable; create a strategic plan and supporting processes to address it. [26:43] 083: Breaking through Buyer’s Remorse—Never Lose a Customer Again with Joey Coleman #9: You’re doing extra work if you’re not creating evergreen email sequences! Save your best newsletters as part of an ongoing welcome series for new subscribers. [29:45] 069: Epic Evergreen Email Sequences with Allan Dib #10: When it comes to taking risks and taking on new projects, don’t worry about competition: ask what’s safe to try, and remember that there is room for you. [33:05] 081: DAOing and Prioritizing Progress over Perfection with Aaron Dignan 089: Is the Podcast Market Too Saturated? Featuring Megan Dougherty of One Stone Creative 📝 Permission: To keep hitting publish on your projects and ongoing public original thinking, no matter how awkward or imperfect.  📘 Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business, Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join 🛠 Get instant access to the Free Time Toolkit: http://itsfreetime.com/tools 💬 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 links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/100 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How has Alexandra Franzen built two thriving businesses without social media? By delivering work with a quality I like to call “exquisite greatness.” She treats every marketing initiative like a tiny art project, something to get excited about rather than a draining chore to dread—and no, it doesn’t require social media. As Alex shares, according to a Nielsen study, 92% of customers purchase products or services because of a recommendation from someone they know. This episode originally aired on June 14, 2022. More About Alex: Alexandra Franzen is a bestselling author, award-winning editor, and entrepreneur based in Hawaii. She’s the co-founder of Get It Done, a company providing writing coaching, editing, proofreading, cover design, publishing, and distribution services for clients who want to write a book. She writes one of my favorite newsletters at AlexandraFranzen.com, and runs her popular Tiny Book Course. Alex deleted all of her social media accounts eight years ago as she describes in her forthcoming book, Marketing Without Social Media. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways: Being excellent at what you do is the best way to get more clients and revenue. Do less and do it better. There is always another layer of simplicity you can reach with your work. Flex your asking muscle. Remember that what you are asking for is usually a win-win and you will be giving as much as you receive.  📝 Permission: Give yourself a raise! If you are excellent at what you do, significantly increase what you charge.  ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: If you’re stressed by social media, take a break; stop for a week and see how it feels. It’ll be fine. It might even be great, allowing you to focus on creating tiny art with your business communications instead.  📘 Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Marketing Without Social Media: 100 Marketing Ideas (No Social Media Required) for Business Owners, Founders, Freelancers, Authors, Artists, Musicians, and Creatives   The 3-Day Effect 🔗 Resources Mentioned:   Alex on the web, Get It Done, Tiny Book Course, Marketing Without Social Media Program Ben Wendel  Brand Strategist: Jennifer Kem  Erin Haag: Pricing Overhaul  Video: Adele on Oprah Related Podcast Episodes:  183: Cultivating Opposites and Checklists with Alexandra Franzen 076: On Plan Z, Creative Finish Lines and the Graceful No—with Alexandra Franzen 075: Coaching Through the Free Time Framework with Wade Brill 020: Pricing Psychology with Jacquette Timmons   💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » ❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. Consider becoming a podcast BFF and you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call with Jenny, a private feed, and access to a community forum with fellow 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/tools  💬 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 links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/101 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just a few days after launch, Free Time topped many Amazon charts! Although "making the lists" is not something I lose sleep over, it does go a long way toward raising awareness and generating lasting launch momentum. Here are some early category stats—I couldn't do any of this without you! #1 New Release in Time Management #1 New Release in Small Business #1 New Release Organizational Change #1 New Release Business Structural Adjustment Enormous thanks to all of you who have read the book and posted reviews on Amazon and Goodreads already! Every one has warmed my heart. ❤️ This episode originally aired on April 1, 2022. 🎁 We're bringing back BOGOGO! Give the gift of free time to yourself and others in the new year by participating in our Buy One, Get One, Give One bonus—back for a limited time. Here's how it works: Buy One: Order the hardcover edition and submit proof of purchase at http://itsfreetime.com/bogogo Get One: Within one business day, you'll get audiobook access via private feed and the Free Time Toolkit Give One: You will get details on how to gift audiobook access to a friend :) ⭐️ Key Takeaways: Make a list of how you’re spending your time for a week. If you see repeated tasks — those are prime candidates for automation. Notice the mortifying moments in your business. We all have them, and as uncomfortable as they are, they are great chances to fix our systems. Are your processes and systems ready for a big break? If Oprah came out of retirement and wanted to talk to you tomorrow — could you meet the increase in demand that would ensue? 