Free Time with Jenny Blake

Are you working in tasks or on templates? For anything you repeat, take a little time up-front to design a process that will save you time for future sessions.Books Mentioned:  Eat That Frog! The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It Resources Mentioned: Free Time Dashboard Beta Free Author Toolkit Related Episodes:  Episode 34 Organizing Research and Ideas - Notion Walkthrough #1 Episode 36: Shaping Big Ideas - Notion Walkthrough #2 Episode 38: Tracking Progress Toward Finishing a Book (or Big Idea) with an Essay Tracker - Notion Walkthrough #3 Episode 62 - Made by Monday 🐸 On Content “Frog” Batching 🎁 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/066 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do you decide what to delegate, and what to keep doing yourself? What are the best ways to build flexibility into our businesses for ensuring we have plenty of free time for family and creativity?This week's guest is Evan La Ruffa, a father and artist-turned entrepreneur who is passionate about shaping a better world through new solutions to big problems. He is the founder of IPaintMyMind.org, a nonprofit focused on art, equity, and impact. One of my favorite projects of theirs is matching Chicago artists with companies for creating large-scale mural commissions in lobbies or the exterior.Resources Mentioned: Evan La Ruffa on Web | LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook Good Life Project Podcast Bench Accounting Services Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters is Your Next One Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live) Related Episodes: Pivot; Episode 47 - Live Fiercely, Study Deeply… While Earning a Living - with Jonathan Fields🎁 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/065 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When is good enough good enough? When is it important to stick to a creative vision, down to every last meticulous detail? Hitting publish means welcoming praise and criticism, and today I’m sharing the nerve-wracking feeling leading up to both, as well as an audio adventure to the book’s unboxing at the Rochester Warehouse!📘 Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College: The Complete Guide to Getting What You Want Pivot: The Only Move That Matters is Your Next One 🔗 Resource Mentioned: Pivot Coaching (use promo code PODCAST at checkout), Celebrities Read Mean Tweets 🎙 Related Episodes: 062: Made By Monday 🐸 On Content "Frog" Batching, and 019: Most Valuable Activities with Dave Crenshaw 🎁 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 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/064 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The mic tables are turned this week, with Azul Terronez, cofounder of Authors Who Lead interviewing me for his fantastic podcast. With so many mutual friends in common, it was such a joy to finally connect directly! I hope you enjoy this conversation on burnout, spacious work boundaries, delegating, and doubling down on business intuition.📘 Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One 🔗 Resources Mentioned: Authors Who Lead Authors Who Lead podcast Jadah Sellner in conversation with Azul about his book coaching process: Writing a Book That Changes You First, #BTS: Behind the Scenes of My Next Book Part 2 with Azul, #BTS: Behind the scenes of my next book part 3 🎙 Related Episodes: 062: Made By Monday 🐸 On Content "Frog" Batching 019: Most Valuable Activities with Dave Crenshaw 🎁 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 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/063 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Twain once said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Brian Tracy adapted this for his productivity book, Eat That Frog! to say, "If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first," and "If you have to eat any frog at all, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for very long."What if you turned this into a content batching template, and tackled all creative tasks in a Monday sprint every week? That's the experiment I've been running that I share more about in this episode . . . of course, created during my own Made-By-Monday sprint :)📘 Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Eat That Frog! The One Thing 🔗 Resources Mentioned: Pivot podcast, #PivotList newsletter, Time Well Spent newsletter, WeWork On Demand, Gotham Podcast Studio🎙 Related Episodes: 025: The Joys of Precrastination, 010: Batching & Boundaries with John Lee Dumas, 055: How to Free Your Calendar Now for Next Year🎁 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 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/062 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's the difference between a lifestyle boutique and one that is built to scale and sell? Between a commoditized "body shop" and a unique boutique?There are approximately 1.47 million firms in professional services (industry code NAICS 54). Four thousand have reached scale, with more than 250 employees. This is one-quarter of one percent—these are the market leaders. The other 99.75% have between 1 and 249 employees; these are what Greg Alexander calls boutiques.Greg sold his professional services firm, SBI, after eleven years for $160 million, and is now focused on helping others grow, scale, and sell their own boutique professional services firms.He is now the founder of Capital 54, author of The Boutique: How to Start, Scale, and Sell a Professional Services Firm, and a frequent contributor to The Boutique podcast based on his book and business. Greg’s purpose is to live a fulfilling life by taking risks and competing for extraordinary accomplishments, like helping members of Collective 54 achieve and maintain financial success. 