Free Time with Jenny Blake

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

You’ve heard the term low-hanging fruit: the easiest thing you can do to make the biggest possible impact in your business. But not all fruit is created equal! Sometimes, those low-hanging fruits are modest peaches or distracting, underperforming pumpkins (in Mike Michalowicz parlance) that might not be worth pursuing. Other times, you’re so close to your own business that you can’t see the enormous, juicy, low-hanging watermelon you’re about to walk right into.🌟3 Key Takeaways: Look for low-hanging watermelons in your business: opportunities that won’t take a lot of time or energy but could make a huge impact in your business, hanging so close in front of your face that you don’t see them.  The best ones are based on work that you’ve already done: repackaging content or material that has product-market fit and that you know will create great value for your community Be discerning about whether the project you’re considering is a juicy low-hanging watermelon or an undersized pumpkin worth cutting off the vine. 📝Permission: Stop investing in small, overripe (or worm-ridden!) fruit. Whether they’re shiny shoulds or clients who drain your time and energy, snip them out of your business so you can focus on higher-value projects that are even more fulfilling.  ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Make a list of your products, services, and clients, and identify the best of the best. Identify the ones that are taking more of your time and energy than they are giving back in terms of joy or profit. For the next quarter, focus your energy on the most lucrative and worthwhile ones. What falls at the intersection of revenue, ease, and joy? 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College The Pumpkin Plan: A Simple Strategy to Grow a Remarkable Business in Any Field by Mike Michalowicz Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling by Matthew Dicks 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Leanne Hughes First Time Facilitator Podcast  Matthew Dix Asynchronous communication: Voxer Video: Career in the Age of the App  🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  129: The $10K Work Framework with Khe Hy 017: Serendipity as Business Strategy with Leanne Hughes 140: How to License Your IP (Intellectual Property) 122: My Top 5 Sources of Recurring Revenue 117: Tiny Marketing Actions with Pamela Slim 016: IP Licensing with Lee LeFever 037: The Ultimate Marketing Engine with John Jantsch Pivot 164: Fix This Next (And Stop Keeping Up With The Entrepre-Joneses) Jenny on First Time Facilitator #74: Pivoting into public speaking 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.❤️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/142 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do you do when your business model is no longer working for you? When your current income streams and activities are not just tiring but draining you to the point of exhaustion? My guest today, Tara McMullin, is someone I have long admired for her willingness to question dominant narratives about how things should be done, instead emphasizing what works for each individual person and business.In this conversation, Tara shares her journey of making one of the toughest decisions in her business. As heart- and gut-wrenching as it was to make, it freed her energy for deep work that is even more aligned with her interests, energy, and identity of who she’s most excited to become. She gave herself permission long ago to drop the “expert/guru” model and focus on asking bigger, bolder, better questions instead.More About Tara: Tara McMullin is a writer, podcaster, and producer. For over 13 years, she has studied small business owners—how they live, how they work, what influences them, and what they hope for the future. She’s the host of What Works, a podcast about navigating the 21st-century economy with your humanity intact. Today we’re talking about her first book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework To Change The Way We Approach Goal Setting.🌟3 Key Takeaways: Our society is obsessed with goals and achievement; try emphasizing the process instead.  Break the content marketing mold by asking bigger, bolder, better questions. Let go of the need to be someone who has the answers. Consider: Can you live with less? Can you be happy and thrive with less? Think about whether or not the work you are doing and what you are offering to the world aligns with what you really need to be happy.   📝Permission: To rebuild your business model from the ground up. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Design an “earning” sabbatical, even if it’s far into the future. What elements of your craft would you be excited to dig back into? How would you spend your time differently? 