Free Time with Jenny Blake

Today, I’m sharing eight reasons I really appreciate having a team inbox using HelpScout. They’re not paying for this episode; I just can’t help but share software solutions that help me move from friction to flow in my business, especially when I have already spent a lot of time and money on ones that don’t work.📝 Permission: Stop managing a zillion inboxes and narrow them down to one centralized inbox for you and your team.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Set-up a shared inbox for your business, and set all of your work-related accounts to forward into it.🔗 Resources Mentioned Apps: HelpScout, TextExpander, Descript, SpeakPipe Related: Free Time Tools Jenny's Free Time Toolkit 📚 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 092: Train the System, Then the Person 086: The Cyrano Strategy for Delegating Important Comms 161: Inbox Taming with Yaro Starak 094: Top 5 Tools That Power My Business 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 BFF community for access to a monthly Q&A call, a private podcast feed with bonus content, and a 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: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/204 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we’re going behind the scenes of book launching, sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly (cries) resulting from the emotional rollercoaster that often surrounds the process of setting big projects loose into the world, including exhaustion, comparison, dashed hopes, and grief.🎧 If you haven’t already, be sure to listen to Natalie on the Pivot podcast in episode 329: Five Types of People-Pleasers from The Joy of Saying No.More About Natalie: Natalie Lue is the author of The Joy of Saying No: A Simple Plan to Stop People Pleasing, Reclaim Boundaries, and Say Yes to the Life You Want and for 8 years hosted The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast. She helps people learn how to reclaim themselves from their emotional baggage and increase emotional availability through self-care.📝 Permission: Do something at 70 percent and see what happens, giving yourself the gift of more energy and bandwidth.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Create a Mastermind group of friendtors to vent with, even if you don’t wait to air that grief (and those grievances) publicly. For related episodes, check out 078: How to Create Transformational Mastermind Groups and 188: Energy Capacity Planning and Finding Resonant Masterminds with Kelli Thompson.🔗 Resources Mentioned Natalie on the web, Instagram: @natlue, Twitter, Facebook, Substack: On Knowing Yourself Substack: On Knowing Yourself Quiz: Are You a People-Pleaser? Video: Natalie’s TV Show appearance on Lorraine—How To Stop People Pleasing & Start Saying No With Author Natalie Lue! 📚 Books Mentioned The Joy of Saying No by Natalie Lue Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead by Tosha Silver Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One 🎧 Related Episodes Natalie’s podcast: The Baggage Reclaim Sessions with Natalie Lue Jenny's Behind-the-Book playlist (Spotify) Pivot: 329: Five Types of People-Pleasers from The Joy of Saying No with Natalie Lue, 319: Who’s Sitting in the Boardroom of your Brain?, 320: Sustainable Ambition with Kathy Oneto, and 329: Five Types of People-Pleasers from The Joy of Saying No Free Time: 031: Eleventh-Hour Creative Gremlins, 064: The Vulnerability of Launching, 096: Book Sales Stats—One Month Post-Launch 🎉, 174: What Book Marketing has to do with Glass Blowing: Reflecting on Free Time’s 1-Year Bookiversary 🥂, 173: Cut Your Losses—Even While Pivoting in Public—with Khe Hy 🌟 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☎️ Submit a voice question or comment for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to our #200 celebration...part two! 🎉 These next 20 permission slips all about mindset, staying in the game, and the spiritual aspects of running a Heart-Based Business. Make sure to catch last week’s episode which had 20 of my favorites about doing less, charging more, and working in your zone of genius.📝 #202 Permission Slips 🎧 027: Time Management for Mortals with Oliver Burkeman — 📝 Admit that you are never going to get everything done. You're never going to get on top of everything. 🎧 183: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt with Madeleine Dore — 📝 Stop measuring the day by how productive you were. Embrace your day for what it wants to be. 