Do you already have an elegant way of wrapping up with clients? If you work with people one-on-one, it's important to systematize business values that you say are important to you, like surprise and delight, or giving clients a red carpet experience from start to finish.

Many of us have thought more about that on the front end than when we're actually closing out with a client—that's why I'm super excited to bring you this listener submission episode from previous guest and BFF, Jacqueline Fisch.

Ask directly for referrals and feedback, in an elegantly streamlined and systematized way.

Create your own See You Soon kit and feedback survey for when you wrap-up with clients. Want a head start? Check out Jacq’s Intuitive Client Service Bundle.

🌟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

✍️ Check out Jenny’s new Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h

💌 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

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📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/224

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“Have you ever looked at someone else, someone you admire, who has accomplished a lot, and just assumed they must be wildly confident and always winning at everything? You’re not alone. But, the truth, it turns out, is much more complex.

So many of those luminaries are not, in fact wildly, or even remotely confident. And if they are, they go through cycles of profound change, self-doubt, struggle and, when they learn to harness these experiences, revelation and even reinvention.”

That’s how my longtime friendtor Jonathan Fields describes this episode, a crossover from his fantastic SPARKED podcast, where I’m honored to be on a panel of rotating advisor co-hosts (here’s our Spotify playlist).

In this crossover episode, we discuss seasons of confidence, struggle, renewal, and my 51/49 mantra on courage. I hadn’t yet spoken about the new secret Substack publicly, so I thought Free Timers might benefit from a spontaneous (and nerve-wracking!) reveal that I didn’t see coming.

As Jonathan writes, “In an unexpected, yet deeply powerful moment, Jenny shares a ‘Sparked Exclusive’ revealing that she began, almost covertly, creating something ‘from the mess’ in hopes of helping others feel less alone in their struggles. She wonders: Can sharing our human flaws and uncertainties actually complement our expertise and advice, providing value in its own way?”

More About Jonathan Fields: Jonathan Fields—the Good Life Guy—delivers insights that spark purpose, possibility, and potential. On a decades-long quest to discover what makes people come fully alive, Jonathan is an award-winning author, Webby-nominated producer, business innovator, and host of one of the world’s top podcasts, Good Life Project. He is the author of Sparked: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work that Makes You Come Alive.

📝 Permission

To share your process before you have a neat, tidy outcome tied in a beautiful bow.

Take one tiny step that tips the scale from fear and anxiety into action. 51/49.

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

✍️ Check out my new Substack Rolling in D 🤦🏻‍♀️h: Divine Disaster Diaries

📝 Check out full show notes and share with friends: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/223

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Now that I’m one month into Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h, I’m sharing my reflections on Substack as a software platform for personal writing (and potentially moving my newsletters soon too). I recorded this bonus episode for the BFF Community at the end of July; since then, I decided to officially migrate my Pivot and Free Time mailing lists and go all-in.

;TLDR: I’m utterly delighted! The last time I felt this thrilled about software was when I first started tinkering in Notion four years ago, which became one of the best things I ever did for my business :)

✨ If you have the means and it feels joyful to support me and this new body of work, you can subscribe as a paid or Founding Member here 🙏 Huge thanks to those of you who have already joined and commented — I can't begin to tell you how much it means to me!

📝 Permission: To make changes in your business operations even when it seems like no one solution is perfect, and you know you’ll break 100 things in the process. No risk, no reward! You also hereby have permission to charge for your work :) We’re all getting a raise in 2024!

✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Download the Substack app and see how joyful it is to browse newsletters again away from the chaos of your email inbox! You might be surprised at how many people you read and follow are already on there :)

✍️ Check out my new Substack Rolling in D 🤦🏻‍♀️h: Divine Disaster Diaries

📝 Check out full show notes at: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/222

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“I see in books,” says today’s guest. “Every book is, at its heart, an argument for something—for a belief, a way of life, a vision of the future, a way to solve a problem, a way to make a friend, a way to lose your soul. The point is what the entire story drives to. It’s the thing your reader will come away from your book feeling.”