📘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 The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles That Reveal How to Make Your Life Better (and Other People's Lives Better, Too) by Gretchen Rubin Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Tara on the web, IG: @tara_mcmullin, Twitter, LinkedIn Tara’s Podcast: What Works Online Education Platform: Creative Live The Four Tendencies Quiz  🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  121: How to Steer Through a Downturn and Stop Micromanaging with Annie Hyman Pratt 114: “Failure is the Frame, Not the Picture” 040: It's Not Free Time If You're Exhausted 101: Run Your Business with Exquisite Greatness and Tiny Art Projects 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/141 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Licensing your IP to companies can be lucrative and a tough nut to crack. Pricing is opaque, deliverables and tracking can get complicated, and companies with a smaller Learning and Development function may call it by another name (such as Train-the-Trainer). After many years working with a small handful of joyful clients—bolstered by many mentoring sessions, lessons learned the hard way, and a whole lot of experimentation—today, I’m sharing a few pointers on how to get started. I am not an expert, but I do believe in the power of licensing to help your ideas reach even more people who can benefit without you being the bottleneck. Because I get the “can I pick your brain” question often on this, more than any other topic: I no longer work with clients one-on-one, so if you are interested in learning more about licensing and implementing it in your business in 2023, I invite you to join the BFF community. Keep an eye on Pamela Slim too, who will also be releasing more resources on this in the year ahead.🌟3 Key Takeaways: Be choosy about your end customer. Do you want to offer a public-facing certification that results in 1,000+ trainers and coaches who are your clients? Or would you prefer to work with a small handful of large companies instead? Both? Neither? When pricing, communicate the value of your training in terms of benefit to the organization. What bottom-line metrics will you improve, and what is the value of that to the company? Less is more. Don’t cram weeks' worth of content into a Train-the-Trainer program. Keep the material simple, streamlined, and easy to grasp, customize, and deliver. 💌Permission: Stop being the bottleneck for speaking engagements by empowering organizations to teach your material themselves, on-demand, through licensing.✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Create a page on your website that demonstrates the path to licensing with different scalable learning options. For example: kick-off keynote, online courses, Train-the-Trainer, unlimited use licensing. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One The New and Complete Business of Licensing: The Essential Guide to Monetizing Intellectual Property by Craig Battersby Fix This Next: Make the Vital Change That Will Level Up Your Business by Mike Michalowicz  Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels (3rd Edition) by Donald Kirkpatrick Built to Sell: Creating a Business that Can Thrive Without You by John Warrillow Value-Based Fees (3rd Edition): How to Charge What You're Worth and Get What You Charge by Alan Weiss Million Dollar Consulting Proposals and Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Pamela Slim Jenny’s LinkedIn Learning Pivot Method Workbook Examples of Licensing Programs: Getting Things Done Practitioner Certification, John Jantsch's Duct Tape Marketing Certification, Box of Crayons, Pivot in the Classroom, Pivot Programs Overview (Made in Canva) 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  122: My Top 5 Sources of Recurring Revenue 117: Tiny Marketing Actions with Pamela Slim 016: IP Licensing with Lee LeFever 037: The Ultimate Marketing Engine with John Jantsch Pivot 164: Fix This Next (And Stop Keeping Up With The Entrepre-Joneses) 💻 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. 🛠 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 at https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/140 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Build an email list,” is business advice equivalent to “Make sure you breathe.” We all know it’s a best practice to communicate consistently with our communities, but coming up with something interesting on a regular basis is easier said than done! As is building out a paid newsletter subscription in parallel to the baseline missives.Thank goodness for our guest today, David Elikwu (also a fellow Notion nerd), who is taking us behind the scenes of his business to share how he organizes information and builds automation into his newsletter sequences, and the strategy and software behind his paid subscription.More About David: David Elikwu is a writer, speaker, and startup operator with a background spanning technology, corporate law, and marketing. He is the founder of The Knowledge, a platform helping curious people think deeper and work smarter. David also founded Democratic Republic, a social impact brand supporting global artisanship through African coffee and biodynamic wine. He hosts The Knowledge with David Elikwu podcast, where he is joined by the best and brightest minds in business, entrepreneurship, and beyond.