Free Time with Jenny Blake

As I share in Free Time, nowhere is entropy more visually evident than in older homes or ones in nature. I remember staying at a cabin in the Catskills, where I could see right before my eyes all forms of plants and animals encroaching on the once-pristine house.  Without upkeep, a dead tree teetered precariously toward the roof, weeds started overtaking the grass, spiders made themselves comforta...

If life is a circus, then maybe there’s a way to get better at performing in it. As Laura shares in this conversation about ways to calm time chaos, “Nobody gets shot out of a cannon at the wrong time in a circus . . . it’s a miracle of precision.” In this week’s episode, you will learn how to shift from a sense of time scarcity to spacious serenity, how to overcome “horror vacui” and guilt when c...

Welcome Deep Questions with Cal Newport listeners! I had so much fun recording the "Help me do less!" episode — check it out here if you haven't already :) This episode originally aired on January 7, 2022. 🎁 We're bringing back BOGOGO! Give the gift of free time to yourself and others in the new year by participating in our Buy One, Get One, Give One bonus—back for a limited time. Here's how it w...

"I never serve from my reserves" is just one of countless gems from one of my wisest friends, Christine Arylo. It is time for us to unhook from the over-culture operating system that produces burnout. Christine teaches us how to lead from the heart with a “pace of grace” by changing our relationship to time, energy, and flow (focus + fluidity). This episode originally aired on March 21, 2021. More...

Free Time for Your Future Self: For any area of your business that causes friction, run through these systems-thinking questions to inspire small steps today that will save time far into the future.  This is from our BFF community’s private feed, with an excerpt from the Free Time book and toolkit. If you want to join a group of smart, heart-centered, generous and successful business owners who ar...

What is your relationship to information? Scattered and chaotic, or clear and navigable? Do you have streamlined systems for saving, distilling, and crafting original thought-leadership from what you encounter and store, or are you stuck when it comes time to create order from the chaos? Our guest this week, Tiago Forte, is here to teach you how to develop a second brain—a mindset that transcends...

This best of episode is a replay of the 100th episode of this show since launching on March 21, 2021. I gave myself the tricky task of pairing down the top ten lessons learned this last year and a half. I wish I could’ve pulled an excerpt from every single guest, but alas! These are the lessons that stuck most, sparking new insights and ahas.  This episode originally aired June 10, 2022. 🎁 We're...

How has Alexandra Franzen built two thriving businesses without social media? By delivering work with a quality I like to call “exquisite greatness.” She treats every marketing initiative like a tiny art project, something to get excited about rather than a draining chore to dread—and no, it doesn’t require social media. As Alex shares, according to a Nielsen study, 92% of customers purchase produ...

Just a few days after launch, Free Time topped many Amazon charts! Although "making the lists" is not something I lose sleep over, it does go a long way toward raising awareness and generating lasting launch momentum. Here are some early category stats—I couldn't do any of this without you! #1 New Release in Time Management #1 New Release in Small Business #1 New Release Organizational Change #1 N...

“Stab the Hydra in the heart.” Cal Newport is not pulling any punches with his latest treatise on how we can combat Hyperactive Hive Mind with smarter systems for communication. Email has become a constant source of guilt and stress for so many of us — listen in for strategies to reclaim your peace and focus. This episode originally aired on March 21, 2021. About Cal Newport: Cal Newport is an Ass...

What steps can you take now to free your time far into the future? Long-time listeners know this is one of the central questions and strategies throughout Free Time, my book that helps you build the muscle of continually freeing more of your time. Today I’m sharing three strategies to set your time free in 2023. For added accountability in freeing your time in the year ahead, I encourage you to ch...

According to SignalFire, the fastest growing type of small business is one that revolves around content creation, also known as the creator economy. In this conversation, Kim Kaupe and I explore favorite tips and tools for designing our calendar to support creative work, strategies for staying consistent, paying for accountability, “fishing where your fish are,” batching to get more done in less t...

Your creativity and entrepreneurial spirit got you here. Smarter systems will take you there. There is less friction in your operations and a greater focus on joyful work. There is a spacious calendar where you are free to dedicate time to your most compelling, strategic projects — the ones that best express your unique talents, powered by a Delightfully Tiny Team. It’s time to stop working full t...

