300! 🎉 3 Creative Lessons Learned from 7+ Years of Podcasting

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the the Pivot Podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

Hi friends. I cannot believe it, but Today marks episode 300 of the Pivot podcast and officially our seventh year in the biz. Thank you so much for being here. Listening. This show would be nothing without you. If a podcast falls in the forest and nobody hears it, does it exist? Well, maybe I couldn't quite muster 300 creative lessons for you, let alone 30. So instead I decided to boil down my top three creative lessons learned in seven years of pivot podcasting. Over 300 episodes. 450 if you count where we're at with free time. Now my second show and just give you the top three of what I've learned in all this time. All right, let's dive in.

Creative lesson number one Doing a daily creative output bootcamp for three months makes the rest seem easy. When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, as we all know, mid March started the shutdowns around the world. I felt this call to step up my systems. I shifted to daily podcast production for three months, trying to keep up with big hitters like the Daily who have teams of 20 plus full time people alone working on those shows. And in episode 223 of the Pivot Podcast, I shared more about the mindset, the motivation, the systems, and the skills that that daily podcast production helped me improve upon. That episode came out in May of 2020, so I was a little ways through this experiment and I didn't know where it was going to take me. I never thought it would be possible to produce a daily podcast episode pretty much by myself. I didn't even have the full service production team that I do now, but I knew that I wanted to try, that we were all going through really uncertain times, that Pivot is all about navigating change, being more agile, being more resilient in our lives, and that if I was going to try a big, scary, hairy creative goal like that, daily podcasting would be a good one. Even though I didn't ultimately keep up with the daily podcast production. I mean, I'm sure I had friends at that time who thought I was crazy and what was I thinking? And I'm going to burn out. It was so energizing. And I will say it felt really good to challenge myself in that way, in the same way that I'm not a serial marathon runner. I did it once in my life and that was good. I kind of checked the box, but it felt really good to know that I could do it. The same thing was true with a daily podcast. Even if you're not a podcaster, fill in any creative project of yours that seems intimidating. And this kind of goes along the lines of Grant Cardone's book 10x about 10x thinking, but it's counterintuitive. Sometimes when we double down on a goal or an output, or we stretch ourselves to our limits, that's actually where we get breakthroughs in how we can tackle things. When we go back to, quote, normal, before my daily experiment, I remember that getting one episode out a week felt super intimidating. I had a hard time staying on schedule. Multiple times in these last seven years, I've gone on complete hiatus, unannounced and unplanned even to myself, where what I thought would be taking one week off turned into two weeks, turned into a month turned into two months, to the point where I had probably more than one three month break on the Pivot podcast because I couldn't quite keep up with production. So when the pandemic hit and I switched to daily, it was this muscle building mode, a creative bootcamp, as I called it, that truly made the rest seem easy. So even though life continued to unfold, continued to be a shit show of a year, and that kind of interrupted my Daily podcasting. I did need a break. Once I returned to producing episodes weekly, it felt like a walk in the park. And I had this muscle memory that I knew what I was capable of in terms of coming up with content and new ideas, streamlining systems, turning episodes around much more quickly, not being a perfectionist about anyone, because, boom, there was going to be the next episode coming out the following day. So when I went back to weekly, that felt super easy and it actually opened the door and created space for me to launch FreeTime, my second podcast. Because I thought, I've done daily, I can do this, I can have two shows. When I first launched the FreeTime podcast on March 21, 2021, I was producing one episode a week, and I had Pivot kind of in maintenance mode of two episodes a month. So that was producing six episodes a month. Throughout the course of 2021, as I was writing the book Free Time, I started to reflect on how much I loved podcasting. And I know you hear me say it all the time, but in terms of how I like to put my ideas and my voice out there, it has just been such a source of joy these last seven years that I wanted to challenge myself again. Part of this was aided by going pro and hiring One Stone Creative, the full service podcast production team. But in my heart of hearts, I realized I would love to produce two free time episodes a week and return Pivot back to its normal weekly cadence just so that you could know what to expect. I figured that if it was coming out every other week, no one would really care, but. But you wouldn't know it releases on Sundays. You wouldn't know is there going to be one today or not? I can't remember what schedule Jenny's on. Whereas with Pivot Back to Weekly, it's coming out consistently every Sunday. So if you go on a walk on Sunday mornings, you know that it's going to be there. And then with free time, that comes out on Tuesdays, I have a guest interview and on Fridays I do a solo show. What's been challenging and interesting about that is that when I set that goal to do one guest a week is easy. That means I get on the phone, slash Riverside fm, and I have a conversation with someone that is super easy. I enjoy that. It's basically my form of networking and making friends. What I didn't know if I was capable of was creating a solo episode for free time every single week. That's four big ish ideas a month. You know, maybe they're small ideas. I have done episodes on mosquitoes and bug splatter on the windshield, so. But nonetheless, it meant coming up with four original ideas. And let's say Pivot Podcast is coming out four times a month. Maybe two would be with a guest and two solos, or three guests and one solo. I was trying to challenge myself again to put more of my own ideas out, even when they aren't fully formed, even when they aren't perfect. So ramping up to this 12 times a month production schedule would have seemed absolutely bonkers if I didn't have the team and if I hadn't done that daily creative boot camp of daily podcasting when the pandemic hit in 2020. So even now, when I tell people, oh, I produce 12 episodes a month, they look at me like I'm crazy, but in my heart I know. But I've done 30 episodes a month before, and no, that wasn't totally sustainable, but I didn't have a team at that time. So this cadence definitely challenges me. But I enjoy that challenge. It doesn't give me enough time to second guess myself. The show must go on. Now, if some big life event or business catastrophe were to strike, of course I would probably need to take a break. But I just want to share a couple clips from episode 223 on stepping up how I shifted to daily podcasting. I released that in May 2020, and I was breaking down what I was learning about this creative challenge in terms of mindse motivation systems and skills. So you're going to hear a clip on Mindset Peace and then about motivation.

