Freeing Your Time with Jenny Blake

Tony  0:00  
Jenny Blake, thanks so much for being here. And welcome to the three points podcast.

Jenny  0:05  
Thank you so much, Tony. I'm thrilled to be here, you and producer Matt, or does you get 11 out of 10 stars, just red carpet experience all the way through. So, way to go on your systems, your process, your onboarding, I love it. I just love getting to experience you and your team and your business and what you're up to. So thanks for having me.

Tony  0:26
Thank you. Well, yes, it must be nice for you to kind of be on the other side of the podcast, because obviously, we're big fans of your podcast that we're listening to in free time. Is it weird to switch to being a guest versus being a host?

Jenny  0:39  
I really love them both. That's a funny, uh, no one's asked me that question. They're both so fun. I mean, I think we're on the inside track, which is that this is the coolest way to make friends and talk to people. And I find it very rewarding. Whichever side of the mic, I'm on to have a conversation that other people can listen to. And I've podcasts in my ear all day, when I'm just cleaning, going for a walk taking my dog out. I love podcasts. They really feel like my friends. So I'm always honored if we could give that experience to other people too.

Tony  1:08  
I love that. I love that. Well, here's a good question that we ask all our friends on the podcast, which is what is the most embarrassing moment of your professional career so far, Jenny?

Jenny  1:19  
Wow, I was just telling one of my podcast guests. He's kind of like entrepreneur, author hero that I was fangirling out on and I I basically said that every day I feel awkward. And a little embarrassed every day, every podcast interview I do. I just kind of live with a pervasive sense of awkwardness and that I just keep going with. So it's like, Yes, I'm awkward. And I'm a fan girl there. I was nervous at a conference or I approached somebody that I admire. As far as one supremely embarrassing moment of my professional career. Oh my gosh, this doesn't really count. But the other day, I sit on a bouncing ball at my desk, you can probably see me right now bouncing.

Tony  1:59  
I was gonna suggest you replace your chair, actually. But I'm glad you know it's by design.

Jenny  2:03  
Little rickety. One day I was on a call with my private community. And I've sat on a bouncing ball for 10 years. It's nothing new. But the thing just for the first time ever slipped out from under me and I fell off and I was on video. I was on video and oh my gosh, I don't even know how it happened. But they probably just watched me like as if I slipped on a banana peel, you know, catapulted myself, and had to like peel myself up like a cartoon putting my fingertips on my desk and sort of reemerging from the floor like, hey, guys, so that happened.

Tony  2:36  
I could just pictured out  did you just lean into it and go, Wow, that was awkward. Or did you try and save yourself from it?

Jenny  2:43  
I just laughed. I was like, that's never happened before? In fact, I haven't had the heart to go back and watch that recording. I don't even remember we do a q&a every month. I don't remember which one. Oh, my

Tony  2:55  
God, there's a recording. Jenny. There's there's a recording Jenny? I know you're not on the socials very much, but I bet that would get a million hits.

Jenny  3:05  
We could make it a what do they call it a boomerang or a gif that just replays itself over and over? And then the caption is just that happened? Yeah.

Tony  3:16  
That is super. So that is your most recent embarrassing moments so far? Well, I'm grateful for you sharing it, we actually had, we have a resident comedian, and people playbook. His name's Jared Christmas. And he was just on our podcast recently. And one of the things that he said about comedy at work, he said, you should lean into your mistakes. You know, it's really awkward if you try and cover them up. And he said, it's a really great way to increase likeability. So well done you, you're probably much more likeable for falling off your bouncy ball.

Jenny  3:44  
So I'm just gonna have to end that now. Well, what a great question to ask you have a great sense of humor. It's fun that you weave that right in.

Tony  3:52  
Oh, yeah. Thanks for playing along. So look, the theme of our conversation today is all about freeing your time the book is actually sitting over there. And as you know, both Matt and I are a huge fan. But tell us why is this so important to freeing your time?

