“’Something I always say: at the very least, do it for the plot. Do it for the story. Be bold in life, mostly because not being bold is boring as hell.’ Margot tipped her head back in glittery laughter and I felt my chest expand in hope.”

That’s just one of many glittering conversations that the main character of Jamie Varon’s debut novel, Main Character Energy, has with her Aunt, a guiding light who helps her find her voice and pursue her publishing dream. In today’s conversation, Jamie and I go behind the book to talk about how fiction differs from nonfiction, working with a writing coach, the importance of giving yourself permission for a “zero” draft, moving past the mental machinations of envy and the desire for logical explanations for others’ success, and so much more.

Be sure to check out our previous conversation for the Pivot podcast 278: Radically Content with Jamie Varon.

More About Jamie: Jamie Varon’s writing has been seen across the internet for over a decade, from her early days of personal blogging all the way to features in publications such as Teen Vogue, HuffPost, GOOD, Complex, and many more. Over the years, both her long-form essays and short-form prose have garnered millions of reads and views, using her signature style of combining personal story with universal themes.

Drop the perfectionism. Let it be messy and uncertain. Let yourself discover how you work, what you’re good at, and what you need to improve upon. There’s so much wisdom in action. Give yourself permission to write Novel Zero.

Envy and comparison doesn’t go away through logic, even though our mind craves answers and formulas to “figure it out.” Return to your spiritual practices. I do my best, at my pace; I accept and love where I’m at; it always makes sense, it’s always working in my favor. Trust that. Bonus: Take a break from social media.

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”In a society that glorifies titles, visibility, reach, and the grind, taking a beat to opt out of all that isn’t easy,” today’s guest Mel Dizon writes in the origin story to her pop-up Substack.

Mel shares how she defines an accidental sabbatical; the energetic urgency and pent up ambition that let her know it was time to leave her job; the permission she needed to give herself; navigating the fears that followed; how publishing her process out loud has helped with courage and accountability; and trusting herself to make important decisions when it’s time, while also not rushing that process.

More About Mel: Mel Dizon is a writer and editor; a runner, CrossFitter, pickleballer, and efficiency fanatic; a former therapist, consultant, and coach; a dog, pool, and scalding-hot-dirty-chai lover. She started writing words for dollars back in 1993. She’s written thousands of articles, ghostwritten many books and essays, facilitated hundreds of video interviews, and written copy for everyone from NYT best-selling authors to companies like Google. Melani dreamed about taking a sabbatical for years, and the universe finally conspired to light the way. Turns out she’s a big fan. She currently writes life & dying on Substack for those in the middle of the reinvention mess, seeking to “live a life worth writing about.”

Who am I doing this for? If it’s for anybody other than yourself, pause and reconsider.

Take a page out of Mel’s post, On Calling People Out for Being Awesome and her book, The Hand Written Letter Project:

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Just because you use pretty words that sound nice doesn’t mean they are effective. Although we know what we do because we do it all the time; it’s hard to separate that from what your audience wants and experiences. Thankfully, today’s guest is here to help.

Ben Guttmann is a marketing and communications expert and author of Simply Put: Why Clear Messages Win — and How to Design Them.

We discuss why business owners often muck up their sales pages (what I call invitation letters), how to reduce friction when attracting clients and customers, and the toll that writing too much takes on the receiver.

More About Ben: Ben is former co-founder and managing partner at Digital Natives Group, an award-winning agency that worked with the NFL, I Love NY, Comcast NBCUniversal, Hachette Book Group, The Nature Conservancy, and other major clients. He’s an experienced marketing executive and educator on a mission to get leaders to more effectively connect by simplifying their message. Currently, Ben teaches digital marketing at Baruch College in New York City and consults with a range of thought leaders, venture-backed startups, and other brands.

Not to spend money on paid advertising. Focus on making your business more referable instead.

Look at one of the most important pages of your website. If each word costs you $10, how many can you cut? What about $1,000? If you had to distill your message down to a road sign, what would it look like?

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The phrase is emblazoned at WeWorks across the globe: in large neon lights across lobby walls, bedecking laptops via swag stickers, and printed in playful cursive on the mugs that facilitate bottomless free coffee—with the addition of always in small print at the top.

But what becomes of the adage to do what you love when the company blasting it everywhere declares bankruptcy? What about the rest of us?

