014: Why It Matters to Celebrate Wins

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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, time and team to do your best work. Now onto today's show.

Hello friends. I hope this episode finds you well wherever you are. I am recording this the day after the very first batch of six episodes dropped the official free time podcast launch on 321 21. Even though this episode is going to come out weeks later, if not more than that, because we're ahead of things and planning ahead and on a schedule now remember, I'm trying to go pro. It's still important to me to jump on the mic and record while I have truth that is fresh. What is that specifically you ask? I am sharing the post launch melancholy that has set in. It's so crazy and I'll explain why. I should have seen this coming. And this has happened with many, many of the big creative efforts that I have launched into the world, most notably my two previous books. I also failed to take my own advice. I remember hearing a quote from Oprah that said celebrate what you want to see more of. And you know what my friends, I worked on this podcast launch for six months. There were so many incredible people involved. There was so much 11th hour effort that went into the website and the brand and the episode editing and the show notes set up and migrating our old feeds. Shout out to every single team member who helped along the way and even the extended team members of all the new software services that we were using, going back and forth with their support teams so that we could get things set up and ready to go. Sure enough, as I hit refresh on my podcast player on Sunday, March 21, I hit refresh. Refresh. They weren't there. I was nervous. Is this going to work? Are they going to go live? Are the feeds working? Is everything okay? Boom. There they were. That first Batch dropped. I was so happy. I was feeling so excited in the moment. And it didn't hit me until later on in the day when I said to Michael, I said, something's wrong. I have a pit in my stomach and I don't know why. And he's like, well, what do you think it is? Where's it coming from? As I checked in with myself, I realized that it was so anticlimactic that, that I was so focused on building toward the launch and my joy was going to be that everything went live without a hitch, that I had not planned any sort of celebration. And I'm also kind of more on the humble, quiet side of these things. I never throw myself birthday parties. I really like, just am super low key. Michael and I got married at City Hall. We didn't have any kind of wild and crazy reception. We met at a speakeasy bar behind a gallery, an art gallery in the Lower east side, the day after. And we just opened a bar tab for some friends. It was so chill, super last minute. But I realized, in this case, all of a sudden, I started crying. He asked me what was wrong and I realized I was sad. I felt like I had just spent six months of effort, really intense effort, starting from ideating this whole new direction. You getting clear that, yes, this is a direction that I want to move, Making the hard choices to shut things down, like my momentum, community and all the. Just angst of communicating that and hoping that that was the right move. Engaging together agency and embarking on this big brand strategy in October. So six months ago, at the time of this recording, going through the whole brand strategy process, rounds of feedback going back and forth. And then once we turned the corner into the new year, really getting going on all the software that I needed to set up. There was just massive amounts of effort that went into the launch. And when the day came, there I was just still sitting in my sweats. Nothing planned, no real way to celebrate, and no way that I was marking the moment. This might sound really frivolous to some of you listening, like, oh my God, talk about first world problems, but here's why I'm saying it. This quote, celebrate what you want to see more of is so important. And it reminds me that we. I put a lot of effort into these big projects and big launches, and it's only fair that we celebrate, that we mark the moment. I'm even a big fan of creating some sort of ritual or even buying something memorable like a token or John Warlow calls it a trophy. When he interviews founders who have sold their businesses. He says, did you buy a trophy? You know, for some people, I guess if you've sold your business for millions, you're buying. They could be buying a vacation home. But for others, maybe it's just a meaningful piece of jewelry or who even knows, a jacket, a pair of sunglasses. It could be anything at all. But something to say, yes, I worked really hard and I want to remember this and I want to celebrate this because it'd be so easy to have this big launch day come and go and then just be focused on the next milestone and the next one after that and the next one after that. My dad wrote a book called the Bliss Engine and in it he talks about the Bliss crash that after any big creative effort, you know, it's so all consuming and this is passion in the best sense for, for me, in the last several weeks and months I was going to bed thinking about this new show, waking up thinking about it, making little fixes and edits throughout the day, just obsessing and twisting joyfully. So this is what I love to do. I love building and creating new things based on big ideas. It's my favorite thing to do. But that all consuming nature of it when all of a sudden it goes away and the project shifts into a different state. So now I won't be building and tinkering quite so much as getting into the flow of ongoing recording and making sure our systems are working and that we have episodes scheduled with interesting guests and doing solo shows like this and then even into marketing, which definitely not my zone of genius. There can be a little bit of sadness that the fun part or the building or that intensity and passion and commitment goes away a little bit. It just, it needs to shift. And you know, this is kind of funny, but they say that some couples if, if they've spent a year and a half planning their wedding, that sometimes there can be a post wedding celebration crash because you've put all this effort into planning this big beautiful day and we certainly didn't. But some couples spend a lot of money. You get your family, your friends there, you've had the best friggin day. It's been this day on the calendar that you've been anticipating for a year and a half. And I have to say I never ever fantasized about my own wedding. But maybe some people fantasize their whole lives for this big day. And then it goes, it comes and goes. And of course you're gonna feel a void on the other side. Of course you're gonna feel some sadness, like, oh my goodness, this marker, this pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I have arrived. It is here, it has passed even. And now what? What's next? And we're now peering over the ledge into the unknown future again. In the case of a project like this one, it also means shifting what the next milestone of success or completion looks like. So in my case, setting up software and creating a new website and migrating the back end and even moving the Pivot feeds and sort of working on the big ideas and the brand strategy. This is actually my comfort zone. And my finish line is that the first batch of six episodes goes live. And in fact, it did that. It went live on March 21, 2021. Now, in fact, that was several months delayed. I had originally wanted the podcast to launch one one 21. You know me, I just love these harmonious numbers. But one one was just not going to work and I didn't want to stress over the holidays. So then I moved it to 221 21. That wasn't going to work. I missed that. And even when we launched, when I moved it for the third and final time to March 21, it meant that I was actually going to be late on helping friends spread the word about some of their books that were coming out. So I kind of committed, you know, this is happening no matter what. And we did scale back. I was originally gonna launch with 10 episodes and we scaled back to six. Still totally reasonable, still gives you something to binge when you first arrive. But once those episodes went live, when I came to my desk the next day, which is today, at the time of this recording, all of a sudden I realized, oh man, my favorite kind of finish line has passed now. You know, my favorite one of just going from zero to one, creating something out of midair, my own imagination, that now that finish line is behind me by a day. And what's the next finish line? Oh, now we get to the really tough stuff of trying to grow the show. And specifically in the way I share in episode one, trying to grow the show big enough so that I can give this my full time energy, attention and focus. So as I look at the stats, and I'm not super big on obsessing over stats or anything, but there is a sense in the beginning of like, is anyone here? Is anyone listening? And I see that the stats in what is it? It's been one day. But you know, I put the word out on the Pivot podcast that has a couple thousand listeners, and I Came over to free time and I said, what are the stats? And maybe it's a hundred listens or 150.