Jenny  4:07  
I mean, in the sense, like, you can think of free time as a noun, what do we do on Saturdays of the weekend? I think of it as a verb and a skill. How do we get better and better at building the muscle of creating more free time, it's not a one time thing. It's this ongoing practice. And I find that challenge and that game, incredibly rewarding. So the more I learn, the more I improve even how I use and leverage software, the more free time I create. It's this very virtuous circle. And I'm passionate about it, because I don't think that any of us wants to be buried and busy work and bored. You and I both used to work at Google. And I remember one time reflecting I was in my dream role on paper. I was a Career Development Program Manager and yet I was in so many meetings all day every day and working on so many emails that I felt buried by it, I didn't feel I was using my gifts to their fullest ability. And I think that just because you run your own business, the same problems can follow you, it takes really intentional strategy to create more free time. So that's the kind of the long winding road. Oh, I love this topic.

Tony  5:16  
I love that. And I think I mentioned to you, I used to teach your career development program based on your first book, which is amazing pivot. So I love that you've already positioned your first point by talking about you as a business owner. And it's been the work that you're doing has been like a manual for us as we've been growing people playbook, just making sure we're being really thoughtful of how we spend our time. And so your first point, Jenny is going to be about freeing yourself from the role of chief everything officer.

Jenny  5:44  
Yes, and I love you're applying and using this book in the exact way I was secretly hoping which is that, yes, I wrote it to one person. But I actually wanted to free all business owners from even having to do half the work of onboarding their team. So you just hand them the book, and you say, this is how we work. And so that your team gets smarter and more strategic without the owner having to even do all that training and heavy lifting. So it's really fun. And then it's cool discussion points with each other too. Because if you are chief everything officer and doing everything yourself, that also is the surest path to burnout. And delegating is hard. There is a delegation curve where it sometimes is harder and more stressful up front, and there's more uncertainty and friction because you kind of got to get on the same page with your team. But down the road, it becomes much more rewarding. And then the team to nobody wants the team to be buried by busy work and minutia and bureaucracy. So it's also a game for team members to say, how can I get better and better at the parts that I love? And how do I automate or eliminate the rest?

Tony  6:44  
Yeah, I love that. I love that, Jenny. It's been really helpful. Funny, I do say to my team, I send them stuff off to say, oh, you should take a lesson, you take a read. And I sent on the podcast episode specifically of the 10 principles of free time from your book. And I actually typed into Slack, oh, this is worth listening to. And then I actually realized no, no, this is required reading or listening. So so it really formed a good starting point for us as we kind of move forward.

Jenny  7:11  
Is that why that's the most popular episode currently on free time? Is it thanks to you, you've made it required listening.

Tony  7:18  
Millions of people everywhere? Well, well, I tell you what, I've shared it with my team and a bunch of other folks. But believe it or not one of the lessons that I hopefully I'm not given a spoiler alert, but you talk about double delegation. Yes. And that's something I actually built into a workshop recently and tagged the book and you and said, because even though we talk about freeing yourself from the role of chief everything officer, what I find is that a lot of the lessons from your book are also applicable to managers. Would you find that to be the case as well?

Jenny  7:50  
Definitely. I've been thinking a lot about this, because I still work with Google to this day, as you mentioned, and it's so fun hearing how our paths cross across space and time. And pivot is about figuring out what's next three times about optimizing what's here now. And yes, I have managers on my mind, a lot, especially managers in companies, they're really sandwiched. They have a ton of pressure, because they're managing upward. They don't have full autonomy of being the business owner. Not that even Sundar, let's say he doesn't have full autonomy over his time, either. He has a lot of people he needs to answer to. And then it's, you know, I say in the book, it's easy to become the all seeing question answer as the manager. So not only are you juggling a lot, and you have a lot of responsibility, and you feel a sense of pressure, and managing today, I talked to managers today, not only are you getting peppered with questions from everybody on your team, or they get stuck, and they need your help. Now, we have so much complexity of managing remote work or mental health conversations, political topics, that can be a real hot potato, and not knowing how to facilitate across all these incredibly complex issues that managers are facing is not easy. So if there are ways that they can streamline or empower their team, or just teach little principles and rules of thumb to make some of the work, that's not the EQ side of things, but that's like easy to systematize it can hopefully free their mind for a little more of that more nuanced stuff that they're dealing with.

