Free Time with Jenny Blake

“How do you decide who has the power to judge you? Who are you seeking to please? Is that validation directly in alignment with how you are rewarded and how you're organized?”

Seth Godin is back with a brand new book, This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans, and if you loved Free Time, I know you will love this one for geeking out on systems thinking!

We discuss how his author strategy has shifted over time, why he’s piloting a new type of publishing contract with this book, how he felt when asked to leave a weekly poker game for not taking big enough risks, and how The Innovator’s Dilemma relates to companies like Google, NPR, and Netflix (he was in the room as NPR purposefully missed the boat on podcasting).

More About Seth: Seth Godin is a renowned author, entrepreneur, and marketing expert who has profoundly influenced modern business thinking through his blog, with over 9,000 daily posts and counting. Known for his innovative ideas on marketing, leadership, and personal growth, Godin has authored 22 bestselling books in over 39 languages. He is also the coordinator of The Carbon Almanac, which he calls “the most important project of my career.”

Stop seeking authority and start taking responsibility. Time is ours; sooner or later, the story we tell ourselves belongs to us. That doesn't mean it's easy. It just means that given the situation you're in, you could make something better and no one can stop you.

If you feel creatively stagnant, try switching up your environment. For example, Seth took train rides with no destination in mind to get into a writing groove. Bonus: Try asking Claude.ai to expand on a list or framework you’ve created. What might you be missing?

🌟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

💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter for access to the Free Time Toolkit

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/272

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Hi Friends! Although the podcast is still paused, I'm dropping into the feed this week and next with two very special conversations :)

Today is a bonus episode from February for paid subscribers with Todd Sattersten, publisher and owner of Bard Press, and next week features Seth Godin and his new book, This Is Strategy.

If you haven't already listened, check out part one here (episode 261) first. Todd is so committed to helping his authors succeed that he only publishes one book each year. Today he's sharing how to investigate and possibly reposition a book when a launch isn’t gaining traction, his three-sentence problem statement to attract ideal readers, and why the Table of Contents and first chapter are essential parts of the marketing process.

Drop the idea that your launch day is 24 hours. Taking a page from Tim Grahl’s Your First 1000 Copies, just do one thing a week. Use the HBO model of a little bit every week, not the Netflix binge release-watch.

With the Free Time book approaching its three-year bookiversary on March 22, 2025, help 🎁 give the gift of free time :D

✍️ Check out my personal business essays at Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h with Jenny Blake

💌 Subscribe to Free Time with Jenny Blake for access to the Free Time Toolkit

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As I round the corner into this ninth year of podcasting and after over 700 episodes, today I’m announcing a pause for both shows.

Listen in to hear what factors helped me reach this decision across time, money, energy, depressing industry articles, the pace of both shows’ growth, and mix of additional business factors that make this an important moment to pause and regroup. You might also appreciate the even deeper dive with my longtime friend (and first coach) Adrian Klaphaak in Pivot episode 360: 📦 Unpacking a Big Business Decision and Dissolving Related Doubts.

While I will be sad not to bring fresh episodes to your earbuds every week, I truly want to say thank you so much for being here. This only represents a small fraction of listeners, but I was genuinely touched receiving the Spotify Wrapped for Podcasters stats at the end of 2023 after I knew I would be pausing once all the episodes “in the can” went live.

There’s one thing I know for sure: I will miss you during this break 🥹

Pause and regroup on any of your creative projects so you can create space to hear what’s next.

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/270

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“I don’t get on the airplane—and definitely not the stage—unless all invoices are paid in full.”

When my friend and fellow keynote speaker Joey Coleman said this to me over coffee, I started drilling him for details: Really?! How do you have the nerve to say that to a speaking client?! How do you avoid caving in to make sure their event doesn’t fall apart if they haven’t paid in time? What about clients who work for highly bureaucratic companies that insist on their “standard” net-120 terms?

In this illuminating conversation, Joey shares his best practices for getting paid on time—every time by setting, stating, and upholding better boundaries (and contracts) with clients.

More About Joey: As an award-winning speaker for over twenty years, Joey Coleman works with organizations around the world ranging from small startups to major brands such as Volkswagen Australia, Zappos, and Whirlpool. His First 100 Days® methodology fuels the remarkable experiences his clients deliver and dramatically improves their profits.

It is unbelievably challenging to start and run your own business. Because you are so bold to do that, give yourself permission to courageously set your boundaries. The more clear and comfortable you are stating how to work with you and holding firm when pushed, the happier you will be as a business owner, and the longer you will be in business.

Try Joey’s approach to sharing the investment for working together. List a range on your website, and the first time your desired client learns how much it costs to work with you should be hearing it from you, not reading a document.

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/269

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What mysterious ingredients make a book launch successful? What number of first-week and first-year sales truly make a difference to a book’s longevity? What can you do to turn lagging numbers around?

In a flagship illuminating post for the industry, Todd Sattersten, publisher and owner of Bard Press, shared his findings in The Magic Number. In this behind-the-business conversation from October 2023, you’ll hear him generously talk me through how I could help Free Time get there—with a much-needed morale boost at the end.

More About Todd: Todd Sattersten is the publisher and owner of Bard Press, a book publisher that works with authors to create best-selling books in business, personal development and technology. Before Bard Press, Todd served as general manager of IT Revolution and president of business book retailer 800-CEO-READ. He is the author of Every Book Is a Startup and the co-author of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time (Portfolio, 2009). Todd lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Amy and their three awesome kids.

