001: All-in on Heart-Based Business

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the Freetime Cafe, your home for heart based Business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind to time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello friends. Welcome to the inaugural episode of Free Time. I am so delighted that you found your way here. Thank you. Some of you may have been long time Pivot Podcast listeners. I started that show in 2015 and now here we are. I'm recording this March 12, 2021. This is officially my 10 year business aversary. It was 10 years ago this week that I remember finishing the launch of Google's Career Guru program that I had helped co create. And I remember starting my sabbatical and jumping on a plane that very same night, March 11, 2011 when my first book, Life After College was coming out and heading to south by Southwest. It was the first time I was going to meet many of my friends from the Twitter sphere in person, their little squares just becoming life size. And I can't believe it. But here we are. It's 10 years later. I am absolutely thrilled to be going all in on heart based business with this new show. It's something that I shared from time to time on the Pivot podcast, but I was aware that not everyone listening to Pivot was running their own business. And I always wanted to be sensitive to that. At the same time, for so many of us, 2020 asked us to radically reimagine our life and and work. One of my passions has been building my business. And in fact, the times where I'm most lost and in the zone is when I'm tinkering with new software or systems behind the scenes. I ran my private Momentum community for five years, doing Q&A calls every two weeks, teaching workshops once a month, facilitating conversations in our forum. And it was a really tough decision at the end of 2020 when I realized that actually the success of Momentum meant that I needed to shut it down so that I could go all in on this new free time podcast and share my business, tinkering and learning and conversations more broadly. And I really want this to be a place where we just have candid conversations with authors, friends, and fellow business owners about what they're doing in their businesses, what they've tried over the years, and how they structure their time and their team to facilitate their best work and even better when they have some kind of contrarian approach. For example, I share in the Pivot podcast how I run my business without social media. That's episode 228. What are people doing that's different? What are people giving themselves and others permission to drop or think about in a new and different way? You might hear some noise in the background. That's because I live in New York City and I, I swear I am constantly waiting until there's the perfect day or the perfect quiet to record. And if that were the case, we would not have this podcast at all. One of my big missions for free time is to give us all permission to do things differently and permission not to do it all along with permission not to be perfect. I had an aha moment at Thanksgiving when I wrote all the different streams of income that I was managing in my business. Range related to licensing Pivot programs, to companies running the team of Pivot coaches, Momentum, the Pivot podcast, and so on and so on. And then I wrote down wanting to write a new book and launch a new podcast. This one. I looked at this piece of paper and I thought, you must be crazy. This is insane. Any one of these 10 things on this piece of paper is a viable full time income for people out there. I realized there were people that were running a full time paid newsletter and that was their thing. There were people who went all in on podcasting and that was their thing, and that was how they earned A living. There were professional keynote speakers and that was their thing. There were people who ran licensing companies and programs and so on and so on. There were people who center their entire business around a flagship online course. There are people who run a full time business, running a community. And here I was trying to do all of those things. How many businesses was I running by having this many streams of income? Of course, part of that helped me stay afloat in 2020 when a lot of my speaking and corporate work got canceled all in the same weeks in March. But I also realized that it's time for me to take some risks. Big risks. Again, this feels like as risky as leaving Google is shutting down a lot of what was working and working well so that I could really focus on what's next. One of the driving questions that I've had in my business since my days leaving Google, because I realized I was so fear based when I left in 2011, I was constantly worrying about being that statistic, you know, the one that 90% of businesses fail in the first five or 10 years. So I was constantly worrying what if I run out of money and this doesn't work out and I regret my decision. So I made myself start asking, but what if you earn twice as much in half the time? And so that gave me the courage in the first few years that as I was leaving Google, I thought, oh God, what if I fail? And then in the next breath I would just make myself ask, well, and what if you earn twice as much in half the time?