🎧 173: Cut Your Losses—Even While Pivoting in Public—with Khe Hy — 📝 To feel. To cry. To fully experience and talk about what you’re going through. 🎧 137: Attracting Clients Through TikTok (without Letting the Algorithm Drive You) with Inna Aizenshtein — 📝 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. 🎧 033: Sparked with Jonathan Fields — 📝 Allow the thing that you seek to create be as much a manifestation of the essential nature of who you are as it is a mechanism to fill what you perceive to be a viable need in a marketplace. 🎧 041: Pay From the Heart Pricing with Mark Silver — 📝 Trust your heart. 🎧 171: Discovering Your Divine Assignment with Melissa Hughes (while Building with Grace and Ease) — 📝 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. 🎧 047: Beautiful Business with Steven Morris — 📝 Be your whole self and grant yourself permission to live your most beautiful life. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. 🎧 191: Structuring Free Time as a Single Parent while Grieving and Rebuilding with Karen Allen — 📝 Do what your soul is calling you to do. 🎧 013: The Self-Employed Ecosystem with Jeffrey Shaw — 📝 Do business in a way that actually feels good. 🎧 117: Tiny Marketing Actions with Pamela Slim — 📝 Drop the socialization that tells you that you should be in a different place than you are, doing more, feeling guilty for what you haven’t done. 🎧 004: Take a Stand with Antonio Neves — 📝 Being fine with who we are. 🎧 165: Are Your Clients Bringing Out the Best in You? Engineering the Evolution of Your Business with Ilise Benun — 📝 Stop listening to the scolding voice in your head. See your business as a laboratory, where everything is an experiment. 🎧 083: Breaking through Buyer’s Remorse—Never Lose a Customer Again with Joey Coleman — 📝 Be more gentle with yourself. 🎧 115: Successfully Taking Over as CEO from a Founder (MBS) with Shannon Minifie — 📝 To “earn your paycheck” over a long period of time. 🎧 147: How to Set Up Brand Partnerships with Justin Moore — 📝 Celebrate the business success you have already achieved. 🎧 121: How to Steer Through a Downturn and Stop Micromanaging with Annie Hyman Pratt — 📝 Drop the self-blame and self-disappointment. If you are a business owner, your self-compassion must exceed your ambition. 🎧 073: From CEO (Back) to Creator with Pat Flynn — 📝 To fail. There is no better learning than failure, so go ahead, try something new, do your best and learn from the results. 🎧 039: Permission to Glow with Kristoffer (KC) Carter — 📝 Breathe. There's time. 🎧 079: Behind the Launch with Antonio Neves (Part 2) — 📝 Share what scares you. Whatever secret you are terrified people will find out — or are embarrassed to say out loud — let it surface; it’s freeing to let the light in. 📝 Check out full show notes from this episode: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/202❤️ Join our private BFF community for Heart-Based Business owners Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You’ve heard of buyers remorse—but what about new hire’s remorse? That is the feeling of worry, regret or uncertainty that a new team member might have when taking a new role with your team. Today, returning guest Joey Coleman shares insights his new book, Never Lose an Employee Again: The Simple Path to Remarkable Retention.Make sure to also check out our previous conversation **083: Breaking through Buyer’s Remorse—Never Lose a Customer Again with Joey Coleman.More About Joey: Joey Coleman, author of the #2 Wall Street Journal bestseller, Never Lose a Customer Again: Turn Any Sale into Lifelong Loyalty in 100 Days, has helped organizations retain their best customers and team members by turning them into raving fans. He is an award-winning speaker and co-host of the Experience This! podcast. He’s also a former criminal defense lawyer and one of the most generous, energetic people I know. Today we’re talking about his new book, Never Lose an Employee Again: The Simple Path to Remarkable Retention.🌟 3 Key Takeaways Be intentional with designing a new team member’s experience: What systems do you need to make sure someone’s pivot doesn’t result in a faceplant? Orientation is different from onboarding: Orientation means introducing a new team member to their surroundings, with an overview of how things work in your business. Onboarding involves a structured series of contacts designed to create a warm, welcoming experience. The first hundred days are critical when it comes to making a good impression on a new team member. But don’t stop paying attention on day 101; you still want to be creating surprise and delight moments throughout their tenure. 