110: Are You Bordering on Bottlenecked or Chief Everything Officer? Free Time Quiz Results

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You and everyone around you, including your business, your team and your clients, are better served when you are rested and you're earning well. You're creative. You're solving problems at the highest possible level for the way your mind likes to solve them and therefore it's not worth the tiny cuts of saying yes when you know you don't want to. The antidote here. You might want to pause before you say yes. Before you overstep your own boundaries. Before you let somebody kind of bully you, make you feel bad, you answer with the because you should really pause. Tune into your body and ask is this in the highest good? What I'm about to do or say yes to.

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.

Are you a bonafide free timer? Are you bordering on bottlenecked or are you the Chief Everything Officer? Today I'm sharing the preliminary findings from a couple hundred quiz results. Maybe yours are part of these results. If not, you're welcome to take the quiz and find out what your personality or profile is in terms of free time. Just visit itsfreetime.comquiz. that's itsfreetime.com quiz. I also want to share a quick review from Hill Gaming Co. Who says a breath of fresh air. I love listening to this pod on my daily walks and getting inspired with great ideas for how to grow my business and my outlook. Thank you so much. I'm so honored that I get to accompany you on your daily walks. That is awesome. I know podcasts are my best friend when I'm out and about as well. Walking, commuting, dog walking, cleaning decluttering all the things I would love to hear from you. If you haven't yet left a rating and a review for free time, share with me what's your favorite nugget of wisdom or the biggest aha that you've experienced in these a hundred plus episodes? You can visit lovethepodcast.com freetime to let me know. That's lovethepodcast.com freetime now, before I share these quiz results, it's important to say that this is not a representative statistically significant sample. First of all, the sample size is a little over 300. That's how many responses we've had so far. Second of all, it's not a representative sample in that it's inherently a biased group. If somebody has abundant free time, maybe they're not even attracted to my website or my book. They don't even feel the need to take the quiz. So it's possible that the outcomes and the data that I'm going to share with you from the quiz results so far are a little bit skewed toward people who wish they had more free time, who are attracted to the idea of how to create more free time, how to lose the busy work and love their business. The sample size is a little bit small with just a little over 300. It's short of what we would typically look for. Let's say if Gallup was going to do a survey, maybe they would have 2,000 responses or 10,000, so we're not sure yet. Do these numbers extrapolate out? Would they be the same if we had a much bigger sample size? Another caveat is that these responses are self reported and some people might have a stricter answering scale and some might be more lenient. So for example, the three outcomes rarely, sometimes and often. Well, maybe somebody just does not feel comfortable saying rarely or either extreme and they just tend to answer more down the middle. And then maybe someone else allows themselves to answer the full range of saying rarely or often and then another person just figures. Ah well, 95% of it is sometimes. I also want to let you know that of the 300 plus people, some of the demographic data of who answered, 62% are the only one on payroll in their business. 30% of respondents have at least one full time employee and 8% have a co founder or co owner. 58% it's just them, no other team members even part time. 13% hire domain specialists, 11% have themselves and two or more part time contractors. Let's see, 10% or 11% almost have a VA or personal light professional admin help and then 6.7% have themselves and one part time contractor 35% have two to five full time employees and in fact 19% have over 20 full time employees. Of those who answered 18% have at least one full time employee and then 17% have six to 10 6% have 11 to 20 FTEs and then 5% said I have no full time employees. I think this was of those who have a full time employee. So really interesting spread there. And at last one of the demographic data in terms of typical gross yearly business revenue, the highest percentage 40% are earning less than $50,000 annually gross 17% it's 50 to $100,000 11% are earning 151 to $300,000 10% are earning 101 to $150,000 7% $300 to $500,000 5.5% are earning over $2 million 4% are earning 1 to 2 million and that's pretty consistent with small business data. 3 3.6% 500 to 750k and 3% about are earning 750k to a million. With that, let's get into the results. With all that said, I thought you would still find it interesting, as I do, of where people ended up. Only after the book came out did I realize that the quiz was also framed in sort of a negative way. Every single question was indicating something that might be holding somebody back from free time. In this episode, not only am I going to share what the results are of these 300 plus responses so far, but one antidote for each question. As in framing one thing you can do to create the positive side of that question or area of the business rather than just what might be dragging you down. Based on 334 people who've taken the quiz so far, 6.6% of respondents said that they are a free timer. Or at least that was the quiz outcome. 27.3% ended up bordering on bottlenecked and 66% ended up with the outcome of Chief Everything Officer. So if that's you, you're not alone. And welcome to the show. This is all we're doing here is figuring out how to get you out of the Chief Everything Officer role, how to remove yourself as the bottleneck and increasingly build that muscle of creating free time, of generating free time now and into the future for you, for your business, for your family, for anything in your orbit. If you've taken the quiz, you know that the questions ask you to answer rarely sometimes or often. So there's three outcomes for any given question.

