144: The Antidote to Business FOMO: You Have Already Arrived

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

Quick word about this episode before we jump in. This is an excerpt from the private podcast feed for my BFF community. I do at least one of these a month. I sometimes release interviews early, unedited, the behind the scenes version, and so much more. This bonus episode is a particular favorite.

Because it's topics that I struggle with.

Often and I've really had to curate resources around so that I can stay focused, eyes on my own paper as I call it in the book, and really have a sense of joy and gratitude, ease and surrender when it comes to what I'm creating, the journey that I'm on as a business owner and all the ups and downs along the way. So I wanted to release it here on the free time feed.

This is also a sneak peek into.

BFF if it's something you're considering for help and commitment and accountability and just a community of peers of fellow heart based business owners. As we round the corner into the new year. If you want to learn more and join us, visit itsfreetime.com BFF and use promo code podcast for 50% off your first month. I hope to see you in there. And now onto this special bonus episode.

Hello. Hello besties.

It's hi, it's Jenny popping in with your November bonus episode here in the States. This is a time of gratitude and I want to take that as a.

Theme for this because we're through the.

Main content of the book in terms of the free time framework, Align Design sign, you're all pros at that by now and all the subsections within that last month we talked about the idea of asymptotic growth as in entrepreneurship running your own business. It is a journey. And in fact some of you may weave in and out of the container that is your business.

Capital Y, Capital B.

So many people end up taking on a part time job or a full time job or transitioning with their biggest client into one of those types of jobs. Or as in the case of my friend Lexi Grant, her whole team got acquired.

She built such a successful social media.

Agency that this company, the Penny Hoarder, asked to acquire her and the team and bring them in house full time. You can hear more about her story on the podcast.

They got acquired.

It's such an inspiration and she's now building a whole new direction@theygotacquired.com that's talking about buying and selling a hundred thousand dollars to $50 million exits for online business owners. I find that really interesting. Even though I have no plans to sell. I find it interesting just to study.

First of all that you could sell.

What kind of business sells at the low end of that for 100 grand. I had her on the free time.

Podcast as well talking about this.

We'll put that in the show notes and then which ones go for 50 million and everything in between. So she's trying to highlight a segment of the business press that doesn't really get covered because the entrepreneurial media is usually so focused on the big snazzy wins. I've been doing a lot of reading.

Lately about the idea of status.

So there's two books in particular that I highly recommend, One Wanting by Luke Burgess and Status Games.

Both of these books talk about how.

We are mimetic creatures. We see other people having doing things and we get ideas for our own life.

That's cool.

However, sometimes it splinters into a sense of FOMO or compare and despair analysis paralysis. I'm certainly not immune from that. Sometimes it turns into mimetic rivalry, and sometimes that sense of mirroring or looking at others can be motivating. Maybe you are looking and you're getting ideas. The point that Will Schorr makes in.

Status games is that we are status seeking creatures.

This is hardwired into us and we are all playing status games, whether it's.

For power, prestige, virtuosity.

So both of these authors are saying, just be aware of the game that you're playing. On a recent episode of her podcast.

Brooke Castillo, she talked about the secrets.

Behind her success and it reminded me of a friend who has been working.

With her for over a decade.

That friend and I recorded a podcast for free time in the early days and it was just one where Neither of one of us thought it was ready to go live, that it was worthy of airing, because, as with sometimes two friends catching up, it just was wandering a bit. But she told me something that Brooke told her on that conversation that I have not forgotten since. And Brooke actually said it out loud, at least the first time I've heard her say it on her show. The phrase is, there is not better than here. There is not better than here. So when my friend was telling Brooke that she really wanted to have a million dollar business if she could just hit a million dollars in revenue, Brooke.

Said, I want to stop you right there.

I can tell that you're thinking that there is better than here. And on the podcast, Brooks says, she says, life is 50, 50, 50% of the time. It's amazing, and you're flying at 50% of the time. It's not. It's tough, it's challenging, and you wish that the situation would change. So her whole philosophy on life is that it's 50, 50, therefore, there is not better than here if you hit some revenue goal. Sarah Young talked about this as well in the Pivot podcast that we did about her book Expansive Impact.

She said that whenever she would hit these revenue goals, either she would be kind of striving to hit it, or.

She'D hit it and then just set the new one. There was never really that sense of satisfaction or accomplishment. In a conversation on Diary of a CEO, Mark Manson, the author of Subtle Art of Not Giving a F, he said that actually when that book became such a mega smash hit, to date it sold more than 10 million copies, that the following year he was miserable. Isn't that surprising?

He said it was the hardest year of his life because he had gotten.

Everything he ever wanted. And then he didn't know what was next.

He got the accolades, he got the.

Acclaim, he got the fame, he got the money. He even then later, you know, wrote Will Smith's memoir. And that kind of reassured him, it's going to be okay. You know, he's going to always have a new project.

But that first year after Subtle Art.

Came out, hearing him describe that on.

Diaries of a CEO was just really, really powerful.

And he even said to the host, Stephen, he said, I'm convinced that you can't just tell people not to want what they want, but actually that people need to get every single thing their heart desires. They need to get everything they think they want. And that's when they're going to realize what's important, what's going to bring you joy. What isn't?

We'll be right back just after this.

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Jim Carrey said something similar in this Netflix movie about Andy Kaufman.

He said, I hope everybody can get.

Everything they want so they realize where happiness really comes from. Because it doesn't come from the money, the fame, the power. This is what I say in free time. How we bake is as important as what we make. If you bake your business, your projects with a sense of lack striving, martyrism, you know, I don't know if that's a word. I just made that up. Basically, if you bake in misery, you're not going to be any happier once the cake comes out and it's finished.

Or when you take the first bite.

Or when your guests enjoy the first slice, you're just not. If you bake, you're building the habit of misery.

If you bake that way, with that.

Frequency and that energy, there's no way.

That you bake a cake for, let's.

Say, the 50 minutes that it takes to mix the ingredients, put it in the oven, that in the final 10 minutes, all of a sudden when the cake is done, you're going to suddenly become this happy person. Because the habit that you're building is compare and despair, lack and misery. Now, I'm telling you all this because.

These topics really interest me because I.

Struggle with them sometimes.

I have goals. I think all of us who, if.

You run a business, it's basically built into business building, that you set targets and you try to reach them. Even if your target is break even or don't fold. You know, even if your target is stay in business, you still need to make the math work for that to be possible. And so with that in mind, the.

Sort of the paradox of all this.

That we're all building is that yes, you want to strive and if you want to set goals, that's cool. Some people are super motivated by specific metrics. Amazing. And realize that the journey of how you're building and how you're going about that is so important because it is not going to switch on a dime just because you arrive somewhere. And so the mantra that I've been playing with lately is, I have arrived. I am already here.

Or instead of saying, oh, I want.

To be like, oh, I want to.

Be a full time podcaster, the switch to flip is I am. I am a full time podcaster. Why not? I don't have a boss. I'm sitting here recording this for all of you. Cool. This is how I'm spending my days, recording podcasts. Who cares if the way I'm sustaining that is not entirely through ad revenue? Just one way to monetize the show.

Okay, so try this.

Try this on. Try saying, I am already.

I'm already there. I am a.

How can you recognize and have gratitude for the journey you've already been on? And instead of seeing the state that you want to end up in? Penny Pierce talks about this a lot.

Too, as somewhere far outside of your.

See you already having it, even if.

It'S just the seeds of it.

My dad always told me an acorn becomes an oak tree. And not just an acorn. Little tiny bits of pollen become an oak tree. Little microscopic bits of pollen can become an oak tree. So you already have that pollen within you.

You already have the seeds of your.

Heart'S desire, because that's why you're pursuing what you're pursuing. The phrase act as if often gets a bad rep. And I get it. Nobody is more bothered than me about people lying about who they are, what.

They have, what they do just to.

Attract people into whatever it is they're creating or selling. But there is an aspect of act as if that is helpful in the.

Sense that you act as if you.

Are complete and whole and perfect exactly as you are.

You act as if your business is successful because if you're in the game.

If you're in the arena, as that.

Roosevelt saying goes, then you are already here.

You're here and you are acting as if you are running your own business because you are. Who cares what the numbers are? Again, like I understand how misery making it can be when you don't have enough. I've been there so many times through dips in cash flow and what's coming in and corporate clients who are paying me months later than I anticipated, and therefore I'm in a scramble or I'm carrying credit card interest stuff that I hate to do. I've also heard people pose the inquiry, would your past self ever have imagined.

That you are where you are today? So picture yourself five years ago or.

Ten years ago, or even when you were a kid growing up.

Would that kid have ever dreamed that you would be where you are doing.

What you're doing now? Unless you're at a real dip, unless you're really in a dark Night of the Soul place, I can understand that when you're in that place, you would.

Go, this is horrible.

No, I don't want to be here. No, I never imagined I would be in the dip like this. But barring that, maybe even that dip, maybe even that dip represents a set of problems that you never imagined you'd have. So, for example, maybe you are about to go bankrupt in your business and you are just struggling to figure out how are you going to pay next month's rent? Or how are you going to get this business off the ground? Well, even then, maybe it represents that you've already quit a comfy job and you're in it.

So yes, you have the big problem of cash flow, but hey, that's a.

Problem you never thought you'd have. Because maybe you never thought you would.

Have the courage to go out on.

Your own at all, right? In the first few pages of the introduction to Free Time, I cite the saying, all business owners experience problems just with more or fewer zeros at the end. I also share an excerpt from the book Enough by Vanguard founder John C. Bogle.

The excerpt says, at a party given.

By a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal Joseph Heller that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch 22 over its whole history. Heller responds, yes, but I have something that he will never have enough.

So as we close out this little.

Bonus, I want to keep it short so I can leave you with all these sayings, these inquiries, these ways to reframe what it is that you think you're missing that you don't have, that you haven't reached, and have gratitude for.

Exactly where you are, for exactly who you are, for exactly the stage that.

Your business is in, and gratitude for the journey that you get to bake with ease and joy thanks to technology that has never been this evolved, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but that you can operate a business from a laptop from a cell phone with so many tools, with so many freelancers and.

Contractors available to you that we have.

More flexibility than ever before and that.

Exactly where you already are is perfect.

Thank you so much for listening everybody. See you in circle and have a.

Beautiful rest of your day.

And if you're not yet a member, I would love for you to join us together. We will continue conversations just like this one as we all work to bake with joy and ease together as heart based business owners. You'll be in great company with slow Such a generous, smart community of fellow business owners. And one of my big themes for 2023 will be helping us all stay consistent, organized and systematized. Specifically when it comes to content production. Your ongoing original public thinking. So if that's something that you're excited to double down on next year as a core part of your business, getting the word out about what you do, making an impact, leaving a legacy, really, I would love for you to join us. Visit itsfreetime.com BFF that's itsfreetime.com Bff and if you put promo code podcast, you'll get 50% off your first month promo code podcast. It gets you 50% off your first month. There is no reason not to join us. You'll get instant access to the archives. Everything we've discussed A monthly live Q and A call with me. The following week we do something called Brilliant Sparter Live where we do rotating.

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And so much more. Private Forum the archives of this private feed that you're listening to right now. All kinds of great stuff. I would love for you to join us. Head on over to itsfreetime.com BFF see you in there.

If you've listened this far, you get a gold star.

Thank you.

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Is up for grabs.

Let it be easy, let it be fun and build with love.

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