Free Time with Jenny Blake

“You do not need to cannibalize your healing for content.” Today, I’m in conversation with longtime blog-turned-IRL friend Nic Antoinette, diving deeper into her decision to shut down her Patreon community (taking a $30,000/year haircut to do so), then pivoting to a private paid Substack while she navigated her way through decisions about what might follow.

We discuss the generosity of being honest, the trap of wanting to be special, knowing where to draw the line on how much or how little you share, and much more. Be sure to also check out our earlier Pivot conversation in episode 342: “Whatever Comes Through Me Comes for Me First,” with Nicole Antoinette.

More About Nic: Nicole Antoinette is a writer, long-distance hiker, and former indoor kid who never imagined she’d wind up spending months of each year pooping in the woods. In 2017, stuck in a loop of codependency and people-pleasing, Nicole set off to find her self-belief and inner resilience by doing something she did not for one second believe she could actually do. The results are two adventure memoirs, How To Be Alone: An 800-mile hike on the Arizona Trail, and What We Owe to Ourselves, and a weekly Substack newsletter called Wild Letters.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

• Spirals of intimacy: who has access to which parts of you, and when, and why?
• Before posting, ask: What am I hoping to gain from sharing this? Is it coming from a place of your ego seeking validation, or does it feel “true and good” to share?
• Remember: (Almost) all deadlines are arbitrary!

📝 Permission

Go your own way: if you are going to use a certain platform or give a certain type of offering, you don’t have to opt into the ways other people are using that offering.

✅ Do (or delegate) this next

For an existing program, reflect on how you might realign with your strengths, energy, and values. Ask, “What does this offering really want to be?”

🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Nicole on the web, IG: @nic.antoinette
• Adventure writing: Backpacking Books
• Substacks: Wild Letters, Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h
• Patreon: Honest Conversation Club
• Coworking: Get Sh*t Done Club
• Jenny’s BFF Community

📚 Books Mentioned

• How To Be Alone: an 800-mile hike on the Arizona Trail
• What We Owe to Ourselves
• Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
• Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
• Life After College

🎧 Related Episodes

• Nicole’s podcasts: Real Talk Radio and The Pop-Up Pod
• Good Life Project: Ann Patchett | On Solitude, Writing & Indie Bookstores
• Pivot: 342: “Whatever Comes Through Me Comes for Me First,” with Nicole Antoinette
• 327: 🐺The Wolf You Feed — On Addiction, Recovery & Codependency — and What We Get Wrong About All Three with Eric Zimmer
• 302: Moving Beyond Burnout with Dr. Susan Biali Haas
• 338: Is Midlife Messing with Your Enoughness? With Mandy Lehto
• 305: Is What You’re Wanting Actually What’s Best for You? With Luke Burgis
• 341: Pivoting from Prestigious Consulting Jobs to the Pathless Path with Paul Millerd
• Free Time: 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin
• 042: How I Run My Business ...

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!

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

• As a reader, Substack allows you to more easily reply and engage in the comments, “restack” snippets you like, browse the archives, bookmark favorite posts, see what percentage of each article you’ve read, and support fellow creators’ work if you feel called to.
• As a writer, the composition interface is such an improvement! You can create richer newsletters with fancy content embeds—my husband calls it “upgrading the facilities,” host an archive page ****with previous issues, and for the first time—publish essays and podcast episodes to the same main feed.
• One writer I follow, Kathryn Vercillo, practices artistic tithing: Ten percent of her income goes to supporting other writers on the platform. I now pay for fifteen fellow Substackers, and while at first I feared subscription fatigue (like so many of us!), this combined expense has become the happiest money that leaves my bank account every month. I love supporting the writers and thinkers whom I respect most, and who have given me so much.

📝 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 :)

🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Writing coach: Writers at Work with Sarah
• Loom Walkthrough: Notion for Idea Collection (5 min)
• Video: TEDxBerkshires—Homework for Life
• Course: MasterClass—Dan Brown Teaches Writing Thrillers
• JB’s Substacks: Notes (and “restacks”), Rolling in D🤦🏻‍♀️h, Time Well Spent, PivotList
• Elizabeth Gilbert’s new Substack: Letters from Love
• Articles: Time Well Spent Newsletter with Writing Apps, Substack Office Hours, Top Twenty Tips for Writing Memoir
• Apps: Substack, Notion, Circle, OmmWriter, SaneBox, K...

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.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

• A book launch is a set of activities to engage people and create momentum, and there is no common blueprint for success. “Each book is different—in its approach to a problem and delivery of solution. Each author is different—in what they bring to the launch. And the world itself is different every time you bring a book into the world.”
• The Magic Number: The data says is that if you can get into the 10,000 to 25,000 copy range for first year sales, you have a 42% chance of selling more than 25,000 copies in lifetime sales. If you get past that 10K mark, there is a 4 in 10 chance of getting beyond 25K copies sold.
• Endorsements should triangulate the reader to think this book is for them. Who is the highest comp author? A practitioner (someone doing the work or even a related recognizable company), a reader who demonstrates utility.

📝 Permission

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!

✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next

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!

🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Todd on the web, IG, X, LinkedIn
• Publisher: Bard Press
• Take the Free Time reader survey Jenny sent here, whether you’ve read the book or not!
• Bard Press Articles: The Magic Number and The Few, The Many, and the Reality of Power Laws
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score
• Technology Adoption Life Cycle: Innovators → early adopters → early majority → late majority → laggards
• BookBub and The Fussy Librarian for ebook promotions
• Jenny’s Author Toolkit and Free Time Leader Kit

📚 Books Mentioned