Free Time with Jenny Blake
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232: 11 Practices to Strengthen Business Intuition (Part One)
Free Time with Jenny Blake
10/13/23 • 31 min
Intuition is always speaking to you in subtle ways. Are you listening?
Intuition isn’t a gift that is only bestowed on a special few; everyone can strengthen this muscle—how loudly you hear these signals, and the trust in yourself to take action on the information you’re receiving.
In the comments of a recent ‘D🤦🏻♀️h post, Claudia asked:
I read your words “all-in on myself” and how you consciously cho(o)se to believe that the Universe was/is redirecting you, and can’t but think “Jenny’s so in tune with her intuition. No matter what comes, she has this trust muscle that allows her to keep going, to keep betting on herself and her ideas” and I wish I was “better” at it. Is this something you’ve gotten better at with practice? And is there any advice that you would share with us here about how to cultivate this way of being?
In this two-part solo episode, I’m sharing eleven strategies that have helped me build (and trust) my intuition at increasingly subtle levels. As always, I would love to hear from you! How do you practice the skill of following your intuition? Leave a voice note for a future listener-submission episode at http://itsfreetime.com/ask.
📝 Permission
Trust your intuitive hits, even if you do not have a verbal or rational explanation (yet!) to validate the “memos” or make sense of your insights. Oprah says, “Your life is always speaking to you. It speaks in whispers guiding you to your next right step.” Are you listening? What is your life whispering to you right now?
✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next
Review your intuition history: Reverse engineer previous intuitive hits and the action you took; times you listened, times you didn’t. Times it “worked,” and times it didn’t — even then, you don’t always know what the bigger picture might have been. How did your intuition speak to you in these moments (a whisper, a feeling, an image)?
🔗 Resources Mentioned
- Articles: Penney Peirce—7 Tips to Improve Your Intuition
- Catherine Carrigan—5 Easy Ways to Muscle Test Yourself
- Mind Body Green—How To Develop The 4 'Clairs' Of Intuition
- Oprah.com—Get a New Leash on Life by Martha Beck
- Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h—Mutually Assured Rejection: Part One and Part Two
- Website: Work with Source (via Graham Duncan in Tribe of Mentors)
- Quiz: 4 Types Of Intuition: Which Are You Dominant In?
- Course: Become an Expert Intuitive: Trust What Your Deep Self Knows with Penney Peirce
📚 Books Mentioned
- Finding Your Own North Star and Steering by Starlight by Martha Beck
- The Intuitive Way: The Definitive Guide to Increasing Your Awareness and Frequency: The Power of Personal Vibration by Penney Peirce
- The Psychic Pathway: A Workbook for Reawakening the Voice of Your Soul by Sonia Choquette
- Outrageous Openness and It’s Not Your Money by Tosha Silver
- The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker
- Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
- The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron
- The Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel-Shinn
- Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss (Graham Duncan, pages 56-63)
- mBraining by Grant Soosalu and Marvin Oka
- Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love You...
252: Taking an Accidental Sabbatical with Mel Dizon
Free Time with Jenny Blake
12/22/23 • 51 min
”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.”
🌟 3 Key Takeaways
- An Accidental Sabbatical is about not knowing what's next and how to live more comfortably in the void or liminal space.
- When you feel blocked by fear or worry, ask yourself: What if X were no longer important to you, what would you do?
- Don’t babysit your work (or your budget): “Don’t do it. Write the thing, publish it, post it, paint it on a mural, or do whatever you need to do with it and move on. Forgive yourself for being terrible or unreadable, or boring or derivative and just keep going.”
📝 Permission
Who am I doing this for? If it’s for anybody other than yourself, pause and reconsider.
✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next
Take a page out of Mel’s post, On Calling People Out for Being Awesome and her book, The Hand Written Letter Project:
- Go to your favorite stationary store and pick out at least 30 notecards or long-form letter pages and envelopes. Or make your own.
- Buy a pen that will make you feel smarter, funnier, and more brilliant each time you touch it to the page.
- Sit down in your favorite chair with your dashing new pen and a piece of paper, and write down the names of the first 30 people that come to your mind. Don’t overthink it. The first time I did this, someone I had not talked to in 10 years came to my mind. When she received my letter, she called me immediately and told me that receiving my letter was one of the best moments of her entire year. We talked and laughed for hours. Just go with whoever comes to mind. There’s a reason they will.
