Free Time with Jenny Blake

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 TableDanny 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 HemingwayThat’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