Then after hitting a point of burnout and almost hitting zero in my bank account balance, I had two weeks to figure out how to pay the rent. That inspired what became Pivot and the Pivot method, which was realizing that just earning twice as much in half the time is not enough. That can still lead to tremendous burnout and frustration. So then I extended my mantra to how can I earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is the driving question for me in heart based business, which is not just of course earning abundantly, but also working less. I think the 40 hour workweek, it just doesn't work. If you're a small business owner, you are already paying a risk and pressure tax. You have a lot on your shoulders. You want to be healthy, you want to be present for your family. You may or may not need to work 40 hours a week. There's no but in seats reward built in to running your own business if you're not producing results and time and money just aren't correlated when you're self employed or even effort and money. I hate to say that I wish it weren't the case. There have been so many times where I'm frustrated that I'm trying so hard on something and it's just not working. So I really feel strongly that we can work differently and we must. Especially we've all been juggling so much in recent months and this last year that how can we just pause, regroup, simplify, focus and ask how can I make this easier? How can I have fun with all of this? Again, the piece about for the highest good of all involved is how do we make decisions that that are with integrity, that we honor every single person who's involved along the chain, whether it's you as the owner, your team, your customers, your clients, your community. This is really important to me. So there are decisions that I've made in my business where maybe I am earning a little less, although I never like to make these linear associations. But I'm doing something that I believe in. When it comes to podcasts, I feel like a lot of business podcasts take themselves very seriously and it sounds like a lot of hard work. My friend and I often joke that after listening, sometimes we feel inspired and we've learned important, helpful new things, but sometimes we just feel a sense of compare and despair or like there's so much we should be doing, could be doing, should have been doing already. One of the big permissions I'm giving myself for this new show is done is better than perfect. I did not make up that phrase, but I am certainly adopting it here Even now, as I'm recording this episode, I'm just getting over a cold, so my voice sounds a little different. Getting over sounds more active even. It's midwinter, it's freezing. I live in New York City. There's constantly construction or dogs barking outside. Not to mention the German shepherd pup that's barking on the inside of my house. Ryder. He will scratch the door to my office if he wants to come in. So maybe you're hearing that already in the background. He'll bark if someone's at the door. Maybe Michael, my husband's going to the bathroom and flushes the toilet accidentally. Doesn't realize I'm recording. I mean, it is a comedy of errors just trying to. It's the most simple thing of having a podcast is a quiet space to record. And yet it's shocking how difficult that can be. So today I committed and recommitted again. That I'm gonna show up and I'm going to share what's going on. I'm going to be as straightforward as I can, as honest as I can. I'm not here to be some kind of business building expert. I can tell you that I absolutely love systems and structure and saving ourselves time and saving our sanity by automating what we can and learning how to delegate more effectively. And these are things I'm really passionate about because I often say nobody in my business works full time, even me. I work about 20 to 25 hours a week and my team members work about five hours a week and I have two or three at any given time, revenue wise, mid six figures. So this is possible. I'm not here to tell you what to do. I'm just showing you some strategies that have worked for me and I'm going to share as well what I'm thinking about, what's going on behind the scenes. I was recently inspired by Gimlet Media's startup podcast. This was one of the first business podcasts to really go big when podcasting was getting off the ground in 2014, 2015. And as I listened back, I realized the host, Alex Bloomberg, he has a whole soundscape in the background. He might be recording in a noisy restaurant or in his home, and his kids are watching TV in the background as he talks with his wife or he's in a co working space. He's recording his awkward pitch to Chris Sacca in episode one, the venture capitalist on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. And I was inspired by how vulnerable he was. You know, he just plays this, these audio clips where he sounds so awkward and he's struggling to pitch Chris Sacca. And it's noisy and he's caught off guard because he's pitching without his talking points or his computer, his presentation in front of him. And it was just so helpful to listen to these in this moment where we're getting free time off the ground, because I realized, okay, look, I most likely, most of the time, am not going to have a pristinely quiet, perfect backdrop. My life has changed since I launched Pivot. When I launched the Pivot podcast, I lived alone in a cute little studio apartment in Naleeda. And now we're all dealing with working from home and the chaos that ensues from that. And we're Michael and I don't even have kids. But it's nonetheless just an interesting exercise in accepting what is and also accepting the massive imposter syndrome feelings that arise whenever I or any of us are tackling something big. So another permission that I'm giving myself and I'm hereby giving to all of you is, oof. Permission to have that imposter monster sitting right next to you at your desk or wherever you're planning big things, wherever you're running your business, and to keep showing up. Anyway, one of my goals for this show is to really go pro. And I'm reflecting that in the software that I'm signing up for. The sophistication, investing in brand strategy, trademarks, all the things I messed up or didn't do as well as I could have with the Pivot podcast. With Pivot, I also never intentionally focused on growing the show. I tend to be more of a receiver in that