Whether you're going to do a daily, a weekly, or a monthly podcast or creative project, there is a commitment involved. It's much easier to commit to a certain frequency than to waffle constantly about, should I do a new one today? Should I do a new one this week? Do I feel like putting a podcast out? Do I feel like writing a newsletter this week?

What is motivating you to start this in the first place? What will motivate you to keep going even when you hit a dip or you get tired or you think you want to stop? And what will motivate you to take the risks to put new types of content or interview your heroes or do a solo episode? If you're not used to doing something like that? What is the motivation that is driving this project? That is the magnet pulling you forward.

I was reflecting during the Pandemic that in the early days of the Pandemic, it was almost easier to figure out what to talk about because not as many of the larger, less agile platforms had caught up yet now it's very different. It's harder to differentiate. There's more noise. And that's true for any topic and any growing platform is that over time there becomes more noise and the bar does raise. It's harder to stand out, it's harder to be unique. So that's something that it's a skill that you constantly develop over time. Planning is a skill. What's the flow of content that DJing approach? Batching is a skill. So the days that we can post process four episodes at once or send four episodes at a time to James for audio editing, and then Brenna can do four squarespace setup show notes at once. Those are amazing. And then it's the best feeling in the world to have five episodes pre scheduled out. That's when I get a chance to exhale and I'll say, ah, okay. I know that I don't have to go in and edit a podcast today because I've given a gift to my future self. I scheduled out five in advance and that's a good feeling.

Last but not least, on this first creative lesson, here's a highlight that I know you'll love for from later that summer, episode 254 on Seth Godin's new book @ that time, the Practice. We're talking about generosity, peculiarity, and showing.

Up.

Why even bother having a practice? It protects us from the variation of our daily intent. It protects us from the good days and the bad days. Mostly the bad days. Because if we have a practice, then we commit to doing the practice. So no matter how slow or sloggy a day is, I figure out how to brush my teeth twice even. And we can go further than that. We can develop the habit of doing the work even when we don't feel like it. Especially when we do. Because it's doing the work that changes our mood, not the other way around. And you know, when you and I connected a couple minutes ago, I could hear in your voice both fatigue and joy. And I think the joy comes from you're back at it, you're doing the work again. So don't hold that back. Go ahead and do the work before you feel like doing it. Because often, at least for me, what I discover is when I do the work, even when I don't feel like it, suddenly I feel like it. Hiding until everything is perfect will mean we are hiding for a very long time. And for me, it's how can I make things just a little bit better for at least one person. So that's what motivates me to show up a little. And you know, in terms of my output, I have a buffer. And I think having a buffer is really smart. So I don't get up at 4 o' clock in the morning to write that day's blog post. I've been thinking about tomorrow's blog post and next week's blog post for a long time and there's something there. So if I get run over by a truck, the blog post will continue, the streak will happen. And buffers are useful because they allow us to not work out of a position of panic and not always worry about being live. Instead, they let us realize we can build assets, we can expend assets, but we still have to chop the wood. We still have to do the.

