48. On Yes! to Free Time & High Net Freedom with Jenny Blake

Overview

Today I’m joined by one of my favorite people and someone who has been an inspiration for my career and business, Jenny Blake. Jenny is the author of three books; her latest “Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business” comes out on March 22, 2022. Jenny is also the author of “Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One,” an important life+work book that won the Axiom award for best business book in the careers category in 2016 and is for anyone who wants to be “high net growth” and successfully manage change throughout their career in today’s ever-changing environment.

In this conversation, we talk about the new book and also how Jenny finds the courage and conviction to build her business her way and create Free Time for herself. After 10 years of running her own business and sharing her lessons with her private community, now called BFF, Jenny shares her lessons for eliminating business stress through systems and non-traditional ways of running one’s business, like following your intuition and a Jenny-ism I love, “Let it be easy, let it be fun.”

If you are already a small business owner, someone looking to go out on your own, or a creative person looking to find more spaciousness to your best work, check out the book and Jenny’s podcast of the same name, Free Time with Jenny Blake.

It was such a joy to have you on, Jenny! This podcast wouldn’t exist without your generosity in sharing your knowledge and wisdom. Thank you for continually showing us the way to more freedom to do our best work, while, as you say, “serving the highest good for all involved.”

More about Our Guest

Jenny Blake is an author, podcaster, and keynote speaker who loves helping business owners move from friction to flow through smarter systems, powered by Delightfully Tiny Teams. Her third book, Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business, launches on March 22, 2022*.* Jenny’s previous book, Pivot: The Only Move That Matters Is Your Next One, won the Axiom award for best business book in the careers category in 2016. Licensing clients for her Pivot Programs include Google and CHANEL.

Jenny hosts two podcasts with over one million downloads combined: Free Time for Heart-Based Business owners, and Pivot with Jenny Blake to help others navigate change. After working for two years as the first employee at a Silicon Valley political polling startup, then at Google for five years in coaching and career development, Jenny moved to New York City in 2011 to launch her own business.

Topics Covered

  • I ask Jenny how she has the courage and conviction to do things a different way and define success on her own terms. She shares that her guiding force is her commitment to creativity.

  • We talk about how it’s important to listen to the voices inside you (Jenny says that it’s when she’s cranky or a curmudgeon) that may be telling you that an approach and way of doing things doesn’t fit you perhaps at all or anymore. Or, when those voices show up, perhaps it’s time to make a change and pivot to what’s next. I love how Jenny has modeled building a business and crafting a life in a way that works for her and on her own terms, as opposed to following a business approach just because everyone else is doing it.

  • We delve into the book and talk about many of the concepts around Free Time, including High Net Freedom and as Jenny says, “Time is not money. Time is life force.” She bucks against the notion of doing business in a way that drains our life force, when that energy is so critical to building and running a successful business.

  • I ask for people who are listening who might go out on their own, where should they start? Oftentimes when we go out on our own, we’re seeking freedom and flexibility, yet it’s easy to quickly find ourselves back in “friction vs. flow,” as Jenny says. Jenny points us towards building the systems and structures that create spaciousness to do your best work and really protect your energy, and a good place to start is with creating the calendar you want, because that’s where free time starts and gets created in today’s world.

    • “And so I do feel that putting intentionality and structure and systems, even if some people don’t love those words, is what creates the spaciousness. And that’s how we can protect ourselves from ourselves.”

    • “And so the more fun each of us has and the more boundaries and parameters we put in place, then people know where to slot in. And I find that we respect that, the right people respect it and aren’t offended or aren’t put off by it at all. But if you don’t have these in place, everyone will happily fill your calendar, A to Z from 9am to 6pm, every day of the week.”

  • Jenny champions dropping the guilt around doing things your way. It’s one of the reasons she talks in her book about dropping the expectations and giving yourself and others permission to do things differently.

  • I also wanted to know how Jenny finds the way to pivot herself and step back and away to create the space to generate what is next for her. It’s another time when permission comes into play, and for her what works to create that space to craft what’s next is to explain to people what’s had her attention or where she’s putting her attention next. She also shares how for this book she allowed herself permission to have full focus on a creative vision. It comes back to the idea she shared at the beginning around her commitment to creativity.

  • Jenny brings up the idea of thinking about structures and systems not just on your business, but also at home, and bringing it back to Sustainable Ambition, being thoughtful about where you want to be ambitious across your holistic life.

  • Her parting permission to all of you: “Follow your heart.”

Resources Mentioned

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48. On Yes! to Free Time & High Net Freedom with Jenny Blake

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2022Kathy OnetoRight Success, Right Effort