Today’s essay is a crossover from my paid Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h. I encourage you to join us there if you haven’t already!

Continue reading »

To pause doing what you love if the money isn’t following and you need to regroup.

What did I miss on the Top 20 list? Share in the comments and let me know :)

🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review

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📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/250

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“The biggest breakthroughs came from the random side projects that I had no expectation would turn into anything.” Josh Kaufman is a longtime friendtor (13 years and counting!) who I admire for his streamlined approach to running his business in a way that supports family life and creative solitude.

In our last conversation we spoke about releasing the ten-year anniversary edition of his bestselling book, The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business, that has since surpassed the one million books sold milestone. Today we’re diving into the systems behind that success.

Check out 012: Generating Personal MBA Momentum with Josh Kaufman if you haven’t already!

More About Josh: Josh Kaufman’s research and books focus on business, entrepreneurship, skill acquisition, productivity, creativity, applied psychology, and practical wisdom. Josh's unique, multidisciplinary approach to business mastery and rapid skill acquisition has helped millions of readers around the world learn essential concepts and skills on their own terms. Josh's TEDx talk on The First 20 Hours is one of the top 25 most-viewed TED talks published to date, with over 37 million views on YouTube.

Try more random experiments, things where you don’t know whether or not it will work. Things you’re curious about, that pique your attention. “The biggest breakthroughs come from the random side projects that I had no expectation would turn into anything.”

From Josh: To build skill from scratch, you need to know How to Climb A Ladder. But how do you know which ladder to climb? Try the Explore / Exploit process (here’s the overview from the Personal MBA: Exploration / Exploitation

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Are you running a Franken-Brand? A quick, inexpensive logo here. And then someone a few months later tries to write the brand strategy. And then another junior hire adds in graphics and you don’t even know where they came from. Suddenly, you have this brand that is cobbled together, and no one on the team is feeling compelled.

Today, returning guest Adam Chaloeicheep and I are picking up where we left off in episode 259: Has your Business Brand Become a Liability, diving into Together Agency’s four personas of clients who are ready to do brand work, the three types of clients that are deal-breakers for Adam, and the perils of navigating the brand strategy process with a CEO who is in the midst of a spiritual awakening.

Be sure to check out our previous conversations, 045: Behind the Free Time Brand with Adam Chaloeicheep and 247: Has your Business Brand Become a Liability? How to Know When It’s Time for a Tune-up.

More About Adam: Adam Chaloeicheep is co-founder of Together agency with his wife, Marisol Dahl, who I had the great pleasure of working with for five years in the early days of JBE. Adam is a creative business leader with over a decade of experience in a variety of startup areas including product and service concepting, building teams, operations, and brand-focused design and digital solutions. He is one of my closest friends (12 years and counting!), and a creative business leader with over a decade of experience in product and service concepting, building teams, and brand strategy. Together Agency is behind every big brand I have launched into the world including Pivot and Free Time.

“Judge the crap out of anything you want for five minutes!”

Adam says, “If you’re feeling spiritually lost, go figure that out before starting the brand strategy process.”

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Has your business brand become stale, perhaps to the point of being a liability? After a few years, especially with major pivots, you may run the risk of losing clients and credibility. Sometimes it’s time for a tune-up and fresh tires, and sometimes, it’s time for a whole new brand engine.

As today’s returning guest, my good friend and part of the team behind the award-winning Free Time brand, recently featured on Behance. Adam Chaloeicheep says, “It’s about building the relationship with your customer. First impressions are really important.”

If you haven’t already, I suggest listening to our previous conversation first, 045: Behind the Free Time Brand with Adam Chaloeicheep, for a foundational overview of how Adam and team think about brand strategy more broadly. Today, we’re diving into how to know when you’re due for a rebrand.

More About Adam: Adam Chaloeicheep is co-founder of Together agency with his wife, Marisol Dahl, who I had the great pleasure of working with for five years in the early days of JBE. Adam is a creative business leader with over a decade of experience in a variety of startup areas including product and service concepting, building teams, operations, and brand-focused design and digital solutions. He is one of my closest friends (12 years and counting!), and a creative business leader with over a decade of experience in product and service concepting, building teams, and brand strategy. Together Agency is behind every big brand I have launched into the world including Pivot and Free Time.

Be vulnerable; take some risks to put your whole self out there.