Work.

We'll be right back just after this.

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Creative lesson number two Delegating is a game changer in Free time. The book I talk about stepping out of the role of Chief Everything Officer that it's too much, it creates too much stress and that anytime we are the bottleneck, that's what leads to those burdensome Bs of eventually feeling bored, burnt out, buried by bureaucracy, or bottlenecking the works in any other way where we know that we're holding up the ability for anything else to make progress in the business or in your creative projects. So for this creative lesson number two, it was taking the leap to invest in a full service production team before before I was 100% ready and this is crucial. And even before I really had the budget, I was getting ready to launch the Freetime Book. So now I'm zooming you forward to the end of 2021 and turning the corner into the new year. I knew the book was gonna be launching and I spent an entire Saturday editing audio. Now I like editing audio. It's super time consuming to edit 30 minutes of audio. I mean, it depends the nature of the episode, who it's with, if it's a solo, if I'm using Descript to do a one click filler word removal. But usually a half an hour of audio might take up to two hours to edit. If it's a close listen and a close edit max, maybe it would take an hour cause you have to listen back and stop and start and cut and stitch things together. So needless to say, I enjoy doing this. I find it kind of soothing. But I had spent an entire Saturday and the book was launching. The book was coming out in a month or two. I had products like the Free Time Operations Dashboard that I built out in notion that didn't exist yet that I mentioned in the book. That was a real deadline that the book was going to come out. This product needed to exist and people needed to be able to pay for it and have emails confirming and have the process worked out of how I was going to deliver the dashboard once they purchased. Although it was okay that I wasn't drained that day I spent editing audio, I kind of had a look in the mirror moment of realizing I'm making a real choice here because the longer that I do things myself and don't delegate because at the time I felt like, well, I can't justify it. The podcast doesn't really make money in and of itself. I was saying no to developing real income generating products and services in my business. I was making a very real trade off by sticking with what was comfortable with what I said, oh, I can do it myself. We've all said that I was making a trade off, that I was not building very important things in the business that I could have been building, let alone spending time with Michael and Ryder on a Saturday when I didn't really need to be working. I was super hesitant and to go all in on the team for the podcast. But I was having conversations with my brother and he just kept telling me, he said, jenny, you have got to buy your time back. And he kept reminding me, your time is worth so much more. Your time is really high value, you've got to buy it back. But I don't have the money yet. I was telling him, I've spent so much money on this book process and the marketing and designing a really beautiful book and printing it because I went indie for this one, he said, you will figure out how to earn it back, but you've got to free up your time. So he was just this voice in my ear saying, free your time, free your time, Free your time. And of course, that's the irony of writing a book, is that we get tested on exactly those topics. So if I'm going to truly live the message of this book, I knew that he was right. And so not only did I hire One Stone Creative, but I asked them for the top three package that they have, like full concierge. What that helped me to achieve was that for the first time in at that time, it would have been six years of podcasting, I was no longer the one who owned the life of an episode in my mind. And that is still a cognitive burden. It's like I still had all the tabs open of podcast production, because even though I was delegating bits and pieces of it, like audio editing or setting up show notes, I still had to be the one to hold the episode's hand and walk it through our production process. Hiring One Stone Creative. They started with me at the very start of 2022. For the first time, they owned the life of an episode. They sent me things, helped me prepare for guest interviews. They would edit the audio more than once, give it a second listen. They would insert little sound clips like you're gonna hear in this episode. They would draft the show notes. They would email the guests to tell the guests when the episode went live, they owned it. And I even said to them, do not let me be the bottleneck. If you haven't heard back from me to approve the show notes or the audio, schedule it anyway. I do not want to hold up the process. So for the first time, I now get to do what I do best. My unique zone of genius is just showing up and recording a solo episode like this one, or interviewing the guest. And I could finally harness my creative time and energy into preparing to be with a guest, being really present when I was on with the guest, or preparing and really focusing on my ideas for the solo episodes that I'm going to create these mini assets around with that episode. And my brother was right. I didn't need to be the one in the weeds of everything else. So even though the podcast itself, let's say purely from ad revenue, doesn't pay for the production team, other parts of my business certainly do. So if the podcasts help bring people into my private BFF community, that counts. If people want to do an ad swap where we advertise each other's show, that counts. If people end up purchasing the FreeTime operations dashboard, that counts. If somebody within an organization is listening to Pivot or freetime and they want to bring me in to Speak, that pays for the entire year of the podcast production team, practically depending where it is and if it's in person or virtual. And so once I expanded the lens of how I would recoup the, quote, cost of hiring the team and buying back my time, I just saw a much fuller picture and I've been much calmer and much more able to focus on my unique creative output while letting them do what they do best. And they're super genius at their whole process and systems and level of quality and excellence.