Number one how often do you find yourself feeling bad for not moving faster or being farther along in your business or your creative projects? 70% said often, 25% sometimes, and 4% said rarely. Here's an antidote for this one. Remove one project and designate one project as your number one strategic focus. It might be for the next three months, the next six months, or the next year, but put one project front and center as your sun. The thing that you are going to watch rise, watch ball every day. The thing you are going to orient yourself around. The one project that is going to become your beacon and set this thing in front of you, chip away at it every single day. But for this one, the antidote is remove one of your projects and that may be a tough decision for you. And then shift one very deliberately front and center. When I was starting free time, the brand, the book, the business, the podcast, all of it. My brother even said to me, you've probably got to pick one to do first. And although I launched the podcast first In March of 2021, it quickly became the book. And I needed to put the book front and center. I realized I could not build both at the exact same time. I needed to put the book front and center. Get that done, then I could double down on the podcast. And that's exactly what I've done recently. But in the beginning, and while I was writing the book, I definitely could not publish two episodes a week. It just would not have fit with where my creative energy was.

Question 2 How often do you find yourself down on about the state of your systems or your skills around tools and software automations? 49% of you said often, 41% said sometimes, and about 9% said rarely. So that means that a lot of you sometimes or often feel down on yourself about the state of your systems or your skills with tools and software. The antidote here Sign up for Zapier's blog. I'm not getting paid to say this, I swear. I learn tips from them every single week about ways to automate different parts of my life and work. They might talk about ways to create zaps that revolve around your calendar or how to create zaps for a CRM that you use. Whatever you can imagine. Every week there's some article where I learn at least one creative zap that I could create in my business. So that's zapier.com, z a p I e r.com and we just recently in BFF have a thread. So if you want to join us in the community, this is the kind of stuff we're talking about. Of what are some of your favorite zaps that you've created in your business? And now we're crowdsourcing from each other. What are some of the best ones that we do? One simple one that I've shared here before is that when a guest schedules an interview for this podcast via Calendly, the scheduling tool that I use, I have a zap setup that ports all of their information over from the calendly questions and questionnaire and creates a notion card so I know who is coming up, who I'm interviewing when the zap actually transfers over what that guest is excited to talk about, their mailing address, the date of their interview. It even assigns the category of prep so that someone on the podcast production team preps that guest's card, which includes recent posts on social media, topics covered books, book links, TED talks, all kinds of stuff. That's a very simple zap that not only does it create the notion card, but it simplified a process and took out a manual step. Because instead of creating a different recording room in Riverside fm, the software I use every single guest or every single interview which required us creating a room, generating a new link, sending that link to the guest. Now we have one room in Riverside. The link never changes. So that link goes in calendly, we never have to take another step. We removed the manual part of the scheduling and setup process because I know as soon as a guest schedules they have everything they need, including the link to the recording room, and all I have to do is prepare for the interview.