💌 Permission: Relinquish your role as all-seeing question answerer. Let someone else answer the questions (and maybe your email!) — you are juggling way too much to remember all of the little things. ✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next:  Double it! Double how much you delegate. What is your comfort zone for allowing other people to take things over? Stretch it to accommodate more.   📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Client Retention Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity The Four-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich  The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey  The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd 🔗 Resources Mentioned:  Review Writing Quick Start chat Leave a review on Amazon and Goodreads Free Time Dashboard VIP Group Free Time Coach: Chris Wilson Podcast: Entrepreneurs On Fire Podcast: Deep Questions with Cal Newport Article: The Saturday Morning Test by Neil Pasricha Podcast Production: One Stone Creative Related Podcast Episodes:  Free Time Episode 62: Made By Monday On Content “Frog” Batching Deep Questions Episode 157: JENNY BLAKE: Help Me Do Less! ❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. Consider becoming a podcast BFF and you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call with Jenny, a private feed, and access to a community forum with fellow 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 links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/080 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Stab the Hydra in the heart.” Cal Newport is not pulling any punches with his latest treatise on how we can combat Hyperactive Hive Mind with smarter systems for communication. Email has become a constant source of guilt and stress for so many of us — listen in for strategies to reclaim your peace and focus. This episode originally aired on March 21, 2021. About Cal Newport: Cal Newport is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. He is the author of six books, including Deep Work, which argues that focus is the new I.Q. in the modern workplace. His latest, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload, is in many ways his magnum opus on the topic of technology and the workplace. Be sure to also check out his podcast, Deep Questions. Key questions: How can you approach email as a process observer (and architect), not a do-er? What people or workflows can you put in place to eliminate email? Where are you still reacting to the Hyperactive Hive Mind? What experiment can you run this week? ❤️ Enjoying the show? Please leave a rating or review. Free Time is listener supported—consider donating to become a podcast Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call: 📘 Books Mentioned: Pivot, A World Without Email, Digital Minimalism, Deep Work, So Good They Can’t Ignore You 🔗 Links Mentioned: Cal on the web...and he’s not on Twitter! Or Facebook. 🎙Related Podcasts: 122: Digital Minimalism with Cal Newport, 29: Deep Work: Ditch Cognitive Junk Food with Cal Newport 💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join 💸 Enroll in the complimentary Free-up Founder Time mini-course 💬 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 ‘casts: 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! http://itsfreetime.com/episodes/002 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What steps can you take now to free your time far into the future? Long-time listeners know this is one of the central questions and strategies throughout Free Time, my book that helps you build the muscle of continually freeing more of your time. Today I’m sharing three strategies to set your time free in 2023. For added accountability in freeing your time in the year ahead, I encourage you to check out the Free Time Leader Kit—you can work through the sections of the book with your team or in a mastermind group (or join us in BFF!) for even more support. 🎁 Give the gift of Free Time! Buy the book for your team members and business besties. We’ve reopened our BOGOGO promo for the holidays: Buy One, Get One, Give One.  🌟3 Key Takeaways: Set a Time Goal first, then work backward. How much is your time worth? Calculate it. What is your billable rate if you break down your income on an hourly basis? Here is how I estimate:     How much would you be *thrilled* to earn this year? ________________     How many work hours per week is *ideal* for you to achieve that? ____     Multiply that number by 42 weeks (to account for time off) = ______     Divide line 1 (a) by line 3 (c) to get your ideal billable hourly rate: _________ Fill in Strategic Goals within your time framework: How can you achieve them in half the time? Identify a friction area, then work through the Free Time Framework: Align, Design, Assign Design your Calendar for the entire year ahead (now) with DNS Blocks: Parkinson's Law is the old adage that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion, first coined by Cyril Northcote Parkinson in a humorous essay he wrote for “The Economist” in 1955.  📝Permission: Aggressively block off time for the entire year ahead, only making exceptions in the moment for what’s joyful from week to week.   ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Pick one area that’s important to you but where you’re experiencing friction. Fill out the Free Time Framework guide to work through improvements resulting in greater flow, joy, and ease.  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape the 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich by Tim Ferriss 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Free Time Toolkit, Leader Kit, Free Time Framework Quick Reference worksheet Private BFF Community Holiday BOGOGO promotion—Buy One, Get One, Give One Parkinson’s Law Paul Graham on Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  148: How to Build a Business Operations Dashboard 149: Tips, Tools & Must Have’s for Content Creators with Kim Kaupe 126: Creating Time Buffer—7 Strategies for Spacious Scheduling 134: How I Prepare for In-Person Speaking Engagements 056: Set Your Compass—Systems vs. Goals Pivot 277: Expansive Impact and Spacious Scheduling with Sarah Young 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/150 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to SignalFire, the fastest growing type of small business is one that revolves around content creation, also known as the creator economy. In this conversation, Kim Kaupe and I explore favorite tips and tools for designing our calendar to support creative work, strategies for staying consistent, paying for accountability, “fishing where your fish are,” batching to get more done in less time, and how Kim prepared for her successful Shark Tank pitch several years ago. Watch the full conversation via video (YouTube) and our previous conversation on Time Blocking. 🧰 If you want more help getting organized for the year ahead and freeing up dozens of hours each week, get your Free Time Operations Dashboard » More About Kim: Kim Kaupe is an accidental entrepreneur, who at 24 years old researched how to start a company. Fast-forward ten years later, she’s worked with Oprah and secured 4 out of 5 sharks on Shark Tank. On her Coffee with Kim show, she has meaningful conversations with fascinating, thought-provoking and successful CEOs, celebrities & influential individuals in business. She is an educator, speaker, and chocolate chip cookie aficionado who believes in hard work, short emails, and showing others how to showcase their strengths. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Set up creative blocks on your calendar, and collect inspiration prior to those sessions. Create a cloud-based Collection Bucket if you don’t already have one. For high-stakes situations: Find people who have recently done what you’re trying to do and “copy their homework.” How did it go? What surprised you? What helped you most? What were you unprepared for? As far as where to publish content, ”You’ve got to fish where your fish are.” What pond are your people swimming in? 📝Permission: Pivot away from projects that are no longer a fit. People do business with people, not any one product.   ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Open your calendar and block off the time you want to be unavailable before during and after holidays and other annual events. Make those blocks recurring so that your rest and relaxation time will be built in next year. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking by Sönke Ahrens 🔗Resources Mentioned: Kim on the web, Bright Ideas Only, IG: @kimkaupe, LinkedIn, Facebook Kim’s podcast: Coffee with Kim LinkedIn Learning course Creator Mode Video: Kim’s Shark Tank pitch for ZinePak Newsletters: Kim’s Copy My Notes, Sarah Young’s Friday Favorites, #PivotList, The What Article: Paul Graham on Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule Tools: Captio (iOS), Superhuman, Boomerang, Kajabi, ConvertKit, Notion 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 011: Pitching Shark Tank with Sarah Apgar 111: Building a Second Brain with Tiago Forte 069: Epic Evergreen Email Sequences with Allan Dib Jenny on Coffee with Kim: Time Blocking: Creating More Free Time With Jenny Blake, Freeing Up Time In Your Life & Business with Jenny Blake   💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟 Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️ Join Jenny’s private BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/149 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Your creativity and entrepreneurial spirit got you here. Smarter systems will take you there. There is less friction in your operations and a greater focus on joyful work. There is a spacious calendar where you are free to dedicate time to your most compelling, strategic projects — the ones that best express your unique talents, powered by a Delightfully Tiny Team. It’s time to stop working full time and start working free time: by applying agile operating principles toward building smarter systems, starting with a centralized business operations dashboard if you don’t already have one. Today I’m sharing the key elements that a strong dashboard has; you’ll know because it makes running your business much easier—to the point where you may even find that you don’t need as many team members to power your operations.  