169: Running a Goal-Free Business with Stephen Shapiro

When it comes to gifting, everyone on your list deserves something special. Luckily, Marshall's buyers travel far and wide, hustling for great deals and amazing gifts so you don't have to. That means your mom gets that cashmere sweater, your best friend that Italian leather bag, your co workers unwrap their favorite beauty brands, and your nephews the coolest new toys.

Go ahead.

A price is this good, you can grab something for yourself too. Marshalls we get the deals. You gift the good stuff. Shop now@marshalls.com or find a store near you.

Once you start looking to the future, you're never going to be as powerful as you could be. If you look at what you need to do right now to move you directionally in the right direction.

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.

Welcome back Free Timers. I am so excited to be here in conversation today with my friend Steve Steven Shapiro. Steven cultivates innovation by showing leaders and their teams how to approach, tackle and solve their business challenges. He sees what others can't opportunities to improve innovation models and the cultures that support them. I recently met with Stephen in person. We had our friends did a mini mastermind in Miami after a group that started from a single Zoom session and Steven and I just connected so much about how we run our businesses, how we think about our time and even how we think about money and metrics that part of the business. So I invited him onto the show to talk about one of his earliest books Goal Free Living and how it applies to running a delightfully tiny team or a delightfully free timey business. We could say he's also the author of the little book of Big Innovation Ideas Personality Poker Best Practices are Stupid and Invisible Solutions. Such a good book. 25 lenses that reframe and help solve Difficult Business problems. Steven, welcome to the show.

Hey Jenny, so glad to be here.

On the last day of the Mastermind you gave us a snapshot of your business. You're now over 21 years in to self employment and you gave us this snapshot that all of us you could see everybody's eyes light up at how inspiring it was. Not because of the dollar size which are still abundant but because of the bigger picture. And so I'm wondering if you can just kick us off by sharing how you run your business, Give us that snapshot.

The key thing for me is I really value freedom, flexibility, lifestyle. I find those things to be really important. You know, one of the things I want to be able to do is fly less. I mean, in the past I would be on airplanes a lot. And I really have consciously made a move towards spending more time at home. So I can have breakfast with my wife in the morning and I can be home during the days and we take a lot of vacations and it's just a really nice lifestyle. So I might not make as much money or I might not be as busy as others, but I do a lot of great work and I have an incredible life. And that to me is really the most important thing for designing my business.

I love hearing about how you have breakfast and coffee with your wife. And I remember you telling us that you work about 20 hours a week. Is that still the case?

There are some weeks where it's more, some weeks where it's less. What I tend to do is I lock myself in a hotel about three or four times a year and then I'll work about a hundred plus hours a week. But the rest of the time, by the time that I've had breakfast and by the time I get started, yeah, I would say probably about 20, 25 hours a week. Some weeks less, some weeks more.

Now, I know you have a background in corporate consulting. Early in your career they really work you into the ground in corporate, especially consulting. Was there a time in your business where you were working like that throughout the year and you had to kind of pull back or redesign things? Or have you been this way, 20 hours a week average with a couple hotel stays for most of it?

I would say for the past 20 years I've been pretty consistent in not working as many hours as most people do. In fact, I did an experiment, it was about, I think it's closing in on like eight or nine years ago now where I did an experiment to see if I could work an hour a day and really just keep it to that hour a day on average. Now that didn't include if I was doing a speech and all of that, but in terms of non speech work, whether it was marketing, sales calls, things of that nature. And what was fascinating is over the course of three years where I really stuck to it only one hour a day on average, my business actually grew. And I think the reason for that is Because I just had to stop all the distractions and I had to get hyper focused on what was going to make the greatest impact on the business rather than everything I could do. And there are so many opportunities that were really just distractions and I got rid of them.

Do you remember what you ended up doing in that one hour a day? Like what ended up making the cut.