sense, just whoever finds me. That's great. And I love growing things by word of mouth, whether it's my books or the show. I just want you to find immense value. So much so that you naturally want to share it with a friend with free time. I do have goals. I realized as I shared earlier, I cannot juggle so many things in my business and do them all well. And the one thing that I, and only I can do is use my voice and specifically in a one to many public way, not behind a paywall. Even speaking engagements, which I love, happen in a kind of protected area for whatever organization I'm speaking to. So this podcast and my next book are ways that I can really show up and offer what I have in the biggest and I think most unique way. It's not that unique for me to manage certain other parts of the business. Why am I telling you all of this other than as a tmi? Because I really want to generate enough revenue from this free time podcast that it can be my full time gig. I realize how crazy that sounds as I'm saying it because there's something like only 3% of podcasts are successful enough in that way to create a full time job for the host. And it's a big job, it's a busy job. This isn't one of those passive income activities where you just kick up your feet and watch money roll in sort of asynchronously to any effort. No, it's a lot of work, but it's work I'm excited to do and therefore I'm taking it more seriously. So boom. What comes along with taking something more seriously and wanting to go? Probably all those messages. I mean, part of the reason I never went all in on focusing specifically for small business owners or entrepreneurs, founders, we all call ourselves something different. Solopreneurs. Solopluspreneurs. I was always hesitant to do that because there's so much noise in the online business arena and podcasts and courses and all this. And I never really gave myself permission because I never felt like the expert at building a business. It's a learning journey and I'm on it alongside all of you. So this year, finally, as I'm hitting my 10 year anniversary, I'm finally giving myself permission to say, okay, I don't know everything, but I have figured out certain things about how to work with ease and joy. And more than that, I'm excited to facilitate conversations, as I mentioned, with friends and fellow business owners for all of you to talk about business in a different way, to let it be more easy and more joyful. And so the imposter monster imposter syndrome that comes in with that is like, who do you think you are? You're gonna be in the top 3% of podcasts and be able to make a full time living and be able to keep up with it and be able to release consistently and be able to go pro and all of those things that are on my mind. And the truth is, like, I really don't know if it will succeed in that way or not. But as I asked myself when I was leaving Google, I knew that I would regret not trying. And that's how I feel here again, you know, I share that at the end of Pivot that I call them high net growth or impactors. We don't have fomo, we have font fear of not trying. So this is the inflection point that I'm at. Again, you can hear Ryder busting his way in. This is the inflection point is that I knew I would be mad at myself if I didn't at least try to give something like this show my full focus and attention. If you've read the book essentialism by Greg McCown, there's this diagram he has of it looks like a sun, there's a circle, and then there's all these arrows going out in, let's say 10 different directions. The arrows are relatively short and then there's a circle where one arrow shoots out and it's like 10 times longer than the ones in the other diagram. I just recently reread the book and this image is seared in my mind of this is what's possible once you have piloted as I talk about in Pivot. And you know what you're most excited to double down on. And if you think there's opportunity there. Then there's the power of focus and and giving it a chance. Now I'm not going to give myself indefinite to have like a higher burn rate on this what I'm spending every month, but I am going to give myself a Runway of six months to a year where I don't worry about monetizing this at all. I'm just trying to generate momentum and then we'll see. James Kars wrote a book called Finite and Infinite Games. The Finite Game is saying, okay, this podcast will only be a success when it creates a full time living for myself and my family. The Infinite Game is I love having conversations with smart, interesting people and knowing that it's helpful for all of you who are here listening. That's infinite. That's what I've always said about Pivot is even if nobody was listening, I've made such close friendships from the people I've interviewed. I have the best day when it's a recording day and that will not go anywhere. That will not change. I'm really, really thrilled to have you here for this journey and I'm excited to have the conversations that you're most interested to hear and learn about. So if you have guest suggestions, questions, topics you want me to tee up for this show, please let me know. You can get everything you need@itsfreetime.com and if you have a friend who you think would love to listen to a show about heart based business, please spread the word. That is my favorite way to grow the show is word of mouth. You can send them the link wherever you listen to podcasts or send them to itsfreetime.com thank you so so much for listening everybody, for being here and for joining me in this new direction. I cannot wait to see where it takes us. If you've listened this far, you get a gold star. Thank you. Word of Mouth is the most joyful way we can grow this show and it helps us land interviews with the luminaries and insightful guests that you would most love to hear from. Please send this episode to a friend who might find it helpful and for show notes and related links from this episode, visit itsfreetime.com while you're there, make sure you're subscribed to the Time well Spent newsletter. You'll get instant access to my Tech Toolkit, a continually updated list of all the software I use, along with the total monthly spend to run my business where no one works full time, Even me. Visit itsfreetime.com join Remember, you are running the show. It's time for radical reimagining and everything is up for grabs. Let it be easy, let it be fun and build with love.