For this lesson, I'll play you two clips. One is from March 2022, episode 276 of the Pivot Podcast where I share behind the Free Time Pivot. And you'll also hear a clip from May of 2018. That was episode 100 of this podcast where I share 10 lessons learned in three plus years of podcasting. That one I love. It's got a place close to my heart. Because in that episode, the number one lesson is a phrase that I repeat often about putting yourself in the path of pivot. Even when you can't see where it's leading you yet.

You cannot know the answers. Sometimes you just need to put yourself in the path of pivot and then see what develops. So in this case, by me writing and launching a new book, I'm putting myself in the path of pivot. I'm seeing what's possible, and I will know what to do once I get going down this path. But I won't know right up front. And every next stage is just an exercise in trust and having a little faith and trying to tune in and see what would be most helpful. Most interesting listening to all of you, taking your feedback, and then making the next set of decisions from there.

Anyone who's in my private community knows that I hate the term personal branding, and instead I often talk about the power of public original thinking. What does that mean? It just means thinking out loud. And when I say put yourself in the path of pivot, you can back into your next ideas by committing to public original thinking, even if you don't know exactly where it's taking you. My friend and fellow Pivot coach Lisa Lewis said to me the other day, if you want to get hit by the luck truck, you have to put yourself in the middle of the road. I love this quote I love the idea of putting yourself in the middle of the road when I say put yourself in the path of pivot. We don't always know what's next. And that's the whole point of the book, which is that the only move that matters is your next one. And sometimes that next move isn't even a big decision. It isn't even the clarity of exactly where you're going next. It might just be that I'm going to commit to doing something out loud, like podcasting that allows you to explore your curiosity, allows you to meet new people, and most importantly, allows you to get feedback from friends, community members, and the people that you're hoping to work with.

Lesson number three. Intrinsic success is priceless for any creative project. Anything over a very small handful of listeners or readers is a success. I love what the author Jay Acunzo says on his website. He says, don't be the best, be their favorite, and don't market more, matter more. This is consistent with what Seth Godin often talks about, which is, who cares if you have 100,000 listeners or readers? What if you have the perfect 10? What if you have someone listening that's going to give you the opportunity of a lifetime that changes the trajectory of your entire life or career? This is exactly what happened to my friend Julie, who wrote a book called the Work Revolution that didn't become a gangbuster runaway hit bestseller. In fact, there reached a point where the publisher said, hey, we can't store these extra books. Do you want to buy them back from us? There would be one way to look at that and feel disappointed. Oh, we didn't sell out the print run. However, that one book got Julie a job that she has had to this day, seven years later. Incredible benefits. She's the head of talent for a global organization. It's just incredible what doors that book opened for her. So for sure, one of the biggest lessons that I've taken out of these last seven years of podcasting is not to obsess over the numbers. I do feel that if a show is growing, that is a good sign. My measure of success is word of mouth marketing. If I create something good enough, you'll want to share it with a friend. So with all three of my books, I've tried to write the very best, most helpful, practical book that I can write so that when you put it down, you can't help but tell a friend or two or three, or buy them as gifts for other people. That's the same way I think about every single episode of these two podcasts. So we have 300 now on pivot and 150 on freetime, as I mentioned at the intro. And that my hope is when you stop listening to any single one of them, you have the perfect friend in mind that you want to share it with. At least those are the episodes where I really know that I've done a good job, where I feel that in my heart I can never really know. It's a little bit strange talking into the ether when recording a podcast because it's not like I'm in the room with any of you. I can't see you and your reactions and hear from you after every single time that you engage with the show. Mihaly Csiksemi wrote the book on flow. He describes people who are internally driven, who exhibit a sense of purpose and curiosity as autotelic. This is a Greek term that basically refers to that sense of intrinsic motivation. So an autotelic activity is one that you enjoy for the sake of it itself, not because of any external results. On the flip side side, Csikszentmihalyi describes those who are externally driven, where things like comfort, money, power or fame are the motivating force, and telic activities are those where, let's say with this podcast, I would only describe it as successful if it had a certain number of listeners. He writes, an autotelic person needs few material possessions and little entertainment, comfort, power or fame because so much of what he or she does is already rewarding. Because such persons experience flow in work, in family life, when interacting with people, when eating, even when alone with nothing to do, they depend less on external rewards that keep others motivated to go on with a life of routines. They're more autonomous and independent because they cannot be as easily manipulated with threats or rewards from the outside. At the same time, they're more involved with everything around them because they are fully immersed in the current of life.