Tony  9:17  
Yeah, I love that Jenny. Well, thanks very much. Yeah. So now that we've talked about, this is your first point, right? freeing yourself from the role of chief everything officer. Your second point was about making yourself and your team replaceable with the Fiji test. And I have read about this, and I listen to the podcasts. I'm really excited for you to share more on it.

Jenny  9:36  
So, we all know the question, What if I get hit by a bus? I just find I don't want to envision getting hit by a bus. Now. I'm 11 years into my business. I would have been asking it what every day every week, every month for 11 years is just me imagining myself getting hit by a bus. So very early on, I realized I didn't want to manifest that reality. So I just changed it to what if I got whisked to Fiji for three weeks, and I could give no notice, and I had no devices, could a stranger to the business step in and do the work. And I teach my team the same thing. So everybody operates on the Fiji test, which is really a fun way of talking about systematizing. And documenting the work, no iota of information about the business should live in anybody's mind, including the owner. So the Fiji test is are we keeping up with our documentation such that if any of us were to get whisked to Fiji, someone else can step in and do the work. And by the way, this happens a lot. Even with COVID, someone could get taken out for three weeks or three months. And that's the last time if you are sick with the flu, that's not when you want to update your process documentation. And so the pop quiz happens is that something arises and someone really does need to step in and help out and can they do that seamlessly? Or when you're at your absolute worst? And the last thing you want to be doing? Is it get on the phone or the computer? Do you have to sit there and help someone through it? Or the business? Something breaks? Because you weren't keeping up with the Fiji test

Tony  11:01  
Yeah, I just love the Fiji test. What a positive reframe. I think that's why it really stuck with me because you are right, it's much more pleasant to think about going to Fiji than being hit by a bus

Jenny  11:13  
and make yourself replaceable pieces important too. Because I want everybody to have a creative thought exercise, how can I automate as much of my role as possible? And if we all think in that way, then we're increasingly delegating to software and freeing up our unique strengths and energy for what we do best. And it's not a one time thing. It's an ongoing inquiry. And I like thinking about that, too. How do I make myself replaceable? How do I get as much off my plate as I can so that I'm left doing things like this with you that hopefully is is priceless and irreplaceable?

Tony  11:48  
Absolutely. It'll be hard to automate this conversation for sure. I think so anyway, especially if you're

Jenny  11:53  
If someone could do it, though. It's producer Matt, he'll figure that out

Tony  11:55  
Matt's working on an algorithm

Jenny  11:56  
He made a Tony Bot and knows what to ask it. I heard Tim Ferriss and Eric Schmidt as it were talking about this software that can like read a bunch of transcripts of your conversations, and then learn how to be you. Creepy.

Tony  12:13  
That is creepy. And that would be freeing ourselves up to not do the fun, creative stuff. Hopefully. Exactly. Let me ask question about this. Because we've talked about freeing yourself. We talked about make yourself and team replaceable. I mean, my initial reaction to both the free time book and less this was like, Yeah, that's that all sounds great. I'm really up for that. But I've got this, this and that. And you mentioned about the ever growing expectations put on managers and business owners. What's maybe one thing that you see as a major obstacle, and maybe even one solution for folks who are listening or being a bit hesitant to kind of go jump into this positive mindset of freeing up their time?

Jenny  12:52  
Yeah, because I think a lot of people would say, a couple of things are going on. There's the knowing doing gap, that statement that oh, we all know how to become a millionaire and have six pack abs. But there's this gap. We don't necessarily do what it takes to get that six pack. There's also

Tony  13:05  
Jenny, can I also just say, Jenny, you know what's funny when I'm asking you about? No, I wasn't. I was actually just gonna say interesting. Let me tell you about my abs. No, I was gonna say it's quite funny me asking this question about lots of stuff going on. And then cue the New York City Sirens, I thought that was perfect. I don't know

Jenny  13:25  
What's going on. Right? Like a special sort of chaos has descended. I'm hearing it too in the back of the house. And they must be like blocked in the street and not moving. So we have a metaphor for sorry for cutting you off? Well, it's a metaphor for distraction, and how they can hijack our attention. And the loud obnoxious noises pull us when the in depth deep work beckons as well, on the other side of the house? Absolutely. How would I do with a time that was perfect.