🎙 Related Episodes: 016: IP Licensing with Lee LeFever🔗 Organizations Mentioned: EO, YPO, Strategic Coach, Genius Network📘 Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business The Boutique: How to Start, Scale, and Sell a Professional Services Firm Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Businesses On Top 🎁 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 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/061 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As my dad (an architect) always reminded me when I was growing up, clients often want it all — quality, speed, and the best prices. The reality? Pick two. It's nearly impossible to optimize for all at once, so what do you want to be known for as a business?📘 Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham 🔗 Resources Mentioned: Article on the Project Management Triangle🎙 Related Episodes: 056: Systems vs. Goals🎁 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 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/060 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is the difference between uniqueness, talent, and onlyness? Nilofer Merchant is here to help us figure out how the room changes when we walk in, how to turn feeling othered or overworked into opportunities to help ourselves and everyone around us shine, and the powerful question that shifted how she leads others.More About Nilofer: Nilofer Merchant is ranked by Thinkers50 as one of the world's leading business thinkers. In 2013 she gave a top-ranking TED talk, "Sitting is the Smoking of Our Generation." This conversation is about her book, The Power of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World (2017). Check out Nilofer's substack newsletter, Fully Alive at Work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's episode builds on 56: Systems vs. Goals. Now let's talk about how to build smarter systems by looking for measurable loops in your business, then split testing with small experiments. For some of you, this is automatic, especially if you're familiar with growth hacking principles. For others, it will be a helpful reminder for you and your team about how to simplify and systematize making improvements in your business.📘 Books Mentioned: Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One The Ultimate Marketing Engine Growth Hacker Marketing The Cold Start Problem Traction 🔗 Resources Mentioned: PickFu for running polls among target audiences, Adele on Oprah: "It was never about losing weight. I'm an athlete."🎙 Related Episodes: 056: Systems vs. Goals, 037: The Ultimate Marketing Engine with John Jantsch🎁 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/058 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If it weren't for my longtime mentor MBS and our tiny sprints, sending each other daily check marks via Marco Polo to clock in our (minimum) 100 words of writing, the new Free Time book would not exist.In keeping with his new podcast format, in honor of his book launch (today!!) he gave me permission to replay a recent episode from his show. In it, MBS reads two pages of his new book, How to Begin: Start Something That Matters, and I ask him follow-up questions about the nitty gritty of navigating the massive shifts into an entirely new self—what he calls "You 2.0."Be sure to also sign up for his upcoming summit, Begin, Grow, Pivot, and Learn! Enroll at HowToBegin.com.More About MBS: Michael Bungay Stanier is the author of six books which between them have sold over a million copies. He’s best known for The Coaching Habit, the best-selling coaching book of the century and already recognized as a classic. His new book, How to Begin, helps people be more ambitious for themselves and for the world.📘 Books Mentioned: How to Begin: Start Doing Something That Matters Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business, Pivot🔗 Resources Mentioned: MBS.works, howtobegin.com, Register for the Begin, Grow, Pivot, and Learn Summit (Jan. 20), 2 Pages with MBS🎙Related Podcast Episodes: 051: How to Replace Yourself as CEO with Michael Bungay Stanier❤️ 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 BFF and you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call with Jenny and private feed.💌 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 ‘casts: http://pod.link/freetime📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/057 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices