
Free Time with Jenny Blake
Set your time free through smarter systems so you can do more of your best work. Free Time launched in 2021 and releases on Tuesdays and Fridays. It's a Webby-nominated business podcast and winner of three W3 awards for best show and best host. Join Jenny Blake, author of three award-winning books—including Free Time: Lose the Busywork and Love Your Business and Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One—to explore our guiding question: How can we earn twice as much in half the time, with joy and ease, while serving the highest good? Subscribe now so you don’t miss an episode! Bonus: please leave a review and share with a friend—word-of-mouth is the most joyful way to grow the show :) Subscribe to theTime Well Spent newsletter at ItsFreeTime.com, and share this episode at pod.link/freetime. Check out Jenny's other podcast, Pivot with Jenny Blake, on navigating change at pod.link/pivotmethod.
Latest episodes

Oct 17, 2023 • 38min
233: On Sensitive CEOs and Building a Soulful Business with Rose Cox
I’m excited to bring you this crossover episode with Rose Cox, founder of The HSP Business School and host of The Sensitive CEO Show ****podcast. She is one of the people I have been most excited to connect with across the globe the last few years, even though we have yet to meet IRL!In this conversation, we dive into the world of highly sensitive people (HSPs), empaths, and introverts in the business world, with plenty of permission slips to stop doing what drains you. We discuss how to build a sustainable, soulful business that aligns with your energy, while embracing the strengths and challenges of being a sensitive CEO. Finally, we touch on Rose’s decision to pause her podcast (at least for now) after a year of releasing weekly episodes.More About Rose: Rose Cox is an ICF-credentialed and Certified Human Potential Coach, 3 Brains Coach, Business Coach + Strategist, Advanced Rapid Transformational Therapist, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Energy Practitioner. Rose's unique blend of soul, science, systems and strategy combines her 20+ years’ experience in the fields of online business, hypnotherapy, coaching, and psychology to help her clients build a successful and sustainable business that is aligned with their energy and their soul. She works with highly sensitive people, empaths and introverts who have amazing gifts to share with the world but struggle with both the business strategies and mindset to fully step into their own.🌟 3 Key Takeaways
Do business in a way that serves you: For example, just one or two days for clients each week, alternating on A and C weeks of each month (so you always have two no-client weeks)
Work with fellow sensitives, even as an overt niche market for your clients and community: Working together because we understand each other, share the same values, have a similar nervous system.
Batch activities so that you group similar types of work together: For example, client-facing, podcast interviews, admin, day off.
📝 Permission
Remove email and other social apps from your phone.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next
Try a guided meditation to speak with your higher self, or do free writing as if it’s a letter from your higher self to you. For encouragement around this, check out Elizabeth Gilbert’s new Substack, Letters from Love.🔗 Resources Mentioned
Rose on the web, IG: @therosecox, Twitter, LinkedIn
Course: The HSP Business School
Video: The Human Upgrade—#928 How to Revamp Busy Work, Overcome Boredom and Fix Burnout
📚 Books Mentioned
The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron
Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss
Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
Life After College
🎧 Related Episodes
Sensitive CEO Show: An HSP’s Guide to Podcasting, and Awakening Intuition: Empowering Sensitive Entrepreneurs through Trusting Your Inner Guidance
Pivot: 172: Self-Care for Empaths and HSPs with Sarah Santacroce and 257: Gentle Business Revolution with Sarah Santacroce
Free Time: 203: 🎢 Riding the Emotional Rollercoaster of Launching with Natalie Lue
141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin
193: Sabbatical Planning with DJ DiDonna
200: 🎉 20+ Free Time Permission Slips for Small Business Owners (Part 1)
202: 🎉 20+ Permission Slips for Small Business Owners (Part 2)
🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join🛠 Get instant access to the Free Time Toolkit: http://itsfreetime.com/toolkit💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/233 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

19 snips
Oct 13, 2023 • 31min
232: 11 Practices to Strengthen Business Intuition (Part One)
Discover the power of intuition and how it can enhance decision-making. Learn about the importance of intuition in building business skills. Explore receiving intuitive guidance and its impact on decision-making. Gain insights on accepting or declining podcast pitches. Discover strategies to enhance business intuition, including home frequency and muscle testing.

Oct 10, 2023 • 46min
231: Building and Selling a Profitable Content-Based Business with David Thomas Tao
David Thomas Tao, founder of BarBend, discusses building and selling a profitable content-based business. Topics include hiring team members to avoid burnout, learning from mistakes in monetization strategies, navigating successful acquisitions, and the importance of niche marketing and organic search in building a profitable business.

