MBA2028 Must Read: Free Time by Jenny Blake

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Free Time by Jenny Blake was just released just a few weeks ago. But when I saw that she launched a new book, I thought to myself, I gotta pick it up. And boy, was I glad I did. At the start of the book, Jenny shares her journey of getting to the point where she's just fed up with her business or like she eloquently describes, feels like just burning it all down. And if we're all being honest with ourselves, we've probably gone to the point at some point during the journey, during the entrepreneurial struggle, during building our business today, where we felt like, oh, I can't do this anymore. Just burn the whole thing down. You know what I'm talking about? Where you have more work than you have day, you run out of day, you run out of time, really, in your day. And that becomes the way you operate, right? That becomes the way you run your business. It starts off with just a few busy days and a few busy weeks and months. Then before you know, it's years. And you ask yourself, how did I get here? Why do I have chock full of meetings in my calendar? Why is my whole team so dependent on me? Why can't I even imagine taking a month off? Well, Jenny got to that point and decided, enough's enough. I'm gonna create a better system for my business. A system where it allows me to have a happy life. Yep. Remember that life? And the book is called Free time because it's really way for you to gain your free time back where you can just have the whole afternoon off every day. Imagine that. But it doesn't happen by accident. It doesn't happen by just deciding you have to have systems in place and this is what this book is really about. I'm actually quite impressed about how much detail Jenny goes into in this book of setting up your business to have this free time. But it all starts with a mindset and having the right intention, understanding the that you can't go on like this. She talks about the free time framework in her book early on because it's really important to understand what are the rules of this mindset of this way of doing business. Jenny doesn't have any full time employees and yet she runs a highly successful business. She's a best selling author, she speaks on stages across the world, she has highly successful membership programs and courses and she does it all in a calm and and rewarding environment that she calls her business. One of the things I love about this book is that it starts out with values. You have to understand your values need to be reshaped if you are thinking about going with this model of building a business. And this one was one of the most hard hitting sections in the book for me because you had to realize that these people that they glorify in the media, that are billionaires or startup founders that have hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, their life is not a life that you're going to envy. There's an incredible amount of pressure on them. They have no free time. They are working 12 to 16 hours a day. Yes, those are real numbers. And at the end of the day, if you ask them, they probably really don't want this. They actually want to have a fulfilled life with a little bit more balance. And this is what this book is trying to show you. You have to have a balanced business, meaning make enough to have a happy life. And the key here is knowing what enough is. The worst thing you can chase is more. Because more never ends. And if you feel like you want to learn more about what I'm talking about right now, this book really goes into it and really makes you start thinking differently about how you approach making money and growing your business. The key here is to get more free time to grow your business, to gain that time. And one of those things that she recommends is, is creating an externalized mind. This is basically like a handbook that you can create to allow other people to make decisions on your behalf, to follow instructions. It's basically a manual of the way you make decisions or the way you do work. And yes, people will need to be trained on this manual, but the fact that it exists allows you not to be needed. You don't need to be around. You can be anywhere you'd like. You can be doing anything you like, because the work can get done and decision can be made without you. This is a concept that I also learned from Derek Sivers in his book Anything youg Want, where he shared the story when he was building the company Citi Baby, his company, and how they created this great manual for the whole team. So anytime a team asks a question, they popped it into the manual. The question, the answer. So anybody can basically just refer to the manual, search the manual instead of asking him. And that's a lovely story and a great concept. But Jenny goes into serious depth what that looks like in its simplest form. It's basically like what she mentions, like an Airbnb manual. Have you ever been to an Airbnb? You go to the Airbnb, there's a house manual. A good Airbnb will have that, where it has all the instructions. It tells you the WI fi password, it tells you how to turn on the washing machine and, you know, start the oven, how to change the temperature, like the climate control of the apartment, even shows you recommended restaurants and bars and cafes and things like that. And in that manual also says, if there's an emergency, you can contact this person. So creating a manual like this for your business is so important, but what's most important is that you make your team refer to the manual. You know, we actually made that mistake in our business where we created this great manual, a bunch of great sops. But when somebody asked me a question, instead of me just telling them, go to the sop, I would answer the question, making them reliant on me for answers to any questions instead of me telling them, hey, there is a manual. There's sops in this folder. Just search it, it should be there. If not, I can refer them to somebody else on the team that has done this before. And please add it to the manual once you know how to do it. But this book is not only just about creating a manual for your team or realigning your values or getting your mind right. It's also about knowing how to manage your energy properly. Not all energy is created equal. You need to know when to use your energy and when not. Ginny does a great job with explaining all that, as well as how to have fun again in your work, how to be inspired again. Because when you're having fun, you get energy. One of my favorite takeaways from this book is chapter six, where she talks about give yourself golden hour. And that's like the Evening time or the afternoon time. Golden hour in photography is like that sunset or sunrise where the light is perfect, where basically she's saying, you know, you gotta give yourself some time to just unwind, have a good time in life. But in the chapter, she talks about answering the question, what's your job today? And you really should just choose one thing every day to be your job. So maybe your job today is to improve the copy on the sales page. If you nail that job, it's a good day. Maybe your job today is to make sure your team feels motivated and valued. Maybe your job today is making sure you catch up on you, on your life, on life tests, running some errands, taking out the garbage, going to get some groceries. What's your job today is a great, great way to give yourself just one goal every day.