The third question how often do you find yourself tackling tiny, tedious or time sensitive tasks instead of your most important work? 63% of you said often, 33% said sometimes and 4% said rarely. So this means that we all have a lot of tiny, tedious and time sensitive tasks piling up instead of tackling our most important work. That second part of the question is what jumps out to me here instead of your most important work. So by definition this means that we are sidelining important strategic work that could 10x things in the business and instead we're getting consumed by minutia. We're in the weeds, we are buried by bureaucracy. And you're not alone because just about everybody said sometimes or often. The antidote here. I would encourage you to batch your tiny, tedious tasks block off if it's two hours a week or if it's one hour a day, pick a window, contain them into that window and be really clear. What is your most important work? And how are you going to remind yourself that if you spend one hour on that work instead of the tedious stuff, you are going to 10x your business or you're going to create revenue opportunities, or you are going to move things forward in such a way that it generates far more abundant time, energy and revenue in the business moving forward. So sometimes what I find is that business owners don't tackle the important work because they haven't reminded themselves this is the most meaningful thing I can do. This is my legacy work. Or this is what I can uniquely create in the business that nobody else can. And also on the same time reminding themselves, hey, these tiny tedious tasks, they're not urgent. They kind of seem urgent and they pile up in an annoying way or they ping you and they're in your face. So the other antidote here is to continually remind yourself this isn't important. This isn't urgent. As my friend Julie talks about in her book the Work Revolution, Notice and be an observer of true urgency and false urgency, things that are truly urgent and important and need your time, energy and attention just that very moment. And false urgency, things that seem like they need to get done but actually nothing at all is gonna break if you don't do them at all, or if you do them at a later date in a batch.

Number four. How often do you find yourself looking ahead to a calendar stacked with meetings with little time remaining for deeper thinking? 42% of you said sometimes. I'm rounding here, 35% said often and 23% said rarely. If you are someone who marked sometimes or often, here's an anecdote and these anecdotes seem to have two parts. 1. Look at your calendar for the next two weeks and remove three things. Yes, I actually want you to look ahead and I want you to decline, reschedule or remove three things. There are probably three things that you've signed up for or meetings that you've scheduled that don't need to happen or that could be cut in half. The second thing, if you don't already have time blocked off for deep work, do that now. Add a block. You know me. In free time. I suggest a weekly recurring block, if not on two days of the week and each morning. Be strategic though. What I like to do. If you're new to this block off a day next week or the one after the soonest available and leave the house. Find somewhere joyful in your local area that you can go get out of the house and you know you are dedicating that time to deep work and deep thinking. I've gone so far as to book staycations in the city where I stay in a hotel for three days and I tackle a big massive project or I like to go to a coffee shop downtown and I set in advance. I say no busy work. Sometimes if I do that, my entire goal for the day might be tackling email. But other times like today where I come to the podcast recording studio, I'm paying for the time. It hurts if I tackle busy work during my studio time because I'm paying 50 plus dollars an hour just to be here. So I know I kind of by a forcing function make myself do deep work on these days if you don't already have it a block for the next two weeks, Pick one Make a plan. Leave the house.

Number five How often are you questioning whether your business model and structure is set up to match your cash flow goals? 50% said often. 32% said sometimes. 17% said rarely. So that means that half of you are wondering, is your business model set up the way you want it to be? Is it aligned with that Venn diagram of revenue, ease and joy, if not your homework? The antidote for this one is to write down every single element of your business model. How does your business bring in cash? Which ones are active that require your time, energy and attention? Or your team? Which ones are passive? That they're byproducts of things you've already created? Things that are coming in the background without doing much of anything new, like book or video royalties? When you look at the active parts of your business model, are you happy with them again, are they at that intersection of revenue, ease and joy? If not, maybe you need to rethink your pricing, who your ideal clients are, or how many activities you're doing? Maybe your activities, they're all okay, but you're not focused enough on any one. So your business model feels clunky or all over the place. Or you've never left that mode of throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall, seeing what sticks. At a certain point you have to pare things down so that you can focus. And I suggest taking inventory of what is in that sweet spot of revenue, ease and joy and what might be time to go. As I quote Paul Selig at the start of free time, where are you ordering off of yesterday's business menu? And what of today's specials are right under your nose that you might be missing or not creating time for.