📝 Permission: Be gentler with yourself. Many entrepreneurs are great at being gentle with team members, vendors and clients, but are way too critical of themselves. Think about the experience of you interacting with you, and consider what you can do to provide little moments of delight and appreciation to yourself.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Send a quick video selfie to one of your team members (or extended team and/or contractors), thanking them for their contribution to your business.🔗 Resources Mentioned Joey on the Web, Twitter, LinkedIn Video: Savannah Bananas, Savannah Bananas’ website, Pieces of Flair - Office Space Articles: Architectural Digest’s Before and After Flair! Wizard Pins Tool: Hootsuite 📚 Books Mentioned Never Lose an Employee Again and Never Lose a Customer Again by Joey Coleman Giftology ****by John Ruhlin The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins Gallup’s It’s the Manager by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Joey’s Podcast: Experience This! Pivot: 177: Pivot Method as 4-Stage Coaching Framework Free Time: 083: Breaking through Buyer’s Remorse with Joey Coleman 146: New? Help Us Welcome the Next You (A Message for Your New Team Members) 145: Tips for Training Part-Time Team Members with Kaneisha Grayson 128: A Tale of Two Teas, On Botching the Basics and Correcting Mistakes (Or Not) 🌟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.🛠 Get instant access to the Free Time Toolkit: http://itsfreetime.com/toolkit☎️ Submit a voice question or comment for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask📝 Check out full show notes from this episode: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/201 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, hey, Free Timers, we have arrived at episode 200! 🎉 To celebrate, I’m giving you the ultimate permission slip compilation (two in fact). At the end of every episode, I ask our guests to give fellow business owners a permission slip to do something differently or drop something altogether. 📝 Permission Slips 🎧 123: “Pricing is Branding” — Anti-Time Management with Richie Norton — 📝 Rethink projects with too many steps or obstacles toward creating the lifestyle you want. How can you bake your dream into the process from day one? 🎧 188: Energy Capacity Planning, Pricing, and Finding Resonant Masterminds with Kelli Thompson —📝 Drop anything that drains your energy! 🎧 169: Running a Goal-Free Business with Stephen Shapiro — 📝 Do less and get more. Each day, imagine you only have one hour you can work. How would you spend that hour? 🎧 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin — 📝 To rebuild your business model from the ground up. 🎧 145: Tips for Training Part-Time Team Members with Kaneisha Grayson — 📝 Keep some of the tasks that you are excellent at and bring money into the business, and let go of the feeling that you’re not acting like “the CEO.” 🎧 091: Quarterly Planning with Charlie Gilkey — 📝 Drop at least one project that does not create cash flow, opportunity, or visibility. 🎧 101: Run Your Business with Exquisite Greatness and Tiny Art Projects with Alexandra Franzen — 📝 Give yourself a raise! If you are excellent at what you do, significantly increase what you charge. 🎧 111: Building a Second Brain with Tiago Forte — 📝 Not to be everywhere on all channels. Pick just one place that best fits your personality and style for your unique artistic expression. 🎧 167: How to Transform Your Approach to Community-Building with Gina Bianchini — 📝 You don’t have to produce a lot of content! Flip the script from producing content to convening human beings towards a common goal. 🎧 181: Be Irreplaceable with My Creative Coach Jay Acunzo — 📝 Focus on resonance before—or even at the expense of—reach. Let go of the idea of adding more people until you have a small group reacting in a big way. 🎧 035: The Long Game with Dorie Clark — 📝 Not to network or connect with people when you don’t feel like it. 🎧 002: Eliminate Email with Cal Newport — 📝 Electronic communication does not have to be a super important part of your work life. 🎧 161: Inbox Taming with Yaro Starek — 📝 To be involved in, not responsible for, your inbox. 🎧 133: Hire People Who Are Better Than You with Terri Trespicio — 📝 Stop taking pride in doing everything yourself. Delight in the fact that you need help and support to do your best work, and you can get it. 🎧 099: How to Find Your Perfect Problem with Jim McKelvey — 📝 Charge people for your time, and bill for your attention. 