As I round the corner into this ninth year of podcasting, after over 700 episodes today, I’m announcing a pause for both shows.
Listen in to hear what factors helped me reach this decision across time, money, energy, depressing industry articles, the pace of both shows’ growth, and mix of additional business factors that make this an important moment to pause and regroup. You might also appreciate the even deeper dive with my longtime friend (and first coach) Adrian Klaphaak in Pivot episode 360: 📦 Unpacking a Big Business Decision and Dissolving Related Doubts.
“Expectations are the enemy to the creative process. Sometimes you have to let go of the known to see the unknown.”
Today I’m speaking with James McCrae, an author, poet, and meme artist based in Austin, Texas. He is the founder of 🌻 Sunflower Club, a global school and community dedicated to conscious creativity.
Good decision-making is not about omniscience or clairvoyance—it's more about resilience, according to today’s guest, decision engineer Michelle Florendo. “Decision-making is harder than ever before, and it's not your fault,” Michelle says. “People feel like they ‘should just know’ how to decide.”
Today we’re talking about a framework more helpful than pro-con lists, tuning into your head, heart and gut; why the quality of your decision is not equal to the outcome—did good or bad things happen; keeping a decision journal to evaluate the quality of your decisions regardless of the outcome; and how to drop the guilt of “bad” past outcomes.
What happens when you make a big decision but still have lingering doubt, fear, and even despair? How do you know when a “download” from the universe is worth following, and what does test-driving a decision look like? What happens on the other side or when a pivot is taking far longer than planned?
We’re unpacking all these topics in today’s twelfth and final (for now) conversation for the Pivot x Career Pathfinder series with Adrian Klaphaak.
“You can’t give what you don’t have.” That’s just one of the powerful lessons that Nataly Kogan learned the hard way seven years ago, after suffering a debilitating phase of burnout. As a former refugee from the former Soviet Union, she began her American journey in the projects and on welfare, then going on to build an impressive career as a finance and tech executive and serial entrepreneur over the next 25 years. Until she crashed at thirty-eight years old and needed to find a new way of moving forward.
As part of her healing process, Nataly began to paint when she was 40 by signing up for a painting retreat in Tuscony (that turned out to be for semi-professional watercolorists), and now her paintings are on the cover of her books—front and center as part of her bold self-expression.
What happens when you ask someone a question they’ve never heard before? Today I’m answering a question from a listener about what questions do to our brains and exploring the magic of neuroplasticity: the property of our brains that allow them to physically change to encourage creative thinking and new knowledge.
Is it time to break up with your work? Samantha Clarke is a happiness consultant, TEDx & Keynote Speaker & author of Love It or Leave It: How To Be Happy at Work. She is on a mission to help individuals decide whether to LOVE IT or LEAVE IT and get to the crux of what it means to work and live with real meaning, purpose and intention.
Is anyone else exasperated by too much time working from home? If so, you are not alone! Whether it's the level of distractions or monotony, many of us are ready for a break—even if we still aren't interesting in returning to an office full time.
In this episode I'm answering a listener question from Omar who says, "It's getting to the point where I just extremely dislike it."
🎉 Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business launches on 3/22/22!
In this episode I'm walking you through the Free Time Framework—Align, Design, Assign—so you have a technique to move from friction to flow in any project or area of your life and work in 2022.
How do you "stand out when "everyone is peddling the same sh*t"? That's what Terri Trespicio and I are talking about today—a deep dive into how her early experiences with poetry writing, jewelry sales, magazine editing, and stand-up comedy gave her lifelong career skills and taught her what it really takes to stand out.
"For generations, we’ve been taught there are two ways to succeed—either from talent or practice." My guest today, Ron Friedman, shares a powerful third path: reverse engineering. In this conversation you will learn how to unpack others' success to spark breakthrough ideas of your own, with an original twist.
Are you tuned into radio station WRRY, playing your "downer mind's" favorite hits? If so, Jeffrey Davis is here to help you shift from worry into wonder. Today we're talking about his new book, Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed with Productivity (Sounds True, November 2021).