Number six How often do you find yourself wondering if your ambitions match your available resources and or your team members skills? 48% said often. 38% said sometimes. 14% said rarely. As you know, I don't obsess about metrics too much, but the antidote to this one might be claiming one or two key metrics that are going to help you measure success, even if they're ambitious, and then understand what are the skills and activities needed to move those forward. So for example, growing this podcast. You hear me talk about that a lot. I have big ambitions. I have ambitions of having it provide practically full time income, whether through direct or indirect revenue activities that surround it. I have ambitions of increasing the number of downloads. I have ambitions of it being in the top certain percentage of shows just so that I know that it's working. I also have no frigging clue whether or not my skills, my resources match up with those ambitions. But what I can do is know what metrics we're aiming for and look for growth in the metrics that matter most. Again, you know I'm not somebody that obsesses over metrics or too many or too much of an obsessive focus. However, as Charlie Gilkey so astutely pointed out, they really help you and your team know if you're making progress on the things that matter. And so then with those key metrics in mind, you can look and see. I know for sure. I have a fantastic production team. Are my marketing skills up to par? Are my marketing strategies up to par? I don't know. That's where I'm still running tests. I might experiment with doing podcast ad swaps with fellow business podcasters or I have already experimented with running ads on overcast little things, but I can tell you right now, no, my marketing skills are not up to par because things aren't where I want it yet and they don't have a predictable marketing machine that I've created. It's a work in progress, so I can see how I'm making progress. But if you're wondering if your ambitions match your and your team's skills and strategies, having at least three key metrics that you're aiming for each quarter might be a useful way to track that and also to see where you need to improve.

We'll be right back, just after this.

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Number 7 How often do you find yourself working on low ROI tasks, yet ones that still seem necessary? 54% said often, 39% sometimes and about 7% said rarely. My favorite antidote for this one comes from Todd Herman. He's the creator of the 90 day year and I love that idea. Let's just pause There. The 90 day year he talks about being the observer. The entrepreneurial scorecard is observing where in your business are you working on $10 tasks, $100 tasks, thousand dollar tasks and $10,000 tasks. This really helped me. I remember one trip in particular. I was in Santa Barbara. Carpinteria to be exact. I was there to film a LinkedIn learning course. I had a Friday afternoon all to myself and I had been filming all week and busy with travel. So I had this one window to catch up on things and I saw so clearly this fork in the road. I could either answer emails for three or four hours or I could create a Pivot programs PDF, an overview that could help explain and sell and bolster the case for Pivot licensing programs and even keynote speaking. I spent that next three hours that I had at the coffee shop and I had this idea of $10,000 tasks in mind and I said to myself, this document I'm creating could lead to a minimum $10,000 keynote and in a really optimistic scenario, $100,000 licensing contract or even more if it led to more than one contract, hundreds of thousands of dollars. So the calculus in my mind and the way I decided which route to take of that fork in a road was I either play catch up and I react to many small things or I work on a $10,000 task that could create 10x the ROI in my business. So I hope you find this question helpful from Todd Herman, but where in your business, what are the $10,000 tasks and how can you be really clear about tackling at least one or two of those every single week.

Question 8 How often do you find yourself worrying about key person risk because your business lives in the minds of your team and if anyone were to step out, including you, problems would ensue. 40% of you said often, 34% said sometimes, and about 25% said rarely. The antidote here, if you're worrying about key person risk is you gotta get your business out of your mind. You have got to create an externalized business mind where no item about the business or any of your clients lives only in your head or your team members. As many of you know, I've already created this for you. It's called the FreeTime Operations Dashboard. I took everything I've created in over two years of just micro optimizing every single aspect of notion, which is where we keep all information about my own business, and I've created the entire operations Dashboard for you. So if you want practically one click implementation and then of course you're going to have to customize it over time and build it out, visit itsfreetime.com dashboard.