🎧 107: How to Know When You’ve Gotten Pricing Wrong with Jacquette M. Timmons — 📝 Quote an uncomfortable price. Detach yourself from the outcome by treating it as an exercise; doing this once will make it easier next time. 🎧 143: Exploring Time, Money, and Energy Capacity with Tara McMullin and Charlie Gilkey — 📝 Shift your request evaluation default from, “Do I have time to squeeze this in?” to “Do I have time to do this well?” 🎧 139: Paid Newsletter Secrets and Organizing Knowledge with David Elikwu — 📝 Shut down projects on purpose so you don’t kill them by accident. Be intentional about possibilities you leave open. 🎧 016: IP Licensing with Lee LeFever — 📝 Forget the way things have been done in the past. You don’t need to be a billion-dollar unicorn. 🎧 131: Scaling Joy While Streamlining Business Overhead and Navigating ADHD with Kaneisha Grayson — 📝 Ignore business advice that doesn’t work for you, or that—for whatever reason—you just can’t do. Stop internalizing failures. 📝 Check out full show notes from this episode and share it with a friend: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/200 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s the daily free time sweet spot? Between two to five hours, according to today’s guest, professor and researcher Cassie Holmes. In this conversation, you’ll hear about the wedding that wasn’t — sparking Cassie’s quest to determine the areas of highest agency for improving our own happiness, why time well spent is such a big factor to that end, the powerful question her now husband opened with on their first date, and how to buy better time.More About Cassie: Cassie Holmes is a professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, an award-winning teacher and researcher on time and happiness, and bestselling author of Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most.🌟 3 Key Takeaways Too much free time can lead to less happiness: There are diminishing returns on more than five hours of free time a day (if we’re not on vacation) because we do value work activities that foster meaning, connection, and purpose. Least happy activities: Lonely, obligated, and wasteful. Happiest activities: Connecting through conversation, fresh air / getting outside, and “buying better time” through delegation 📝 Permission: Prioritize your own personal happiness. It’s tempting to try and prioritize the happiness and needs of others, but when we personally feel happier, we show up better for the people around us than we do otherwise.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Buy better time—identify one household chore that you could delegate, and/or experiment with a meal service like Thistle, Gobble, Factor, etc.🔗 Resources Mentioned Cassie on the web Parable: “We’ll see” Research: UCLA Anderson Review—Too Much Free Time? Blame Solitude or Lack of Productive Activity Tool: The School of Life—Conversation Cards and Decks Meal Services: Thistle, Gobble, Factor 📚 Books Mentioned Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most by Cassie Holmes Scarcity: The New Science of Having Less and How It Defines Our Lives by Sendhil Mullainathan Time Smart by Ashley Whillans 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: RadReads x Pivot & Free Time, 046: Time Margin—Are You Drowning, Treading Water, or Gliding?, 188: Energy Capacity Planning, Pricing, and Finding Resonant Masterminds with Kelli Thompson Pivot: 315: Intuition-Building, Spotting Pedestal Syndrome, and Closing the Confidence Gap with Kelli Thompson, 61: Virtual Freedom: Overcome Superhero Syndrome and Start Outsourcing with Chris Ducker 🌟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 Time Well Spent: http://itsfreetime.com/join🛠 Access the Free Time Toolkit: http://itsfreetime.com/toolkit☎️ Submit a voice question or comment for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you catch a wishie, what do you yearn for? Today’s book club episode might shift your “wish” hereafter to just one powerful offering.Tosha Silver’s grassroots-to-bestselling book Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead is a cornerstone of my collection, one that changed my life when I first read it nearly a decade ago.The stories from this book were adapted from two years of Tosha’s columns for the San Francisco Examiner, after she spent 25 years giving nearly 30,000 readings to people from all over the world. After OO became a self-published sensation, she got a traditional book deal and republished with Atria a few years later.More about Tosha: For the past 30 years, Tosha Silver has taught people around the world practical ways to align with Inner Love. She’s the author of Outrageous Openness, Change Me Prayers, and It’s Not Your Money. She particularly enjoys finding fresh, funny ways to embrace the Divine, while avoiding conventional jargon and cliches.