And as I look toward my first benchmark of goal of 10,000 subscribers, and then eventually 100,000, I go, oh, okay, this is gonna be a climb. You know, this is. I never want to associate. This is gonna be long or this is gonna be hard. You'll hear me at some point. I'll do a full episode on Nonlinear Breakthroughs. I really believe in asking for Nonlinear Breakthroughs. So I could imagine my journey to 100,000 listeners could be up and to the right, just this long, hard slog one by one by one. And it might and it might not. Magic, serendipity, crazy, random things, they can happen. And often growth and traction is not a straight line up into the right. If I look at how long I've been platform building, public original thinking, as I call it, or ongoing public original thinking, it's 15 years. So, okay, maybe that can help accelerate where we're going. But nonetheless, the finish line that was in my comfort zone, it has passed. That's behind the show is live. It's in your earbuds right now as we speak. So the new finish line is one that I'm not as comfortable with focusing on growth or focusing on, you know, really going pro in terms of my systems and my commitment and my release schedule. So I just had to. I just had to come to the mic and hit record because this post launch melancholy is real. It has happened to me before. It has happened to me almost every single time. I don't know if there's a way to escape it. And I want you to not make the mistake that I did, which was not planning a way to celebrate and mark the occasion. Do not cap six plus months of effort and teamwork by realizing, just sitting in your sweats and realizing, oh, okay, the launch just came and went of this big creative effort. Don't do that. Plan yourself something. Listen, you don't have to plan some big blowout party. I've done book launch parties and I friggin love those. I've invested way more money and planning effort on my book launch parties than we did on our wedding. But that was intentional because we wanted to focus on our ceremony between the two of us. We just didn't want to be worried about anyone else or travel or details. We wanted to really focus on the marriage. But in the case of creative projects, I've done book launches, I've done. I did a website launch party like who really does that? I don't even know why I did that, but I was just celebrating at that time. It was moving from life after college to this new site and direction. Jennyblake me. That site launched in 2013 and my tagline was systems at the intersection of mind, body and business. Isn't that funny? It still connects. It still ties into what I'm doing here and now, both for some reason, with free time and the Corona times that we're in. I just didn't plan a damn thing. Nothing. Nothing. Not an email thread, not a zoom with friends, not going out to dinner with Michael. I didn't even have a bottle of bubbly in the fridge waiting, nothing. So when Michael saw my face and he saw that I was all of a sudden realizing that the launch was behind me, I swear I must have looked like I was a 2 year old or a 3 year old where he just like took their toy away or.

Just childlike reaction of sadness. My friends and I also call it birthday party syndrome, where you've had such a fun birthday that when everybody leaves and you're a little kid, everyone leaves. You're like sad. You start crying because where did all your friends go? Where did the party go? It was so fun. So in a way it celebrates how fun something was. And so he looked at me and he put celebrate on the TV and we danced. We had a three minute dance party in the living room with Michael and even Ryder. You know, celebrate good times. Come on. Singing is not my strength, okay? That's why I have a podcast. All right? So if you're launching something this year in 2021, big or small, please do something to celebrate. Please. If you even need to delegate the fact that someone is going to arrange a little celebration or a shindig, or a lunch or a dinner, or that you have cupcakes in your fridge, I don't know, I don't care. Just don't do what I did and do nothing at all to mark the occasion as per Oprah. Celebrate what you want to see more of. I do believe that when we celebrate, we train our subconscious to do more, to keep going, to keep stretching, to keep reaching. And it refuels us for the next leg of the creative journey, which will of course have its ups and downs and twists and turns. So you hereby have my permission to celebrate not just the milestones, but your progress along the way. And I want to know what are you doing to celebrate? And in fact, I was just trading voxers with a friend. Shout out you know who you are. I just don't want to say your name because I didn't ask for permission. You can celebrate something retroactively as well. So let's say you have just reached a milestone in your business, or a milestone came and went in the last six months, in the last year, and you didn't celebrate. Now's your time. Let's do it. I want to hear Report back. You can even leave us a voice message@itsfreetime.com ask. You can leave a voice note that I'll play on air during the next Listener Q and A episode in order to have Listener Q and A episodes. You yes, you who are listening gotta submit something because right now the new inbox is empty. So go to itsfreetime.com ask and report back. Tell us what you're celebrating and how you marked the occasion. Thank you so much for listening everybody. Have a beautiful day. 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.