Number nine how often are you feeling insecure because you don't really know how your business works or how to strategically grow revenue? 38% of you said sometimes, 32% said often, and 30% said rarely. Two things would be the antidote here. One, you might be feeling insecure just because you're somebody prone to imposter syndrome. I know I feel insecure and awkward all the time and as I've shared here before, I just keep going. I don't ever expect that insecurity to go away. I just keep going. But another thing that helps is to run experiments. So the second part of this question. How does your business work? How do you strategically grow revenue? I think listening to other business podcast is really helpful. Reading business books like Traction Clockwork, Work the System. Those are books that had a really big impact on me. E. Myth Revisited. I mean, there are some classics in this space. I also strive to run experiments and I encourage my team members to do the same. So you can reverse engineer. Well, how have you grown revenue in the past? Where are your clients coming from? Do you have the always Be Listening systems built into your business where you ask them, how did you hear about me? What brings you here? So what's working best for you? I know my most joyful form of marketing and getting anything at all is receiving it's word of mouth. I write my books so that I throw all that serendipity popcorn into the universe. So many of the good things in my business, people that I know, friends that I've met, community members for bff, have come as a result of me putting that public original thinking out there into the world in the form of the book and the podcast. And those tend to generate speaking gigs. I'm not really out there pounding the pavement proactively pitching myself to speak at different companies. In a way, the way that industry works is they gotta come to you, they need to think, it's their idea and word of mouth definitely helps. So if you're not sure about this area, be deliberate about setting up at least one experiment every month. You could really go all out and set one up every week, but encourage your team members to do the same. So between now and when we meet next, what's one experiment you're going to try? And the mark of a good experiment, as they talk about in the growth hacking industry, is it's an AB test. You want to have two clear things where ideally only one small variable has changed so that you can really discern which one works better, A or B. Recently I mentioned I ran ads on Overcast for the free Time podcast. I had two variables that were different. So in a way I didn't run a clean enough AB test. I ran ads in two different categories, business and technology, and I used two different ad copies. So I had one that was about free your mind, time and team for your best work. And then the other one, the ad copy was how can we earn twice as much and half the time with joy and ease. I could actually see the difference in those two tests. But now I don't know if it's because my ad copy changed or because the category changed or even the timing shifted by a week. So next time I run this experiment, I'm going to try the better performing ad copy in the better performing category, which was business and we'll see. And by the way, if you're curious, the better performing ad copy was free your mind, time and team for more of your best work, something along like that, or through smarter systems I might have emphasized. The point is these types of experiments can help you feel more confident in what actually moves the needle for you. Running tests and then also reverse engineering. How are your current clients and your most joyful clients already finding you.

Number 10? How often are you feeling fuzzy knowing team members do too because you haven't clarified your path forward? 45.5% said sometimes, 31% said often, 24% said rarely. The antidote here what is the one most important thing I recommend the book the one thing for this. It drills this message home. What is the number one most important thing that you are tackling this quarter this year? Maximum two. So this way you and your team know what is the number one goal that you are all driving toward. And then some of these metrics and experiments that we've been talking about really come into play. So if you haven't clarified your path forward, if you don't know the one or two most mission critical things in the next quarter, or some people like to do a two quarter interval and then they pick two new things that's going to get everybody aligned and rowing in the same direction.

Number 11, are you frequently answering questions from team members when they could have done that critical thinking first, 44% of you said rarely. Bravo. Bravo. 34.5% said sometimes. 21.5% said often. If you fall into the sometimes or often category, here's the antidote. Stop answering the questions. Just stop the reflex to answer and instead say, what do you think? What do you recommend? You almost got to put your coaching hat on. Not almost. You do team member asks you a question instead of jumping. Have you tried googling this? Have you checked their help center before you just go jump and check the help center. That's something I noticed. A team member might shoot me a Kajabi question. That's the backend platform that we use to run a lot of my courses, programs, email prices, coupons, affiliate stuff, everything. So sometimes someone would ping me a question and I go, well, have you checked the Kajabi help center? Because my impulse is that I would have gone and checked the help center or maybe I already had done that in the past and I knew what to do and tell them the answer. But I want to teach them the answer is right at your fingertips. That's more empowering for them too. Of course, if I can't answer quickly, you know, sometimes I get into that habit too. And I do, but I like to show, well, here's where I got that answer. So even if I would answer it, I'll say, here's what you do. And by the way, this is their help center is really helpful for things like this. Or I'll say, I don't know, can you write to support or have you already tried contacting support? So I'm just always reinforcing what the other options are besides me for getting things answered. And then your team builds this muscle. They feel more confident. They also know the troubleshooting steps that they can take.

Number 12 how often are you taking less than ideal clients or projects to pay the bills? 42% said sometimes, 32% said rarely and 26% said often. If you are taking less than ideal clients, I wonder if you are not pricing high enough. I also wonder if you're clear on who your ideal clients are. Of course we all need to pay the bills sometimes. Absolutely. And a lot of times those bill paying gigs, I feel very grateful for them because they are the bread and butter. They are the bridge that helps you build the bridge from however you're currently generating income at the moment to where you really want to go. Those absolutely jumping out of your chair with glee. Ideal clients at ideal rates. The antidote here if you're taking on less than ideal clients. 1. Clarify who is your ideal client and be super clear. What is your ideal rate that gets you not just neutral about working with this client, but actually thrilled? Jumping out of bed because it feels really abundant all the way around and really aligned in terms of who you're attracting and who you're working with. We'll be right back just after this.