🌟 3 Big Ideas Divine Order and Divine Source: Learn to become detached to what the mind wants or thinks it needs; let go of grasping. Tosha writes, “Divine Order says that the perfect solution to any problem is already selected if you allow yourself to be guided; Divine Source says there is a natural Universal Abundance that knows how to meet every need. Harmonizing with this Force of Love—call it the Shakti, God, Goddess, One Mind, whatever you will—is the golden key to everything.” Outrageous Openness and Surrender: Surrender to the flow, “what wants to happen.” There’s also a bigger picture to manifestation and the much maligned Law of Attraction that includes our prarabdha karma, our soul’s course of study. Tosha writes, “Whenever I can, I love to be receptive to how the day wishes to unfold without any planning or interference of the mind. Since this skill grows with practice, I’ll intentionally create situations that involve relaxing and letting my instincts guide me.” Offering: When problems feel bigger or more intractable than your ability to meet them, offer them up to the divine, even the divine higher wisdom within you that’s already attuned to the universe at the deepest levels. Ask to be shown next steps. When experiencing intense writer’s block with OO, Tosha offered it to God: “If You wish this [book] written, I cannot do this on my own. You know my limits. But the perfect route is already selected, so if this is Your Will, fling open the doors. If this is meant to be, please bring the right help.” 📝 Permission: Let go of your attachment to the way things need to be. Release your grip, open your palms in an offering of surrender to something higher than yourself.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Try offering your biggest challenge by saying, “My perfect new path is already selected and will arrive at the right time. I’ll be shown the steps to receive it.” As Tosha writes, “Don’t strong-arm a solution. Call in Divine Order. Allow that the right solution is already chosen and you will be guided to it effortlessly at the right time. Then let go. Follow the steps as they appear. You’ll be shown the way.”🔗 Resources Mentioned Tosha on the web, Facebook, Twitter Community: Outrageous Openness Forum Article: How "Outrageous Openness" was Born Songs: Fun. “Some Nights” (YouTube), Spotify), and “We Are Young” (Spotify) 📚 Books Mentioned Tosha Silver’s books: 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 Florence Scovel-Shinn’s The Game of Life and How to Play It and The Collection Jenny’s books: 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: 170: 🌈 “Imagine a World of Abundance” ✨ Pivot: 27: Intuition And Frequency With Penney Peirce Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Liking is the great fog of the mind.”—Todd HermanYou’ve heard the adage that people need to know, like, and trust you to want to do business with you. But is that really true?Today’s guest, longtime entrepreneur and peak performance coach Todd Herman, believes liking is not nearly as important as respect, and can even prevent us from making strong decisions. We also cover how to organize your work according to your strengths, creating growth loops for growing the business, and making key adjustments as your business grows.More About Todd: Todd Herman is the creator of the multi-award-winning Leadership & Skills Development Program, 90 Day Year, author of the WSJ bestselling book, The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life, and recipient of Inc. 500’s Fastest Growing Companies Award. Todd is also the founder of Upcoach, a platform to help coaches simplify, organize, and automate their coaching.🌟 3 Key Takeaways Know-Respect-Trust (with a little “l” at the end): Drop the need to be liked as a main priority of how you show up online, replacing it with respect instead. Theme your days: Organize the different kinds of work you do into different daily themes over the course of a week, such as coaching day, writing day, and domino day (catch-up), to optimize your energy and inspiration. The Transformation-Led Growth Loop: Four stages of working with a 1:1 client can be systematized to ensure successful outcomes: Onboarding clients so they start seeing results quickly; building a strong relationship through encouragement and accountability; demonstrating progress the client is making; and retention by **keeping people invested, engaging with new/next products and services. 