152: Do Less — On Entropic Bloat & Business Haircuts ✂️

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This is your time. How can we earn twice as much in half the time with joy and ease while serving the highest good? That is our guiding question here at the FreeTime Cafe, your home for heart based business. I'm your host Jenny Blake. Join me for conversations with authors, friends and fellow business owners as we explore ways to free your mind, time and.

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Hello. Hello Free Timers. Happy New Year. Welcome back. This is my first official solo episode of 2023 and after having taken my hiatus starting in mid December. Thank you for your patience. While we played a round of best of episodes, I've been reflecting a lot on what's the best free timey way to start this new year. Is it a strategy? Is it helping you set strategy? Is it a system? No, it's none of the above. It is a call to inaction. It is a call for all of us to see if we can commit to doing less. I've always been inspired by friends who will set a word for the year like simplify or streamline. And I often have those words in the back of my mind. No matter my official word of the year, which I always do, pick one big theme for the year Head. I have the idea of simplifying in the back of my mind and yet this is something that can feel so elusive somehow. No matter all the intention to simplify and streamline, it's almost easier. It just seems like when you're running a business, the easier thing is that things start to spiral out of control or your calendar gets overly full or you take on too much on your plate or you have one too many work projects and then some kind of personal catastrophe strikes and you need to address that. And then another thing I've been reflecting on is that I cringe a little bit when people talk about free time as a time management or productivity book or system or set of ideas. Now on the face of it of course there are time management. It's called free time. And why wouldn't it be about time management and productivity? And yet something about those ideas connotes managing time, manipulating time, doing more in less time. All of it still gives a sense that our time is trapped and we have to wrangle it and wrestle it to the ground and we need to manage it and micromanage it and then do even better at that, and only then do we get some reward on the other side. In contrast, the whole spirit of free Time of the book of this podcast is to set your your time free. And I love that it rhymes with 2023. So you're going to hear me talking about this all year. Set your time free in 2023. I imagine our time as a little bird in a cage, and instead of giving the bird a fancier cage or building more structures and systems inside the cage, what does it look like to set that bird for free? That's the metaphor that came to me when I was thinking of leaving corporate. I kind of felt that I at some point I was a bird in a cage and the door was open, and yet I was afraid to leave. I was afraid to fly. I was afraid to have too much freedom. And so what I want you to think about this year in the context of doing less. Yes. Is what does it look like to set your time free? What if this wasn't about time management and productivity and doing more with less and less? Manipulating, trapping, squeezing our time? What if it was about setting our time free? Now, in order to do this requires active, repeated steps to do less. I've been thinking a lot about the concept of entropy that basically unmanaged an entropic system is one that will slowly descend into a state of chaos or disorder. Think about your home if you don't clean it. Think about things in nature. In the book Free Time, I tell the story of going to stay at an Airbnb in the Catskills, and Michael and I were so excited because there was a hot tub there. We were stoked. We get there and the hot tub is bright green, it's filled with moss. And as we were inspecting, we saw a snake slither. A little garden snake. It wasn't a big scary one, but it slithered into the side of the hot tub. Now, I don't know about you, but my idea of relaxing in a hot tub does not include wondering where the snake is going to come out or sitting in green moss. And we didn't know how to use all the chemicals you're supposed to use to rebalance the pH. This cabin was built as a really modern custom build, right in the middle of the Catskills, the mountains of New York. And yet, as I say in the book, we could see right before our eyes all forms of plants and animals encroaching on this once pristine house without upkeep. A dead tree teetered precariously toward the roof. Weeds started overtaking the grass. Spiders made themselves comfortable in bathroom corners. Giant carpenter ants traversed the kitchen counters. And there's that garden snake crawling into the crevices of the outdoor hot tub. I continue in the book. This is on page 253, if any of you want to follow along. Entropy, defined as a gradual decline into disorder, is intrinsic to all organic systems. And it is happening in your business, too. In the context of today's conversation about doing less and setting our time free, I think of it as entropic bloat in a business that if you don't actively give your business a haircut. That's the metaphor I used in conversation the other day. If you don't actively give your business a haircut, the chaos and disorder, the entropic nature of any system that's unmanaged will be that you start collecting too many things, you start doing too many things. And this is no longer a question of what can we automate, what can we delegate? Yes, that's important. But the very first thing is, should you still be doing any of these things at all, or should you eliminate them? Think about getting an actual haircut. We all need to get haircuts every now and then. It depends. If you have really short hair, you might need a haircut every six weeks. If you have longer hair, you can kind of get away with growing it out and not getting a haircut as often. But if you have a certain style and a certain mode that you like to have your hair in, you have to get regular haircuts. Because the nature of hair is that it grows, and the nature of a business is that it bloats. It just is. So what I would love for you to think about, and I'll give you some ideas, are how can you actively give your business a haircut? You have to do that in order to make room for the new. Another metaphor might be pruning a rose bush. It needs active management. You need to remove the ones that aren't going to bud or aren't going to blossom. Or, as I've heard when I've read about this, you sometimes need to remove good roses to kind of have the entire rose bush flourish and have the really exquisitely beautiful roses and give them room and resources. So here are some ways to set your time free in 2023 and you know I would love to hear from you if you have your own ideas that you think other listeners and free timers could benefit from. Number one, raise prices. You hereby get a raise. Give yourself a raise, especially if you have a lot of demand. If you find that you're doing too much and you want to do less, raise your prices. You will have fewer clients, but at higher earnings, higher revenue, sometimes you might even still be earning more even though it seems like you have fewer people coming through the door. Number two, you could do as my friend Lindsay does, who's featured in Free Time, and stop doing custom proposals. That's a way to do less you're offering. Whatever it is. In her case, she has a good better best and she doesn't do custom proposals or quotes. It's right there on a password protected page of her website for her potential clients to see. And that's that. Number three, also from my friend Lindsay, you could decide for yourself, I don't negotiate your rates. Could be your rates and you could just do less of the back and forth of the consternation and thinking and conversation and make a policy for yourself. Even if you don't communicate it explicitly to your clients that you don't negotiate your rates are your rates. Number four, you could set better boundaries across the board. Sometimes we do more out of obligation, guilt, people pleasing, wanting to be nice, wanting to be liked, wanting to return a favor. I'm guilty of all of these things and it's not until I catch a cold or I get sick or glued to the couch as I call when the fuzzy rest monster comes and demands that I do nothing, that I look back and I go I'm still doing too much out of obligation or that inner people pleaser. So with better boundaries around, when you're willing to take calls, how many of a certain type of call you're willing to do in a week or a month are you going to do in person, coffee dates or not? Do you want to say no to those across the board? You could do as another friend does, number five and only sell one thing in your business. So if you are someone like me, where things have spiraled out of control over the years and you have so many different products, different price points, different audiences, even that exponentially increases the level of process and attention to detail and customer service, emails and things that you need to service and maintain in the business. So you could go really radical and say we saw one thing and you pick what that is and you make it clear.