Put your ego down. Remember, you want your readers to be better, to improve their lives. Our job is to find more people to help, and there are still so many opportunities for that. You don’t actually have to stop promoting the book after it’s launched—there is nobody stopping you!

Send a survey out to your readers and community, ideally 90 to 120 days after the book comes out. Check out the one Jenny sent here—and please take it if you can at the same time!

📝 Check out full show notes and share: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/268

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Laura Mae Martin has a fascinating role as the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google in the Office of the CEO—one that she helped create six years ago (with big thanks to Jenny Wood for introducing us!). ****She coaches Google’s top executives on the best ways to manage their time and energy and sends out a weekly productivity newsletter that reaches over fifty thousand employees.

Today we’re talking about her forthcoming book, Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing. We discuss what the most senior-level executives do differently when it comes to time management (and what they still struggle with), five strategies for saying no, taming inbox stress with The Laundry Method, cozy corners, pairing activities with certain locations (hot spots and not spots), and what differentiates truly excellent executive assistants.

More About Laura: During her nearly fourteen-year tenure at Google, Laura Mae Martin has worked in sales, product operations, event planning, and now executive coaching. She holds a bachelor of science in business administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, with her husband and three children under five.

Give yourself plenty of down time in order to have highly productive uptime; drop the guilt! Rest leads to better overall productivity.

Stop wasting energy points! Eliminate any emails from your inbox that you don’t need to see: the unread, notifications, newsletters (Jenny uses SaneBox for this), and make sure you help the things you need to see stick out.

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/267

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While the title of this episode, The Framework Framework™ is tongue-in-cheek, I’m pulling this out of the BFF bonus vault because it’s one of the community’s favorites.

I’m sharing the first steps to how you can set up a framework to help bolster your IP and your business; either by scaling through programs like certification and licensing, and to make your material more memorable and accessible to the groups you care most about reaching.

I shared this in June 2023 as a follow-up to the fantastic workshop that Pamela Slim did for us on Certification and Licensing. You can access over 100 bonus episodes and that workshop by joining Free Time as a paying subscriber. You’ll get instant access to Stephanie Huston’s How to Batch Create and Customize Your Annual Content Calendar, with an epic multi-tab template in Google Sheets. Be sure to also check out the resources below, including Wes Kao’s detailed LinkedIn post on how to turn your ideas into frameworks.

🌟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

💌 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

🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to podcasts

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/266

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What do you do when you lose your biggest client? If you haven’t already, listen to part one for some answers—264: What to Do When You Lose Your Biggest Client— and save these links for a rainy day :)

The next time you’re going through something challenging in your business, remember: you are not alone! I hope you find comfort through the voices of some of my dearest friends, former podcast guests, and favorite Heart-Based Business owners who are speaking from experience about how they've handled situations just like this.

If you want the full scoop on what founding BFF member Leanne Hughes calls “business reality TV” on how I have been handling losing my biggest favorite client, I encourage you to check out the full series of posts at Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h. Thank you for listening, and huge thanks to our contributors to this series!

🌟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

💌 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/265

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What do you do when you lose your biggest client? That was my Spotify search query for podcast episodes on this topic in the summer of 2023. It came up empty—there was not a single podcast episode on this topic. Of course not. Who wants to admit out loud and in their archives that they've lost their biggest client? In the past, I probably wouldn't have fessed up to this either. Except for the fact that now it's what I wish I could see, read, and hear. Today’s compilation episode is here to fix that!

If you've been reading Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h, you know that the origin story for my new-ish paid Substack was losing my biggest, most beloved corporate client in the summer of 2023. Getting The News shook me up so much because not only was it one of my longest-running favorite licensing clients, but it also represented at least six figures of income for the next six months being instantly wiped off the table.

Now, at least, we will all have something to turn to (and return to). My goal is not to provide advice but rather to offer some comfort through the voices of some of my dearest friends and favorite Heart-Based Business owners who are speaking from experience about how they've handled situations just like this.

Maybe you don't need this episode right now, but if something does happen in the future (even if we hope not), you'll remember that you can come back and listen on a proverbial rainy day.

Please share with any fellow business owner friends who might be going through a tough time, and enormous thanks to the wonderful group of friends and former podcast guests who shared their stories for this two-part episode!

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/264

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“I am great in the early, messy days and I know that about myself, so I designed my business around serving others in that stage.”

In this conversation with business strategist (genius!) Michelle Warner, we cover the three growth stages most relevant to tiny business owners, how to fix broken business models, validating product-market-founder fit, the difference between traffic-based versus relationship-based sales and marketing, borrowing aligned audiences, leading a free monthly Q&A to “catch” their interest afterward, imagining sales as a downhill snowball, and how to scale while still staying Delightfully Tiny.

More About Michelle: Michelle Warner designs tiny companies that are built to last. With an MBA from one of the world’s top business schools and 15+ years experience growing small businesses, Michelle focuses on layering real world experience on top of classic business fundamentals to design businesses that are sustainable and scalable in the long term and resilient and adaptable in the short term.

It’s the way she grew her first business to 7+ figures, and it’s what she’s used to help 300+ CEO's create businesses that work for the important stuff: profit, energy, passion + time. She’s also the creator of Networking That Pays, the introvert-friendly, always awkward-free connection system that brings in reliable leads, consistent referrals and meaningful connections for your business - in 5 minutes a day.

Focus on sequence over strategy: you can execute strategies perfectly, but if you’re doing them in the wrong order, it’s not going to do a thing for you.

Take five minutes a day to reach out to one person across any of these four themes: thank you’s (be specific!), connections, asks, and catch-ups.

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/263

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