That’s just one gem from today’s guest, Jennie Nash, book coach and author of a blueprint series on how to approach your writing. Jennie and I discuss the tumult happening in hybrid and traditional publishing outfits; risks inherent in the publishing process; red flags to watch out for in selecting partners; determining the right genre for your work (i.e. nonfiction, fiction, memoir), how to “make room for the reader,” and what it means to write for the marketplace.

More About Jennie: Jennie Nash is the founder and CEO of Author Accelerator, a company on a mission to lead the emerging book coaching industry. Author Accelerator has certified more than 160 book coaches in both fiction and nonfiction. Jennie’s own book coaching clients have landed top New York agents and six-figure book deals with Big 5 houses such as Penguin, Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette, and won dozens of national indie book awards. Jennie is the author of 12 books in 3 genres, including Blueprint for a Nonfiction Book: Plan and Pitch Your Big Idea and the forthcoming Blueprint for a Memoir: How to Write a Memoir for the Marketplace.

📝 Permission: Drop the idea that you will be picked by the publishing industry. You are the creator, so take the work into your own hands. You pick you.

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

✍️ Check out my new Substack Rolling in D 🤦🏻‍♀️h: Divine Disaster Diaries

📝 Check out full show notes and share with a friend: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/221

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I broke one of my own big rules this summer. For the last few weeks, I've been kicking myself, saying, how could I do this? I know better. I wrote a book called Free Time, after all!

Well, as I say in the introduction, business stress is a systems problem. Listen in for more on the mistake I made, and the systems and reminders I set up to ensure I have ample free time next summer.

I'm falling deeper in love with Substack every day—there are so many wonderful elements that are refreshing my creative energy for all things newsletters and writing. I haven’t been this excited about software since encountering Notion in early 2020, and that completely changed my life and transformed my business!

In addition to my new paid Substack Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h: Divine Disaster Diaries from a Breadwinning Business Owner Living in New York City, I’m now in the process of migrating my two main lists for Pivot and Free Time.

Linda Lebrun from Substack’s writer partnerships team graciously agreed to do a Q&A with the BFF community on September 7 at 12pm ET. She’ll share:

Learn more and join us here »

If you’re listening in the future and this date has passed, you can still join to get instant access to our entire archive of bonus workshops and monthly private podcast episodes.

📝 Permission: Claim your big free time blocks for next summer now. Take notice, future self!

✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Set a daily recurring Do Not Schedule (DNS) block now for next August. Do not let yourself schedule any work commitments over it! Bonus: Take this time to also block off mid-December through mid-January if you haven’t already.

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

✍️ Check out my new Substack, Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h: Divine Disaster Diaries

❤️ 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/220

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Since launching this show in September 2015, the podcasting landscape has grown and changed tremendously. What was once a niche sandbox of independent producers pursuing passion projects has blossomed into an abundant field where it seems as though every major media property, celebrity, side hustler, and business owner decided to throw their hat (mic?) into the audio arena.

Since I’m not nearly ambitious or prolific enough to share three hundred lessons learned in honor of today’s major milestone, or even thirty, I thought I’d boil it down to my top three creative lessons learned in seven years of creating content in a constantly changing space.

This crossover episode originally aired on the Pivot podcast on November 13, 2022.

Before going any further, thank you from the bottom of my heart—this show wouldn’t be nearly what it is without you here listening and sharing with friends. Thank you for listening these last seven years, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the years ahead bring us!

🌟3 Key Takeaways:

📘Books: 

🔗Resources:

🎧Related Podcast Episodes:

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“Cultivate 12 people who love you, because they are worth more than 12 million people who like you.”

That’s just one of many gems from Kevin Kelly’s new book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier, bits of wisdom that he thinks of like handrails to grab when he needs a quick reminder about what is most important.

In this conversation, we revisit our 2016 discussion about the power of human-AI partnerships, give you permission not to become a billionaire, help you lean into serendipity and embrace paradox, and encourage you to buy your time (through delegation) so that you can focus on doing the work that only you can do. As Kevin says, “Don’t be the best, be the only.”