If you’re a business owner thinking, “My platform is too small to land sponsors,” today’s guest will encourage you to think again. Instead of counting yourself out purely because of the numbers—consider shifting your mindset from how you can help brands to how you can serve your audience best.  In this conversation, sponsorship coach Justin Moore shares his hard-earned wisdom on forming mutually b...

There’s a missing chapter in Free Time that, over the course of editing, got condensed down into a single bullet point. When someone new joins your team, even part-time, those first few days, weeks, and months have potential to transform your manager manual—in ways that you would otherwise miss. I encourage you to share this episode with your new team members as they join! 🌟Key Takeaways for New...

For many of us running Delightfully Tiny Teams, the ideal team set-up is one where no one works full time — including the owner. Today Kaneisha Grayson returns to the pod to share with her signature transparency her lessons learned about onboarding part-time team members, designing effective hiring and vetting processes, teaching sales skills, and scaling without breaking the bank. If you haven’t...

How do you define enough? Today, Jenny is sharing a bonus episode from the private BFF podcast feed where she’s talking about how to refocus on what enough looks like, and how you can celebrate exactly where (and who) you already are—in business and in life. 🌟3 Key Takeaways: Mirroring, or looking at others, can be motivating, but be wary of falling into the compare pit of despair. My friend Meli...

Do we really all have the same 24 hours as Beyoncé? That’s our tongue-in-cheek title, pulled from Tara McMullin’s new book, What Works: A Comprehensive Framework to Change the Way We Approach Goal Setting, for a recent Spotify Live conversation. In this replay, Charlie Gilkey, Tara McMullin, and I explore the nuances of calculating time, money, and energy capacity so that we don’t tip into boredom...

You’ve heard the term low-hanging fruit: the easiest thing you can do to make the biggest possible impact in your business. But not all fruit is created equal!  Sometimes, those low-hanging fruits are modest peaches or distracting, underperforming pumpkins (in Mike Michalowicz parlance) that might not be worth pursuing.  Other times, you’re so close to your own business that you can’t see the enor...

What do you do when your business model is no longer working for you? When your current income streams and activities are not just tiring but draining you to the point of exhaustion? My guest today, Tara McMullin, is someone I have long admired for her willingness to question dominant narratives about how things should be done, instead emphasizing what works for each individual person and business...

Licensing your IP to companies can be lucrative and a tough nut to crack. Pricing is opaque, deliverables and tracking can get complicated, and companies with a smaller Learning and Development function may call it by another name (such as Train-the-Trainer).  After many years working with a small handful of joyful clients—bolstered by many mentoring sessions, lessons learned the hard way, and a w...

“Build an email list,” is business advice equivalent to “Make sure you breathe.” We all know it’s a best practice to communicate consistently with our communities, but coming up with something interesting on a regular basis is easier said than done! As is building out a paid newsletter subscription in parallel to the baseline missives. Thank goodness for our guest today, David Elikwu (also a fello...

Today I’m sharing a section from Free Time about one of the topics interviewers ask me about most: Sailing the Sea of Shiny Shoulds. You’ll hear why I’m such an advocate for writing permission slips to do the things we really want to and dropping the things we don’t. 🌟Key Takeaway: If you want to dabble in something that might be a Shiny Should, treat it like an experiment. Set rules for engageme...

As you all may well know by now, I am a social media curmudgeon. But that doesn’t mean I’m not inspired by success stories of business owners applying these tools joyfully to create leverage in their business marketing! My guest today is one of my longtime IRL besties, Inna Aizenshtein, who has been successful at filling her coaching and hypnotherapy practice primarily with leads from TikTok. In t...

In the spirit of “truth while it’s fresh,” one of my core values for this podcast, today I’m sharing a truth that has been on a low simmer for two years but that I’ve never quite shared publicly. I’m taking you behind the scenes of my explorations around potentially selling the Pivot side of my business—and why I chose not to (for now, unless you know of any $5 million to 10 million buyers around!...