Ask yourself instead each morning: What am I devoted to? What am I curious about today?
This is a special Pivot Podcast and Free Time podcast crossover. I’m sharing the first excerpt from my new book: Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business (release March 22nd, 2022). This excerpt is what builds the bridge from Pivot toward Free Time. I talk in Pivot about pivoters being high net growth and this excerpt in particular is about free timers who are often optimizing for high net freedom,
If you want to join us in the Free Time book launch team to get insider access and behind the book calls and community leading up to the launch, you can join at itsfreetime.com/join.
Thank you for your patience as I've been in deep work hibernation mode behind the scenes! I launched my new podcast Free Time in March of this year, and I'm really excited to bring you a crossover episode, one of the early listener favorites with Cal Newport on his latest book, A World Without Email. I also *just* sent my next book to the printer, which I was honored to have Cal provide a cover blurb for! Free Time: Lose the Busy Work, Love Your Business launches in March of 2022.
Cal is not pulling any punches with his latest treatise on how we can combat Hyperactive Hive Mind with smarter systems for communication. Email has become a source of guilt and stress for so many of us — listen in for strategies to reclaim your peace and focus.
What is the difference between uniqueness and Onlyness? Nilofer Merchant is here to help us figure out how the room changes when we walk in, how to turn feeling othered or overworked into opportunities to help ourselves and everyone around us shine.
More About Nilofer: Nilofer Merchant is ranked by Thinkers50 as one of the world's leading business thinkers, and has personally launched more than 100 products netting $18 billion in sales. In 2013 she gave a top-ranking TED talk, "Sitting is the Smoking of Our Generation." Her most recent book is The Power of Onlyness: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough to Dent the World (2017). By centering on that source of all innovation, Onlyness, Nilofer Merchant enables you to create more value. Her cover story for Harvard Business Review (HBR) Magazine is a case study in the crucial role trust plays in creating scale.
❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to say thank you is leaving a rating or review. Free Time is listener supported—consider donating to become a podcast Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call:
💸 Enroll in the complimentary Free-up Founder Time mini-course before the price goes up
❤️ Enjoying the show? Pivot Podcast is listener supported—consider donating to become a Pivot Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call with Jenny
💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter
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🗣 Submit a question or comment for future episodes
🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts
📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned
With exhaustion and empathy fatigue encroaching upon so many of us, perhaps it's time to take a relationship audit: who are the takers in your life and work, and who are the energizers? Equally important, how are you showing up for others?
In her new book, Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection, and in this conversation, Ximena Vengoechea is helping us elevate our listening lenses so we can be more present with others, while still managing our own energy reserves.
Ximena Vengoechea is a user researcher, writer, and illustrator whose work on personal and professional development has been published in Inc., The Washington post, Newsweek, and Huffington Post. She is the author of the new book, Listen Like You Mean it: Reclaiming the Lost Art of True Connection. Ximena is best known for her project The Life Audit. An experienced manager, mentor, and researcher in the tech industry, she previously worked at Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to say thank you is leaving a rating or review. Free Time is listener supported—consider donating to become a podcast Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call:
💸 Enroll in the complimentary Free-up Founder Time mini-course before the price goes up
❤️ Enjoying the show? Pivot Podcast is listener supported—consider donating to become a Pivot Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call with Jenny
💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter
💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey
🗣 Submit a question or comment for future episodes
🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts
📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned
For the first time this month after six years of podcasting, you may notice something new: ads. This week I’m sharing my behind-the-business logic on “going pro,” with ads as one piece of my strategy to turn this show into a primary source of income. That way I can dedicate more time and energy to it, creating the best possible content for all of you!
I share why I switched to Megaphone for hosting, and why I opted into their ads marketplace despite years of resisting ads in general (a big piece of that was not wanting to negatively impact your listening experience!). My thoughts on host-read ads haven’t changed: I must authentically love and use that product or service in order to talk about something with full integrity.
❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to thank us is by leaving a rating or review. Free Time is listener supported—consider donating to become a podcast BFF Insider and you’ll get access to a monthly Q&A call with Jenny and private feed.