Sit with one of the creative questions from Together Agency’s client intake/exploration survey: What texture is your brand? If your brand were a plant, which one would it be? A song?

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/247

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What do you do when a business area becomes energetically draining, or the income isn’t flowing? Today’s guest has many intuitive superpowers, and one of them is “following the data points of truth.”

In this episode, Erin Weed and I discuss why you shouldn’t just stick with something that is no longer aligned; the tragic event that launched her journey into entrepreneurship; the moment she knew it was time to release her first business; how she came up with her unique process, The Dig®️ (then later trained a dozen facilitators to help conduct sessions); volunteering as one of the best ways to try on new business ideas; and setting intentions with a word of the week and for the year, in addition to your core word at the center of who you are.

⛔️ For listeners who wish to avoid sensitive content: This episode contains a story about violent crime.

More About Erin: Erin Weed is an intuitive communications expert with a passion for truth and storytelling, dedicated to helping leaders discover their purpose and express it succinctly. With a background in PR and documentary production, she has a wealth of experience. Erin's journey took a transformative turn when the tragic murder of her sorority sister inspired her to launch Girls Fight Back!, a global women's safety education company. Erin is also renowned 22-year professional speaker who coaches TEDx and TED speakers using her unique approach, The Dig®, to distill their messages down to simple words.

Be radically honest with yourself. Try Erin’s Head Heart Core framework: Pick a topic that is alive for you, or one that has been challenging for you. Share your truth by naming the factual truth, what is undisputedly true. Then name your emotional truth, then name what you really, really, want.

Take out a pen and paper and reflect: When is the last time I was out of alignment, and how did it feel in my body? How did it show up in my thoughts? How did it show up in my life expression?

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/246

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How can you get paid for who you are, not just what you do? Today’s guest, Terry Rice, is teaching us his Golden Link Strategy for creating a steady stream of potential clients, without giving them (or you) “the ick” through cold outreach misfires.

He also shares speaking and marketing tips he pulled from one of his mentors, Daymond John, how he reframes business development activities, why it’s vital to get your offer right before you focus on branding, how he makes time for 12 hours of creating each week (even with four kids), and the sacrifices he made after his business started taking off.

More About Terry: Terry Rice is a performance coach and business development consultant. He is a staff writer at Entrepreneur magazine and host of Launch Your Business, a podcast that helps entrepreneurs make money, save time and avoid burnout. Terry is also the author of Start Your Own Consulting Business: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Success.

A recognized marketing expert, Terry’s previous experience includes internal consulting roles at Adobe and Facebook. Terry is an instructor at New York University, and has been featured as a subject matter expert by Good Morning America, Fast Company and the Wall Street Journal. Terry is based in Brooklyn; he is a husband and father of four children.

Be unreasonable. Go from needing to wanting, even without a justification why. As George Bernard Shaw said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Conduct a time audit: How much time do you need each week to create content for your business? Client follow-up? Business development? Add those as recurring blocks to your calendar.

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“What am I pretending not to know?” There is tremendous power in asking better questions, whether it comes to ideal day design, creating systems in your business, or teaching someone how to help tame your inboxes.

Today’s conversation with Claire Giovino covers all that ground and more. We talk about what qualities make email so vexing for many business owners, how to reduce fear and friction when delegating replies, and the importance of asking better questions—of yourself and in your business.

More About Claire: After an extensive career in academia, Claire Giovino began optimizing inboxes for industry leaders, launching InboxDone in 2017. She and her cofounder Yaro quickly scaled the business 10X in three years with no startup capital. Her proprietary recruitment, training and onboarding process ensures that each client is matched with a carefully-selected Inbox Manager and represented with a superior level of communication. These clients now check their inbox just once per month — or not at all. Claire has always been a seeker, maneuvering her way through life with constant questioning. She now has the lifestyle freedom to seek out her dream podcast guests and to start conversations at her Better Question Dinners. She cherishes books, quotes and good listeners.

Drop even things that you’re very good at. Ask: is this nourishing me or depleting me?

Go back to the ideal day drawing board (here’s a template for that!): If you could spend your day however you wanted, what would that look like? Where would the parts of your business show up on a daily basis? For each area ask, “Am I the one who should be doing this?” Create a time budget for a single work week, starting by tracking how you are currently spending time.

"But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!"

—Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

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📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/244

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