028: When the Financial Tides Recede

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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 finds you well. Today I'm building on episode 26 where I talked about five trade offs of long term singular focus. One of those trade offs was financial. So the topic of today's solo episode is how I think about money and finances when the financial tides recede. I'll explain what I mean by that in a moment. This is one of those problems in progress episodes I mentioned in episode 24, Missing Mojo, that I got great feedback from a friend on just switching up the format a little bit and I've also been thinking about being a little more strategic and intentional with even how I shape these solo episodes. Sometimes I'll be sharing something I have truly figured out that might be in the forthcoming free time book and other times like today, I just want to share truth while it's fresh. Something that I'm experiencing. A way that I'm thinking about it without making any assumptions that it's correct or that it's going to work. Just explaining my thought process in the hopes that it gives you permission to do the same. Before I dive into today's episode, I would love to ask a quick favor of you. I have submitted a free time book signing for consideration for south by Southwest which happens in March of 2022. It will be two weeks before the official launch of FreeTime on March 22, 2022. I've submitted a talk called Agile. What's your wi fi password? This is one of my favorite chapters in the whole book and it really sets the premise. This chapter is about every time we take a step or we ask a question. How do we ensure that we can capture it for future use and to save ourselves time in the future. So the story of what's your WI FI password is how many times have you gone to stay with a friend or you go stay at someone else's place, barring a hotel or Airbnb, where they actually have a lot of great documentation and you ask them what's your WI FI password? And all of this information about what you need to know as a guest gets transmitted in these one off situations, whether in text or email. Well, as I share in this chapter, what if you helped your friend create a Google Doc about their place where you capture all this information for them and the next time they have a guest all they have to do is send them a link. This is a mindset, this is a systematic way of thinking and we can certainly apply it to many, many facets of our business to save us time and energy so that we can free our time and mind and team to do our best work. And that's the whole premise of this podcast and the book south by has opened voting for these panels. It opened on August 10th and it closes August 26th. I would be so grateful if you could log in. It's annoy. I know you do have to create an account. You can visit Bit ly freetime Panelpicker all one word, all lowercase. So just go to Bit ly freetimepanelpicker. You don't have to be attending south by in order to vote. It's just a way for them to see. Yes, there is interest in us adding this to the lineup one more time and I'll put it in the show notes. If you could visit Bit ly freetime Panel picker, that would be amazing and I would be so grateful. The second fun announcement before we get into the show is that the Amazon Freetime book page is officially live. Woohoo. Cue the confetti. It's only about half complete for some reason I guess. Amazon's very backed up these days, so we are working to get all the full book endorsements up right now. It's just the very bones of it, but it is available for pre order. Can you believe it? It's early, but some of you may be excited. I was so grateful when I sent the link to my friend Sarah and she just showed me the confirmation of her pre order. It's so reassuring, especially because we're not quite done. We're in the big climb of typesetting and layout and there's so much attention to detail at this stage as well. So just giving you a heads up because I've been talking about it more and more in these solo episodes. You can go to Bit ly itsfreetime and you'll get right to that Amazon page. So again, that's Bit ly itsfreetime and that link will be in the show notes from here on out. And of course, thank you in advance for being here, for listening and for grabbing a coffee whenever. Whenever the mood strikes. And now, without further ado, onto today's episode, when the Financial Tides Recede. You'll notice I didn't title it what to do when the Financial Tides Recede because I just have a few hypotheses. My ways are not the only ways, but I do want to share how I'm thinking about money during this particular year and how it relates to free time. What I mean when I say the financial tides recede is that sometimes things are flowing. If you run your own business, you know, there are times that are really flush, really abundant. You almost have more work than you can handle. Clients keep knocking on your door. And then there are other times, and I feel like that is when the tide is in, the waves are crashing on the shore. You're just trying to surf those waves and kind of stay afloat. And that's its own beautiful chaos of working in concert with your team and your systems and tackling all that work and, you know, having fun, hopefully, while you're surfing those waves. So the tide is in, it's robust, it's abundant, it's flowing and it's. It's fast. When the financial tides recede, it's as if the tide goes out and all of a sudden you're left standing on the shore and you're going, where are the waves? Where's the water? The water was right here yesterday and now it's all the way so far out and there's all this open shore. I almost picture in this mode, instead of surfing, you're almost walking up and down the beach. There's a term called mudlarking, and I love this. There's a book. I'll link to it in the show Notes. There's a book that came out last year from. Her name is Lara Miklem. It's called In Search of London's Past along the River Thames. So mudlark is someone who scavenges in river mud for items of value. It was a term used to describe those who scavenge this way in London during the late 18th and 19th century. In London in particular, twice a day, the low tide pulls the flowing edges of the Thames back, dropping the river level by 20ft in some areas, revealing centuries of forgotten London life in the fragments that poke out from the newly exposed land known as the foreshore. When the financial tide recedes, I see us doing this. I feel there's a huge opportunity if we don't try to chase the water and we don't panic and try to immediately act as if the tides were still in. We have this opportunity to be mudlarkers of our own lives and our business. We have an opportunity to say, what little gems have washed ashore? What can I find here? What am I meant to discover in this slower, more searching, contemplative time? You know, especially early in running a business, I think sometimes when the financial tide recedes, it could lead to panic. You just go, oh my gosh, is the. Is the sky falling? Are my worst fears coming true? Is the business going to fall apart? Are the money and the clients ever going to come back? Or maybe it's your energy. This last year and a half, almost two years, has been so intense. And I lost a lot of income when the pandemic hit, as did so many of you. But part of me, I don't even think of it as losing the income as the tide receded and it creates all these new opportunities. So the work of an entrepreneur is to ride out those moments, these slow times, with almost the same reverence as when things are good.