- Address all of your envelopes. I recommend doing this a few days before the start date because, inevitably, you’ll be missing some addresses, and you’ll need time to track them down, send emails, ask friends and family, etc. Then, put a cool stamp on each one—there are plenty to choose from here. Now go ahead, make someone’s day!
🔗 Resources Mentioned
- Mel on Substack, IG, LinkedIn
- Articles: Babysitting the Rusty Nail
- Is your sabbatical on the chopping block?
- Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h: A Strange and Wonderful Morning: Walking Photo Essay
- Elizabeth Gilbert’s Letters from Love
- BFF December Mailer: Important Community Announcement—Please Read!
- Tools: Substack, Future Me
📚 Books Mentioned
241: Finding Freedom and Financial Reciprocity through a Paid Newsletter with Nic Antoinette
Free Time with Jenny Blake
11/14/23 • 63 min
“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 ...
222: Why I Migrated My Three Email Lists to Substack (BFF Bonus Replay)
Free Time with Jenny Blake
09/08/23 • 42 min
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...
268: Strategies for Surpassing “The Magic Number” of Book Sales with Todd Sattersten
Free Time with Jenny Blake
02/16/24 • 62 min
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
233: On Sensitive CEOs and Building a Soulful Business with Rose Cox
Free Time with Jenny Blake
10/17/23 • 37 min
I’m excited to bring you this crossover episode with Rose Cox, founder of The HSP Business School and host of The Sensitive CEO Show ****podcast. She is one of the people I have been most excited to connect with across the globe the last few years, even though we have yet to meet IRL!
In this conversation, we dive into the world of highly sensitive people (HSPs), empaths, and introverts in the business world, with plenty of permission slips to stop doing what drains you. We discuss how to build a sustainable, soulful business that aligns with your energy, while embracing the strengths and challenges of being a sensitive CEO. Finally, we touch on Rose’s decision to pause her podcast (at least for now) after a year of releasing weekly episodes.
More About Rose: Rose Cox is an ICF-credentialed and Certified Human Potential Coach, 3 Brains Coach, Business Coach + Strategist, Advanced Rapid Transformational Therapist, Clinical Hypnotherapist and Energy Practitioner. Rose's unique blend of soul, science, systems and strategy combines her 20+ years’ experience in the fields of online business, hypnotherapy, coaching, and psychology to help her clients build a successful and sustainable business that is aligned with their energy and their soul. She works with highly sensitive people, empaths and introverts who have amazing gifts to share with the world but struggle with both the business strategies and mindset to fully step into their own.
🌟 3 Key Takeaways
- Do business in a way that serves you: For example, just one or two days for clients each week, alternating on A and C weeks of each month (so you always have two no-client weeks)
- Work with fellow sensitives, even as an overt niche market for your clients and community: Working together because we understand each other, share the same values, have a similar nervous system.
- Batch activities so that you group similar types of work together: For example, client-facing, podcast interviews, admin, day off.
📝 Permission
Remove email and other social apps from your phone.
✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next
Try a guided meditation to speak with your higher self, or do free writing as if it’s a letter from your higher self to you. For encouragement around this, check out Elizabeth Gilbert’s new Substack, Letters from Love.
🔗 Resources Mentioned
- Rose on the web, IG: @therosecox, Twitter, LinkedIn
- Course: The HSP Business School
- Video: The Human Upgrade—#928 How to Revamp Busy Work, Overcome Boredom and Fix Burnout
📚 Books Mentioned
- The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron
- Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss
- Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
- Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
- Life After College
🎧 Related Episodes
- Sensitive CEO Show: An HSP’s Guide to Podcasting, and Awakening Intuition: Empowering Sensitive Entrepreneurs through Trusting Your Inner Guidance
- Pivot: 172: Self-Care for Empaths and HSPs with Sarah Santacroce and 257: Gentle Business Revolution with Sarah Santacroce
- Free Time: 203: 🎢 Riding the Emotional Rollercoaster of Launching with Natalie Lue
- 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin
- 193: Sabbatical Planning with DJ DiDonna
208: 😇 Delight Is in the Details
Free Time with Jenny Blake
07/21/23 • 26 min
What do Manuka honey, brown M&Ms, chocolate milk, vanilla gelato, rose petals, fair trade bananas, and Twizzlers have in common? No, they’re not ingredients for a bizarre ice cream sundae. Listen to today’s episode to find out . . .