📘 Books Mentioned: Pivot
💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join
💸 Enroll in the Mini-Course: Free-up Founder Time
💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey
🗣 Submit a voice question or comment for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask
🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts: http://pod.link/freetime
📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! http://itsfreetime.com/episodes/009
What’s your sun, moon, and rising? That’s the shorthand for our inner blueprint, created the moment each of us took our first breath, based on where the planets were in the sky. In this conversation, we’re talking about her brand new book Cosmic Health: Unlock Your Healing Magic with Astrology, Positive Psychology, and Integrative Wellness.
Jennifer Racioppi is a certified Duke Integrative Medicine Health Coach, a holistic health counselor, a Positive Psychology coach, and an astrologer. In fact, she is the first person who ever gave me a natal chart reading, which sparked my own great love for—and deep dive into—astrology!
Casper ter Kuile is helping to build a world of joyful belonging. He is the author of The Power of Ritual and the co-host of the award-winning podcast Harry Potter and the Sacred Text. Casper is a Ministry Innovation Fellow at Harvard Divinity School and the co-founder of startup Sacred Design Lab - a research and design consultancy working to create a culture of belonging and becoming. He also co-authored “How We Gather” and collaborated with Holstee on his new Ritual Life Planner.
❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to say thank you is leaving a rating or review. Free Time is listener supported—consider donating to become a podcast Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call:
💸 Enroll in the complimentary Free-up Founder Time mini-course before the price goes up
❤️ Enjoying the show? Pivot Podcast is listener supported—consider donating to become a Pivot Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call with Jenny
💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter
💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey
🗣 Submit a question or comment for future episodes
🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts
📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned
Hi Friends! As I mentioned in the last solo episode, my team and I have been hard at work creating a brand new podcast that will run in parallel to Pivot! I'm thrilled to welcome you to Free Time — your home for Heart-Based Business.
I'm sharing the inaugural episode here with you on Pivot, but be sure you go subscribe to that one too, if the subject matter interests you! Search for "Free Time with Jenny Blake" or visit http://pod.link/freetime to subscribe in your favorite podcasts app.
In this preview episode, I share what inspired me to start the show, how I’m handling the Imposter Monster sitting right next to me, and what’s next for Jenny Blake Enterprises. A pivot for Pivot, if you will :)
❤️ Enjoying the show? The best way to say thank you is leaving a rating or review. Free Time is listener supported—consider donating to become a podcast Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call:
📘 Books Mentioned: Pivot, Essentialism, Finite and Infinite Games
🔗 Links Mentioned: Gimlet Media’s StartUp, Pivot podcast episodes 228 (how I run my business without social media) and 251 (Imposter Monsters)
💌 Subscribe to the Time Well Spent newsletter: http://itsfreetime.com/join
💸 Enroll in the Mini-Course: Free-up Founder Time
💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Free Time listener survey
🗣 Submit a voice question or comment for future episodes: http://itsfreetime.com/ask
🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts:
📝 Check out full show notes and links from this episode and share it with a friend! http://itsfreetime.com/episodes/001
Hi Friends! I’m back with another “staycation” solo episode on what I’ve been up to. It’s a quick take on systems to support seasons of retreat for creativity and rest, my favorite books of the year so far, and a peek into my forthcoming projects.
Key questions:
What are you ready to let go of? How can you say no to “good” to say yes to what’s next?
For your new projects, ask: Who Not How? (Strategic Coach, Impact Filter PDF)
How can you design systems to support cyclical work? (Check out Stefan Sagmeister’s TEDx Talk on 7-year sabbaticals)
📘 Books Mentioned: Pivot, Wintering, Who Not How, Clockwork, The Power of Full Engagement
💸 Enroll in the complimentary Free-up Founder Time mini-course before the price goes up
❤️ Enjoying the show? Pivot Podcast is listener supported—consider donating to become a Pivot Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call with Jenny
💌 Get my curated weekly(ish) PivotList newsletter
💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey
🗣 Submit a question or comment for future episodes
🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts
📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned
I’m thrilled to be back from holiday hiatus (and a deep work creation cave on my new book and podcast - more on that soon!) with an episode from someone who inspires me greatly in heart-based business: Sarah Santacroce.