🌟Key Takeaways: Price affects perceived value: Sometimes, people are willing to pay more for higher-priced products, so don’t assume that lower prices lead to more subscribers! Try the Costco Sample Strategy for business development: With gated content, people don’t always get to see the value of the offer—look for ways to bundle relatively lower-cost programs as a sample (with an expiration date) with higher-priced programs. Assign a Velocity Score of 1 through 5, where 1 is something that could just be an idea, 3 is something that you have a few sentences on, and 5 is a few paragraphs and/or structure ready to move into a finished state. This will allow you to jump right into creating content with whatever time and creative energy you have available. 📝Permission: “You are born a thousand men and die only one.” In other words: shut down projects on purpose, so you don’t kill them by accident. Be intentional about curating the possibilities you leave open for yourself.  ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Create a collection bucket for saving snippets that you want to add to a future newsletter. See Jenny’s Loom on Notion for CRM & Idea Collection » 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business, Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One🔗Resources Mentioned:  David on the web, LinkedIn, Twitter: @Delikwu, Democratic Republic Podcast: The Knowledge with David Elikwu David’s Notion Life Wheel Template and Career Overdrive course Tools: ConvertKit, Ghost, Substack, Midnight, Digital Ocean, Sam Harris’ subscription-based podcast 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  JB on The Knowledge: Creating Free time with Jenny Blake 125: How to Create Your Own CRM with Alex Sherwood 147: How to Set-up Brand Partnerships with Justin Moore 107: How to Know When You’ve Gotten Pricing Wrong with Jacquette M. Timmons 069: Epic Evergreen Email Sequences with Allan Dib 💻 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/139 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today I’m sharing a section from Free Time about one of the topics interviewers ask me about most: Sailing the Sea of Shiny Shoulds. You’ll hear why I’m such an advocate for writing permission slips to do the things we really want to and dropping the things we don’t.🌟Key Takeaway: If you want to dabble in something that might be a Shiny Should, treat it like an experiment. Set rules for engagement that respect your time, including firm start and end dates, then evaluate the impact on your energy and your business. Is the juice worth the squeeze?📝Permission: Stop sailing the sea of shiny shoulds!✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Observe your calendar, projects, and primary revenue streams for the next two weeks: What is most energizing? What’s most draining? Within the most energizing streams of income, conduct a second audit (you can do this by drawing three columns on a blank piece of paper or digital note): What are your shiny shoulds? The coulds? The so goods?📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One  The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level by Gay Hendricks The Genius Habit: How One Habit Can Radically Change Your Work and Your Life by Laura Garnett Find Your Zone of Genius: Break Free from Burnout, Reduce Career Anxiety, and Make the Work Your Doing Matter by Making Your Job The Right Job for You by Laura Garnett 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Article: NYT Workologist feature: Climbing Down the Corporate Ladder Without Alarming Your Boss  Strategic Social Media Experimenter: Stephanie Huston Podcast: SPARKED by Jonathan Fields 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  JB on SPARKED with Jonathan Fields: How to Choose Freedom Over Familial Responsibility, How to Scale While Staying True to Yourself, and How to Know When to Jump Into Your Side Hustle 134: How I Prepare for In-Person Speaking Engagements  075: Coaching Through the Free Time Framework with Wade Brill 012: Generating Personal MBA Momentum with Josh Kaufman Pivot 292: True Fun vs Fake Fun with Catherine Price 💻 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/138 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As you all may well know by now, I am a social media curmudgeon. But that doesn’t mean I’m not inspired by success stories of business owners applying these tools joyfully to create leverage in their business marketing!My guest today is one of my longtime IRL besties, Inna Aizenshtein, who has been successful at filling her coaching and hypnotherapy practice primarily with leads from TikTok. In this conversation, we discuss energy ebbs and flows and creating authentic content without letting appeasing The Almighty Algorithm suck joy out of the process. More About Inna: Inna Aizenshtein is a hypnotherapist and coach who examines the role that shame and fear play in the unfolding of our lives. Prior to her career in hypnotherapy, Inna worked in the fashion industry for 14 years, most recently as a creative director. She now helps people work through and release outdated subconscious blocks so they can reclaim their worthiness and become more magnetic, primarily through TikTok shorts (where she has over 1.5 million views) and in 1:1 sessions with clients.