Free Time with Jenny Blake

What’s the daily free time sweet spot? Between two to five hours, according to today’s guest, professor and researcher Cassie Holmes. In this conversation, you’ll hear about the wedding that wasn’t — sparking Cassie’s quest to determine the areas of highest agency for improving our own happiness, why time well spent is such a big factor to that end, the powerful question her now husband opened wit...

When you catch a wishie, what do you yearn for? Today’s book club episode might shift your “wish” hereafter to just one powerful offering. Tosha Silver’s grassroots-to-bestselling book Outrageous Openness: Letting the Divine Take the Lead is a cornerstone of my collection, one that changed my life when I first read it nearly a decade ago. The stories from this book were adapted from two years of T...

“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 w...

What’s it like to be at a conference with “fancy” people, when you’re the one feeling like you snuck in a side door as a seat filler? Okay, okay — that’s just my imposter monster talking. In today’s experimental episode, I’m taking you behind-the-scenes of the recent 5-day main TED conference in Vancouver, building on Pivot episode 325: 10+ Conference Networking Strategies with Alisa Cohn. In full...

Does the world really need this? This is one of the inevitable existential dilemmas of creative work. You have to decide that your work is worth your time and energy, because no one is asking you for it. Today’s guest, Jessica Abel, is someone whose work I have long admired for its richness and depth. In this conversation, we talk about navigating the “Dark Forests” of creativity; go behind-the-bu...

Today I'm sharing ten more of my favorite recent GPT4 prompts and experiments for creative business owners. This episode originally aired as a bonus episode for the private BFF community, as a follow-up to a case study on how ChatGPT has helped me draft a few solo podcast episodes. Want more where this came from? Join us in the private BFF community and/or Free Time Operations Dashboard with promo...

The average American worker gets 11 days of paid vacation per year. Among those with unlimited paid time off (PTO), the average person takes 19 days off per year, yet 48% of Americans say they still check their work email while away. What about business owners? Although it seems like we have more free time, the reality is that life as a business owner can be a 24/7 unceasing, all-consuming task. E...

Today I'm sharing five creative ways to better organize your phone contacts. I hope it’s helpful and time-saving toward a very important end: feeling less overwhelmed by relationships! 🏝️ Friendly Reminder: I’m opening up ten Voxer coaching spots to work with me 1:1 (asynchronously). I’d love to help you take a step back from the day-to-day operations of your business and set even more of your tim...

“Small hinges move big doors.” That one thought helped Karen Allen pick herself up from the depths of grief after losing her husband in a tragic, senseless act of violence nearly a decade ago. Shortly afterward, she lost her house, her car, and then one year later — her job. Getting fired followed just a few months after an intuitive hit that corporate wasn’t the best fit for her any longer was a...

Hi friends! A quick in-beteween-isode to let you know about a special opportunity to work with me 1:1 :) Back by popular demand, I'm opening doors again for my 1:1 Voxer coaching pop-up. Summer is the perfect time to take a step back from your business and set even more time free through smarter systems—while freeing yourself from screens and coordinating extra calendar entries. We piloted this pr...

Time- and money-based targets don’t always serve the purpose we intend. In fact, sometimes, they actively work against us. Today we’re spelunking into a few related principles like Goodhart’s Law, The Cobra Effect, and why vanity metrics are often no more than a hungry ghost lurking in the shadows of your business. I couldn’t resist sprinkling pop culture clips throughout to illustrate these conce...

In episode 181: Be Irreplaceable, you heard from my creative coach, Jay Acunzo about how to prioritize resonanceover reach. I’ve been working with Jay for about six months now, and it has transformed the way I think about creating content. One of the videos he shared with us in his new community, Creator Kitchen, is a walkthrough of his Intellectual Property (IP) Development OS: how he collects id...

When today’s guest, Kelli Thompson, was overwhelmed by opportunity—a level of success she had been dreaming of and working diligently toward—she knew she needed a roadmap to better manage her time and energy, stat. In this conversation, we unpack how she created an Energy Capacity Plan (a woman after my own spreadsheet-loving heart!), how to create yours, why it doesn’t need to be a detailed calen...

Today’s episode is the second half of an in-depth Licensing Q&A prompted by BFF Al Dea, host of the MBA Insider podcast. If you haven’t already, listen first to 140: How to Licensing Your IP (Intellectual Property), followed by 186: Licensing 201 — Q&A (Part One) on Product Development, Attracting Clients, and Sales Process. Al submitted a series of wonderful questions that span five categories; i...

“A shoe is just a shoe until my son steps into it.” —Deloris Jordan When negotiating Michael Jordan's famous shoe deal with Nike, his mom Deloris “made an additional demand: Her son must receive not only a $250,000 fee, but also a cut from every sneaker sold,” making her case with that mic drop moment above (as retold in the movie Air via The New York Times article ‘Air’ and the Argument for Letti...

I'm excited to bring you an episode from the Pivot podcast vault today—this is a conversation with a longtime friendtor, Mike Michalowicz, that stuck in my mind long after we recorded on February 5, 2020. The episode launched on March 20, 2020, and the last group gathering I attended was Mike's in-person Fix This Next workshop at his office in New Jersey on Friday, March 13. Boy was the world abou...

It was a hot summer day, and I’m grumbling while dragging a rolling carry-on suitcase full of books to sign and send to the post office, starting to build resentment at how much time it was taking. After two hours of signing, writing notes, punching endless kiosk buttons, I start tsk taking myself, saying I should never do this myself again (I’m the owner of the business, after all! This is admin...

“You have to live spherically—in many directions. Never lose your childish enthusiasm—and things will come your way.” —Federico Fellini This week’s delightful guest, Madeleine Dore, reminded me of this wonderful quote while reading her book, one that I know you will love as much as I did: I Didn’t Do The Thing Today: Letting Go of Productivity Guilt. We talk about widening the measure and meaning...

📣 We’re publishing this week’s solo episode a day early as a friendly reminder that the Free Time podcast is nominated for a Webby Award, the "Oscars of the Internet!" Please visit http://itsfreetime.com/webby to cast your vote by the end of today, Thursday, April 20! This nomination alone is a major achievement, putting us in the top 12% of nearly 14,000 projects entered—thank you so much for be...

Hi Friends! I'm re-airing this announcement as a friendly reminder that the Free Time podcast has made it to the nomination stage of the Webby Awards, the "Oscars of the Internet!" The Webbys celebrate the best and most innovative online content across websites, podcasts, games, apps, and videos. 📣 Between now and TOMORROW, April 20th: Please visit itsfreetime.com/webby and cast your vote for Fre...

📣 The Free Time podcast is nominated for a Webby Award, the "Oscars of the Internet!" Please visit http://itsfreetime.com/webby to cast your vote for Free Time between now and April 20! One thing I love about Jay Acunzo is that his body of work is a love letter to craft and quality. We talk about mindset shifts and practices to help you focus more on resonance than reach; how to do work that matt...

📣 The Free Time podcast is nominated for a Webby Award, the "Oscars of the Internet!" Please visit http://itsfreetime.com/webby to cast your vote for Free Time between now and Thursday, April 20! This nomination alone is a major achievement, putting us in the top 12% of nearly 14,000 projects entered—thank you so much for being here and for your support! What business best practices drive you nut...

📣 The Free Time podcast is nominated for a Webby Award, the "Oscars of the Internet!" Please visit http://itsfreetime.com/webby to cast your vote for Free Time between now and Thursday, April 20! This nomination alone is a major achievement, putting us in the top 12% of nearly 14,000 projects entered—thank you so much for being here and for your support! “Start with the truth, then edit.” That’s...

📣 The Free Time podcast is nominated for a Webby Award, the "Oscars of the Internet!" Please visit http://itsfreetime.com/webby to cast your vote for Free Time between now and Thursday, April 20! This nomination alone is a major achievement, putting us in the top 12% of nearly 14,000 projects entered—thank you so much for being here and for your support! What if time wasn’t something we had to ho...

Friends!! I can't believe it!! The Free Time podcast has made it to the nomination stage of the Webby Awards, the "Oscars of the Internet!" The Webbys celebrate the best and most innovative online content across websites, podcasts, games, apps, and videos. 📣 Between now and April 20th: Please visit itsfreetime.com/webby and cast your vote for Free Time! This nomination alone is a major achievemen...