🌟 3 Key Takeaways
- Botching the basics: **A term my friend and I use for companies who fail to deliver the baseline minimum expected customer experience. See also: unforced errors in Chapter 3 of Free Time, “Systematize the Spirit of Your Business.”
- “God is in the details:” What might seem simple at a first glance often turns out to be more complex and require more time and attention to accomplish correctly. ****
- Touring bands have backstage riders that specify details on stage design, sound systems, lighting, and an artist's green room wishlist.
📝 Permission: Be picky about the details! And to be incredibly detail oriented in your documentation.
✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Create your own form of a celebrity rider, whether for your household, for travel and on-site client events, or even VIP days you might host with clients. I encourage you to go a little wild with this! Yes, figure out what your must haves are, but then imagine your ultra delightful details too :)
🔗 Resources Mentioned
- Video clip: Curb Your Enthusiasm—Pissing Off Mocha Joe (S10, E1)
- TV Show: Bravo’s Below Deck (Prime, Peacock)
- Articles: John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success
- The Smoking Gun’s 300+ Backstage Riders; Sample Excerpts: John Mayer (2005), Adele (2011), Katy Perry (Page 1, Dressing Rooms), Justin Bieber (2010), Pearl Jam (2008)
- PDF: JE’s Palm Beach Household Manual
- Tools: Free Time Business Operations Dashboard (promo code PODCAST), Free Time Toolkit, ChatGPT
📚 Books Mentioned
- The Essential Wooden by John Wooden
- Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
- Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
- Life After College
🎧 Related Episodes
- The Really Rich Podcast: Ep 22 with Rey Flemings: Buying What Isn’t For Sale, Post Luxury, & Kindness
- Pivot: ChatGPT as Universal Intern and Permission Not to Be a Billionaire with Kevin Kelly
- Expansive Impact and Spacious Scheduling with Sarah Young
- Free Time: 200: 🎉 20+ Free Time Permission Slips for Small Business Owners (Part 1)
- 202: 🎉 20+ Permission Slips for Small Business Owners (Part 2)
- 068: Are You Running a Grumpy Business?
- 176: 🍪What’s the Chocolate Chip Banana Bread in Your Business?🍌
- 104: Save Someone Next Steps
- 146: New? Help Us Welcome the Next You (A Message for Your New Team Members)
197: Growth Loops + Why it’s Better to be Respected than Liked with Todd Herman
Free Time with Jenny Blake
06/13/23 • 46 min
“Liking is the great fog of the mind.”—Todd Herman
You’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
115: Successfully Taking Over as CEO from a Founder (MBS) with Shannon Minifie
Free Time with Jenny Blake
08/02/22 • 42 min
We talk about The Fiji Test often here at Free Time HQ on documentation and making ourselves replaceable every day. The central question: Could a stranger to the business take over without much disruption?
That’s exactly what Shannon Minifie and longtime friendtor MBS put to the test several years ago. As he stepped aside as CEO of the company he’d been building for nearly 20 years, Box of Crayons, Shannon took the reins through a two-year transition process. If you haven’t listened yet, be sure to pair this with episode 051: How to Replace Yourself as CEO with MBS.
Today we hear about Shannon’s side of the experience—navigating a pandemic while parenting young children as a newly minted CEO, and the inevitable imposter syndrome that comes with any leadership role. I chuckled at her reminders-to-self about not trying to impersonate Michael or “build a museum frozen in place” with his ways of operating.
More About Shannon: Shannon’s career began in academia, where she wrote a dissertation on David Foster Wallace. In 2016, she embarked on a new path, starting a career in corporate learning and development, and took over as CEO at Box of Crayons (founded by previous guest Michael Bungay Stanier) in 2019. She encourages in her team an enthusiastic discernment that brings a depth of thinking to bear on everything Box of Crayons does.
🌟3 Key Takeaways:
- The focus changes when you move from working with contractors to having a core team. It’s important to keep the client front and center.
- Have an identity outside of work: your job is what you do, not all of who you are.
- Go on a listening tour with your clients and team members. Be curious, listen carefully and make connections to better understand what is happening at your company. Remember that something can be real and true, but not need immediate action.
📝Permission: To “earn your paycheck” over a long period of time.
✅Do (or Delegate) This Next: Take the advice a fellow CEO gave to Shannon—divide your time into four buckets: staying close to the client, staying close to the competition, calibrating your top team, and making your team and organization smarter.