Tony  13:53  
That was perfect. I love that. We just did that. So there's a stop between knowing and shooting and fighting, we always talk about shooting yourself, you know, I shouldn't be..

Jenny  14:03  
Yeah, drop the shiny shoulds. I don't want anybody to do something because they should. That's a recipe for just over exerting your willpower because willpower is a finite resource. And the more that you work on shoulds, that you're going to just burn out and tire yourself out, and you're not going to be doing nearly your best work. The other thing is all or nothing thinking about this stuff is, oh, well, if I can't implement the entire free time framework and body of work, then I'm stuck. I'm completely stuck. And I would just encourage people to not try to take all of it at once. But look for one friction area. What is one thing that you're actively uncomfortable about? It's creating stress, it's draining you it's dragging you down, it's on your mind. We all know that feeling of agita or where your stomach's turning because you just can't stand this area. And yet, if it's not something you can eliminate altogether. It's really ripe to be solved. So I would turn your attention. It could be a small friction area, or the biggest one that you have But start there start where it's meaningful where it matters, you don't have to start by like implementing a 60 minute meditation practice every day, something that's really not even the crux of this book is actually, what I say the measure of a good system is that it hurts not to use it, it's harder not to use it than it is to do it. So you might not crack this right away. But if you have an open inquiry, how can I let this friction area? How can I shift it so that it's easily joyful, automated and off my plate, if you just hold that inquiry, when you solve it, you will know because your life will get easier, and you will be happier. And that will be the reward for sitting with this kind of conundrum of what to do or thinking about this entire conversation and not knowing where to start.

Tony  15:45  
I love that I love that you're again, framing it as it's more painful not to do the things right. And I think that's it, right? Because there's growth in that pin. I'm kind of leaning into these things.  

Jenny  15:57  
And here's a very simple example. So my husband is a painter. He's a fine artist. He's a free spirit. He's an ENFP, or an INFP. And he has ADHD. Okay, so before we got married and live together, like he never knew where anything was not his keys, not his wallet, not his phone. And for years, we would joke that I would go Have you seen because he would just 10 times a day, he would ask me the question, have you seen fill in the blank wallet, keys, phone, whatever it is, he wouldn't even look first, he just asked me Have you seen. And then he learned with me that there's a charging station for the headphones, they all live in the same place and you got him put him back there, or you'll never find them again. There is a hook by the door for the keys. That's where the keys live. So there became these logical places where things live, that he now catches himself. When he starts going, have you seen, oh, yeah, it's gonna be where I put it. And then the punishment when he doesn't put things back where he'll his future self will remember them. He goes, dang it, I didn't put that charger back. And now I can't find it. And so you see the contrast when the system works, and when it doesn't, and then you go, Oh, shoot. That's why that system exists. Because it does make things easier to find in the future. You stop wasting that little nugget of time.

Tony  17:13  
I love that you shared that I feel terrible for your husband, if he's, if people are listening,

Jenny  17:19  
Subject to all my weird rules, well, he'll leave a little packet of weavin He likes liquid IV for hydration just likes his water to taste delightful. I like plain water. He doesn't. And this little liquid IV packet will be torn in half. And on the counter right before he left. He's away right now. But it was on the counter right above the trash can. And I'm like, Why did you put this down right on the counter, just while it's still in your hand while you ripped it in half. Just take those hands. And instead of placing it on the counters, put it right under the trash. So we do laugh, like I am probably in some ways easier to live with and teaching him a lot.

Tony  17:19  
That is so funny.