Sarah’s new book is called The Gentle Marketing Revolution: A Radical Business Approach to Get New Clients with Integrity and Kindness. I was honored to co-write the foreword with Penney Pierce in a fun, delightful, in the moment, flowing way. You'll hear more about that and how to launch with serendipity and ease in this episode! Be sure to also check out Sarah’s Gentle Business Revolution Manifesto, and our most recent conversation on her podcast, Kindness in Business.
❤️ Enjoying the show? Pivot Podcast is listener supported—consider donating to become a Pivot Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call: http://pivotmethod.com/insider
💌 Subscribe to the PivotList newsletter, a curated weekly(ish) round-up of my favorite finds ‘round the web: http://pivotmethod.com/pivotlist
💬 I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Take the Pivot listener survey at http://pivotmethod.com/survey
🗣 Submit a question or comment for future episodes at http://pivotmethod.com/ask
🎧 Make sure you’re subscribed wherever you listen to ‘casts: https://pod.link/1054817076
📝 Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://pivotmethod.com/257
Aired 3/8/20 — just before the pandemic hit! This is the last major event I attended live . . . replaying now for some thought-starters to help shape our 2021 new year visioning :)
This week’s Pivot Podcast is a field report from seeing one of my heroes live! I attended Oprah’s 2020 Vision Tour: Your Life in Focus in Brooklyn in early February, and I was so curious going into this event that I thought you might like to hear about the experience and key takeaways.
Oprah is inviting a different headliner from each stop on the tour (ours was Michelle Obama), so if you want a peek into other cities and guests, listen to her Super Soul Conversations podcast — she’s had equally wonderful conversations with Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Kate Hudson, Tracee Ellis Ross, and more.
Check out full show notes from this episode with links to resources mentioned at http://PivotMethod.com/158.
Enjoying the show? Pivot Podcast is listener supported—consider donating to become a Pivot Insider and you’ll get access to a private monthly Q&A call where you can ask me anything, and discuss the latest books, tools and topics I’ve shared in recent episodes. Next up: We’ll be kicking-off the new year together on January 13 and I’d love for you to join us!
(Originally released May 2020) Why are so many of us allergic to the word innovation, solving the wrong problems, and experiencing idea-fatigue? Because, as Stephen Shapiro brilliantly shares in his book, Invisible Solutions: 25 Lenses that Reframe and Help Solve Difficult Business Problems, what we’re really aiming for is relevance.
How can you apply the 5D’s of disruption to solve difficult problems? We dive into that and so much more during this conversation—one I can’t wait to listen back to at least twice more to absorb all the powerful pivot-related concepts! I’ll tell you one thing: you’ll never brainstorm the same way again . . .
Check out full show notes from this episode at http://pivotmethod.com/215
When discussing fraught, divisive, or high-stakes issues it's so easy to get defensive, triggered, and hurt—sometimes even doing irreparable damage to relationships we hold dear. Communications pro Bob Gower returns to Pivot to help us understand something crucial before we engage in our next argument: is this discourse or a debate?
He outlines the difference between the two in his fantastic piece, Rules of Engagement: 5 Steps to Better Arguments: "In discourse, the goal is to eventually align. Debate is discourse's more flamboyant cousin where people with opposing views intend to remain that way at the end of the conversation.”
In this wandering conversational stroll, we explore what it means to be a “good person,” when "agree to disagree" does and doesn't work, intent versus impact, when not to "poke the bear," releasing the urge to have an opinion on everything (or enter into an argument with every person in the first place), why Bob shut-down several of his social media profiles, and how he boils this all down into his day-to-day practices and intentions.
As longtime listeners know well by now, awkward is the name of the game for subjects as tricky as these! For intrepid listeners, our hope is that by hearing us work through (in real-time) some of these more challenging aspects of tough conversations, it will give you a chance to explore where you stand and what approach you want to take—knowing there isn't always just one "right" answer.