When you think about relationships ending, you know, we all know the type. Maybe you were this way once or still are, where they're almost lining up their next relationship as their exit strategy from the current one. Or the minute they break up with someone, bam, the next person is right there. They just. It is like almost panic mode of not wanting to be alone. I have the opposite problem, which is that I could never find a partner. I don't know what my karma was, but I could never, like create relationships. So I had the opposite situation where I was single most of the time. I would say I was like certifiably single. Like a little dating here and there for almost my entire 20s. I think I had one year and a half relationship and then a couple things that never never materialized into something really full on where the person was like, all in, you know, introducing me to family, this kind of thing. It just didn't happen for me. So I had to learn to be alone and enjoy it and savor it. And I do you always hear me talking here about how much I love alone time. And if anything, being married is challenging for me because I'm so used to having so much solitude and space. And it's this interesting dance to find that within the container of our little tiny family, me, Michael and Ryder. So imagine that over time. I think as we mature, you know, people, at least the friends I know who used to jump from one relationship to the next, they reach up point where they would say, you know what, I need to be single for a little while. I need to find myself, I need to reconnect with myself. I need to become the person that I want to attract. And it's really inspiring to watch people do this and to watch them build the confidence. Yes, I can be on my own. I can find so much to enjoy and appreciate. And then they do attract that next level of person. It's not really the right way to say it, but the, the next level of maturity, let's say, and at a higher frequency because they themselves have taken the time to really listen to their own inner voice and wisdom and track their own soul's evolution. This is how I approach times like this for me, when the financial tide recedes. So I shared in the, in the last solo episode 26, that I'm earning almost no money this year. And it's pretty much by design. I set out at the end of 2020. I said I kind of want to give myself a sabbatical year in 2021. I guess I felt like when the pandemic hit and my calendar totally cleared from speaking gigs and travel and I had already stopped taking on one on one clients, I felt this breath of fresh air. I just felt my schedule was finally spacious, that I had finally had a real lived sense of free time. And I know it can sound kind of frivolous the phrase free time. And I know, I mean it was not without stressors. There were so many stressful things that happened for all of us in 2020, but still there to appreciate there was a silver lining which was that my calendar was so clear and I felt so much less obligated to everyone else and I felt really able to reconnect with myself and my creativity. And that is what created the room to even create free time. It's what gave me the courage to double down on small business and heart based business as I am here. Whereas I had not given myself that permission for the previous 10 years. I always thought, I don't know enough. I don't have all the answers. I don't have a multimillion dollar business. I don't even have a million dollar business. I do think I have figured out a spacious Schedule, though I have. I do feel that I have figured out honing in on really energizing work. And so having that calendar spaciousness was something that I always aspired to and kind of pined for, to be honest, but didn't know how to create it. And I also was a little more worried. Well, I can't give up all my sources of income. You know, that's part of the reason we fill our cal, is because work is work. And sometimes we do need to, you know, have things that are good. Maybe they're not our total zone of genius, but we put good work on our calendar and in our business model. But with 2020 being so stressful and being so tired and spent, I just didn't have the patience anymore. I just didn't have it in me. It's almost like if some of us, you know, I never want to speak for any of you, but if we were willing to, you know, phone it in a little or err on the side of people pleasing or. Or over commit, I just feel like for so many of us, we got too tired to accept that way of living and being anymore. And with our social calendars so much more clear for me with my financial, my finances, my clients just the decks were so clear, no travel. It was such a gift in certain ways that I really decided to double down on it in 2021. And the whole point of episode 26 is, wow, how powerful it is to harness all that energy and focus and creative drive and put it into one project. To, if you count this one, which I do, the book and the podcast, and I've kind of toggled between both this year, just trying to go in surges a little bit for each one, but neither of them are generating revenue right now. So not only do I have many fewer clients, but these are costing a lot of money. I'm hybrid publishing free time, which means a ton of financial investment upfront and this podcast as well. I am paying more for a lot of different software services and audio producer, editor. So I've made a lot of investments this year, but very little income. And I had savings from selling a condo that I owned in California that just cleared at the beginning of 2021. Still a lot of those. Those funds are pretty much at the end now, pretty much have been invested into the business and into keeping us afloat during this time. So it's getting to a little bit of a. I can't call it panicky point, but a point of real curiosity.