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Number13 how often do you find yourself saying yes to contracts at prices you know are too low? 45% said sometimes, 35% said rarely. 20% said often. Good on you. For those who said rarely. If you are someone who said often or sometimes, here's the good news. You know your prizes are too low and you know because a they say yes too quickly, B you instantly feel like shoot, why did I do that? You're kind of kicking yourself like oh, I did it again. These are too low. 3. You're just not that excited about the work. They're too low. You know they're not enough and then four, you're, you feel pinched. You actually have negative consequences from doing this because you get too busy, you get burnt out, you don't have enough time to rest, you can't pay your bills, your cash flow breaks down. There's so many consequences to pricing too low. The antidote on this one, triple your prices to account for the three T's, taxes, your team and your time. There is an opportunity cost to taking on any client in that it takes you away from building longer term assets and value in your business. So the antidote here, raise your prices to account for the three T's. And there's two more. Challenge yourself to double your rates or increase by a certain percentage with every next contract. If you don't want to, just double it overnight. When I was first starting out as a keynote speaker, I would say, oh, it's free. Then the next client that reached out is 500. The next client it was 1000. The next one it was 2000. The next one it was 4000. Until several years in when I reached a point where people wouldn't say yes. I think I was putting out 10,000 and it took a couple years for people to actually start saying yes. I think it was once pivot came out, then I could kind of command that next tier of rates. And now I just make it a game. You have to be willing to lose a client sometimes, but to try that really edgy edge, an edgy edge of stretch prices where they feel stretchy but edgy and exciting. And it's always nerve wracking the first time you say it. And you don't know if the person's gonna say yes. But you also won't know what your true range is until you try. Another antidote here is have somebody else negotiate for you. Some people have speaking agents. I've talked about the Cyrano strategy of delegating comms. Get someone else on your team, even if you're telling them exactly what to say behind the scenes to be the one to put your prices out, because they will often hold firmer on your pricing than you will. Another antidote. You could develop a strategy for not negotiating prices. You could create a rule of thumb that says, I don't build custom proposals. You productize your service so much that there's, you know, as my friend Lindsay describes, good, better, best. She learned a lot of that from Alan Weiss and value based pricing. Good, better, best. These are the prices. I don't negotiate. I don't do custom proposals. Make it really clear for yourself and others. What your prices are and then be firm about that. Don't negotiate.

Number 14 how often do you find yourself skipping your own payroll or distribution so you can cover other business expenses? 50% said rarely. Way to go. 27% said sometimes. 23% said often. I'm going to go back to here if you're skipping your own payroll or distributions. We know this is a cash flow issue. And my guess here as well would be that you're pricing too low or you're not aligned with product market fit. The products and services you offer or how you're describing them are not aligned with the clients that you're seeking to serve. The antidote here might be conducting a mini listening tour or a massive one. Offer time. Create a calendly link for one day a week to have conversations 20, 30 minutes with your ideal customers and get to know them a bit better. Understand what are they struggling with and how do you describe it in their words, not yours. Sometimes we get so caught up in biz speak that we write sales pages in a way that's just very abstract and obtuse. And it's not the problem statement the way that your ideal audience would describe it. When I was writing the book Pivot, I talk about book Rx. I think of books like a prescription. What does one friend say to another that's bothering them? So with Pivot, I got really clear. Someone was probably going to say to their friend, ugh, I just don't know what's next. And then the friend goes, oh well, then you have to read Pivot. Or the friend that has the problem might say, oh my gosh, I have the perfect on paper job. Like, I don't know what's wrong with me. I work at Google or fill in the blank. And yet something's missing. I'm at this plateau and I just feel like I'm going crazy. Oh, well, then you have to read Pivot. You know? So I got really clear. What would it be in such simple language that one friend would say to another where the answer was the prescription was going to be my book? Let's talk about the Free Time Operations Dashboard. If you go, oh, it's so chaotic. Everything about my business is in my head. I'm the bottleneck. My team doesn't know what to do. I don't even know how to create a team because I don't know where to start. Then I go, oh, no problem. Or the friend goes, oh, well, then you should check out Jenny's Free Time Operations Dashboard. She's already built it for you, that kind of thing. So that's how I think through what I'm creating and how I want to talk about it.