Jenny  18:19  
But I like giving examples that aren't just pure nerdy software related, because not everybody can relate or love software the way that I do. So I think applying it in ways that are very practical and tiny is also a good thought exercise. So Michael knows I do it with love. And he's the one that coined, he said that my brand as a person was love and systems. And that came from oh, I love to point that out. Yeah,

Tony  18:46  
He'll appreciate that. Well, interestingly, before we get on to your third point, and we'll talk a bit more about the systems moving away from the love, I'm sure they'll be loving the systems. But you know, the one thing that you mentioned there is that giant out to conquer it all in one fell swoop. And I love that. And the one thing that I've taken away, both in my business, but also have then subsequently shared it with managers across the world through our work in Manager Development is the double delegation piece that you bring up. And I think that in itself is just an incredible mindset shift. And really, I don't want to say easy to action. But it is one thing that if you focus your energy on it can have an incredible impact, not only on freeing up your time, but it actually featured in a workshop that we created and delivered recently for a client around around building connections in the hybrid world because I find that if you double delegation, it creates an environment for your team to then have to communicate with others across other teams and therefore it's like a byproduct, not just freeing up your time, but also then having these greater connections.

Jenny  19:53  
I love that. I love that. Yeah, this is my bare thought exercise to continually double how much delegate. So for each person and this could be on your overall if you look at everything you're responsible for, what percentage of it is currently delegated out? And then can you double that, or within a given project like your podcast or mine? It was a journey for me. I've had podcasts for over six years. And it was such a journey where in the beginning, I was the chief everything officer of the vodcast, super scrappy. And then over time, I continually tried to double how much I delegated to the point where all these years later living the dream of I just show up on the mic and hit record, just like it seems you do, Tony. And there's an all star team behind it, who is really skilled and actually better at it than me. But there was so long sometimes I think we hesitate to delegate because we think, oh, I can just do it faster, or I'm still more skilled. And what has always helped me is to find specialists or team members who are legitimately better than me at that thing that makes delegating so much easier. Whereas I do think delegation can go wrong when you try to delegate to someone who's not interested in that or doesn't have the skills. And then with no amount of feedback, does it ever improve. That's how you know you're at a delegation dead end.

Tony  21:08  
Yeah, I love that delegate for development or results, but definitely find someone that is passionate and has some skill or can get that skill. Okay, we are gonna move into your third and final point. So we're gonna get into the system space, which is creating an externalized business mind. Tell us more Jenny Blake.

Jenny  21:28  
Well, this goes with the Fiji test. Because what creates stress and bottlenecks is when again, when things live in our mind, there's a burden that we're carrying, because it means that there's friction, if anyone else needs to help out, if we need to step away, step back. And actually, when the manager or the owner is the bottleneck, you know, because everybody's waiting on you, and you're running late, and you're dropping the ball, and things are falling through the cracks. And I've had plenty of embarrassing, those gonna go into the mortifying category of things that I let fall through the cracks that I didn't intend to, because I was the bottleneck. So creating an externalized business mind means that every day every action you take everything you do gets documented, I have asked my team, and I finally named it to put in the book, every question lives three lives. If you ask me a question, if it's not clear from our process, Doc's how to do something, and you need to ask me a question. That's okay. But when I answer, make our manager manuals, smarter document, that q&a, so that the next person doesn't need to ask me, and if that q&a was relevant to clients, as well put it on the website, or put it in our private community. So rather than let's say my team member asks me, What do I do when a member of our community wants to cancel? Okay, that should already be in our documentation? Let's say it isn't. And I tell her, not only should she then add it to our manager manual, what are the steps we take, she should post an FAQ in the community, here's what to do when you're ready to cancel your membership. So that we even start to make the community smarter or website visitors smarter. Everybody gets smarter. Everybody benefits from that one question. And what happens when we don't have an externalize to business mind is that we just repeat ourselves. It's so inefficient, I hate repeating myself, I hate it. So pointless. And onboarding is harder, I find that team members get more overwhelmed when they're getting on boarded, because they have to extract information about how to do their role. Whereas when everything's been documented, they go, Oh, my gosh, I'm so delighted. I knew exactly I didn't know how to do this before, but I knew where to find it. And I took the steps, and I got it done. And I didn't even have to ask how to do that. And that is very empowering.

Tony  23:37  
Yeah, that's awesome. Yes. So I love the idea of a smooth onboarding process for your team. I love that you're not just thinking about this within your team, you're thinking about your community and your clients. I know, for example, the pain points feel like we had this a lot in our past career of having to rebuild from the start starting afresh every time and it was quite exhausting, right. So what's your advice for people trying to get started into this externalized business mind?