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It feels good to save big. It feels good to geico. Free Time by Jenny Blake is a masterpiece, really. She goes into depth with how to build this whole system for yourself so you have more free time and you enjoy business once more. This book is not about minimizing your business or making it a small business. So it's not a lot of hassle. It's also about knowing how to scale and know how to build without all the stress that comes with it. And ultimately, what you want to do is remove yourself from the equation. You need to start trying to make yourself more of an investor in your business than the person that does everything. Or as Jenny puts it, the chief everything officer, the CEO. And she shows you how to do that in the book, particularly in chapter 19, which talks about promote yourself from Chief Everything officer. And if you're wondering, hey, how do I build the right team around me? How do I find these people? Well, she gets into that as well. How to construct your delightfully tiny team in chapter 20. And then she shows you how to delegate tasks to these new team players in the next chapter, chapter 21, double how much you delegate. One of my favorite takeaways from this book is understanding how to reprogram your mind. It's really, really something we all have to think about. And one of those big reprogramming or mind shifts you have to do is growing up in school. If you've ever had a corporate job or worked in an office, you basically were trained to say to yourself or to try to build your career so that you are irreplaceable, that you are one of a kind, that they need you, they can't fire you. You're that important to the team. As an entrepreneur, you need to do the opposite. You actually have to make yourself replaceable. Your value does not come from what you produce, but more the team that you create to produce results for you. And you can do this. And this book, Free Time is going to help you get there. I highly recommend you pick up Free Time by Jenny Blake. If you like audiobooks, I recommend the audio version on Audible. Jenny actually does a narra herself and she does a wonderful job. I'm super proud of Ginny Blake because this is a book that needs to exist and I was so happy that she decided to write it. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Also, by hitting subscribe, you get access to over 2,000 business lessons in our archives. Go ahead and do that and join over 120,000 subscribers here on the $100 MBA Show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Some books are nice to have. They can really add to your toolbox. Some books will give you a different perspective and some books, in my opinion, are a must read. Like they will change you and change you as an entrepreneur, change your business. And this is one of those books. I would go as far as saying, if you're reading a book right now and you're not getting a lot of value from it, drop it and read this book right now because you're going to absolutely get a tremendous amount of value. That and it'll be very thought provoking. You are going to be challenged in this book. Challenge the way you think, the way you act, the way you run your business, and also how you perceive the future of your business. Pick up Free Time by Janet Blake right now, wherever you like to buy your books. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA Show. Make sure you tune in tomorrow where we double down on the concept of time. And I share with you why my ultimate goal is to become a time billionaire. What does that mean? How can you become a time billionaire? Tune in tomorrow to find out. I'll see you then. Take care.

We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's Expired.

Expired in2012. Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save Big. It feels good to Geico.