Number 15 how often do you find yourself frustrated by demanding clients or or lack of boundaries? Feeling pressure to answer when you're off work? 40% of you said sometimes, 32% rarely, and 28% often. So I would say this is not one that too many of you are struggling with. What I have found is that I need to remind myself when I push on my boundaries and I go past them. It really sucks, to put it inelegantly. It's frustrating and it is disappointing and it's draining. The number one thing, the antidote that I would remind yourself here, is that you and everyone around you, including your business, your team and your clients, are better served when you are rested and you're earning well. You're creative, you're solving problems at the highest possible level for the way your mind likes to solve them. And therefore it's not worth the tiny cuts of saying yes when you know you don't want to. The antidote here you might want to pause before you say yes, before you overstep your own boundaries, before you let somebody kind of bully you, make you feel bad. You answer with the because you should really pause. Tune into your body and ask, is this in the highest good what I'm about to do or say yes to? As I describe my free time, and I learned this from, I believe, Tosha Sobert. You can even stand up, close your eyes and frame a question in a way that would elicit a yes or no response. And if your body naturally leans forward, it's a yes. And if your body recoils back, you'll feel it. It's a no.

16. How often are you apologizing for your delayed response or missed deadlines? 36% said sometimes, 34% often. 30% rarely. Here's the Just stop apologizing. I think missed deadlines, that's bad. I'm a big fan of impeccable commitments. If you say you're going to do something, do it, or renegotiate before it's due. I learned this from Fred Kaufman in his book Conscious Business back when I was really early in my career. Missing deadlines is disrespectful, I think, to the people that you've agreed with those deadlines on. If you don't renegotiate them. But if you have a delayed response and there's not an agreement of when you were going to get back, maybe just stop apologizing for it. Just assume that you're getting back at the perfect time and it's all going to be okay. If there's nothing time sensitive in the initial request, it's okay. Just stop apologizing. There's even plugins now. There's a Chrome plugin that flags if you're apologizing and makes sure that it's actually needed. It's not just one of these filler apologies.

Number 17 how often are you working nights or weekends when you don't want to be? 36% said sometimes, 33% often and 31% said rarely. And again, maybe the math doesn't add up because I'm rounding up or down just so we don't have too many decimals. If you're working nights or weekends, here's an anecdote. 1. Listen, if it's joyful for you, work those weekends Sometimes. I love getting a lot of work done on a Sunday because I enter the week feeling really buoyant and I might even take a midday off during the week and run errands when everything in the outside world is less crowded. So if you love it, you don't need to stop. If you're a night owl and you love working nights, you don't need to stop. But the antidote if you're doing this and you don't want to be, realize that nothing is going to break. Start an experiment where you slowly cut your time back. Or you could rip the band aid. You could just say from here forward, nothing after 5pm and go cold turkey on this. Or if you're somebody who you're sort of anxious and you check at 9pm at night, great. The next day. Only check at 8 the next day. Try at 7. Or do this for a week at a time until you work your way backward and realize, oh, nothing broke in my business. I don't work nights. I don't even check email in the afternoon and beyond because it makes me antsy. I know I won't be able to get it off my mind. So you could also remind yourself the consequence of doing this. It's not a harmless habit. If you're working all around the clock when you don't want to be, you're going to burn out. You're not going to be as creative and you're not going to be as effective. Your mind is the best asset that your business has.

The last one. Number 18 how often are you feeling exhausted or overwhelmed pining for a simpler life or business? 53% said often, 35% said sometimes and 12% said rarely. You're clearly not alone. And by the way, who isn't feeling exhausted and overwhelmed after these last few years of just total upheaval politically, socially, pandemically? If you're pining for a simpler life or business, you're in the right place and you're not alone. This is something I think we can all give ourselves more compassion around and just acknowledge it. And that's why I feel so passionate about all the strategies that I share in the book on this show. Because life is hard enough, we don't need to make it harder. And running a business, as I say in the book, you're already paying a risk and pressure tax. So how can we continually take pressure off take things off our plate? Focus More Stop sailing the sea of shiny shoulds I hope you found this breakdown of the free time quiz results so far helpful. Again, if you haven't taken this yet and you'd like to, you can visit itsfreetime.com quiz that's itsfreetime.com quiz. Thank you so much for listening everybody. Have a beautiful rest of your day.

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