I think that's so beautifully said and I'm not perfect on this. Sometimes I'll get discouraged if I look at the numbers for too long, whether it's book sales, podcast downloads, revenue overall in the business, or even if I accidentally pop onto social media because, you know, I don't really do that much intentionally, and I go down a rabbit hole of compare and despair. That's when I return to my mantra that I share in free time. Eyes on your own paper. When I get focused on external statistics or markers of success, especially with these podcasts, I remind myself, eyes on your own paper. Stay focused on the process. Stay Focused on the intangible benefits that continue to come from doing this show. There is so much value that I derive from deep conversation, making new connections, being challenged, as I mentioned, to create my own ongoing public original thinking, creating a base of searchable assets with every single episode, having really robust archives where you can go down a rabbit hole yourself across these many years of putting ideas out, even giving people the path from the book to the podcast to my private community, and vice versa. That whole content and creative flywheel that I talked about with Todd Henry. This episode isn't out yet, but I was reminded of all of these intangible benefits when I interviewed the actor Ryan Devlin about his pivot from acting to entrepreneurship. Here is somebody that I had seen on tv. I had watched shows that he was in, one of them being Jane the Virgin, for example. We had the best time. He was just the nicest guy. We had a really super flowing, energetic conversation. We even went over the time we had allotted for recording. We had so many concepts in common of what we talk about, think about. He had started reading free time because I sent him a copy of the book and I hung up from recording that episode that will come out in the new year and I was flying. I just thought, when on earth would I have otherwise crossed paths with this person, Gotten into an hour long conversation talking about all kinds of pivots and passions and pursuits, his experience of life in Hollywood, what he saw celebrity and fame do to people, and the slippery slope of that, of just like, where how do I get to do this? And I love the fact that it's not just behind closed doors that we get to record it and release it for all of you to listen to. And I tell every guest before we hit record that I want it to feel like we're sitting at coffee together and that you, our listeners, get to be there right alongside with us. So I really now aim for every conversation to be exactly that. A flowing conversation, Less of an interview or a book report where you feel like you're sitting at coffee with two friends or at coffee with a Hollywood actor that you wouldn't otherwise have access to. Here's a clip from the conversation with Ryan that's coming out.

Soon.