It was different every day. So the first thing I do is wake up and say, what's the one thing I have to do that's going to have the greatest impact? Sometimes it might be reaching out to some clients, sometimes it might be writing an article, sometimes it might be creating a piece of thought leadership, whatever it is, but it was different pretty much every day. And I guess the thing which I've learned over the years for myself, more so now than there was even, you know, eight or nine years ago, is that there are just way too many opportunities for us to spend time, whether it's going to be on social media posts or whether it's going to be blogging or YouTube or video or TikTok or whatever it might be. And what I realized is, is that from first of all, in my business, 90% of my revenue comes from people who have some relationship with me. Past clients, speakers bureaus. I've done work with people who've been in the audience, people I've known. Instead of trying to create a larger audience, I try to nurture my existing audience. And so most of that hour, even to this day, is largely focused on how do I build deeper relationships with the people who already know and love me, who, rather than trying to convince strangers that they should know and love me.

Now, I want to come back to your business model because that's also intentional and by design. But before that, on the subject of reducing distraction, tell us about these hotel stays, how they came about. And if I'm not mistaken, they're kind of workations, right, because they're in your same city, but you go to a hotel. And I have found this to be so helpful as well. I've probably set mine up a little differently than you, but I'd love to hear your logic behind them. How do you set them up? Does your wife understand when you go on these workations and what do you find so helpful about it?

The thing for me is I've been doing this for ages now. Back in 2008, 2009, I've had a timeshare with one of the large chains for about 15 years now. So anytime I'd get ready to Write a book. I would just check myself into one of the timeshares. And what I love about the timeshares is first of all they're very relaxing because they're not like a business hotel, they're a little more touristy, but also they all have full kitchens. And so what I would typically do is on Monday when I arrive, or whatever day I arrive, I would stock the refrigerator with food, make sure that I am basically self sufficient for the entire week. And in many cases I don't leave the room the entire week. That first day when I get there, it's basically getting everything set up, figuring out how I'm going to spend the week. And then the rest of the week, phone is off and I lock the doors and I just work. I used to do this when I was writing my books. So when I wrote Personality Poker, I wrote that in a couple different timeshares. When I wrote Best practices are stupid, that was in a couple of different timeshares. And I really just liked that rhythm of not working as hard most of the year and then three, four weeks a year, just pushing myself to the limit. And it's amazing with that level of focus how much I can get done. One time I wrote the first draft of one of my books in one of those weeks, from start to finish, blank sheet of paper to a first draft. Now it was far from the finished product, but it was good enough to, you know, move forward. So that's pretty much how I structure it. And the key for me is no distractions and basically self contained bubble that I'm in so that I never even have to leave.

That's incredible that you got a whole book draft done. I have had experiences. Sometimes I do a workation. I usually do two or three nights if I'm gonna do it in New York City. But there have been times I remember with my first book where I booked a week away somewhere also at a timeshare. I think my mom had a timeshare and I got there and I just couldn't do anything. I must have needed to rest or something. So do you ever show up for these and you just play hooky like you don't feel like working at all? Are you always able to kind of get yourself in the zone?

I will say that for 10 years I was always in the zone. Except for this year. This year for basically January 1st, was in a timeshare for the week. Had plans to strategize what I was going to do for the rest of the year. For some reason I was just emotionally. I don't know whether it was the pandemic or whatever, but I was emotionally exhausted. I literally slept probably about 13, 14 hours a day. And when I was awake, I, in many cases, never left the bed. So that's what I needed to do. And, yeah, that, to me, was an important week for me to feel good about myself so that I can do what I need to do. Now I've done three more this year, so I've done four weeks already this year.

Wow. And we're just at the end of February at the day of this recording. Wow.

Yeah. So I've done three weeks so far or four weeks of losing track of time. And I've got two more weeks coming up, so next week and the week after, because I'm working on my next book. And again, it's just a really great way to stay focused because then I don't feel as bad when I'm home if during the week, we want to go somewhere and it's a beautiful day. You know, we live in Florida. It's like, there's so many fun things to do. Hey, let's go to Disney or whatever. And there's just so many wonderful things that we can do here. And I love being able to do whatever comes up, whatever opportunities we have to enjoy ourselves.

Another part of the business snapshot that you gave us was that you take 15 weeks of vacation a year. Now, maybe that's not a precise number. It could vary from year to year, but do you have a particular strategy for how you block off those 15 weeks? And is that number. Did you arrive at that in a magical way? And were you just kind of sharing off the cuff in average?

So it actually started during the pandemic when nobody was traveling. The timeshares that we own in there was just ridiculous levels of vacancies, and they were giving the rooms away practically for like, half or less than half the number of points. Well, let's take advantage of it now. We would work, she would work, I would work. When we got to these places, the nice thing is we're both entrepreneurs, so we both can do a lot of work from anywhere in the world. And so we thought, well, we're not tethered to the home. We're not tethered to our home office. So when we go on these trips, we're still keeping busy. They're not just purely pleasure, but weave a lot of pleasure into it. And it's just a great way to balance work and play. And again, she's got her Business where she basically does similar types of things, locks herself away and gets some work done. So it's a great model.

That's so fun. I just love how you've designed with such freedom and flexibility, like you said. So tell us a little bit about the business model that enables this. How do you earn money? How do you work with your clients so that you maintain this much freedom and flexibility?

My business has evolved certainly over the past half dozen years or so. So I was with Accenture for the first 15 years, 2001, left Accenture, published my first book. And at that point the person who was my mentor was a professional speaker and author. And basically he was one of Time magazine's most influential people in the world. And his book was the second bestselling business book. So I thought, I want to be him, that's what I want to do. And so my business for the first 15 years or so was modeled after that, which was traveling around the world giving speeches. Probably 90% of my income was from keynote speeches. And then there was a point where it wasn't a financial meltdown, it was an existential meltdown where I just sort of felt I'm getting on stages and doing an hour, but am I really making that much of an impact? Like, am I really making this positive impact in the world or am I just going into places and having this transactional relationship? So a while back I decided I wanted to find a way of going from a large number of speeches to a small number of speeches with those clients that I do speeches for, having them become long term clients, where we go into some transformational work. If I look at my income from last year, I would say it's probably about 50, 50 keynote speeches. But the other 50% is from something I call my Fast Innovation Mastery program, which is essentially a program where it's an apprenticeship model where people learn my process by actually applying it to real world business problems in their organization. And over the course of 3, 6, 12 months, not only do they learn the skills and apply the skills, but the company that they're working for generates millions of dollars in roi. That's a good part of my business now. And I'm hoping to increase that to a even larger percentage of my business moving forward. And what's great is that's all virtual and so we can schedule the work that we do when it's convenient.

So in that model, it's really about having a small handful of clients, but doing a real deep dive with them, would you say? That's mostly the Case now.

Exactly. So instead of 50 speeches, let's say just as a round number. Instead of 50 speeches, I want 10 to 15 speeches, of which of those I would like three to five of them to become part of this mastery program. Because the mastery program is not for individuals, it's for organizations and their teams. And so it's sort of a cohort based program within a company. And my goal is fewer speeches, better. More relationships, fewer transactions, more deep dives.

I remember even when talking about book sales, you were saying you mainly go for bulk. So again, fewer transactions, more leverage from any one purchase because you'd rather sell 500 books at a time than five.

Much easier to do that. I'm always blown away by people who can sell tens of thousands of books at a onesie twosie level. I've always found it easier to do that. If you sell 500 here, 200 there, a thousand there, that's always found to be a much easier model.

I love the onesie twosie.

It's just so hard.

I know I've often said I'm not great at selling many small things to many people where it never really worked for me, trying to run my entire business on a course model. I've created courses over the years, but it always felt like such a heavy lift, launching them and trying to get enough participants. And there's so much pressure on every launch. And so for me, having a small handful of corporate clients as well has really balanced things out because I definitely not the one that can do the onesie twosies either very successfully.

So you ask, how do you work? Less is to me, leverage is the key. I mean, we're always asking the question, how do I do more with less? And I think that's always the wrong way to look at it. I'm always trying to figure out how do I do less and get more. So in order to do that, you have to figure out what's the leverage point, what is it that you do that's going to give you the greatest impact? And then if there are things that have to get done, what are the strategies for getting the work done that might not be in your sweet spot that you need to do? And right now I do most of my own work. I don't even have a virtual assistant. I basically run everything myself. Part of it is because I have technology that has made it easier for me to do that. But at the end of the day, I really try to figure out what is it that only I can do that's gonna have the greatest impact that helps me differentiate in the market and if I focus on those, that gives me leverage. And leverage is, to me the key to working less.

We'll be right back just after this.

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move. Being financially savvy Smart move. Another smart move Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

This episode is brought to you by indeed. You're ready to move your business forward, but first you need to find the right team. Start your search with Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It can help you reach qualified candidates fast, ensuring your listing is the first one they see. According to Indeed data, sponsor jobs are 90% more likely to report a hire than non sponsored jobs. See the results for yourself. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions Appreciate it's.

So interesting that you don't have a team or anyone, even a va. Is that by design? Is that on purpose? Like, given your strengths and interests of how you like to operate?

I just don't think at this point in my career I need that much support. As I do less and less. That is hyper focused. If I had 50 speeches, that's a lot of contracts and a lot of payments and all of that. But once that starts boiling down into a smaller number, there's not that much work to do. And again, the systems help a lot to be able to automate a number of things. And I wouldn't say it's necessarily by design, but at least in my experience, sometimes having more people on the team means I'm spending more time worrying about them and making sure they're doing the right work. And I'm trying to manage them and trying to make sure they're moving in the right direction and that they're not saying something that's inappropriate to a client. If I'm the point of contact 100% of the time, then I know I'm going to say the right thing to the right person at the right time. And maybe it's a control thing, but I just find it works the best for me.

It's so interesting. I just love hearing your take on this because I've also learned, usually the hard way, that the more team members I have, the less happy I am. Like and yet sometimes I feel bad that, well, I should like managing or I should want to get better at this or really step into my shoes as a leader. Or sometimes I'll tell myself like this is just kind of a personal development shortcoming, that I don't want to work on it. You know, I try to enjoy it more. But you're right. When it's just you. If the business model and the business is simple enough.

It just removes the friction of like that extra layer of management. And then like you said, you kind of know you're saying the right thing to the right person. My pitfall there is it's not at the right time because then I get really slow and backed up, bottlenecked.

To be clear, I do have a number of people who do things for me. For example, I have a bookkeeper who handles the books just because that's definitely not a strength of mine. That would be a waste of my time. Anytime there's product to be fulfilled, I have a third party company where they have a warehouse and they do all the fulfillment. It might cost me a little more than if I had done it on my own. But it's worth the extra buck, you know, or two per shipment to have somebody else handle it. And they're professional so they know what they're doing. So I've just found I'll pay a little extra for the people to be able to do it where it's, that's their business. My website, I've got somebody who handles that. But you know, when it comes to content, I've got to do my work. When it comes to relationships, I figure I'm the best person to build relationships.

Part of what inspired this conversation was one of your earliest books, if not the first, on goal free living. And I've had so much fun digging into it since I saw you in Miami. I wonder if you could talk to us about running your business in the spirit of goal free living. So just describe for us a little bit about what goal free living is and then how does that relate to how you think about your business? And do you set goals? Do you have metrics and targets?

I think the first thing is it's important to describe what I mean by goal free living. It doesn't mean you have absolutely no goals. It doesn't mean you have no to do lists. It doesn't mean you're sitting around eating bon bons watching TV all day. So it's definitely not that the whole general concept of goal free living is actually about a detachment from the goals. So you can still have goals, but you have a detachment from the outcome and you don't hyper focus on the goal. So you might set the goals, but then you don't really focus on them, but rather you focus on what you need to do right now. So the way I describe it is you want a sense of direction, not a specific destination, and then you meander with purpose. And the reason why I've always loved this philosophy is because it's a little bit arrogant of us to think that we know where we should be in 6 months, 12 months, 24 months time. I mean, it's like we have such a small understanding of the universe. We have such a small understanding of who we are and what we love to do. We have such a small understanding of what opportunities are out there that if we get myopically focused on a future that we set in the past, well, now we're going down a path where there's no flexibility. Goal Free living is really more of an iterative living process. It's where as you get new insights, as you get new data, as you get new information, you allow yourself to course correct real time and move towards what feels best. So in my business, I don't have quarterly targets. I mean, basically at the end of the year, I know what I did and I know what I didn't do. And what I really just try to figure out is what do I need to do in the very short term to achieve particular outcomes. So in some cases it's like I have things I want to get done in a particular day, and if I get that done, I'm done. That's it. There are things I know I have to get done. That's what I want to get done. And then I do have things which, like, I'm working on another book right now. Okay, you could argue that that's a goal, but I do not have a deadline for it. I have no idea when the book is going to be published. I'm not forcing it. I don't even have a goal for how big the book should be in terms of pages. I mean, it's like the book is going to be the book it's supposed to be and it will be done when it's supposed to be done. And I'm not saying that's always the best strategy for a business, but for me it works really well. Because as a quick tangent goal, Free Living wasn't originally a book on not having goals. The original purpose of that book was to talk to. And I did talk to 150 creative individuals. The objective was to figure out what makes these creative individuals tick. And most creative people tend to be this goal free living mindset. It works for me because that's my style. It doesn't work for everybody. There are some people who need the goals, want the goals, and it helps them. They have maybe different objectives for their business. So it really comes down to who you are as an individual, what you want for your business and what you want for your life. And I would never prescribe a single method for running a business or running your life.

Even in the book, you address some critics of this or even an inner critic voice that might say, well, that's no way to run a business. And you highlight some terms like, oh, might be considered lazy or directionless or even irresponsible or selfish. Do you have any little voices telling you in terms of how you run your business? Like, I call it the personal development police. Or here it could be the business police, you know, well, Steven, you'd be so much better off if you set revenue targets or a book deadline. Sometimes my gremlin tells me, like, you're not running a business. This is just a hobby. Because I'm not very oriented around numbers, as you and I have talked about, it doesn't motivate me. And I think they're so arbitrary. I've never hit the numbers I set, and sometimes I exceed them and sometimes I don't. But, like, setting them means nothing to me. So I'm just curious. I don't know, do you ever wobble on this approach?

I wobble on a lot of things, but this is not one of them, because like you just said, you set the target, and either you hit it or you don't hit it. If you hit it, you feel good, but then you have to set the next target, and then you're like a hamster on a wheel chasing targets. And it's never been appealing to me. So instead of trying to figure out more, what do I want to make from a revenue perspective? These are all laggy indicators.

Okay?

At the end of the year, did I do it or didn't I do it? What I'm trying to do is figure out what are the leading indicators, what are the things that I need to focus on that are gonna have the greatest impact. So, for example, as I said earlier, I know that in my business, the best source of revenue is going to come from people who already know me and trust me, that is going to drive particular behaviors, particular actions, and particular activities. So I need to have that information. Look, I could be a little more disciplined in saying, okay, I'm going to reach out to five people every day. I would like a little more discipline. And to me that's not as much a goal as it's just a something to do on a daily basis. I don't have any issue with people saying, today I'm going to do this, or tomorrow I'm going to do this. It's when we start projecting down into the future where there's just so many unknowns and so many variables that it just becomes disheartening. In fact, we did some studies and one of the things we found was that people who achieved set goals and achieved their goals were no happier than people who didn't set goals. And I'm not claiming to be an expert on this whole topic. It was again a book on creativity. It's not intended to be a self help type of book, but it's really how do you become more creative? And the way you become more creative is by keeping your eyes open and experiencing life in the moment rather than having tunnel vision towards the future.

Yeah, I love that theme. Throughout the book and in your work of you talk about aspiration. We are still directionally oriented. We're still following our strengths, our interests. We're still aspirational. You can even have really big grand aspirations that you might never hit, but there's a sense of presence and appreciation for what is. And even I love the section in your book around not even going with the flow, but becoming the flow. You were quoting somebody and he was saying like going with the flow means you're still separate from the flow. But how do you be the flow? Yeah, it's not something people talk about as much in terms of how to run a business. Most of the books say set your quarterly targets and work toward them and correct things if you're leading indicators are not heading in the right direction. But there's a lot of management that seems to happen at least in bigger businesses than the ones you and I are running.

I think that's also key is when you have a smaller business where we are the center of the business. It's a lot easier when you have larger teams. Everybody needs to know where they're going. But I will say even in larger organizations. So for example, a couple of clients that I worked with and I don't again claim to be a sales expert, I'm an innovation guy. But the concepts apply in other areas. Some of my clients have done some experiments based on what we talked about in goal Free Living and one of the things they decided to do is they had teams of people who were given sales targets and then they had other people who weren't given sales targets, but they were giving service level targets. And basically one group, their goal was to make as much money as they possibly could. The other group was basically there to serve and support the customer base as best as possible. And what they pretty consistently found was the people who were there to really serve people sold more than the people who were focused on selling. I have a couple of companies that I know of that they basically got rid of sales targets completely because they found it demotivated people and moved them in the wrong direction. And again, it's going to be on a case by case basis. Whatever works for your organization is going to be critical. But I think we need to understand that there are unintended consequences of whatever measures, structures or goals we set up. Because people are smart and they're going to try to figure out ways of hitting the goal, even if it means they're going to hurt the rest of the organization or do something that's dysfunctional to the organization.

I was just talking to my brother about this. He told me it's called goodarts law and we can put this in the show notes that when you aim at a measure, it ceases to become a good measure. So it's kind of on perverse incentives. And as I was researching it, I came across the cobra effect, which is that they tried to eliminate cobras and invasive species in India long time ago. So people started breeding cobras. So these perverse incentives was another example. And I'm sorry to all the animals who were harmed in these stories, but there was a city overcome by rats and the powers that be were going to collect the tails to know how many rats had been killed. Well, people just started seeing rats running around the city without their tails. So the rats weren't dying, they were just getting their tails chopped. So that's like, yikes, you know, a really aggressive way to illustrate this point. But even Zappos, I remember they talked about in terms of customer service that if you measure how quickly people get off the phone with the customers, which a lot of companies do, and even did maybe prior to hearing about Tony Hsieh's work on this, if you measure how fast people get off the phone, customer service ratings are going to go down so fast because people are just trying to get off the phone. They're not even trying to be helpful, let alone delightful.

Exactly. So we gain the system. I mean, goals become games. And as human beings, we're smart and we're going to figure out how to win the game, even if it doesn't really serve the higher purpose of what those goals were intended to achieve. I'm not saying don't have goals because I can't think of a big company that doesn't have goals. If you have shareholders, they want to know quarterly earnings, they're going to want to know what are your projections. I mean, that's almost always going to be the case. But when it comes down to the individual, when it comes down to the individual, I think it's useful for us to really just reflect on what's going to get somebody to perform at the highest levels when it comes to their work. And the analogy I use here is golf. And it's not going to be a divot, which is an inside joke, Jenny, that you know about.

I love it.

Which was the title of a book that I was working on about going deep. But actually it's about the whole process of lining up a shot. And so when you line up a shot in golf, what you do is you plant your feet, you figure out where the pin is, where you want the ball to go. And then the most important thing is once you get everything lined up and you know where you want the ball to go, you can't look at where you want the ball to go. You have to look at the ball. So as you're swinging, your eyes need to be on the ball. If you lift your head and look at where you want the ball to go, you're probably going to slice the ball and it's going to go so far away from where you want. And the same thing is true when it comes to measures and organizations, is we need to know where we're going. That's why I say use a compass, not a map. You need to be directionally correct. But then you want to plant your feet and do what you need to do right now in this moment to move you in the direction of that compass setting. And then you do the same thing the next day and the next day and the next day. And I'm originally from New England, so I'm a Patriots fan. And there was a point where, and I can't remember, there's 20, 22, I think it's 20 games the Patriots had won in a row. And after the 20th game that they won in a row, everybody's asking Bill Belichick, comment on the 20 game win streak, comment on the 20 game win streak and I loved his response. Belichick said, we didn't have a 20 game win streak, we had a 21 game win streak. That to me is brilliant because if you're so focused on the super bowl or you're so focused on whatever the goal is, you're taking your eye off what you need to do today. Once you start looking to the future, you're never going to be as powerful as you could be if you look at what you need to do right now to move you directionally in the right direction.

I love that and I love use a compass, not a map.

We'll be right back just after this.

When the holidays start to feel a bit repetitive, reach for a Sprite Winter Spiced Cranberry and put your twist on tradition. A bold cranberry and winter spice flavor Fusion Sprite Winter Spice Cranberry is a refreshing way to shake things up. This sip and season, and only for a limited time. Sprite Obey your thirst with Venmo Stash.

A taco on one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back with Venmo Stash. Get up to 5% cash back when you pick a bundle of your favorite brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash Venmo Stash Terms Exclusions apply. Match $100 cash back per month. See terms at Venmo Me StashTerms.

You mentioned leading versus Lagging indicators. So for any listeners, if you're not familiar with the two, leading indicator would be knowing that if you have five networking calls a day or a week, you know that it leads to X number of new clients. Lagging indicators would be something like how much revenue the business earned last quarter. It's in the past. So Steven, you and I have talked about this too and that there's pros and cons to this approach. But you said you've never been that motivated by the numbers. Do you look in the rearview mirror at all in terms of metrics? Do you track any metrics in your business?

I look at the revenue because, well, the IRS is interested in the revenue. So that's why I have a bookkeeper. I want to make sure my books are clean. I want to know how much money I made and how much money I spent. And in some respects I have more control over my spending than I do on than on my earning. And so I might put a little more emphasis on budgets for spending. But when it comes to earning, I just want to make sure that every day I'M doing the right things that I can do to move the needle in the right direction. So, no, I don't really do a lot of the rear view mirror, the lagging indicators, other than financial, because I need to do financial reporting, but other than for legal reasons, not a whole heck of a lot.

Yeah. So in terms of revenue, I kind of try to just appreciate what I have. And obviously there are times where cash flow is really abundant and then there are times where, as I call it, the financial tides recede. And I try not to panic when that happens. I kind of trust the flow that if I have less clients knocking on my door, I must be meant to work on something bigger behind the scenes. What do you do in your business if you're in a cash flow crunch? So beyond what the bookkeeper handles, if you just feel like you want to step it up a little bit on the earnings front, knowing that your number one thing you're optimizing for is not necessarily money. Of course, none of us would complain having abundant income. But what do you do when you find that your cash flow coffers are getting a little too low?

It's a tough one to answer. I will admit. There have been times where I get into the fetal position and I'm like, okay, gotta figure this out. Maybe I need to get a job.

Totally.

And entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, like we go through those cycles and fortunately you come out of those cycles, what you just said. So when things are still like right now, I don't know whether it's the economy, whether it's my energy out there, but the gigs aren't coming in as much as they normally would. But I'm also really busy working on the new book, so I have that time to do that. And I'm making sure that the process I'm using for writing the book is actually as important for the growth of my business as the book itself. I just always am making sure that, look, if things aren't happening, I can either worry, which I do. I can try to get desperate, which sometimes I feel that way. But I hope that most of the time I'm able to just say, okay, what do I do to take the time that I now have it to actually do something really cool? Like, I've been playing around with the TV project for a long time now. Don't know if it's going to happen, but if it does, we're hoping to know in a few weeks whether or not there's some momentum around that. And if there is, great, then that's a sign that I wasn't supposed to be busy and if it doesn't happen, just means that I need to work on something else. So, yeah, I worry like everybody. I'd be lying if I didn't say that.

Well, I love how you said that you want the way you're working on the new book to also benefit your business when it is a slower season. And I'm definitely having a much slower inbound request season as well. Last question before we wrap up. Speaking of the new book, is there a goal free approach to book marketing? And what I mean by that is it's so easy as an author to get focused on numbers, sales numbers specifically, and then be disappointed or sad if the book isn't selling quite well or enough. So how do you think about book launches? Do you have goals? Will you have a sales goal of how many you want to sell? And how do you kind of keep your spirits high? Hopefully it will just be a slam dunk right away. But in the event that, like many of us, sales seem a little slower than you would like.

Well, this is a really pertinent question because I think what happens is we measure the wrong things. I'm not an author. I mean, I don't make my living if I'm Stephen King. Look, I'm going to care about how many books I sell, but I don't make my living from writing books. Books are a means of people learning about me, learning about my content, and hopefully after they read it, they'll want to engage with me in some other way. I would rather sell 10 copies of the book, just 10 copies, to 10 people who end up hiring me to do one of my mastery programs than to sell 10,000 copies where I'm going to make however much I'm going to make. But it's not a huge amount and nobody ever decides that. But it's not the right audience, so they're not going to do work with me. So I don't look at book numbers. It's also why I don't work with traditional publishers anymore because all they care about are book sales. And I always felt like I had to sell for them, but I was never selling for me. So I would rather just make sure that the people who would benefit from my content get a copy of it. The process I'm using, for example, this time in the past, I would write a book and I go through the editing process, bring in professionals, and then we'd publish the book and then I would send it out to people and say hey, do you want a copy? Do you want a copy? This time I'm getting people involved super early in the process so that by the time the book has come out, I will have had a hundred or more targeted reviewers. These are people who are past clients, potential clients, but people in the innovation space that could benefit from this. They now have some sense of ownership of the book because they've contributed to the development of it. And when the book eventually launches, all those people, those hundred people or more, will get a dozen copies of the book. And so now, before the book is Even launched, there's 1,000 copies of the book in the wild in the hands of people who are my target audience. If I never sold a single copy, it probably would still serve its purpose with those thousand books being in the right hands.

That was my same approach with free time. Like, it's actually not that easy to give away a thousand books. That in itself would be a huge accomplishment just to, as I call it, sprinkle a thousand serendipity seeds into the world.

Right. But if you have people who were part of the process.

Yes.

And their name are in the acknowledgments.

Oh, yeah.

And they know, hey, this story is, is my contribution to this book. They're going to want to share with everybody.

Yeah, that's so true. And we were talking before we hit record about a very helpful book along these lines called Write Useful Books. So we'll put that in the show notes.

Yes. That's a great book.

Yeah. Last question that I ask everybody is if you could give fellow business owners, fellow free timers, permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?

The key is, I'm going to go to the dropping side is just each day, imagine you only have one hour you can work. How would you spend that hour? What's going to be the greatest value creating hour that you could possibly spend that's going to give you the greatest leverage and the greatest impact? I would say don't do more with less. Do less, get more. Use this thought process of an hour a day and if you work more, fine. But if you really try to shoot for that one hour day, it's gonna focus your thinking.

I love that. And I would encourage everybody to also check out invisible solutions because on the subject of focusing, thinking, that book is so good, Steven.

Oh, thanks.

So many gems in there that just can completely shift how somebody's thinking about a problem or challenge in their business. So I wanna highly recommend that as well.

Thank you.

This was such a joy. Thank you so much for being here Steven. And thank you. Kudos for 21 plus years in to running your business so delightfully even with the ups and downs.

Well, thank you. It's been an interesting journey and as they say, it's the journey, not the destination. Let's face it, we all know what the destination is for our life, so let's enjoy it along the way.

Absolutely. Thank you so much Steven.

Thanks Jenny.

Thanks everybody for listening.

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

Thank you.

Word of mouth is the most joyful way we can grow this show and it helps us land interviews with the luminaries and insightful guests that you would.

Most love to hear from.

Please send this episode to a friend who might find it helpful and for show notes and related links from this episode, visit itsfreetime.com while you're there, make sure you're subscribed to the Time well Spent newsletter. You'll get instant access to my Tech Toolkit, a continually updated list of all the software I use, along with the tool. Total monthly spend. To run my business where no one works full time even me, visit itsfreetime.com join remember, you are running the show. It's time for radical reimagining and everything is up for grabs. Let it be easy, let it be fun, and build with love.