149: Tips, Tools & Must Have’s for Content Creators with Kim Kaupe

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People are going to be consuming you and your content or lack thereof. Or LinkedIn profile or lack thereof whether you like it or not. It's sort of this necessary evil. It's no longer a nice to have, it's a mandatory to have. And I'm sad about that.

But it's true.

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 hello Free Timers. I am really excited to bring you a replay today of a conversation I had with my friend Kim Kaup. She has this great live video podcast called Coffee with Kim and I had so much fun doing the first one with her on time blocking. I'll put that in the show notes that I asked her can we flip the mic? I would love to have you on free time. Maybe we can record live and we'll jam on tips, tools and must haves for the creator economy. So you're hearing an excerpt of that live conversation. Apologies sometimes exporting from video. The audio is not as crystal clear perfection as you know. I like it. But we still cover a ton of great tools and strategies for keeping up with the content machine content collection and one of the gems that I loved most from Kim about fishing where your fish are not having to be in all the places. A little more about Kim. She is a self described accidental entrepreneur who at 24 years old researched how to start a company. Fast forward ten years later she's worked with Oprah. She secured four out of five sharks on Shark Tank. We talk about that pitch a little bit during this conversation and on the Coffee with Kim show that I mentioned. She has meaningful conversations with fascinating, thought provoking and successful CEOs, celebrities and influential individuals in business. She's an educator, speaker and chocolate chip cookie aficionado who believes in hard work, short emails and showing others how to showcase their strengths. Without further ado, I'm going to jump you Right into the middle of our conversation where we're covering new ground because some of what we started with in the first 20 minutes, you've heard here a million times. If you're already a free time listener, if you want the full conversation, I'll put the links to the YouTube edition in the show notes. Here we go.

I've got some green tea today, but I'd love to know what you're having so it can feel like we are cozying up together. But if you're joining for the first time today, this is not normal. What you're about to experience is not normal because we decided, I don't know, it's the end of the year, we're getting a little spicy. I don't know what it is. But we decided to mix things up today and bring back one of my dear friends, Jenny Blake. You might have caught horror episode a few months ago. If not, we will drop that link in the chat. You can check it out. It's amazing. And we thought why not have Jenny back and really flip the script. I'm going to ask her some questions. She's going to ask me some questions. So please help me in welcoming wherever you are, Jenny, to join us.

Thank you so much. Glad to be back, Kim, because we got to have irl coffee. I felt like I was living the dream because I had IRL coffee with Kim in New York. She came in for a whirlwind trip and there were so many questions that I had lingering from our conversation that I asked her, can we flip the mic? And I bet your community would be so interested too. And some of the things that you tease on your website, like why Shark Tank isn't always what it seems and how that might tie into the creator economy that we're all grappling with how to thrive in to this day.

And I know everybody here is so excited that you are here with us, Jenny, because you are a wealth of information and I want to make sure that everybody knows because I have been recommending it left and right. That lovely book that you see sitting next to Jenny is not just beautiful decoration. It's not just artwork. That is her book, people. That's her brand spanking new book that is jam packed full of tips and tactics that I have been using ever since I read it and I've been recommending it to everybody. So we had to address that. It had to get talked about.

That is amazing. Thank you so much. It is consistent with so much of what you do. Even the fact that after each one of these sessions, you say, steal my notes or copy my homework. Because the whole point of free time is it's not just what we do for fun, but it's free time as a skill. How do we get better at building that muscle of freeing our time to do more and more of our best work? And I would say to the theme of today's conversation, the creator economy. How do we free our time from the minutiae and the busy work and the boring stuff that we have to do, adulting to do more of our biggest and best contribution for the creator economy?

We get stuck in the shoulds. I should be doing this. I should. Instead of the wants, what do I actually want to be doing? What do I want to be focused on? And I know you've had those days. I've had those days where you start off the day and you're so excited and you have three or four things on your to do list and you're like, I got this. And then somehow the day goes into chaos, you end the day and the same three or four things are on your list and you're like, I was busy all day and yet none of the work that I wanted to do got done. So that I think is one of the things that I've been working really hard on and your book help with so much to get rid of those days, or at least maybe not get rid of them totally, but lessen them as much as possible.

I think of calendar design now, like a puzzle or one of my favorite games, Tetris. I don't know if anyone's played the new Tetris effect, but it's pretty incredible. It's the only video game that I actually enjoy and, and the creators designed it to put you in a flow state. So this combination of problem solving, try to fit the pieces, it's challenging because it goes at a certain speed. But then they've also put it to this like EDM music backdrop with really cool visuals. And time design can be like that. We don't just have to be at the mercy of a chaotic, cluttered, time confetti filled calendar. We can, with just a little bit of intentionality. There are very practical things each of us can do to design our time. Even starting now. Sometimes I'll notice what holidays are coming up and not only do I put a do not schedule block, let's say, for the day before and after an upcoming holiday, I set that to recur annually so that I never have to think of it again. And then lo and behold, next year when that holiday rolls around, I go, oh cool, I already don't have any meetings because I already had put this recurring block. And that's an example of not just being more efficient, taking get more done. That's not really the goal. It's that what steps can you take today that you'll never have to think of again that will continue freeing your time into the future?

I did two things immediately after reading that. I did many things after reading your book. But two of the things when it comes to like calendar construction, two of the things that I have started doing is I have a no meeting Monday. I do no meetings, no phone calls on Monday. Now I work in client services. So I know some people work at corporations, some people are entrepreneurs, some people run product businesses, some people work. So as a service based business owner, does that rule sometimes get bent? Of course, if there is an emergency and a client is calling, I have to pick up the phone. I can't be like, sorry, Jim, it's Monday. I would have no clients. But for the most part I will say my clients are starting to understand because I'm honest. Using the example of Jim. Hey, Jim, would love to talk to you next week. I'm not doing any meetings on Monday, but here are my availabilities on Tuesday and Wednesday. And after a while that might take a couple times. But then Jim starts to absorb. Okay, it's Monday. I know Kim's not going to meet with me. So it's a little bit like trading a puppy, if you will, people, it's no meeting Monday. So that was one of the first things I implemented really soon after reading your book. And the second thing that I implemented that is around meeting structure and calendars was that I decided that sort of as the pendulum to Monday, no meeting Monday, I was going to do fun Fridays. So all of my fun meetings. And you guys know about fun meetings because it's like, oh, Jenny has a friend Sarah that she wants you to meet. I don't know Sarah, but the fact that Jenny is introducing me to Sarah. Sarah must be pretty fun, pretty cool. Or hey, somebody's in Austin and they want to meet up for coffee with me. All of that gets moved to Friday if possible. Again, I know that sometimes scheduling can be tough if people are only in town for one day or whatnot. But all of my fun meetings or fun calls or fun intros or things like that all get stacked on Friday. So I'm curious for you though, Jenny, if you have some, I know you have many rules when it comes to your calendar. But if you have similar one or two similar type rules that you follow.

Definitely. And like you, I make exceptions, but that's the point. The point is to make those exceptions very intentionally and for just the right things. But it's so rewarding when a fun Friday rolls along. I also don't schedule meetings on Friday and I can spontaneously say yes to a lunch invitation. Or sometimes I'll go into a really deep work pocket and I'll go, oh, cool. I didn't even expect to be this productive today. But because I didn't have any meetings on my calendar, I was able to do that. I don't even tell people what my parameters are now. They're very transparent because they're in the book. But even in the past, I never really said to clients because sometimes I'm working with speaking clients, they're paying me a lot of money. I don't even say I'm not available on Mondays. I just say that day doesn't work. How about Tuesday or Thursday? And whether they're using a scheduling tool I use calendly for that, or I'm booking or someone on my team, we just have all these parameters that are clearly defined. Ideally a 30 minute buffer between every call, because I hate the feeling of skidding from one into the next. Ideally, no calls before 10am, although usually I prefer 11am and then as I once had a coaching client say to me around 3pm, I don't even know my own name. So it's to nobody's benefit to meet with me after about 2 or 3 in the afternoon. It's just nobody wins. And even when I was doing coaching in the early days, I used to feel bad if I didn't accommodate those off hours. But then I realized they're getting me at 60% capacity because my brain, my creative energy just isn't very good at that time. So that helps me bolster the buffer, the time buffer, and the boundaries that I have in my calendar. Because I really do want the meetings, calls that I have, or podcast interviews or things like this to be when I'm at my best 100%.

And that's going to be different for everybody. You know, I'm a morning person, but I have friends that are deeply night owls and like they hit three o' clock and they're like in their stride and then like after dinner they're even more in their stride, whereas I'm like completely brain dead. So I will also say it's a little bit of like everyone's answer is going to be different. You just have to play around and see what's going to make the most sense for you. It really is about optimizing. When do you work the best and how do you protect that time to do the big important goals. And it goes into Ari's question that I want us to tackle together here, which is about information systems and storing systems. And I have to let you answer this first because I know that there is one platform and specifically that you use, that you talk about in the book, that that's just like your end all be all.

Oh, yeah. I call this a collection bucket. There are different terms for this. Some people call it a slipbox. There's a German guy who invented a method like this. He calls it a Zettelkasten. There's a book called how to Take Smart Notes that will blow your mind. But to answer Ari directly, I use Notion. I have a database called Synthesis. Or if I were you, you could just call it Collection Bucket. And that is where all my idea snippets have a home. So whether it's an idea I have while I'm on the go, whether it's an article, I've read, a quote, a fact, a story about my day that's called Homework for Life from a book called Storyworthy, it all goes into this collection Bucket. And then what's cool about Notion is you can view that database in different ways and you can also create all the fields you want to label the information that's coming in. So I ran two podcasts and I have two newsletters and so I can tag something as time well spent to add. And then I can also tag it. Is it a quote, a question, a tip or tool? And so when I look at my database in a Kanban style board that has all these categories, in an instant I can just go, okay, it's time to draft a newsletter. Let me view all of this collection bucket. But I'm going to view by what I have tagged for time well spent. And then I could easily pull from each sort of micro bucket within the broader one of what I need. So the principles behind this, even if you're. If I've lost, you are creating something that's easily searchable, that's customizable to the way your mind works, how you like to collect information and interlinkable so that you can link notes to each other and know, oh, okay, this, I use tags a lot in this database. Okay, I tagged this Joy flow and free time. And then I can search based on those tags as well. So the key is just Tiago Forte calls it building a second brain, creating something outside of yourself where every bit of info has a home and creating different views so where to find things when you need them. And I have a loom on this that we could put in the show notes where I actually give you a visual walkthrough.

I think those for visual learners like me and Ari. I don't know if you're a visual learner, but the loom was extremely helpful because sometimes I need to see things and how people are using it. But I would say that this was really helpful for me when I started categorizing notes because this was back in the day. But what I used to be guilty of was sending emails to myself. I would send emails to myself at 11pm at night that would be like idea rocket ship. And I'd wake up in the morning and go, key, what train of thought was I on where I just said idea rocket ship. And sometimes I would remember the next day, but oftentimes I'd be like, yeah, I don't know what I was referring to. And it would just get deleted because I would lose that train of thought. So I feel like putting it in categories, whether it's newsletter, whether it's podcast or whatever categories you might have in your everyday life. I think that's what's really important is being able to say rocket ship newsletter and then maybe giving yourself a little bit more context.

Sometimes I use a tool called Captio. It's like sending yourself an email, but in even fewer clicks. Sometimes I do still fire off a Captio or an email to myself. But then even in your inbox, that data still needs a home so that the next time you want to get on a video or create content for any one of your platforms, it's really hard to find it in email. Even if email is the reminder that you need to file this later, it still should ideally go somewhere and then what I like email's also yes, it's searchable, but it's just so vast and you can't really distinguish your ideas and notes to solve from anyone else's. That in a collection bucket, it's already curated. It's already the stuff you might want to refer to in the future.

We'll be right back just after this.

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I have to say I started using an email tool that I am obsessed with. I started using it about a year ago and I'm in. I'm all in. I've been telling all my friends about it. I actually just got two people on it within the last month. I got separate notes from each of them being like, okay, like, you're right. Like now we see what you were talking about and that is Superhuman. Have you ever used Superhuman?

I've heard of it and I know friends who are obsessed. I don't love the tracking that they do, so I don't use it. But I've heard friends who are obsessed. Tell me, why do you love it so much? What is different about any other email app that you've used?

Okay, I'll give you my top three reasons of why I really love Superhuman. Now, a lot of people have this feature, but I'll still say it. Number one, they have templates. Which again, I know Google has that plugin now and a couple other service providers do as well.

But.

But I really love the idea of templates. I have templated no documents where I have to turn down an opportunity because as a people pleaser, I really struggle with saying no. So even just having that template, it's almost like I don't even have to think about it. It auto fills with a no and I just have to customize it a little bit. It's helpful for me. So the templates are number one. Number two, I never have to touch my mouse. And I know this sounds so, so crazy, but as somebody who used to drag things to folders in my Gmail and label things and star things, everything is now done with shortcuts on the keyboard, which at first I will admit is really intimidating, but then once you get the hang of it, you're like, oh, where was I before this? Like this is a thousand times better than anything else. And then the third thing that I really like about it is again And I know a lot of people have this now, but I just find it very helpful. I can send myself reminders not only to send an email back to me like a week later, but I can specifically set a reminder if people don't reply. So there used to be a plugin for Gmail, I don't know if it still exists, called Boomerang. The problem with Boomerang is it would just send it back even if somebody already replied. So it was coming back in my inbox even if we had already dealt with it. And in Superhuman I can say send this back to me no matter what or send this back to me only if nobody on this chain replies. And I'm like hunting down somebody for something. So those are my top three things for Superhuman. If anybody is interested in Superhuman, I would say message me. I'm happy to. You have to get an invite. I don't know, it's so lame, but the guy who started it gave me a link to use for anybody I know that wants to get on it.

So.

So if you want it, message me and I'll get it for you. But I have to say I know it's probably not. I'm in. I hate even hearing myself go on and on and a fuse about it, but it really is that great.

It's so amazing to find a tool like that. Just email can be such an Achilles heel, at least for me. So it's very satisfying. I use a lot of those same features. I've just probably strung them together differently through Gmail, but.

Oh totally.

You asked me about the tools I use to collect content and collect ideas. You have also been creating content publicly out loud for such a huge part of your career. I'm wondering, how do you keep your content and idea generation machine fed? What are some of your practices for always having something to say? And to that end, can you also tell us how you define creator economy? Because I do feel that you're such a champion for it, but for a lot of people can often feel like a treadmill.

Yeah, I would say for me, as someone who tries to create tips and tricks and content and things to share with other people, what I have found is actually similar to Release Point that she put in here and she was asking about calendaring. When it comes to content creation, I have had to set up by the way, so sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. It's something I've been testing for about three weeks now, so I'm like mid in the testing phase. You're catching me like in the Frankenstein science experiment part, I have started to block off creative time blocks. Now, the reason why I'm a little bit yes and no on that is sometimes when I get into that creative time block, it's great. Things are flowing. I'm like, oh yeah, I gotta do a little Instagram reel on social media superhuman. Or oh yeah, I gotta do a LinkedIn post all about notion and how much I've been loving it. So sometimes it's really easy. Now sometimes I will get to Thursday, 10am Creative block. And I gotta tell you, Jenny, I'm stuck. Even though the time is blocked off in my calendar, there's something. The mojo's not flowing. And then I sometimes psych myself out because I'm like, this is your creative block and you're not being creative. So what I've had to do the past three weeks is just say, it's okay, it's just not hitting you today for one reason or the other. Let's move on to your to do list or something like that. But I do try. Or what I'll do during that time is if it's not immediately hitting me, I will go through notes going back to your point of that kind of idea bucket. I'll go through old notes that I've written or sometimes I will save things on social media that other people have posted that are like inspiration. And I'll look at that and say, oh, our mutual friend Vanessa posted this really great thing about being a people pleaser that kind of gives me a little bit of a jumpstart about a people pleasing tactic or tip. So I would say the calendar stuff. The past three weeks has been interesting. It doesn't always work, but I have been liking it. So I don't know if you do something different. I know it's sometimes hard to be like creative on demand. It's hard to necessarily schedule creative time because it doesn't always hit you.

Well, it's interesting you mentioned scheduling. The one thing that has made the biggest difference is paying for accountability. And here's what I mean. I've had an online platform where I'm trying to create content for other people for almost 18 years. And the one thing that has worked the best than anything else ever is is streaks. Not wanting to break a streak. But even more so paying for accountability. And what I mean by that is I started paying to go into a production, a podcast production studio here in New York. And what's interesting about it is I pay just enough that it hurts. It hurts if I don't use that time. I pay $50 an hour, and of course that's a privilege in and of itself. But what it gets me to do is batch my content production. So I know that I'm much better off if I plan ahead and I have an idea what I want to say. Sometimes I'm brainstorming on the subway on my way into the studio just so that I don't waste time once I'm there. But there have been so many days this year where I don't feel like podcasting at all. It's raining out, I'm in a bad mood, I'm groggy. Maybe my husband and I just got in a weird conversation before I left the house. And it doesn't matter because the studio doesn't let me cancel within 24 hours. So rain or shine, I go, I show up, and I want to make the most of that time. And so I realized that paying for space has actually held me much more accountable to myself than I do when I'm at home and the fridge and my dog and my husband are nearby. And then the other part of paying for accountability is I went pro. I hired a full service production team. Before, I used to own the life of an episode. Like, even if I delegated aspects of it, like audio editing and show notes prep, I, Jenny, was still the one on the hook to move that card on our notion production board. The life of an episode to move it across from start to finish. Once I hired this team and I made sure to hire them also at an amount that really hurt in the beginning, I didn't quite have the funds, didn't know how I was going to justify it. Now they own the episode and they know to make it live whether or not I've reviewed the show notes, whether or not I've listened back to the audio. So they know not to stop the train on my behalf if I'm creating a bottleneck. And that has been a huge relief. Just somebody else cares about the production and publishing schedule other than me. And that has allowed me to produce now 12 episodes a month, which is way more than I've ever done in the past seven years.

And it reminds me, we're coming up on January. It's why everybody gets gym memberships and personal trainers. Like, all of a sudden, January 1st hits and we're like, okay, I'm gonna get those six pack abs. Like I am gonna be able to do a push up. Because when you pay for something, you're a little bit more motivated to get it done or at least for me. I know when I sign up for an exercise class if I'm like waffling. But I know that there's a $20 cancellation fee. Guess who's showing up begrudgingly. Because I'm not paying a $20 cancellation fee like I'm we're spinning that day or whatever it is that I've signed up for.

The other thing that helps me is repurposing content. And this is a known bit of advice, but I think it's easy to forget. So for example, I often will draft the introduction. It's usually a paragraph or two of a show notes for a podcast episode or a conversation like this one. And on days where I am just not feeling it at all in terms of writing a newsletter introduction about what's going on in my life or what I'm thinking about, I just copy paste. I go to the latest podcast episode or a couple back copy paste. That's the newsletter intro. And I figure most people are not even going to notice because how many people read the show notes in detail? How many people remember it? Are those same people reading the newsletter? And even if they read the same thing twice, I doubt that they care. So that's helped me in a pinch. And the other thing, this is a tip I learned from my friend Alan dibbling. He was a guest on free time. If you create a piece of content with an expiration date like a newsletter, once the newsletter goes out, it's gone. And for 10 years. I don't know why I didn't figure this out sooner. For 10 years I would create craft these newsletters with my best tips and tools and quotes and then they would just disappear and any new readers in my community would never see them. Now as soon as I send a newsletter, I evergreen it by removing any time dated references and I put it into a welcome sequence. So now when somebody new joins my list for the new folks, I would not have to create a new piece of content for at least six months and they would still get a message every 10 days with stuff that I genuinely spent time and effort curating, I.

Feel like that's huge. And as somebody who runs multiple newsletters and blogs, as you just referred to, when you're saying that you're evergreening stuff or you're putting things that you can copy paste, what program are you doing that in?

In notion, that's where the ideas start out and that's where they start to get organized. My whole business backend is powered by Kajabi because that's Where I host courses, newsletters, my affiliate programs, event registration. It's just all in one platform. But I either draft the newsletter itself in a Notion card, I have a content calendar in Notion, or in Kajabi itself. That part's not down to any kind of special science. You could use almost any email management software. How about you, Kim?

I use ConvertKit. So ConvertKit has won me over, at least for the time being. I'm always like, if bigger and better comes along, I might jump ship. But I have had friends who totally agree with you. And I know that Kajabi is really great because they do offer a lot of things. What was my friend saying? She was basically saying, yes, are there areas of Kajabi that other programs do better? We were talking about ConvertKit. She's like, yes, I love the tagging and ConvertKit. And I can't do that in Kajabi. Kajabi hosts my course, can take my payments. She was like, all in. It covers more of what I need. So, yes, there might be individual wants and needs, but on the whole, it's a better fit.

Okay, I have something. This is a shift in the conversation, but I'm dying to ask you because I don't know where I saw this or learned this about you. I feel that you've made some strategic choices as a creator in that you got called back to the Real World, but you said no, and I'm dying to know why. And then you did end up making it to Shark Tank, and I just gotta get the dish on that before we get back to Tools. I've been meaning to ask you this for months.

I feel like you went deep because the Real World reference is so deep. I don't even know where that was on the Internet. But that was. You went through a lot of clicks to find that one. I was in college and I had written in like most kids do when they're like 19, 20, being like, I want to be on the Real World. For anybody that doesn't know MTV, which is a channel here in the U.S. although I do think MTV is global, but maybe not. It is a show on MTV called the Real World. And. And what it is they put. I think it's seven strangers in a house to see what happens. And they've had it on for 20 plus years. And they pick a new city, so it'll be like the Real World, Paris, the Real World, New York, the Real World, Key west, et cetera. It's been on for. I don't even know if it's on Anymore. I think they rebooted it for a while, but I don't know if it's permanently back. But anyways, back in college I had applied to be on the Real World and I got through like the first layer where they're like, okay, we'd like to meet you in person.

And.

And the in person casting is in Miami, Florida. I was going to school in Gainesville, Florida, which if you look on a map, those things are about six hours apart. And typical college student. We had a big football game that Saturday. So Friday was really the day, like all the parties were happening. All like the cool stuff was happening. And they wanted me to drive down to Miami that Friday, Friday. And in my sort of like 19 year old mind it was like, ah, I can't miss all these parties for this opportunity. There's a giant football game on Saturday. So I actually did not go to the in person callback, which in retrospect, I mean, everything happens for a reason. I can't imagine if I had gone on the show. I feel like anytime you go on reality TV it is either a great experience or awful. And for the rest of your life you are put in this category of whatever they edited you to be like on reality tv. So maybe it was for the best that I did not go to that.

I wonder if there was part of you that. Not just from your school schedule, but I wonder if there was part of you thinking, is this aligned with my brand? Do you think there was any part of you thinking that at that time?

Probably. I mean even back then, for again, if anybody has watched reality tv, you know that there's like categories of people, right? The girl that cries, the guy who's shy.

What would have been your thing?

I think I probably would have been like typical. It was like University of Florida, big college. Like I think that would have been like my slant. Like kind of the all American football college girl would have probably been my slant because it's not like I play an instrument or I'm in a band or anything that I could have gone into like the artsy category. But I think that's probably what mine would have been.

You say that reality tv, sometimes they use the word reality loosely. Can you take us behind the scenes of the Shark Tank pitch? Both how you prepared? Because today's topic is tools, tips and tools. So were there any tips and tools in preparing for basically what probably at the time felt like the pitch of your life and then what is not always what it seems? Because you alluded to that.

I love that you asked about preparing for Shark Tank, because I feel like everybody wants to talk about the show and what was Mr. Wonderful. All that's really great, and those are really fun, but it's not really getting into the tools that we use to really prepare for that. So we did two things that I think were really key. And now basically anybody that I talk to that is thinking about going on the show or maybe wants to go on the show, I always tell them to do these two things, which is, number one, find individuals that were on the season that just aired. So, yes, I was on season, I think it was like five or six of Shark Tank. So I was back on Way in 2015. A lot changes between 2015 and 2022. So it's been seven years. There's been a lot of changes. I might have information that's no longer totally up to par with what's happening. Probably still valuable, but not totally exact. So find someone who is on the season right before yours and reach out to them and try to get the full download. How did it work? What happened? What surprised you? What were you most unprepared for? Again, copy their homework. Get as many notes as you can from these individuals if you can. Try to find a warm intro to them. Maybe a friend of a friend knows someone, or if you can, try to access these people. So, number one, try to talk to somebody who's on the season right before yours to see if they've added any little tricks that you need to watch out for. And number two, similarly, you need to watch.

Every single episode, every single one of the season before yours, and study it like you are going to war. Like you need to sit in front of a chess board and say, okay, our men need to go here and we need to be ready. So what we did is we watched every single episode, every single one from the season before ours. This is in the days before all of these fun things like Notion and Evernote and HubSpot and all these, like, cool programs. We used Excel. This was like, back in the day, we got an Excel and we wrote down every single question that the judges asked. And what we realized is that there were patterns. There were questions that were being asked over and over again from episode to episode, from company to company. What we did is that Excel had, I think it was like 113 questions by the time we watched all of the episodes before ours. Then what we did is we sorted those by what got asked the most frequently. From there, we came up with canned, if you will, answers to at least the top 40, really. We came up with general answers for everything, but really memorizing those top 40 because we knew, statistically speaking, we would be most likely to be asked those questions. So sometimes when you go on reality shows or people that look surprised or like, oh, I wasn't ready for that question, that was not going to happen to us. It did not happen to us because we did our homework and we figured out exactly the type of questions that we most likely realized they were going to be asking us.

And your pitch succeeded, right, with all that prep?

It definitely did. It was really one of those things that I look back on now and it's such the gift that keeps on giving. Most people don't realize that a lot of these channels, like msnbc, for example, will still run Shark Tank marathons. If you're ever up at 2 in the morning and you turn on MSNBC, there's a good chance it's Shark Tank. And so our episode re airs usually about every two to four months. So we'll see a big spike on the website or I'll see a big spike in people who googling me or my name. And I know, oh, Darkchain probably re aired. And that's why we're seeing that big jump. So even though we that episode came out seven years ago, now it's still getting us traffic and exposure and people that are learning about us for the first time.

What was the fate of Zinepack? Cause my sense is you're not still doing it. But that's interesting that if you've pivoted away from that part of your business or that product altogether, that it still is benefiting you to have been on the show.

Yeah, I feel like it's one of those things now that we're no longer making zine packs in the form that was on the show, which were packages that were sold at Walmart and Target because they had CDs in them and we don't even listen to CDs anymore. So that part of our business has been retired and we're doing all sorts of new stuff now and is also probably a really good business lesson, and I imagine is true for you as well, Jenny, is that after a while it comes back to that fundamental truth that people do business with people and people fall in love with the people and people fall in love with the story. So it's Kim was on Shark Tank with Zinepak, but really it's Kim in general. It's the reason why you might work with somebody at one job not work with them for five years and then work with them again. Or I know for you who does a lot of speaking in corporate events, you, you might do a speaking event for somebody in 2019, never hear from them again. And all of a sudden in 2023 they want to bring you back and maybe they change jobs. So they hired you when they were at Kellogg, but now they're at Johnson and Johnson and they want to hire you for something totally different. So I think it's really a case of if you make an impression as a person, people will follow you. Which is why I think platforms are really important for you to update because people are going to be googling you whether you on.

We'Ll be right back just after this.

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Speaking of Google and to what you just said, I have been so surprised and delighted. I recently gave a talk at Google and some people in the post event feedback survey, they said you were my trainer 16 years ago because that's how long I started at Google in 2006 and I left in 11 and I still do a lot of work with them to this day. And then someone might have watched that talk and they reach out and they say we worked together 16 years ago and I just saw the recent talk you gave and now my team would love to do something for free time and talk about the gift that keeps on giving. I had no idea when I was in my early 20s starting at Google, it was my second job out of school training all these people who were new to the company. I just had no clue that those relationships would still circle back to this day in the craziest ways. It's very joyful. And that kind of. To your thing with Shark Tank. I talk about being discoverable, like we just have to turn our Bluetooth device on. And it's what I find motivating about content when it doesn't feel just like a hamster wheel. It's the part of being discoverable and knowing that then sparks of serendipity can launch at any time. And I just love that surprise of never quite knowing who's going to reach out and when.

And I love that you brought up this discoverability because we were talking offline earlier about content creation and specifically how many people, at least in the last couple years, maybe compared to five, 10 years ago, have started to get that little light bulb above their head and be like, aha. Like I should start giving out tips and tricks and tactics and things that work and have started to maybe identify themselves maybe not as complex content creators. Because you have referenced a. Was it a research study showing the growth.

Yes, we can put the link in the show notes, Signal Fire did this Creator economy market report and I was referencing it. I read this at the start of gosh, maybe even in 2021 because I cite it in free time, the book. And I bet now it's just even more. Millions, 50 million people identify as content creators, even if it's not their full time job. And I think a small percentage, maybe even as low as 3 to 5%, but don't quote me, are able to earn a full time living from it. Wow.

But it is, it's that discoverability. And you never know who's reading and you never know who's listening. And a lot of times I always tell people too, you'll be shocked how many lurkers there are. And by the way, I love lurkers. So I will just say this is no hate on the lurkers, but people will lurk on your stuff. They will not like it, they will not comment on it, they will not share it, but they're watching. And I've even found that in real life, sometimes, like friends or acquaintances, like, they'll slip up and they'll be like, oh yeah, Kim, I saw your Halloween costume. And I'll be like, how'd you see that? How did you see what I was for Halloween?

And then they'll be like, oh, well.

Oh yeah, I think I saw it on Instagram or something. But I know, I'm like, you didn't like it. You didn't say nice costume. You didn't Comment on it. But you saw it, you're, like, lurking around. So I always say, too, even if you're putting it out, you might not be getting, like, the comments or likes or the love, but people are watching, people are noticing.

I mean, I've heard you talk about how we're all part of the creator economy. It's not just the people we look to as influencers. And it's certainly true that when I first started out with blogging and even podcasting, it was not very accessible. So you really had to get over a lot of technical hurdles to participate. And then with the advent of social media, everybody feels a little bit of pressure to create and be visible and be on LinkedIn or pick a platform of your choice. Instagram. TikTok. There's so many options now. So in what ways do you think, are we all creators? Are we all part of the creator economy? Is it even possible to opt out? And if not, how do we manage the overwhelm that comes with that pressure to be in all the places?

Unfortunately for us, we can't opt out. Sometimes I wish we could, but we can't. And the example that I give people the most often is, I loved fax machines, thought they were brilliant. I loved Blockbuster, had my little blue Blockbuster card. But now we have email, and now we have Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime. So you can hold on to the fax machines and you can hold on to Blockbuster with two hands. Really gripping. But the sea, the current is moving us like it's moving us to email, and it's moving us to Netflix and Hulu and Amazon Prime. And so we can hold on and say, but I want first impressions to be in person, and I want people to judge me based off what they find out about me and my smarts. But unfortunately, these things, these phones, these Google results, they're just dragging us, whether we like it or not, because we're all guilty of it. Your kid gets a new teacher at school, you Google them. Your friend starts dating a new guy or a girl, you Google them. You're setting up a meeting with somebody you've never met before. You're Googling them so people are going to be consuming you and your content, or lack thereof, or LinkedIn profile, or lack thereof, whether you like it or not. It's sort of this necessary evil. It's no longer a nice to have, it's a mandatory to have. And I'm sad about that.

But it's true. I call myself a cranky curmudgeon. Maybe that's redundant. I'm a curmudgeon about a lot of this stuff. I, as I mentioned, I do the podcast, the newsletter and my books. That's about it. But I'm not on other social media. Are we at the whims? Just because a new social media company invents itself, are we at the whim? So it's, oh, great. First there's Facebook, now there's Instagram, then LinkedIn becomes more prominent in terms of sending out snippets, and then TikTok. Now TikTok's the hot thing. How do you participate without feeling, A, like you're just chasing a bunch of shiny objects, but B, it's almost impossible to keep up. Just because someone else invents a company, does that mean we have to now allocate more time and attention to it?

I definitely don't think so. A kind of golden rule that I live by, and I tell other people this too, is you gotta fish where your fish are. So what I mean by that is so me. For example, I'll use my marketing agency, Bright Ideas Only Abby and I, my co founder, will sit there and say, okay, who are the people that are hiring us? People that are hiring us are brand managers, their marketing directors. So then we say, okay, where are those fish? What pond, if you will, with this analogy, where are those fish hanging out? And for us, a lot of that is LinkedIn. It's a business network. It's something that these CMOs and brand managers, they're logging into every day to get their industry news or network with people. So for us, that platform is a little bit more important than, let's say, a consumer focused platform like TikTok. We're not getting hired off TikTok just for us, for our business. Now, if you own a cupcake business and you're looking for people to buy cupcakes might be the total opposite. You might have 10,000 TikTok users that are all going to get your cupcakes shipped to their house. Whereas on LinkedIn, if corporate cupcakes aren't exactly your bread and butter, they that might not be the place for you. So I always say fish where your fish are. So one thing that I love, that I think you do so well, Jenny, is the people that are hiring you. Through the book, you get a lot of corporate speaking events, a lot of workshops, a lot of teams that are bringing you in. So to me it makes sense that your website is super robust. You have a lot of information on your website. You have media kits and examples of how to contact you for these workshops and speaking events. And that to me makes sense because somebody reads the book or they hear about you, they Google you and they end up on your website. And then they're like, oh, I can bring her into my conference or I can bring her into my organization. That's where they're going to end up. So I think it's really important for everyone to really kind of sit and consider, who are my fish and what pond are they in.

That's just so brilliant. You got to fish where your fish are. You gotta fish with tools or a fishing rod that fits like that. The weight is just perfect. The functionality works for you. So I also think the implement that we use, maybe someone's using some kind of net. Ideally, we're being even kind to all these fishes and we're not killing too many of them. But we all have different strengths and different ways that we like to go about it. And so I do think matching, it's like once you find the pond, okay, now that's where we get back to process. And for me, I just don't like creating small daily snippets. I really don't like that at all. I'd rather go all in on a book. And even though my books only come out every five or six years, that fits my personality so much better.

I'm glad that David brought this up because I know we had talked about, as we wrap up here, really giving some of these tools and copy my homework and stuff that we're using. So I'm curious for you, Jenny. David's asking about best resources. What are you using? What apps or tricks or forms or software are you like, yes, this has been my new favorite thing.

Sometimes people ask me because I've been sharing. Just like Kim, I share tools. I Recommend at least two tools a week for the last 10 years. I like following other curators. So Tim Ferriss, he has five bullet Friday, my friend Sarah Young, her website is zingcollaborative.com she sends Friday favorites. The what is a great newsletter. The what is always curating really interesting things. Kim, our one and only Kim Kaup is always curating interesting things and people. So I find that curation is a real gift. Even if your role as a content creator in this world that we're living in is curation, that is performing a service for people because you're helping pull the signal out of the noise. And I always feel good when I'm sharing tips and tools that I know are going to help other people. So following curators, even if I can't keep up with all their stuff, it's there and I could search it or things cross my path at the perfect moment in time and at a meta level that helps me then curate from the curation curate what I think my fish, my people are going to benefit from most I love that I give myself permission to read for two hours every morning. Some people ask me how do I read so many books because I'll read one to two books a week. Sometimes I listen to like at least five podcasts a day on 2x or maybe 1 8. But the bottom line is because I want to feed my mind. That is the engine behind my business, behind my thought leadership, behind having not just regurgitating other people and curating other people's ideas, but actually coming up with my own. So so the permission to read two hours in the morning I read the New York Times paper edition, Inky edition, the New Yorker, Monocle magazine. I don't mind setting that time aside books to just consume content and I see that as part of my work and that helps me drop the guilt. Should I be answering email right now? No, because feeding my mind is the engine that drives everything else, whereas the email is more of a reactive responsibility.

Wow, two hours a day for reading. No wonder you finished so many books, Jenny. But as you talked about listening to podcasts at 2x speed, are there certain podcasts that are your favorites that you're listening to all the time?

I probably subscribe to over 300 shows. There's no way I can listen to that many, but it goes in waves. There's really too many good ones to even say right now. I'll have to think of which ones come top of mind. Do you have any favorites Kim, that are your go to?

I have a couple Tim Ferriss. Always a good one. It's one of those that it's I don't listen to everyone. I sort of like pick and choose because I don't know if anyone else has noticed. Tim's have gotten really long lately. Like two and a half hours long. And so sometimes I don't have time for all that. So I will be discerning and I'll give you a little tip that I learned about podcasts because again as that people pleaser gold star a student in me as Jen would say, although she's not here with us, I'm an enneagram3 I love to complete things. I love to check things off. And it was actually my husband who really drilled this into me. And he said it's okay to abandon ship because sometimes I would muscle my way through a book or muscle my way through a podcast, even if I wasn't enjoying it, even if I wasn't learning. And his whole point is cut bait. Go to a book that you are going to learn from. Don't just finish it for the sake of finishing it. No one's giving you a gold star. No one's giving you a medal because you finished a two and a half hour Tim Ferriss podcast that you didn't find interesting. If after 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 20 minutes, you're not fully engaged, it's okay, you know, it's okay to abandon ship. So that has won me back a lot of time to then reallocate and resource to other things that maybe are more my fancy. So I would give that little podcast tip to anybody who's a big podcast fan. But I know we're getting to the top of the hour, so I wanted to say, Jenny, where can people keep learning from you? I know you referenced two newsletters, two podcasts. Can you give us the names of those where people can sign up for them? I want to make sure that everybody knows where to go to find that stuff.

Sure. This has been so fun. I just love trading tips and tools going back and forth and everyone who's been been here with us live. You can visit its freetime.com for all things free time, pivot method.com for all things Pivot and in your podcast app, if you search for my name, Jenny Blake. Thankfully, I don't have a zillion doppelgangers yet in other places. If you search Jenny Blake, you'll find both shows free time and the other one's called Pivot.

I love it. This has been so fun. I'm so glad that you came up with this idea. I. I'm so glad you have the time and energy to space to do it with me because this was really fun and I really enjoyed it.

I second that you have such a gift for facilitation. Thank you for having me. And it's just so fun to be here having virtual coffee with all of you live. So thank you, Kim. Thanks for having me back.

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