We'll be right back just after this.

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Number six aggressively block your calendar, leaving it 60% open rather than 90% full. You know I'm always talking about calendar design here. This is nothing new if you've been here for a while, but I just want to remind you that sometimes we might think, oh, okay, I'm designing my calendar. And yet you look at the week and it's still jam packed. So yes, you are time blocking and you do have some rules and boundaries set up and you are batching certain types of tasks or calls. But ultimately maybe your calendar is still more full. It's not spacious, it's not open for spontaneity. What would happen if by a rule you left your calendar? I'm saying 60% full. What about only 40% full? What if in a given week, I mean, I still think Monday through Friday 9 to 5 is outdated. But just as an example, instead of packing all but Friday morning, yay for carving out founder time for yourself. What if you only scheduled things from Tuesday to Thursday 11 to 2, and if something didn't fit in that window, they all just have to wait a little bit? What would happen? I'm asking you. You might not be able to do this in your business, but what would it look like to create a calendar that was abundantly spacious rather than overly full? Number seven, choose your focus areas and don't forget that you're going to be doing plenty of maintenance and adulting or life admin tasks in addition to those. So if you only had one focus focus area for the year. What would it be? What would you be the proudest to look back on at the end of the year and say, I did that. I created that. I know not all of you consider yourself creators, and maybe creating one big thing is not on your list for the year, but what would it be like if you chose one focus area, either a quarter or for the entire year, or both? That. That is the number one thing that is your most important, best work.

Number eight, tighten your filter again. Yes again. Imagine that you're saying no or saying, yes, screw got loose and you need to tighten it again. Say no to most things. Unless it's an ecstatic yes. Unless the thing, the request sparks joy. You're almost giddy. You almost can't believe that this person asked you to have a call or be on their podcast or go for a walk. Those are the ones you want to say yes to, where you would proactively suggest it even if you weren't reacting to their invitation. So what often happens for me is someone might send an invite and in a reactive mode, I think to myself, well, I should do this. It would be a good idea to do this. It might even be a good idea for my business or my book sales. But it's all in my head. It's not in my heart. It's not an ecstatic yes. It's not something that I would proactively think to do. And what happens is that, that one request, that person, they're not bad, they're wonderful. Everything is wonderful in isolation, but it starts to balloon and create time clutter. That makes it harder to really be focused and have that pointed, super focused attention that I know I really crave to be able to do my best work.

Number nine, sometimes you have to say no even when you are excited. This one's really tough. These are the tough ones that slide in through the cracks, through the door that's open just a sliver and you go, but it is a hell yes. I'm so excited to do this. And yet sometimes you know the phrase, your eyes are bigger than your stomach? Well, sometimes our business and project and commitment eyes are bigger than our capacity stomach. Sorry for grossing you out with this metaphor, but it's true. Sometimes you have to have the discipline to say no even to something that excites you. And when you craft your graceful no, I'm going to do an episode on that coming up, you can communicate that. You could say, I'm actually so bummed, but I need to say no to this right now because I'M focused on these other things or because I'm focused on leaving abundant open space in my calendar this year. You can be that direct about it. Number 10, think about your contract terms. So if you're doing too much chasing clients around, maybe you want to add some kind of late fee or payment terms. Negotiate the number of days that a client has to pay, negotiate how much time is included, try to reduce scope creep in your contracts. Be really clear and this is something that I have been very focused on in is selling ip, not my time. That's where things like licensing comes in. Number 11 Focus on creating assets in your business. So when you are creating content, what would it look like to do less spray and pray? Content creation, marketing, social media, where you feel guilt and pressure to be on all the things and sort of, I call it death by a thousand cuts. Put yourself in all the places and oh, everyone tells you you should be on video now. So you start adding video to stuff you're doing and that creates new 10x layer of friction. Just step back for a moment and ask yourself what would it look like if you did less in terms of content publishing or production and you focused only on creating assets and resonant, energizing relationships. So if you are able to build resonant, energizing, mutually beneficial, mutually exciting relationships through any one of the current communication channels that you're a part of, amazing. Focus on those and focus on creating assets. Evergreen content. Content that sure it can tie into the news, but that it's unique to you. You're actually creating something that you're proud to have your name on. You're proud to be discoverable when people search for you or your work, that people will want to pass along word of mouth to their friends, their community because they found it so helpful, right? Rather than just kind of creating good enough stuff just so you can check the box.

12. Shut down stale services, courses, freebies and formats. This is where you really gotta do a haircut. What are some of the things that you've created in the past that are just no longer up to date? They're not aligned as well with your business or where you're trying to go. They're just relics of the past. Where can you give a haircut to the aspects of your business and your content, your courses, your services that they're there lingering because maybe they produce a little bit of value, but not that much. They're just legacy products at this point. But you wouldn't create them new if you were starting over today. What would happen if you could just shut those down. You just did an audit, gave your business the haircut, and shut down those stale services.

13. Double check before you delegate I'm all for delegation. If you follow the free time framework, you know that for any friction area that you're experiencing, you want to go through the process. Align, design, assign, assign comes last before you delegate, question Is this still aligned at all? Should we be doing this at all? Because by the time you have delegated a bunch of responsibilities to your teammates, it's unlikely that they are going to be the one to come to you and say should we be doing this at all? Because they want to do a good job, they want to do what you've asked of them. So in my experience, it's usually not my team or my team members who come to me and say, jenny, should we even be doing this at all? They just want to do their job and do it well. And it's usually not until that team member is transitioning out of the role or they express to me they're feeling a little bit drained and maybe they want to go a new direction with their role that sometimes we realize, oh, we don't need to do this at all, we can drop it all together. So that's a big one. Just double check before you delegate and maybe even do an audit of all the things you're already delegating. Does this really need to happen? Is this a must have for my business, a nice to have, or a not even nice to have anymore just drains attention and time where we don't really derive very much value from it. Last but not least, 14 Create a rule or automation that eliminates future steps and friction. This goes to the free time mantra. The best way to set your time free is to do something that enables you to not think about it again, or to free your time far into the future. So you always hear me share that Agile Development quote. Each time you repeat a task, take one step toward automating it. Be an observer over the next few weeks, how can you not just manage something better, but change the way that it's done so that you set your time free completely? An example that I often give is that when we get a new member who joins our private BFF community, as soon as they enroll, there's a zap that automatically adds them to our Circle Community software that adds them to a calendar invite that adds them to our notion people tracker for the BFF community. So those are all micro steps that need to be repeated, but no one person needs to do them by automating them, they're completed for us into the future. And so if you can just continually think about ways that you don't just do something faster, but you can engineer a way to take it off your plate entirely, maybe with a little bit of maintenance and monitoring in the background, that can be one of the strongest ways to set your time free.

As we wrap up, I want to share a few of my favorite book recommendations on all of these topics that I think you'll really appreciate. If you're looking for even more motivation and structure around some of these doing less ideas I know you would appreciate unsubscribe by Jocelyn Gly Overwhelmed by Brigid Schulte what works by Tara McMullen Previous guest of the Pod Drop the Ball by Tiffany Bufu and Do Less by Kate Northrop with that, I hereby give you permission to be selfish in service of your business. What if you were just a little bit more selfish this year in 2023? What if you did less for other people so you could say yes to producing more of your best work, the work that you'll look back on at the end of the year and be most proud of? Thank you so much for listening. Have a beautiful rest of your day. And here's to setting even more time free in 2023.

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