Oct 6, 2023 • 30min
230: What’s Your Ratio of Quantity to Quality for Ongoing Creative Work?
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” —Maya AngelouEarlier this summer, I arrived late one day to the podcast studio, laying on the floor in lieu of actually recording anything. Should I take that as a sign to reduce my creative output?Not necessarily.Aside from big one-off projects like writing a book, where I pour incredible time and attention to detail into (that I tackle every five years or so), I seem to do better with ongoing creative work by sticking to a stretch-worthy production schedule. These days I’m running a Delightfully Tiny media company that produces the following on a monthly basis:
14 podcast episodes across Pivot, Free Time, and BFF Bonuses
~14 essays or newsletters: 8 ‘Doh posts, 4 Time Well Spent newsletters, 2 PivotList round-ups, and 1-2 BFF mailers
This does not include guest appearances on other people’s shows
By stretching myself to show up in these ways, I have discovered that there’s not always an inverse relationship between consistency and quality—at least for me.🌟 5 Key Takeaways
Check your assumptions about causation vs. correlation. For example, more time doesn’t necessarily equal more money (or higher quality); maybe less time requires firmer boundaries, smarter systems, increasing delegation
Keeping up with a stretchy level of creative output doesn’t mean caving into the downsides of quantity: throwing in the kitchen sink to keep up with shiny shoulds or client demands out of insecurity
Nothing needs to be forever: Trust yourself to be creative and resourceful in the moment if/when you need to slow down or take a break.
Align your production schedule with what you will be proud to produce, and look for secondary benefits of each creative output such as networking, catching up with friends, reading books
Do beware of burnout: Look for alignments to make things easier (cross-posting bits of the same content across multiple places), and put a Delightfully Tiny Team in place who can help take the pressure off.
📝 Permission
Aim for consistency even over quality (knowing that “babysitting the work” doesn’t always help anyway), and permission to keep publishing even through energetic highs and lows.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next
Look back at your creative history: do you do better work with more constraints or fewer? What’s your sweet spot? There is no right answer. Bonus: Put a team and/or resources in place to help bolster accountability, take responsibility off your shoulders, and that raises the stakes (in a good way) of missing a deadline.🔗 Resources Mentioned
Articles: Emily McDowell’s Unqualified—Paid Subscribers: READ THIS!
Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h: Mutually Assured Rejection Part One, Part Two; Morning Rush, Afternoon Crushed, The Business Yips & 51/49, Love That! For You 🙄
Video: Ira Glass—The Gap Between Taste and Talent
Podcast Production: One Stone Creative
Apps: Substack
📚 Books Mentioned
Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
Life After College
🎧 Related Episodes
BFF Private Feed (with free preview): Substack Q&A with Linda Lebrun from the Writer Outreach Team
Pivot: 123: Peeking Out From The Plateau — My Latest Pivots
Free Time: 222: Why I migrated my three email lists to Substack (BFF Bonus Replay)
138: ⛵️Stop Sailing the Sea of Shiny Shoulds
060: Triangle of Tradeoffs
130: Day in the Life of a Podcast Episode
✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/230 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oct 3, 2023 • 55min
229: How (and When) to Trust Yourself and Others with Ilise Benun
Ilise Benun, a returning guest, discusses topics such as confidence, starting her own business, tolerance for silence, and putting her phone number in her newsletter. They explore trusting oneself, the importance of action, building courage, understanding the magic money formula, staying visible on multiple platforms, knowing oneself, and the healing power of vulnerability.

Oct 2, 2023 • 13min
😬 On Moving Through Vulnerability Hangovers — Preview of October Bonus for Paying Subscribers
This is a free preview of this month's bonus episode for paying Free Time subscribers. Listen to the full episode (plus 100+ in the archives) and join us for live Q&A calls here »***They say write from the scar, not the wound—but what do you do when you feel called to write or speak from the wound? Do you forge ahead, knowing you will wake up the next day with a raging vulnerability hangover? Or do you keep it inside, bottled up for a future sell-by date?Scott asks:I'd love to hear you talk about seeking recognition / validation from others. Yep, kinda personal, so a bit vulnerable sharing here in direct email, but I do wonder if it's something that lies beneath the surface for me.Possibly combined with an uncertainty about taking a step out of the corporate path about 5 years ago to go into full-time sports coaching and having a lot of pondering about that decision esp based on financial implications that came with it."Somebody tell me I'm doing the right thing / doing well / pat on the back" kinda chat would be amazing. Thanks again.💬 What helps you move through vulnerability hangovers? What helps you try vulnerability experiments in the first place? Join as a paying member or BFF to see the full show notes (related books, articles, and podcast episodes), then share your thoughts in the comments here » Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sep 29, 2023 • 29min
228: The Burdensome B’s—Four Red Flags Signaling it’s Time to Make The Big (Delegation) Leap
In this podcast, the hosts discuss the red flags indicating the need for delegation in business. They explore the zones of functioning and the importance of focusing on one's zone of genius. Additionally, they highlight the benefits of delegating tasks, focusing on strengths, and the negative consequences of not doing so.