📝 Permission: Drop the need to make your business look like someone else’s. Be honest with yourself about what you want, and ditch the idea that you need to scale, scale, scale.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Institute theme days: What kinds of similar work can you batch together to do more efficiently and joyfully, and when in your week does it make the most sense to do it?🔗 Resources Mentioned Todd on the web, IG: @todd_herman, Twitter, LinkedIn Article: Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting by Omar Wasow Program: Peak Athlete (licensing) Software: Upcoach People: Jordan Harbinger, Nassim Taleb 📚 Books Mentioned Nassim Taleb’s books The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham The Mental Game of Baseball: A Guide to Peak Performance by H.A. Dorfman The Referral Engine by John Jantsch Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Beyond a Million: 066: The Science Behind Peak Performers and the 90-Day Year with Todd Herman Free Time: 006: Going Pro on Podcasting with Jordan Harbinger 140: How to License Your IP (Intellectual Property) 186: Licensing 201 — Q&A (Part 1) on Product Development, Attracting Clients, and Sales Process and 187: Licensing 201 on Pricing + Packaging, Train-the-Trainer, Delivery, and Legal 127: Protect Your Idea Factory, Build a Creative Flywheel, and Go Behind-the-Scenes of Book Publishing with Todd Henry 058: Look for Measurable Loops 🌟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🛠 Get instant access to the Free Time Toolkit: http://itsfreetime.com/toolkit☎️ Submit a voice question or comment: http://itsfreetime.com/ask📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/197 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What’s it like to be at a conference with “fancy” people, when you’re the one feeling like you snuck in a side door as a seat filler? Okay, okay — that’s just my imposter monster talking. In today’s experimental episode, I’m taking you behind-the-scenes of the recent 5-day main TED conference in Vancouver, building on Pivot episode 325: 10+ Conference Networking Strategies with Alisa Cohn.In full-on morning voice with a travel mic, I do a daily check-in about what I was nervous about, spontaneous serendipitous invites, fan-girling my favorite authors and podcasters, falling off the energy cliff, what gave me FOMO and JOMO, and my daily quest for coffee. Always. Find. The. Coffee.🌟 3 Key Takeaways Identify when you’re at your conversation-sparking best: time of day and format (1:1, small group, big group; format vs. informal gatherings) Trust that less can be more: Fewer, deeper conversations can be just as powerful, if not even longer lasting than more, shorter ones. Resist the pressure to maximize every single element of being at the event. Put yourself in the path of people: Even when you’re not invited to the fancy formal events, place yourself in a central place — like the hotel lobby or a coffee station — to attract random conversation from other people who are also looking to meet someone new, but may be similarly unsure about how to break the ice of conversation. 📝 Permission: Embrace JOMO, knowing you’ll be at your best if you say no to situations that tend to bring out your worst.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Send a follow-up note to reconnect with someone you met in the last year. Bonus: schedule a small group reunion event over brunch or dinner (or Zoom).🔗 Resources Mentioned Apply to attend the TED Conference in Vancouver Travel: Athletic Greens, TripIt Pro, Peloton, Tonal, my favorite Tumi carry-on bag People: Alexandra Franzen, Alisa Cohn, Jon Levy, Cameron Herold, Gina Bianchini, Amy Cuddy, Dan Harris, Scott Belsky, Krista Tippett, Jacob Weisburg Articles: Jon Levy Influencer Dinners 📚 Books Mentioned From Start-up to Grown Up: Grow Your Leadership to Grow Your Business by Alisa Cohn You're Invited: The Art and Science of Connection, Trust, and Belonging by Jon Levy Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges by Amy Cuddy The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture by Scott Belsky 10% Happier Revised Edition: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works--A True Story by Dan Harris Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes The Sensitive CEO Show with Rose Cox: An HSP’s Guide to Podcasting with Jenny Blake Free Time: 043: From Start-Up to Grown-Up (and Coach to Author) with Alisa Cohn 166: Crashing into Quiet Time 🏝️ 126: Creating Time Buffer—7 Strategies for Spacious Scheduling 084: Sprinkling the First 1,000 Serendipity Seeds of a Launch 167: Transform Your Approach to Community-Building with Gina Bianchini Pivot: 325: 10+ Conference Networking Strategies with Alisa Cohn 298: Networking in a New Niche and Becoming Broadway Investors with Dorie Clark and Alisa Cohn 251: Listener Q&A on (Furry) Imposter Monsters 324: Six Golden Shadows of the Imposter Complex with Tanya Geisler 77: 21+ Travel Tips, Tools and Apps — with Jenny Blake 302: Moving Beyond Burnout with Dr. Susan Biali Haas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Does the world really need this? This is one of the inevitable existential dilemmas of creative work. You have to decide that your work is worth your time and energy, because no one is asking you for it. Today’s guest, Jessica Abel, is someone whose work I have long admired for its richness and depth.In this conversation, we talk about navigating the “Dark Forests” of creativity; go behind-the-business when one of her most successful books, Out on the Wire, was taking off; the causes behind cyclical burnout; three revenue-generating paths that she’s seen work best; and calculating your enough number as a small business owner.More About Jessica: Jessica is an author and indie cartoonist-turned-creative business strategist (founder of Autonomous Creative) who has published a number of comics and prose books, including Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You're Drowning in Your Daily Life and Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio. She also hosts the Out on the Wire and The Autonomous Creative podcasts.🌟 3 Key Takeaways The Dark Forest is a creative phase when you question the value of a project and if you should even continue working on it. Three main ways to fund creative work: Low-cost products and mass marketing, fitting your creative projects around more traditional work, and/or designing a high-end high-ticket business. Calculate your enough number by determining the amount of money you need to meet all of your obligations (including taxes and long-term savings), then determine capacity for the number of clients you can take on or products you can create. Divide the first number by the second to yield the minimum amount you need to charge. 📝 Permission: You do not have to make your living from your creative work. Money doesn’t have to enter the picture at all for you to be the real thing, to make work that has an impact, that expresses something you need to express.✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Do the math on what would help you and your business thrive. If you haven’t already, check out the earlier conversation, 175: Give Yourself a Raise with Erin Haag.🔗 Resources Mentioned Jessica on the web, IG: @autonomouscreative, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn Articles: Hustle Culture is Really a Scam—On Cyclical Burnout, Brad Troemel’s Athletic Aesthetics, How do you know if it’s time to quit? On the Dark Forest (with Kazu Kibuishi’s tweet we referenced) Videos: THE GAP — Ira Glass on Taste vs. Talent, The New Masters of Storytelling, SPX Spotlight on Jessica Abel and NPR Brad Troemel on the MFA pyramid scheme, Jessica at Creative Mornings on Flow Tools: YNAB, Jessica’s calculator, ****When do I earn out? (Jane Friedman's calculator for traditional book deals) 📚 Books Mentioned Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio Growing Gills: How to Find Creative Focus When You're Drowning in Your Daily Life Trish Trash: Rollergirl of Mars Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One Life After College 🎧 Related Episodes Jessica’s podcasts: The Autonomous Creative, Out on the Wire Also Mentioned: This American Life, Radiolab, Planet Money Free Time: 181: Be Irreplaceable with My Creative Coach Jay Acunzo 182:🏚️The Challenges of Renovating a (Business) House while Living in It 175: Give Yourself a Raise with Erin Haag 162: Should You Self-Publish? (Part One) 164: Let’s Talk Royalties re: Publishing Options (Part Two) 174: What Book Marketing has to do with Glass Blowing: Reflecting on Free Time’s 1-Year Bookiversary 🥂 📝 Check out full show notes from this episode and share it with a friend: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/195 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices