Free Time with Jenny Blake
Set your time free through smarter systems so you can do more of your best work. Free Time launched in 2021 and releases on Tuesdays and Fridays. It's a Webby-nominated business podcast and winner of three W3 awards for best show and best host. Join Jenny Blake, author of three award-winning books—including Free Time: Lose the Busywork and Love Your Business and Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One—to explore our guiding question: How can we earn twice as much in half the time, with joy and ease, while serving the highest good? Subscribe now so you don’t miss an episode! Bonus: please leave a review and share with a friend—word-of-mouth is the most joyful way to grow the show :) Subscribe to theTime Well Spent newsletter at ItsFreeTime.com, and share this episode at pod.link/freetime. Check out Jenny's other podcast, Pivot with Jenny Blake, on navigating change at pod.link/pivotmethod.
Episodes
February 24, 2024 • 21 mins
As I round the corner into this ninth year of podcasting and after over 700 episodes, today I’m announcing a pause for both shows.
Listen in to hear what factors helped me reach this decision across time, money, energy, depressing industry articles, the pace of both shows’ growth, and mix of additional business factors that make this an important moment to pause and regroup. You might also appreciate the even deeper dive with my lo...
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269: 🏦 “I am not a bank” — Strategies for Getting Corporate Clients to Pay on Time with Joey Coleman
February 20, 2024 • 61 mins
“I don’t get on the airplane—and definitely not the stage—unless all invoices are paid in full.”
When my friend and fellow keynote speaker Joey Coleman said this to me over coffee, I started drilling him for details: Really?! How do you have the nerve to say that to a speaking client?! How do you avoid caving in to make sure their event doesn’t fall apart if they haven’t paid in time? What about clients who work for highly bureaucr...
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February 16, 2024 • 62 mins
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...
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Laura Mae Martin has a fascinating role as the Executive Productivity Advisor at Google in the Office of the CEO—one that she helped create six years ago (with big thanks to Jenny Wood for introducing us!). ****She coaches Google’s top executives on the best ways to manage their time and energy and sends out a weekly productivity newsletter that reaches over fifty thousand employees.
Today we’re talking about her forthcoming book, ...
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February 9, 2024 • 30 mins
While the title of this episode, The Framework Framework™ is tongue-in-cheek, I’m pulling this out of the BFF bonus vault because it’s one of the community’s favorites.
I’m sharing the first steps to how you can set up a framework to help bolster your IP and your business; either by scaling through programs like certification and licensing, and to make your material more memorable and accessible to the groups you care most about re...
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February 6, 2024 • 34 mins
What do you do when you lose your biggest client? If you haven’t already, listen to part one for some answers—264: What to Do When You Lose Your Biggest Client— and save these links for a rainy day :)
The next time you’re going through something challenging in your business, remember: you are not alone! I hope you find comfort through the voices of some of my dearest friends, former podcast guests, and favorite Heart-Based Business...
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February 2, 2024 • 38 mins
What do you do when you lose your biggest client? That was my Spotify search query for podcast episodes on this topic in the summer of 2023. It came up empty—there was not a single podcast episode on this topic. Of course not. Who wants to admit out loud and in their archives that they've lost their biggest client? In the past, I probably wouldn't have fessed up to this either. Except for the fact that now it's what I wish I could ...
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“I am great in the early, messy days and I know that about myself, so I designed my business around serving others in that stage.”
In this conversation with business strategist (genius!) Michelle Warner, we cover the three growth stages most relevant to tiny business owners, how to fix broken business models, validating product-market-founder fit, the difference between traffic-based versus relationship-based sales and marketing, b...
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January 26, 2024 • 14 mins
“Things today are waaayyyyy better than Things have ever been. Cavemen had sticks. In the Middle ages they had typhoid. We have iPhones and Hermann Miller chairs and shoes with air in the soles. Inside the soles! How do they get the air inside the soles??? We are living in the Golden Age of Things, in the Golden Empire of Things.”
—Shalom Auslander's Fetal Position via Beckett Drove a Deux Chevaux
I first encountered the Apple bill...
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January 23, 2024 • 41 mins
If you’re anything like me, you may find conducting online launches for your programs or events exhausting and sometimes even cringe-inducing. Thankfully, today’s guest, Anne Samoilov, is here to help!
Anne is a long-time expert in the space who has helmed product launches for Laura Roeder, Marie Forleo, and Jonathan Fields. Today, we’re talking about why some of us find big, splashy launches so draining; how to set up automated or...
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January 19, 2024 • 37 mins
“Whenever you have a choice of what to do, choose the more interesting path."
In honor of our upcoming Free Time x Long Game IRL event in Miami on February 1 and 2 (it’s not too late to join!), today I’m bringing you a favorite episode from the earliest days of the Free Time pod. In this conversation with Dorie Clark—aka “DC”—one of my closest friendtors, we discuss how she "optimizes for interesting," says no to good opportunities...
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January 16, 2024 • 36 mins
Before you post anything, ask: Why am I posting this? Is this within my brand guardrails? Even still, you may find yourself in hot water someday, and it’s important to think through how you will respond (and the pop-up team you will assemble to help) in advance. Today, we’re breaking down the tricky art of crisis communications and apologies with Aliza Licht, author of On Brand, who brings two decades of PR experience to the conver...
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January 12, 2024 • 17 mins
What’s on your business owner to-do list? Here’s a peek at mine, full of items large, small, and existential. This is another crossover from Rolling in D🤦🏻♀️h, a recent essay that was an unexpected runaway hit—the most popular to date in the six months since I started on Substack.
I had no idea (as usual) whether it would resonate or not when I hit “publish,” until my friend Adam texted to say how much he could relate. “Your com...
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January 9, 2024 • 38 mins
“We don’t want our time to be spread thin like peanut butter on a slice of toast. You will have greater impact when you concentrate your efforts on work that is closely tied to winning—however you define it.”
Are you working in a frustration factory? If so, it’s important to recognize that not all friction is created equal. Some is good, to slow down decision-making in crucial moments, and some is bad, getting in the way of progres...
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I'm so excited to bring you a listener submission today from Renee Rubin Ross about my summer Voxer coaching pop-up. I've done these two summers in a row now, and I've learned so much every subsequent time. In this episode, I’ll share the structure, systems, and pricing that help me create a joyful asynchronous program that keeps our calendars free of “tiny boxes” (as my friend Sarah calls them).
More about Renee: Dr. Renee Rubin R...
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“It wasn’t about being better than others, it was being ourselves, and true to our ideals in our work.” That’s just one of many gems from today’s guest, Birch Coffee co-founder Paul Schlader, who says, “I don’t accept anything less than absolute excellence.”
In this conversation we talk about how he stands out in the New York City noise by hiring for kindness; getting bought out when the Gershwin Hotel closed and thereby ending the...
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December 29, 2023 • 36 mins
Today is a crossover episode from the Pivot podcast celebrating eight lessons learned from over eight years of podcasting.
The Free Time podcast is now approaching its third birthday—I launched it on March 21, 2021—a year prior to the book coming out. I encourage you to grab your copy if you haven’t already, or even better—🎁 give the gift of free time to a loved one in your life for 2024!
As we start to plan the year ahead, I hope...
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December 26, 2023 • 48 mins
“’Something I always say: at the very least, do it for the plot. Do it for the story. Be bold in life, mostly because not being bold is boring as hell.’ Margot tipped her head back in glittery laughter and I felt my chest expand in hope.”
That’s just one of many glittering conversations that the main character of Jamie Varon’s debut novel, Main Character Energy, has with her Aunt, a guiding light who helps her find her voice and pu...
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December 22, 2023 • 51 mins
”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 h...
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December 19, 2023 • 36 mins
Just because you use pretty words that sound nice doesn’t mean they are effective. Although we know what we do because we do it all the time; it’s hard to separate that from what your audience wants and experiences. Thankfully, today’s guest is here to help.
Ben Guttmann is a marketing and communications expert and author of Simply Put: Why Clear Messages Win — and How to Design Them.
We discuss why business owners often muck up th...
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