Jenny  24:06  
I use Notion for this now, because notion, there's three things I love about it, which you've probably heard me say, but it's customizable into linkable and searchable. The problem when you (inaudible) Google Docs, Sheets, air tables, Asana and all this software together is that there's no one searchable source of truth with notion, it's almost like an internal wiki. And there's Ben's tools that have like Google will build its own internal tool like this huge companies have the resources. There used to be Microsoft SharePoint that I remember using long ago, but notion is really streamlined, and it's not expensive. So the first step, whether use notion or something else, get it all in one place. I'm hesitating, I'm not I don't get paid by notion. I'm not an affiliate or anything. But I used to have my documentation in a Google Doc and it just got so long and unwieldy and hard to navigate even with the table of contents, that I prefer something a little More nonlinear. That's why I love notion. But no matter what it's a good thing to just start documenting, just start capturing how to do the most important things in your business or on your team. And by the way, some managers create a, I call it a manager manual, that's for the entire scope of the business or the team. But some people create a manager manual about themselves, like, here's how to work with me, here are my pet peeves. Here's what I appreciate. Here's the cadence, here's when we meet, or how you run your team. So you can also create some guides think about an Airbnb, every time you go stay at one, there's a guide, here's how to stay at this house, or apartment or whatever it is yet. And so we can create those resources for all kinds of things, even for your own home. So that next time you have a guest, there's a guy even if you're not an Airbnb host.

Tony  25:48  
So that's like if is this for your husband as well, when he's trying to find the charger? You're like, this is where the charger is. Does he have a notion that guy access?

Jenny  25:55  
Yeah, actually, we created his art portfolio in notion and I wonder why yeah, and so you can now search by collection, it's, it's pretty cool. And what I got him into his one password, because you can imagine with the forgetfulness that passwords are hard to keep track have to. And so we have a household one password vault, in addition to the one for my business,

Tony  26:18  
I love that you mentioned a manual for managers or a manager User Guide. That's something that I love the idea of basically hacking our way having a hack to the relationships that we form in the workplace. And oftentimes, when I'm working with clients, I'm like, okay, so have you done any work together as a leadership team? Have you spent time getting to know? Yeah, I think we did something a couple of years back, but I don't ever know what really happened to that information. So this really speaks to me as being incredibly useful within the kind of the team development site. So teams can really get to know one another. Have you seen notion used in that space, that's something you've done for your own team.

Jenny  26:56  
I do everything in those. And you can't imagine like, I track dog vet appointments in their own little spreadsheet, because notion can embed it's very dynamic. So you can have what would otherwise be a brand new Google Sheet is just a database within notion, but I track everything. There's nothing I don't track podcasts, production, doctor's visits, I've just gone ham, it's all in there. I love that. But I know where to find everything. That's the thing.

Tony  27:23  
That's nice. That's very reassuring. I love that. Well, Jenny, I'm going to ask you our final question, which is how would the world change if we implemented these three points you've shared with us today?

Jenny  27:36  
Well, I'm on a mission to set 50 million hours free. And so I imagine that with 50 million hours set free in the world, I just see people feeling lighter and freer and happier and getting to enjoy their work more and be more present when they're not at work. That with their family, they feel a sense of peace and calm reassurance that things are handled, things are taken care of. It's that mindset of time scarcity versus time abundance. And that is there a little practices and systems we can put in place to create a feeling of time abundance and energy abundance. That's how I hope to change the world and people's lives individually.

Tony  28:16  
That is, what a fantastic mission. And thank you for continuing to advance it. It's meant so much to myself and my team and also by extension, the clients that I get to work with. And a huge thank you for joining us on the podcast. Jenny, we really appreciate it.

Jenny  28:31  
Thank you so much, Tony. It really means the world to know that free time is living this life across the ocean and with you and your team and hearing what you're discussing and how you're implementing it. Like it's just so incredible to really know that the book is coming alive through you and your work and I just appreciate that so much. So thank you. It's the highest possible compliment.

Tony  28:54  
Thanks, Jenny.

Jenny  28:55  
Thanks, everybody for listening.