🌟3 Key Takeaways: Scripting and capturing your content over many takes works well on Tiktok because of the way the software is designed, and what viewers seem to appreciate. Trying to work with the algorithm on TikTok (or any other platform!) is a recipe for getting burned out. Instead, think of how you can connect with and contribute to the people you want to work with, and don’t stress about CTAs. What are your authentic codes? These are the principles that are the most important to you and drive your decisions. When you have identified them, you can apply them to analyze different situations and challenges you find yourself in and create a path forward. 📝Permission: Drop whatever shame or fear you have around creating something imperfectly. Step into the fear and remember that this is a superpower, and the fear is going to make it meaningful. [Hitting publish] is also probably a lot lower stakes than it feels in the moment. ✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: The next time you’re feeling stuck on a social platform, spend a few weeks just consuming content. Engage with people, notice what you like and find compelling, and connect with other creators on the platform. This might give you the creative ideas (and additional insight!) you need.📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Inna on the web, Instagram, TikTok Divine Feminine School of Hypnosis Podcast: JB on SPARKED with Jonathan Fields: How to Scale While Staying True to Yourself Dr. Kristen Neff: Self-Compassion Marissa C. Knox, PhD 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  117: Tiny Marketing Actions with Pamela Slim 124: JB’s 5 C’s System for Content Curation and Production 048: Ten Timeless Content Principles Pivot 295: Create a Memory of Your Future Self — On Hypnotherapy 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.❤️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/137 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the spirit of “truth while it’s fresh,” one of my core values for this podcast, today I’m sharing a truth that has been on a low simmer for two years but that I’ve never quite shared publicly. I’m taking you behind the scenes of my explorations around potentially selling the Pivot side of my business—and why I chose not to (for now, unless you know of any $5 million to 10 million buyers around! ;)🌟3 Key Takeaways: I think about three types of knowledge workers: builders, maintainers, and optimizers. Builders love to create new things, Maintainers like to continue and grow what exists, and Optimizers look at what exists and improve it. Knowing which one you are can help you decide what to do with your business, or how to delegate aspects of current projects Your business will be more desirable to buyers if you focus on building recurring revenue, eliminating key person risk, diversifying your client base, and documenting process that becomes part of your unique IP. It may be counterintuitive, but treating your business like you are planning to sell it gives you a chance to fall back in love with it.  📝Permission: Explore what exiting your business could look like, even if you don’t do anything with that information.✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: What is one strategic area for improvement that would make your business more sale-able, even if it’s to yourself? For example: diversifying your client base, reducing key person risk by delegating more, and shifting client payments to recurring revenue. 📘Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business  Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You The Automatic Customer: Creating a Subscription Business in Any Industry The Art of Selling Your Business: Winning Strategies & Secret Hacks for Exiting on Top Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top Buy Then Build: How Acquisition Entrepreneurs Outsmart the Startup Game Exit Rich: The 6 P Method to Sell Your Business for Huge Profit Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, 10th-Anniversary Edition 🔗Resources Mentioned:  Podcasts: They Got Acquired Podcast, Built to Sell Radio Newsletter: TGA Newsletter Article: A Spotlight on Tech’s Invisible Start-ups, Andrew Wilkinson on Medium Business Investors: Tiny 🎧Related Podcast Episodes:  093: How to Sell Your Online Business with Alexis Grant 001: All-in On Heart-Based Business 051: How to Replace Yourself as CEO with Michael Bungay Stanier 115: Successfully Taking Over as CEO from a Founder (MBS) with Shannon Minifie 061: Scaling Boutique Businesses with Greg Alexander Pivot: 276: Behind the Free Time Pivot  SPARKED: On Putting Yourself in the Path of Pivot Diary of a CEO: Moment 48 - 3 Core Principles For A Better Life: Mark Manson 💻 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/136 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices