202: 🎉 20+ Free Time Permission Slips for Small Business Owners (Part 2)

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

Welcome back free Timers. Let's dive in to part two of our episode 200 milestone. Today we're on 202 with 20 more permission slips for you. These are some of my favorite because they speak to the emotional ups and downs of entrepreneurship, of being sometimes the breadwinner for your family, not having the consistency of a steady paycheck, possibly being extra hard on yourself about how you're managing things and all of the challenges that can come with having so much on your shoulders and then navigating such choppy economic seas as we've all been experiencing these last few years. These permission slips spoke straight to my heart and I know that they will to yours as well. As I mentioned last time, it would be such a gift if you could share this episode with a friend. Share it to a fellow business owner, or if you're part of a small group mastermind to anybody you think could benefit who it would just lift their spirits to hear some of these permission slips today. You can always leave me a Note@Hi Time.com if this episode resonates. As I mentioned last time, I would also love to invite you to have more conversations like this with even more than what I share on the podcast in our private BFF community. That's@itsfreetime.com BFF promo code podcast. It gets you access to a private group community forum for talking through sticky challenges. A private podcast feed with a bonus episode every single month, a live Q and A call with me Brilliant Sparter Live where you get to do small group breakouts, masterminds with other business owners, and bonus workshops from time to time. That's@itsfreetime.com BFF without further ado, let's dive into these 20 bonus permission slips celebrating episodes 200 and 202.

If you could give fellow small business owners permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be? It's permission to be finite. It's permission to say that you are never going to get everything done. You are never going to get on top of everything. You are never going to be in a position where you're not dropping a single ball. You're not making a single person feel angry or disappointed. You're not failing to meet a single obligation. This is structured into reality. It is not your failing. It's not because you haven't found the right technique or applied enough energy. It's built in to being finite in a world of infinite inputs and infinite possibilities and infinite demands. And I think that as soon as you see that and just relax a little bit into reality as it is, it's just wonderful. And it's wonderfully empowering because then you can start doing a few things that really count.

Instead of measuring the day by how productive you were and how much you ticked off a to do list, really experimenting with those different measures that we spoke about. So can you be more creative with how you judge the day? Can you make it more expansive? Can you be more curious about things? And can you sort of see that sometimes it's the internal accomplishments that can be the most important? Sometimes it is that moment of connection that's the most important, or that moment of idleness and just doing the day differently in the sense of not trying to optimize it, but to occupy it and to really embrace it for whatever it was.

You have permission to feel. This role of the CEO, the role of the founder is the archetype, is this, like, impregnable, won't cry, won't be sad. And like, sometimes you just need a good cry, and that's okay. Your humanity in the situation is not at odds with what you want to be as a CEO, as a founder. They are perfectly intertwined. Whatever human need you have, whatever emotional need you have, you have permission to feel it, to experience it, to talk about it, because we all know that keeping it bottled in is not gonna work.

Drop whatever shame or fear you have around creating something imperfectly and truly stepping into the fear and just being like, this is actually my superpower. The thing that makes this so scary is what's going to make it really impactful, even on a personal level, even just going through the exercise and doing something that's really scary and making it really low stakes. I'm just Doing this, and let's see what happens. Not I'm doing it because I need a hundred clients, but I'm doing it because this is another way for me to express or another way to reach out to people and people will resonate with you, and you don't know why.

Allow the thing that you seek to create be as much a manifestation of the essential nature of who you are as it is a mechanism to fill what you perceive to be a viable need in a marketplace. Because you can follow the ladder and build something that's quote, successful and then end up realizing in hindsight that you have just recreated constraints to your life, to your happiness, to your love, to your true success that you never intended to, even though outwardly you know you've got all the trappings of a successful, thriving company. Allow your own well being, your own sense of fulfillment to have a seat at the table of what you're building.

I just want you to trust your hearts. One of my Sufi teachers said, if you're in your practices, you can trust your whims. If you have a reaction to something, there's wisdom in that. If you have resistance to doing something, there's wisdom in that. The image that you're getting in your resistance may not be the complete picture. There may be something to still learn and lean into. But I don't want you to think that something's wrong or broken in you simply because you have a reaction to something. There's wisdom in your reactions.

If you were to do something differently. For those of you that I call like the giants in the world, understand that whatever you want wants you to. So it doesn't have to be either or, it can be both. And look at what's working for you and lean more into that unapologetically. Allow yourself to explore new possibilities. Keep what's working. But if it's not working, sometimes we get so busy that we just drag a bad situation on.

This is the permission slip that I've had to write to myself is just be your whole self and grant yourself permission to live your most beautiful life. And if you want, build your most beautiful business, you deserve it. You don't have to prove anything to anyone. Go live it. Go own it. Go be it. Permission to be you.

I want you, dear listener, to have permission to do the thing that your soul is calling you to do and to create it in a way that supports you. Because again, I mean, this is no joke, Jenny. I read your book within this last year, but I have been creating it in the way that you presented it for the last 10 years and that book had so many God hugs. Like if I showed you my copy I literally put hashtag godhug on so many places.

Do business in a way that actually feels good. So many self employed people. We are creeped out by the way marketing has been done, the way business is done. There is so much evidence and we see it around us. People are choosing who to do business with because how they feel about that business more than ever before. Not from their brain, not from a logical sense. What I always say is that nowadays you don't get hired because you're the best at what you do. You get hired because people feel like they get you and that you get them. They have an energetic quality to the relationship. Do business in a way that really feels heart centered, purpose driven and right for you.

Drop the socialization that tells them that they should be in a different place than they are or they should be doing more, feeling guilty for what they haven't done in the past. The shame that builds up around making a plan and committing to do it and then life intervenes and not doing it and carrying that forward is just absolutely unhelpful. If it's important for you to get things done, to create things and make meaning in the world and purpose in your life, it will help you more on a daily basis. It's helpful to just take a quiet moment, take a deep breath and just release and drop anything that you didn't do. And look forward with optimism into the day based on where you're at, how you feel and what's available and say, how can I be the most strategic? How can I be the most joyful about what I'm doing that ultimately is going to lead to more fulfillment and more creation than harboring all that crappy shame and fear and guilt?

We'll be right back just after this.

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We think when we start businesses that every single day is going to be a rainbow and we're going to find that gold at the end of it and hang out with the leprechaun and give them high five or something like that. But that's not always the case. Most times it's going to be a blue collar kind of day. It's going to be working a shift kind of day. There will be those glimmering lights when all is magical and it feels great and I'm so glad I'm following my passion. What we have to do every single day is recommit to what's most important. We have to remind ourselves why we decided to choose the lane that we're in again. We always in society, we talk so much about how important it is to commit. I agree commitment is important. But what's even more important is recommitting every single day to what's most important. I decided to start this business of mine, whether I'm the only person or I have hundreds of employees for this reason. This is why I'm doing this. And I think we lose that flame of why we started it when we forget about that moment when we had that inkling of an idea, when we first started jotting out some notes on a Google Doc or in a notebook of why we wanted to take this risk, when everybody said, you're crazy if you're leaving that great job to start this other thing. So in those moments when you're wavering or it's not the perfect day, I just invite you to remind yourself why you're doing it and to, if it's still that important to you, just to recommit to that decision.

It's that scolding voice in your head, I used to have it. I worked very hard over many years to get rid of it. And sometimes it manifests as imposter syndrome, what people call imposter syndrome. Sometimes it manifests as, oh my God, I can't believe I did it that way. Bad, bad, bad, or even seeing something as a failure. I had a client yesterday say to me, I failed at this. I'm like, I don't see it that way. I don't think so. Let's look at it a different way. So just this idea of stop with that voice, everyone has their own version of it and you know it when you hear it. Can you stop with it and just speak to yourself with more grace, with more love, perhaps with more joy?

Here's the permission I'd love to give all of the business owners listening. Be more gentle with yourself.

The number of second chances you give to customers, the number of third chances, fourth chances, fifth chances. The number of second chances, third, fourth, fifth that you give to your employees, to the people you do business with, I'd be willing to guess, pales in comparison to the number of chances you give yourself. Before you pile on heaps of judgment, heaps of self criticism, it is really, really difficult to run your own business. I say that as somebody who's been doing it for 20 years. It gets easier, kinda, but it also gets harder, right? I think if we were more gentle with ourselves, it would allow us to serve our customers and our employees even better. And so that's the permission I'd love to give everyone.

One of the things I've been working on this idea with my coach that I'm earning my paycheck over a long period of time. So I have a sort of highly developed sense of duty and I like to get things done. And that can mean that if there's a quiet day where things didn't quite go down the way I thought they were going to be, or maybe one of, I have two young kids, maybe one of them was sick and so had to stay home from daycare and the day was a wash when things like that would happen, I would really think I need to make up for this time. Right. I could always do more, can always turn it on, need to get this done. And so this idea that I'm earning my paycheck or I'm having impact over a long term, over a year, maybe it's over multi years. This goes back to the imposter syndrome, Jenny. Every single day needs to be evidence that I am critical and I need to be here and I'm having impact. So sort of being gentler with myself and giving myself permission to, to know that there are ebbs and flows and the impact is earned and proven over the longer term.

The permission that I want people listening to this to have is that it's okay to literally just take a breath and think about the present moment. And when you're on the floor playing with your kids or playing with your dog or like, you know, out and spending time with friends or whatever, you don't need to think about all the things that you need to do next because you'll get that done like you're going to get it done right. We're all professionals, we all have businesses. Like we all handle it. And so you don't need to always be thinking about it. It's okay to just be present for this moment.

Business owners are generally naturally very ambitious. They have plans, they have goals and they are really good at achieving them. That comes with a downside in that most business owners also, when they don't achieve at the level they think they're supposed to, they can kind of beat themselves up. They can have inner dialogue that has a lot of self blame in it or a lot of kind of self disappointment or something. And I want people to really know that your compassion, especially your self compassion must exceed your ambition if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a business owner, it must. Otherwise you will torture yourself. Otherwise you actually won't have the emotional stamina to thrive in your business. The way you have to deal with disappointment is to be able to tell yourself, it's okay, I'm human. Humans make mistakes. Humans can't hit the jackpot every time. Even the best teams don't win the championship every year. And that's okay. It doesn't take perfection to be extraordinary.

I give you permission to fail. Perfectionism is the biggest thing that stopped me from starting back in the day. And it's often the permission to fail that moves a person forward because that's how you learn. There's no better learning than failing because that helps you understand which direction not to go. And if you're anything like me, grew up in the 80s and 90s school, it was all about getting the best grades, it was all about getting into the right college. And a failure would have just been the end of the world. But now I've had to deal through and fight through that conditioning. And now I appreciate the failures and I look to get to the point where I'm close to failing. I don't try to fail, but I put myself in a position that if I were to fail, I know that I'm going to grow on the second iteration and the third iteration. So I give you permission to fail.

Permission to breathe. There's time.

I didn't know what you were going to share out of the book, but I felt a collective exhale for myself. I'm sure people listening right now and business owners, they equally have exhaled because so many of us business owners doing our own thing, providing for our families if a check shows up every two weeks or not, it's on us. There's no guarantee. You gave us all permission to say, you know, it's a lot. Sometimes it's a lot on our shoulders. It is so much to handle in our society nowadays. Tells us sometimes to a fault to suck it up or hustle hard. But we don't give ourselves permission sometimes just to exhale and say, man, it's a lot. I'm stressed, I'm anxious. Q2 isn't looking like. I thought, what's the future going to look like? But we also know simultaneously and the reason why you're writing this book is that in many ways, we wouldn't have it any other way.

That's a wrap. I hope you enjoyed these 40 plus permission slips from previous Free Time guests. It has been such a joy to chat with every single one of them and the greatest gift to know that you are here listening week after week. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for making this show what it is. Thank you for the motivation that you give me to keep going week after week producing this podcast and everything else in the Free Time universe. I wouldn't be doing any of it without you. Thank you so much for being here for helping spread the good word about this podcast or this episode in particular. It means the world to me and if you don't already have it, make sure you grab your copy of Free Time. Lose the busy work, love your business, have a beautiful rest of your day.

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 this 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 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.

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