📘Books Mentioned:
- Free Time: Lose The Busywork, Love Your Business
- Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
- The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever
🔗Resources Mentioned:
- Shannon on the web, Instagram: @boxofcrayonsinc, Twitter, LinkedIn,
- Page Two Publishing
- MBS.works
- Coaches: Ernest Oriente, Jill Murphy
🎧Related Podcast Episodes:
- 051: How to Replace Yourself as CEO with MBS
- Brave New Work Podcast: When the CEO’s Fires Themselves with Michael Bungay Stanier and Shannon Minifie
- 2 Pages Podcast: Brave Choices: Channon Minifie x “A Supposedly Fun Thing I Will Never Do Again”
- 073: From CEO (Back) to Creator with Pat Flynn
- 081: DAOing and Prioritizing Progress over Perfection
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243: Engineering Serendipity and Best Practices for Community-Building with David Spinks
Free Time with Jenny Blake
11/21/23 • 57 min
"For the first time in a decade, I feel free again." That’s how one of my earliest blogging friends, longtime community leader David Spinks, was feeling when I caught up with him in-person in the middle of his yearlong sabbatical, after selling his community-based business.
David and I discuss best practices for creating and nurturing communities, for engineering serendipity, what it’s like to build and run a conference (and later sell it), and the freedom that comes with taking a deliberate sabbatical.
More About David: David Spinks is the author of The Business of Belonging and a popular weekly newsletter for community creators. Previously he co-founded CMX, the leading network for community professionals that was later acquired by Bevy.
🌟 From David’s Post on How to Engineer Serendipity
A 2015 study set out to discover how serendipity occurs. Through in-depth interviews, they uncovered the 4-step process (edited for clarity):
- ⚡️ Trigger: A cue that sparks an experience of serendipity. (e.g. meet at an event, see a question in your Slack, get introduced...)
- 🧠 Connection: The recognition of a potential valuable outcome (e.g. learning, collaboration, friendship)
- 🤳 Follow-up: An action taken to obtain the valuable outcome (e.g. set up a meeting, plan a project, chat on AIM...)
- 🏆 Valuable outcome: The positive result of the serendipitous experience (e.g. form a meaningful relationship, learn something new, commit to build something together...)
And there’s one more factor. . . for serendipity to occur, there must be an 🧵 “unexpected thread” throughout the experience. The more unexpected each step feels, the more it will be perceived as serendipity.
📝 Permission
To say no to virtual meetings!
✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next
If you run a community, build a process to facilitate random encounters: Introduce mechanisms that encourage serendipitous connections among community members. For example, you can implement a "random pairing" feature that pairs members together for one-on-one conversations or create opportunities for members to showcase their work or expertise.
🔗 Resources Mentioned
- David on the web, Twitter, LinkedIn
- David’s Substack: David Spinks
- Articles: Substack—How to Engineer Serendipity
- How I Reduced Scheduled Meetings by 90%
📚 Books Mentioned
- The Business of Belonging: How to Make Community your Competitive Advantage
- Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business
- Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One
- Life After College
🎧 Related Episodes
- Masters of Community with David Spinks
- Free Time: 141: Process, Permission Slips, and Business Pivots with Tara McMullin
- 241: Finding Freedom and Financial Reciprocity through a Paid Newsletter with Nic Antoinette
- 093: How to Sell Your Online Business with Alexis Grant
- 167: Transform Your Approach to Community-Building with Gina Bianchini
🌟Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review
✍️ Connect with me on Substack: http://substack.com/@jennyblake
❤️ Join our private
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FAQ
How many episodes does Free Time with Jenny Blake have?
Free Time with Jenny Blake currently has 286 episodes available.
What topics does Free Time with Jenny Blake cover?
The podcast is about Society & Culture, Entrepreneurship, Podcasts and Business.
What is the most popular episode on Free Time with Jenny Blake?
The episode title '221: Publishing and Personal Writing Pointers with Jennie Nash' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Free Time with Jenny Blake?
The average episode length on Free Time with Jenny Blake is 36 minutes.
How often are episodes of Free Time with Jenny Blake released?
Episodes of Free Time with Jenny Blake are typically released every 4 days.
When was the first episode of Free Time with Jenny Blake?
The first episode of Free Time with Jenny Blake was released on Mar 11, 2021.
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