This crossover episode originally aired on the Pivot podcast on May 7, 2023.

More About Kevin: Kevin Kelly helped launch WIRED magazine in 1993. He is a renowned technology and science writer, futurist, and thinker who has been at the forefront of digital culture for decades. Kelly's work explores the intersection of technology, culture, and society, and he is known for his thought-provoking insights on the future of innovation and the impact of technology on our lives. He has authored multiple books including The Inevitable, Out of Control, The Silver Cord, and What Technology Wants. His newest is Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I’d Known Earlier (May 2023). He lives in Pacifica, California with his family.

✅ Try this experiment: You’ll get invited to an argument in the next week or two. Decline the invitation; don’t attend!

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Self-doubt isn’t all bad. It means you’re stretching outside of your comfort zone, that you’re willing to learn, and that you aim to surround yourself with people who challenge you. So if you often grapple with imposter syndrome (or as I like to call it, an Imposter Monster sitting beside you), you are not alone. If you sometimes fall into the trap of feeling like you’re not good enough or ready yet to tackle your biggest creative aspirations, here’s a new perspective to consider.

This crossover episode originally aired on the Pivot podcast on May 29, 2022.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways:

✅ Next Action: Shift your mindset from “I need to be an expert before . . .” to “I’m curious.” Start curating the people and ideas that inspire you, then share them with others through your unique lens and experiences.

📘 Books Mentioned:

🔗 Resources Mentioned: Shane Snow’s article on Intellectual Humility

Related Podcast Episodes: 

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As “recovering people pleaser” Natalie Lue opens her book, The Joy of Saying No, “Suppressing and repressing my needs, desires, expectations, feelings, and opinions to try to influence and control other people’s feelings and behavior was as natural to me as breathing. I thought it was normal to tell people what they want to hear (read: lie) to make them feel better. I believed I was ticking the boxes of being a Good Person by being kind, generous, hardworking, conscientious, loving, eager to help, attractive, and intelligent, and doing what others needed and wanted.”

If you, too, are ticking “Good Person” boxes while making yourself miserable, this episode is for you. Natalie and I discuss the five types of people pleasers, what we continue to struggle with today despite decades of awareness-building, and how to build the skill of saying no.

This crossover episode originally aired on the Pivot podcast on July 2, 2023.

More About Natalie: Natalie Lue used to have very low self-esteem, a litany of problems including bad boundaries, toxic relationships with emotionally unavailable and shady folk, and a crippling immune system disease, but this all changed in the summer of 2005. Now, she is a recovering people pleaser. She’s 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. Natalie helps people learn how to reclaim themselves from their emotional baggage and increase emotional availability through self-care, making a profound difference in their lives via her substack On Knowing Yourself.

✅ Try This Next: Check in with yourself when you feel pressure to be or do something in a certain way—is this a preference or is this programming?

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I'm super excited to pilot a "what would we invent if anything were possible" experience this quarter—and you're invited!

Join me and business bestie Sarah Young, founder of Zing Collaborative and author of Expansive Impact, on Sunday, October 22 for a three-hour VIP brunch and brainstorming extravaganza, followed by a decadent buffet at DUMBO house, with inspiring views of the Brooklyn Bridge and lower Manhattan. 

This is much more than a brunch. As fans of what restauranteur Will Guidara calls Unreasonable Hospitality, we just couldn’t resist throwing in all kinds of bells and whistles. 

This VIP day is supported by a three-month-long program designed to surprise and delight you. Together with a small, curated group of Heart-Based Business owners, you’ll get a mix of 1:1 coaching and group calls to close 2023 strong, set a clear vision and strategy for 2024, and implement the most joyful, abundant next steps for you and your business.

📆 Early Bird Enrollment (and special pricing) ends September 1, and the final deadline to enroll is September 15.

🪄 Here’s to building business blissfully! 🎉

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