We'll be right back. Just after this.

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My intention at this time is to still try to think calmly and to not rush back in. I think it is so tempting to go, oh my goodness, the tides are out, we're almost at the end of our funds and now I better cram my schedule again, just full of stuff to earn money. But I can't bring myself to do that yet. That day may come. Always, always, always. There's necessity and we have to do what it takes to survive and keep everything afloat. But I'm trying to be very patient about that. And I'm also trying to consider, instead of jumping back to what's familiar, which is basically trading my time for money, whether it's speaking or coaching, I'm really trying to look at, okay, how do I generate or create a hundred thousand dollars at a time, not just $1,000 at a time, or 10? And I'm holding that as an open question. I don't know. I also hold as an open question, really, just what is the path for me and the work and the book and how do I serve the highest good? How do I get this book? I mean, I don't have the money to print it yet, so I told you that it's available on Amazon and you most certainly can pre order it. But sometime in the next few weeks I gotta come up with a lot of money. I mean, we're talking 50 to $80,000, if not 90, because there's a paper shortage happening, a global paper and supply chain shortage, which, go figure, it's happening right when I need to print the book. The publishing team even told me paper is like the price of gold right now. It's just crazy timing. But there's part of me that reminds myself, okay, there is gold to be found here and if I don't just jump back to the old ways of being, I can have a breakthrough. You've probably heard me talk about nonlinear breakthroughs, that the climb, let's say generating the funding needed doesn't have to just be up and to the right. And I have all kinds of different illiquid accounts for investments. 401k. I don't know, I'm researching it all. Everything is up for grabs. That was one of my mantras last year and it kind of is here again. I have never, ever been one of these risk taking entrepreneurs that says, yeah, take out a second mortgage on your house. Or in this case, I already sold one house to try to find this project. But now, now I feel so, like, all in. And I feel so clear that it's the right thing. I feel so clear that it can benefit all of you and so many more that now I am starting to have these wild ideas about, yeah, what can I liquidate to create this asset? That's an important thing to look at too is how can we take the financial resources we have and create assets that work for you, that can generate, at least pay back your IOU to yourself or generate 10x the investment in that asset. Whereas liabilities or just kind of sunk costs might be the cost of living. You know, if I buy, I've got my eye on this, like, fancy velvet chair that I want to podcast in. I don't know, on the one hand it's like a liability. I want to just, I want to spruce up my room when I get back to New York City that I podcast in so that I can just like, oh, walk in there and feel that I'm in this podcasting cocoon, who knows? I guess you could argue that if I, if I make the room really nice and I get a really cozy, cool velvet chair and a furry white rug under my feet, that maybe I'll just tap into even more podcasting mojo. But contrast that with something like printing costs for the book. Whereas in that case, I'm really creating an asset. Because, yes, although it may cost at least 50 grand to print, let's say 5,000, I don't know, you get a lot, you get better price breaks, you get more value for your money if you print 10,000. That, if I do that, that money is not just a sunk cost, it's not just a liability. Because for every book I sell, one by one, little by little, I will earn that money back. And of course, the book can become a pathway into other elements of the business. So I mentioned in 26 I do have, I am cooking something up my sleeve that can help you implement all the principles in free time really easily saving you time. That's my whole mission. So that's an asset. It's finding the funding now knowing that, you know, I'd have to hustle my sale off and just sell that many books to see the return anytime soon. But at least it's not like spending it on something that just vanishes or depreciates in free time. I share the story of He's a very well known designer, Stefan Sagmeister. He has a very popular TED talk on how he takes a sabbatical year every seven years. And he says that so he takes a full year off, he closes his whole shop and he has employees and everything. The whole thing shuts down one year every seven years. And he says that his best work comes from this time. That is what partly gave me the courage to grant myself a sabbatical year. Knowing there would be big financial impact of not kind of hustling for clients, just creating book and podcast that I feel like yes, I actually do sense what what Sagmeister is saying where I feel like yes, I'm absolutely creating my best work and getting ideas for what's next. And then if I can hold out long enough while the financial ties have receded, then I can be even more prepared for the surge. And the surge can be that next level for me and the business instead of just falling into all of the old habits. I'll link to his talk in the show Notes. I highly recommend