You and your team will know exactly how to find what you need and run the business smoothly, reducing pressure, removing yourself as Chief Everything Officer, and preventing “death by a thousand question cuts.” 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Make sure the software you choose to run your dashboard is searchable, customizable, and interlinkable. 5 must-have elements: centralized task tracker, manager manual (with SOPs), content calendar, business areas, and meeting notes. 7 nice-to-have elements: CRM, client tracker, gift tracker, operating principles, metrics scorecard, idea collection bucket, and weekly updates. 📝Permission: Not to build this dashboard yourself! It’s already done for you :) Check! ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Learn more and start freeing your time today » Apply promo code PODCAST for 10% off 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  Giftology: The Art and Science of Using Gifts to Cut Through the Noise, Increase Referrals, and Strengthen Client Retention by John Ruhlin 🔗Resources Mentioned: Done-for-you Free Time Operations Dashboard Free Time Toolkit with Manager Manual Entry and Weekly Updates templates Private BFF community JB’s 4-minute Collection Bucket walkthrough 🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 088: Why I Moved from Asana to Notion for Task and Project Management 104: Save Someone Next Steps 125: How to Create Your Own CRM with Alex Sherwood 002: Eliminate Email with Cal Newport 034: Organizing Research and Ideas - Notion Walkthrough #1  036: Shaping Big Ideas - Notion Walkthrough #2 038: Tracking Progress Toward Finishing a Book (or Big Idea) with an Essay Tracker - Notion Walkthrough #3   💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️Consider joining Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/148 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you’re a business owner thinking, “My platform is too small to land sponsors,” today’s guest will encourage you to think again. Instead of counting yourself out purely because of the numbers—consider shifting your mindset from how you can help brands to how you can serve your audience best.  In this conversation, sponsorship coach Justin Moore shares his hard-earned wisdom on forming mutually beneficial partnerships between brands and creators. He shares tons of tactics on the power of specificity, creative partnership approaches, why you shouldn’t put prices in your media kit, the halo effect, and so much more. As Justin says when it comes to working with brand partners, “You’re not just a creator, you are a consultant.” More About Justin: Justin Moore is a Sponsorship Coach and founder of @CreatorWizard, a school and community dedicated to teaching others how to find and negotiate dream brand deals. He has a unique perspective on how brands choose which influencers they will partner with and those they will not. Justin is on a mission to enable creators to land 1 million paid brand partnerships by 2032. 🌟 Key Takeaways: What brands will help solve the problems that you know (from asking them!) that your audience has? The brand can become the conduit to help solve those problems via your community’s relationship with you.  Pricing for sponsorships depends on which of three goal types the brand has in mind: conversions, content repurposing, or brand awareness. Do not list prices in your media kit! Instead, you can include three tiers of deliverables (good, better, best) and first ask for their budget range for those tiers. If you believe brand partnerships are an important marketing tactic for your business, develop in-house competency in negotiating and delivering the deals. 📝Permission: Take a breath and think about the present moment. Celebrate the business success you have already achieved.   ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Conduct a survey or run a poll on IG to ask your audience about their lives: What is keeping them up at night? Where are they consuming your content? What brands and products are you using and loving right now that might help your audience with where they’re at?  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business, Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One 🔗Resources Mentioned: Justin on the web, YouTube, IG: @creatorwizard, Twitter, Facebook, newsletter  CreatorWizard Courses: Brand Deal Wizard, Gifted to Paid Tools: ConvertKit, The Sponsorship Wheel: 8-Step Framework  🎧Related Podcast Episodes: 139: Paid Newsletter Secrets and Organizing Knowledge with David Elikwu 020: Pricing Psychology with Jacquette Timmons 107: How to Know When You’ve Gotten Pricing Wrong with Jacquette M. Timmons  The Nathan Barry Show: 068: Justin Moore – Game-Changing Newsletter Sponsorship Strategies   Pivot 262: Why I Decided To Run Ads   💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️Consider joining Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/147 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There’s a missing chapter in Free Time that, over the course of editing, got condensed down into a single bullet point. When someone new joins your team, even part-time, those first few days, weeks, and months have potential to transform your manager manual—in ways that you would otherwise miss. I encourage you to share this episode with your new team members as they join! 