Sep 26, 2023 • 30min
227: 🎁 The Best Gifting Strategies and Biggest Mistakes with John Ruhlin
John Ruhlin, founder of Giftology, shares strategies and mistakes when it comes to gifting. Topics include the power of thoughtful gifts, significance of human connections, importance of complete gifts, and gifting strategies and budgeting.

Sep 22, 2023 • 14min
226: Is your business a hot mess? If yes, let's celebrate — Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h
I used to refer to myself as a hot mess often in the early blogging days circa 2008, until someone scolded me saying it wasn’t a nice way to describe myself, that maybe it wasn’t the best self-image to curate. So I stopped. But I lost something in dropping the “hot” and the “mess” as I now approach middle age (and grandma-status in my soul).Today's post is a crossover from my newest project, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h: Divine disaster diaries from a bread-winning business owner living in New York city. This is a paid Substack where I share personal essays about the real nitty-gritty aspects of running a business, especially when sh*t hits the fan. My friend Leanne calls it “business reality TV.” My husband Michael says it's picking up where Sex and the City left off, but this time about money.You can follow me directly on my profile page at Substack to see what I’m publishing across ‘Doh, Free Time, and Pivot at http://substack.com/@jennyblake.📝 Permission
To have messes in your business at the moment—even hot, complicated, gnarly messes. You are still here, and you are still learning and trying and troubleshooting; that’s all that matters.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next
Take a day or two off! Celebrate the mess if it means you’re still in business :)🔗 Resources Mentioned
Articles: Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h—Hot Mess
NYT—Heat Singes the Mind, Not Just the Body
View From the Wing—San Francisco Is A Mess, And The Owner Of The City's Largest Hotel Is Just Walking Away
Apps: Substack
📚 Books Mentioned
Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
Life After College
🎧 Related Episodes
Free Time: 223: The Confidence Trap: Why You Don’t Need It to Do Big Things (SPARKED Crossover)
🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review✍️ Check out Jenny’s personal business essays on Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/226 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sep 19, 2023 • 46min
225: How to Write a Must-Read Nonfiction Book with AJ Harper
“A book is not about something. A book is for someone.” That’s the mantra that drives AJ Harper’s work, that includes ghostwriting over one hundred books (and working on many more one-off chapters and projects).In this conversation, she shares the “life of a book” process in her writing partnership with Mike Michalowicz (ten books together and counting!), what most authors get wrong when writing the conclusion, her favorite tried-and-true question to solicit “unexpected, delicious responses from interviewees,” and how to calibrate expectations for timing around the writing, editing, and creative process.More About AJ: AJ Harper is an editor and publishing strategist who helps authors write transformational books that enable them to build readership, grow their brand, and make a significant impact on the world. As ghostwriter and as developmental editor, she has worked with hundreds of authors, from newbies to New York Times bestselling authors with millions of books sold. She is writing partner to business author Mike Michalowicz, and together they’ve written ten books, including Profit First. AJ is the author of Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives—Including Your Own.🌟 3 Key Takeaways
Before you start writing, every nonfiction book needs three key elements: a transformational message, ideal reader, and a promise you can deliver on.
AJ’s Reader Transformation Sequence: Readers will engage with a life-changing book in the following order: buy, read, finish, act on, tell.
There’s a difference between story, anecdote, and case study: Stories have a beginning, middle, and an end and are told with suspense and often a transformational moment; anecdotes are smaller moments you capture as you move through the world (or from others); case studies are more detailed client examples that illustrate results.
📝 Permission: Abandon your timeline. Don’t overly obsess about deadlines, timelines, and where the book fits in your business plan.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: We can all take strange comfort in knowing that no matter how many books you’ve written or how successful you are in business, “No amount of experience or preparation can save you from being nervous about the work you’re putting out into the world.”🔗 Resources Mentioned
AJ on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn
Book Bonuses: WriteAMustReadBook.com
Templates: Free Time Author Toolkit
Work with AJ: Top Three Book Workshop, Must-Read Editing Workshop
Articles: Notes from Prince Harry’s Ghostwriter
Hallmark Movie: Unexpected Christmas
App: Christmas Hallmark Movies
📚 Books Mentioned
Write a Must-Read: Craft a Book That Changes Lives―Including Your Own
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
All In: How Great Leaders Build Unstoppable Teams ****by Mike Michalowicz
Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
Life After College
🎧 Related Episodes
JB’s Spotify Playlist: Behind-the-Book
Free Time: 103: How to Land a Literary Agent and Publisher with David Moldawer (Part One), 105: “Don’t write the wrong book!” with David Moldawer (Part Two), 032: Courageous Marketing With Mike Michalowicz
Pivot: 164: Fix This Next (And Stop Keeping Up With The Entrepre-Joneses) with Mike Michalowicz
🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join🛠 Get instant access to the Free Time Toolkit: http://itsfreetime.com/toolkit💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/225 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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