you watch it. It's very, very inspiring. The last thing I'll say is that I think some of us just have a different life path around money, different karma, different dharma of what our purpose is, what we're here meant to learn. I know not all of you are into astrology, but I have in my second house of money, values and resources. My son is there. So money is on my mind. I've been interested in personal finance for a long, long time, since I was 8 years old to save birthday money that I received for years. Talk about the marshmallow test like I just didn't buy anything. I just put it, put it away, socked it away into the bank. And so money is something that's very interesting to me to learn about and play with. And then in my second house, I also have Pluto and Saturn. So I also have Pluto, death and rebirth, these waves that just now 10 years into my business, I'm getting used to Them like for some reason it's just in my sphere where I go through these really liminal periods where the tides recede and it's that death and rebirth and then the Phoenix rises. And yes, there is always a Phoenix on the other side, you know, knock on wood.

And then Saturn, which is all about discipline. And it's like the angry old man energy or not angry, but like strict, the strict father that that's all about kind of discipline and being really rigorous and being really systematic. And I think too sometimes I'm like, okay, we all have as well unknown unknowns, ways that we are unconscious about money or we can improve or you know, maybe for me these cycles of death and rebirth can be outgrown. I don't know. That'd be great. I would love that. I've always had a vision of achieving financial freedom early so that I'm not. I don't want to have to work, especially on things I don't want to. At some points, you know, my 50s, 60s, I just, I think I will always work. I love it so much. I enjoy stuff like this. I enjoy ideas, I enjoy writing. But it would certainly be nice to reach that escape velocity as I call it in free time of not having to kind of think about it so consciously. And I have plans. I'm building toward that. I know so many of us are. But I think that's part of the fun of the money game. I'm going to put some of my favorite books in the show notes too. Specifically creating money was a really good one. The abundance code was not the all time mind blower, but it is good to highlight some of the money myths that we unconsciously buy into. And then I love Tosha Silver's it's not your money, which really helps remind me us about the spiritual perspective of actually she says, it's not your money, it's God's money. And you are a vehicle. You are a channel for letting that money flow in and out and to not grasp it so tightly. There's also a show, I saw it on Amazon Prime, I don't know where else, maybe History Channel, discovery called Undercover Billionaire. Have you ever seen it or heard of it? The premise is that with just $100 in their pockets, three business titans are dropped in unfamiliar cities where they have 90 days to build a $1 million business. What is so interesting about this show and the second season got interrupted due to Covid is that they only have $100 and they're trying to build a million dollar business in 90 days. The one thing that they can leverage are their principles, their strategies and their skills. They can't contact anyone in their network. They can't build off of their name, their brand, any previous savings, but they have principles, strategies and skills. That is what I want to leave you with today. If you too are in a situation, and I think we have a lot of depending what industry you're in, the pandemic has created lasting impact on people like me, consultants, people that are a little outside of the budget. And as I said in the last solo episode, my taxi light is probably off. I don't want to blame anything on the pandemic because I can say for sure that I seized this quiet schedule with a bit with abandon. And I probably could have like doubled down and super hustled and tried to drum up a whole bunch of business for Pivot during this time. It's been the word of the year last two years, but I didn't. So I'm definitely, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying my situation is because of the pandemic, but it definitely got sparked by that when everything got wiped out of the calendar. So I just am curious for you, where are you in your business? I know some people are busier than ever, more financially abundant than ever, and that's so amazing and I'm really thrilled for any of you in that situation. And if you're someone for whom the financial tides are receding, what is this time asking of you? How is it encouraging your soul to grow and expand? What new expression is possible for you here in this pause? If you think of yourself as a mudlark, what are you finding? What are the lost and forgotten objects that you're finding within yourself and within your business? And new ideas that you want to nurture. I also am curious if you have strategies that work for you. When the financial tides recede, how do you stay calm? How do you stay trusted? How do you surrender to what wants to emerge? You can always leave me a voice note@itsfreetime.com ask and I can share it in a future show. Thank you so so much for listening everybody. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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