🌟Key Takeaways for New Team Members: The business owner is up to their ears in responsibility. Improving onboarding documentation is a huge gift (and quick win) you can give to your new team. Make sure your questions “live three lives.” 1. The first time you ask (if you’ve already checked all internal documentation and external help centers first), 2. Capturing the reply internally, and 3. On any public-facing pages to help clients or community. 📝Permission: Business owners, not to have everything buttoned up and perfect before bringing someone into your business. Team members, you have permission to take the reins of the onboarding process, whether or not you’re being asked.   ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: New? Help us welcome the next you: Look for ways to improve our onboarding documentation as you get up to speed. With fresh eyes, you are best equipped to update processes that are out-of-date and add new FAQs and answers to questions that we didn’t previously think to include. What else would the next new person find helpful? 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman 🔗Resources Mentioned: Done-for-you Free Time Operations Dashboard, Free Time Toolkit 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  104: Save Someone Next Steps 086: The Cyrano Strategy for Delegating Important Comms 066: Tasks vs. Templates 092: Train the System, Then the Person 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️Consider joining Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/146 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

For many of us running Delightfully Tiny Teams, the ideal team set-up is one where no one works full time — including the owner. Today Kaneisha Grayson returns to the pod to share with her signature transparency her lessons learned about onboarding part-time team members, designing effective hiring and vetting processes, teaching sales skills, and scaling without breaking the bank. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out our previous conversation in episode 131: Scaling Your Joy While Streamlining Business Overhead and Navigating ADHD. More About Kaneisha: Kaneisha Grayson is the founder of The Art of Applying, an agency that aids graduate school applicants to get accepted into top-tier schools and achieve funding. She is the author of Be Your Own Boyfriend: Decide to Be Happy, Unleash Your Sexy, and Change Your Life and host of the Scale Your Joy podcast. Kaneisha is dedicated to sharing her journey with like-minded people who are ready to forge their own path, creating a life and business that brings them joy instead of suffering through the corporate grind. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways: Pyramid of Executive Assistance: VAs who can accomplish tasks you know how to do → Executive Assistants who can own total areas of responsibility → Chief of Staff/ Chief Operating Officer who can make decisions on their own. Make a Loom video of you completing each task: Keep them under 10 minutes. Tasks of more than five hours are projects. Create a to-do list for each new hire for them to track and for you to see their progress. Don’t hire people to solve problems that you haven’t been able to solve yourself (that’s what experts are for). Hire people to help with areas you have already solved and you know what correctly done looks like. 📝Permission: Keep some of the tasks that you are excellent at and bring money into the business on your own desk, and let go of the feeling that you’re not acting like “the CEO.” Similarly, if there’s something you love that doesn’t take a huge amount of time, do it yourself, even if it doesn’t make the most mathematical sense.  ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Set up the Delegation Task Tracker and observe over the next two weeks (particularly when you’re in email response mode) what you could delegate that you aren’t already, personal and professional.  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Be Your Own Boyfriend 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Kaneisha on the web, Instagram: @kaneishagrayson, LinkedIn, Facebook,  Kaneisha’s podcast: Scale Your Joy Jenny’s Delegation Task Tracker and 75+ Things I’ve Delegated in the Last Year, the full Free Time Toolkit Join the BFFs Community Tools: Loom, Kajabi, Basecamp, Notion 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  Kaneisha’s Hire an Extraordinary Executive Assistant: A Conversation with My Executive Assistant (YouTube version) 054: Ten T's of Successful Delegating 006: Going Pro on Podcasting with Jordan Harbinger  Jenny’s first ever Pivot podcast from 2014 (!) 6: How I Work with My VA: Systems and Strategy   💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️Consider joining Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/145 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you define enough? Today, Jenny is sharing a bonus episode from the private BFF podcast feed where she’s talking about how to refocus on what enough looks like, and how you can celebrate exactly where (and who) you already are—in business and in life. