Free Time

Running a business need not exhaust you.

If you’re a small business owner or founder, you might have experienced “burn-it-all-down mode” — the state of feeling so exhausted, overwhelmed, and exasperated thinking of all your responsibilities that you fantasize about throwing it all away. Fortunately, a burn-it-all-down moment can lead to a breakthrough by drawing attention to the fact that you’re working in an unsustainable way. 

Running a business needn’t be overwhelming, exhausting, or all-consuming. It’s possible to transform your business so it can operate on its own, smoothly, without your constant attention. Author Jenny Blake runs her business in 20 hours per week and earns more than $500,000 in gross revenues annually. She does it by aligning her work with her strengths, values, and energy levels, and by designing systems to achieve outsize impacts from manageable amounts of effort. She also relies on a small team — just three people, each working five hours per week — to whom she delegates every task except those she absolutely must do herself. She takes two months’ vacation each year, and she schedules all her meetings to fall on Tuesdays...