I think the confidence to do something like that comes with practice, you know, like you say, the only constant is change, so let's get better at it, right? And so like, the more you get better at change, the more you experience pivots, the more comfortable you become with it. And I have always pivoted like you and I share this DNA trade of every few years, kind of getting a little restless and figuring out something new. So acting hadn't been the thing for me. It was just the current thing. And so for me, I think there was a little bit of comfort in taking a pivot to this saves lives. And also I think like a little bit of cockiness maybe, where I was just like, well, I probably did the hardest thing one can do, which is make it in Hollywood. I'll make it as an entrepreneur with this saves lives and then I'll make it with the next thing. And so there wasn't a fear in the moment. Now being, you know, 43 with a family and kind of not having the benefit of that young cockiness. Now I think to myself often, oh God, did I make the right choice? Like, what if I had just stayed acting? Could I be far more financially secure? What if this next business I start doesn't work out and I've invested my own money in it and now we're broke? You know, like, I guess I'm far less cavalier now than I was as a 23 year old who really didn't have much to lose, to be perfectly honest. So I'm grateful that I've pivoted enough times where I do feel confident that I can make it work, or if it doesn't work, I can pivot quickly to a new thing that will work. I was out on a route just recently and my buddy climbed it in a very certain way to go through this crux. The crux is kind of like the hardest few moves on a route. And he's like, yeah, just do it like that. And I got up there and I tried the way he did it and I absolutely could not do it. I get totally shut down. He grabbed onto a tiny little edge and with his super strong fingers and pulled through it and I couldn't do it. Every time I tried to climb onto that edge, I just fell off. And I was hanging there, getting discouraged, just thinking like, okay, well I can't do this. But as I'm hanging there, I'm studying the features of the rock and I found this way to grab what's called an undercling. So I'm kind of grabbing a hold upside down and standing up super tall and I could skip the tiny edge that he used to get to a better hole. And so I just found my own way through the crux of he did it one way, I couldn't do it that way. I hung there, I studied it, didn't give up. Found a new way and ended up sending the route. And I was really proud of it. And nobody that I was with had ever seen it climbed that way. You know, it was just done out of necessity. And so I think whatever crux you hit in life, you can adapt to it. People are going to try and work through it one way, but there are 10 other ways to do it if you just kind of take a look at it and problem solve. And so I think rock climbing is a very apt metaphor for entrepreneurship as well as, you know, just life in general. And I highly recommend it too.

Jenny.

I'll also play a clip from September 22, episode 291, the free time crossover with Todd Henry on protecting your idea factory and building a creative.

Flywheel.

I have a framed copy of Walt Disney's business model from 1950. It's up over my bookshelf behind me. And what's interesting about that business model is everything comes back to the idea factory. Everything comes back to the creative talent of the film studio. So all of their business, all of their merchandising, all of their licensing, all of that stuff all hinges on the central factor of the creative ideas coming out of their idea factory. And so for me, I recognize that the core of my entire business is measured in how many and the quality of the ideas that I generate. So I need to protect the idea factory. So what does that look like for me is kind of a central question that I ask. So my Flywheel, it's funny, it's I've got a Google assistant in front of me and I have my flywheel on it, and it's create compelling content, distribute in digestible and shareable ways, drive to free subscriptions, and then invite the paid subscriptions. That's my core business model moving forward because that's what we're building out around daily creative. But the wildly important goals for me for a couple of years now have been quality awareness and revenue diversity. Those are the wildly important goals. So every day I wake up obsessing about how can I make what I do higher quality? What does that look like for me? Whether that's bringing people in to help me make things higher quality, figuring out how do I make higher quality audio, how do I do higher quality interviews, make higher quality media, write high quality, higher quality content for my books. Awareness. So how do I increase awareness of the things I'm making? Because if I'm making quality things and I'm increasing the awareness of those things, I can't help but grow my.

Audience.

We'll be right back, just after this.

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Adore? They have Nintendo, Nespresso, Apple and more. What about so the who answered questions from friends till they were blue? Each one listened and shouted from Walmart. Who knew? Shop gifts from top brands for everyone on your list in the Walmart app.

Last but not least on this third creative lesson, I want to play two clips from episodes in May 2020 on episode 213, Flex your flywheel for solopreneurs and two 12 virtuous circles in pivot portfolio planning.

The faster you get at getting out of your own way in terms of building the business and learning what you need to learn and implementing changes, the better off you're going to be, the easier it will be to navigate change moving forward. The Hedgehog concept what are you deeply passionate about? This is Jim Collins, by the way. Good to great. It's worth revisiting even if you've read that book. What are you deeply passionate about? What can you be the best in the world at? And what drives your economic engine? Another Jim Collins principle is the flywheel effect. Maybe, like me, you read good to great and you heard, yeah, yeah, the flywheel and you kind of know the flywheel leads to momentum. Let this be a relief. If you have been waiting for the aha moment and you know I'm all about nonlinear breakthroughs. We're all doing this turn by turn. We're working, we're turning, we're trying, we're experimenting. And then eventually you do reach this flywheel effect, this point of momentum. Or as Malcolm Gladwell would call it, this tipping point where the flywheel is just going on its own volition.

A virtuous circle is one where a good event feeds on itself to improve business further. It is a positive feedback loop. A virtuous circle can be a small operating over days or can drive a whole company strategy for decades. The same positive feedback loop can also run in reverse, however, to create a vicious cycle where a bad situation feeds on itself. To make it even worse, on the subject of a virtuous circle. Think about the flywheel effect. You've got to check out the Flywheel monograph. It's a little smaller book that he released that speaks directly to this flywheel effect of attaining almost unstoppable momentum once you reach the critical points of leverage in the business, such that each one naturally feeds into the next, and the flywheel becomes almost unstoppable at that point. Here's how Jim Collins defines it. No matter how dramatic the end result, good to great transformations never happen in one fell swoop. In building a great company or social sector enterprise, there is no single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment. Rather, the process resembles relentlessly pushing a giant heavy flywheel, turn upon turn, building momentum until a point of breakthrough and beyond pushing. With great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. You keep pushing, and after two or three hours of persistent effort, you get the flywheel to complete one entire turn. You keep pushing and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster. And with continued great effort, you move it around a second rotation. You keep pushing in a consistent direction. 3 turns. 4, 5, 6. The flywheel builds up speed. 7, 8. You keep pushing. 9, 10. It builds momentum. 11, 12. Moving faster with each turn. 20, 30, 50, 100. Then at some point, breakthrough. The momentum of the thing kicks in in your favor, hurling the flywheel forward. Turn after turn. Whoosh. Its own heavy weight working for you. That's an excerpt from jimcollins.com I'm going to put it in the show notes if you want the full URL Jim Collins.com concepts the flywheel so good. I could keep going. What I love about this is that he's saying, you're pushing the flywheel. It's so heavy that at first you push, push, push, and you don't seem to be getting anywhere. There's no visible movement and no visible traction. But if you keep pushing this flywheel, and as he gets into in a business context, if you keep identifying these core actions with the most leverage, that there will come a point where the momentum of the flywheel starts working for you.

So there you have it. Those are the top three creative lessons learned in 300 episodes and seven years of podcasting. Rise to the challenge of doubling down on production so that you don't fall into the perfectionism trap. Delegate. Try to double what you delegate so you can buy your time back and focus on what you and uniquely you can do and stay focused on the autotelic or intrinsic rewards within your creative pursuits. So if you find yourself comparing or falling into despair around the stats, remember what is priceless about what you're creating. Stay focused, eyes on your own paper of what benefits are you gaining simply by doing it at all, regardless of who's out there listening and also remembering that a small handful of really special people might be so much more valuable to you than a whole bunch of people who aren't really listening or paying attention. A bonus lesson is most of all have fun when things get too hard. Pause There's a mantra that I often say to myself that I share as one of the chapters in Free Time. Let it be easy. Let it be fun. Here's a clip from September 22nd with Katherine Price on Fun as the Ultimate Flow State.

I love your definition of true fun versus fake fun. I love how you say that true fun is the confluence of playfulness, connection and flow, and that fun itself is the ultimate flow state, that we are not having fun if we're not in a flow state, and vice versa. When we're in a flow state, we're having fun, although flow isn't the only ingredient. So can you just give listeners a brief overview of true fun versus fake.

Fun? I realized there needs to be a better definition, and so I came up with the theory which I ran by these volunteers, that fun could be defined as the confluence, as you were saying, of playfulness, connection and flow, where playfulness does not require playing games, which I always like to emphasize because I personally cannot stand charades or anything where I have to pretend. So it's not about that, just about being lighthearted and not caring too much about the outcome of what you're doing. And then connection is this feeling of being connected, usually with another person, although sometimes with an animal, sometimes with your environment, sometimes with the activity itself. But in the vast majority of examples people g there was another person involved and that was true even for people who were self described introverts. And then flow, as you were saying, the state of being completely engrossed and present in your experience to the point that you lose track of time. But I also realized when I came up with this definition that there is a opposite form of quote fun, which I refer to as fake fun, which is basically activities and products that are marketed to us as fun, but that if you reflect upon them, don't actually result in playful connected flow and in fact often leave us feeling worse than we did before we started. Social media is the most obvious example of this, but it's been interesting to me since the book came out to hear from people where the distinction between true fun and fake fun is something that really is resonating with people way more than I necessarily.

Anticipated.

Thank you so much for listening these last six, seven years. I am so incredibly grateful for you and I'm really looking forward to seeing what the year ahead brings us.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot Podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my inside tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build platform first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it.

Always.

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