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Mirroring, or looking at others, can be motivating, but be wary of falling into the compare pit of despair. My friend Melissa shared a line from Brooke Castillo: “There isn’t better than here.” As Brooke often says, life is 50/50 between the good and the bad, and that won’t change whether you hit particular milestones or become a multi-millionaire. Flip your internal script from “I want to be” to “I am.” Try on the identity of having accomplished your highest aspirations, and see how that shifts your energy and resulting outcomes. 📝Permission: Let go of reaching for more, the business FOMO that says you need more or better. Enjoy right where you already are. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Picture yourself 5 years ago. Could you have imagined that you would be where you are now, doing what you’re doing? Take a moment to appreciate how far you’ve come. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life by Luke Burgis The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It: On Social Position and How We Use It by Will Storr Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life by John C. Bogle The Gap and the Gain by Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan 🔗Resources Mentioned: Join the private BFF community (promo code PODCAST for 50% off your first month!) Mark Manson on The Diary of a CEO podcast (episode 111) Brooke Castillo's episode: Secrets of My Success 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  093: How to Sell Your Online Business with Alexis Grant Pivot 277: Expansive Impact and Spacious Scheduling with Sarah Young 123: “Pricing is Branding” — Anti-Time Management with Richie Norton The Penney & Jenny Show 💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe »  🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️Consider joining Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/144 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Do we really all have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé? That’s our tongue-in-cheek title, pulled from Tara McMullin’s new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting, for a recent Spotify Live conversation. In this replay, Charlie Gilkey, Tara McMullin, and I explore the nuances of calculating time, money, and energy capacity so that we don’t tip into boredom or burnout. We share strategies for saying no, and discuss the costs of saying yes when we shouldn’t. One caveat: pardon our less-than-perfect audio quality! Because we’re calling in via mobile, this one is a little rougher around the edges than typical episodes. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my previous conversations with Tara and Charlie in episodes 091: Quarterly Planning and 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots. Your Cohosts: Tara McMullin, host of the What Works podcast and author of What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting Charlie Gilkey, host of the Productive Flourishing podcast and author of Start Finishing: How to Go From Idea to Done Jenny Blake, host of the Free Time podcast and author of Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business and **Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One. 🌟 3 Key Takeaways: Consider capacity across T.E.A.M: Time, Energy, Attention, and Money. On saying no: try to communicate before you are overcommitted, so you can address any issues before they become problems. If you’re leaning towards saying yes when you really should say no, remember that it often feels worse to disappoint someone with subpar work and/or missed deadlines than it does to say no in the first place. 📝Permission: Shift your request evaluation default from, “Do I have time to squeeze this in?” to “Do I have time to do this well?” ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Look ahead to the next month on your calendar and cancel one (if not two!) items you no longer have the bandwidth for. Bonus: Create a game-plan with your team (and scheduling tools) to allow for even more margin moving forward.  📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting by Tara McMullin Start Finishing: How to Go from Idea to Done by Charlie Gilkey 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Tara on the web, IG: @tara_mcmullin, Twitter, LinkedIn, podcast: What Works Charlie on the web, IG: @momentumplanner, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, podcast: Productive Flourishing Articles: Is the Scope of Your World Too Big?, Spoon Theory, “Ought implies can,” Beyonce and Jay Z Reportedly Give $6.4 Million in Bonuses to Employees 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  052: Perceived Capacity vs. Actual Capacity 091: Quarterly Planning with Charlie Gilkey  141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin Pivot: 136: Start Finishing—Pricing, Projects, and Momentum Planning with Charlie Gilkey, 277: Expansive Impact and Spacious Scheduling with Sarah Young   💻 Access Free Time episode transcripts on Podscribe » 🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. ❤️Consider joining Jenny’s private BFF community, where you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a community forum to exchange ideas and feedback with fellow 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 for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask 🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts 📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/143 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices