189: 💡Jay Acunzo’s IP Development OS — Courtesy of Creator Kitchen

In episode 181: Be Irreplaceable, you heard from my creative coach, Jay Acunzo about how to prioritize resonance over reach. I’ve been working with Jay for a few months now, and it has completely transformed the way I think about creating content—primarily my two podcasts. He just launched his own community, Creator Kitchen, and I feel lucky to have been part of his early testers for the soft launch.

One of the videos he shared with us in the kitchen is a walkthrough of his Intellectual Property (IP) Development OS—how he collects ideas, chooses which one/s to pursue, and how he decides which channel of his universe they belong in. Think of this whole process like an idea funnel, one where Jay is “applying pressure by aerating it constantly” through testing and publishing in different formats.

I loved it so much—and I know you will too—that I asked for special permission to share an excerpt of this video directly here on the Free Time podcast. If you want to learn more and join us in Creator Kitchen, visit creatorkitchen.com and apply promo code FRIENDOFAFRIEND for $100 off your membership for life.

🎧 If you're listening on Spotify—or just want to pop over there to share your biggest insight from this episode—answer the question prompt at the bottom of this episode's page here :)

💡 View the diagram of Jay Acunzo’s IP Development OS here »

💻 Jay’s IP Development Trello board has the following columns: Ideas, Chef’s Table (Community), Playing Favorites (Newsletter), Unthinkable (Podcast), Strongest Ideas (categorized as either Problems, Change, or Solution/s), Strongest Stories (Lead or Supporting), and Frameworks + Models (Diagrams)

More About Jay: Jay Acunzo is one of the world’s most sought-after business storytellers and brand consultants. He’s hosts the award-winning podcast, Unthinkable, and has authored multiple books on creativity, including Break the Wheel: Question Best Practices, Hone Your Intuition, and Do Your Best Work. He helps creators learn to increase the power of their creative work, not just the volume, through his membership platform, the Creator Kitchen. Jay’s grandest aspiration-slash-delusion is to be the Anthony Bourdain of workplace storytelling.

🌟 3 Key Takeaways

• Stage 1 — Focusing — What is your mission? Seeing the world through a focused lens, through a mission, a message, one big idea that you’re exploring.

• Stage 2 — Feeling — Interplay between frustration and curiosity: You're saying something is under-explored, something is broken. What is the status quo that you would like to change, to improve, to lead people away from? Curiosity is when you turn the frustration into something productive instead of destructive: why is it this way? How did we get here?

• Stage 3 — Thinking — Looking for ideas that feel exciting: What feels easy to tackle today? “If you're trying to knock over a brick wall, it's a lot easier rather than brute force your way forward to just start pressing bricks and see which one of 'em budges.”

✅ Do (or Delegate) This Next: Map out your own IP Development process. What does the life of a new frustration, question, or insight look like? How does it move across a Kanban-style content production board? (If you don’t want to start your own process from scratch, check out the Done-for-you Free Time Operations Dashboard!)

🔗 Resources Mentioned

• Jay on the web, IG: @jacunzo, Twitter, LinkedIn, Medium, and his podcast: Unthinkable

• Community: The Creator Kitchen (use promo code FRIENDOFAFRIEND  for $100 off your membership for life)

• People: Andrew Davis, Hrishikesh Hirway, Joshua Levy of Holloway

• Tools: Trello, Notion

📚 Books Mentioned

• Break the Wheel: Question Best Practices, Hone Your Intuition, and Do Your Best Work by Jay Acunzo

• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly by Anthony Bourdain

• Free Time: Lose the Busywork, Love Your Business by Jenny Blake

🎧 Related Episodes

• Unthinkable: Leaving Expertville, Going Bananas, Fine, I’ll Talk About AI; Song Exploder Exploded, Welcome to the Jumble, Break the Wheel, An Ode to the Asterisk

• 2 Pages with MBS: Making What Matters Most: Jay Acunzo [reads] ‘Kitchen Confidential’

• Pivot: Feeling Impostery? Become a Qualified Curator Instead

• Free Time: 182: The Challenges of Renovating a (Business) House While Living In It

  • 181: Be Irreplaceable with My Creative Coach Jay Acunzo

  • 127: Protect Your Idea Factory, Build a Creative Flywheel, and Go Behind-the-Scenes of Book Publishing with Todd Henry

  • 034: Organizing Research and Ideas — Notion Walkthrough #1

  • 036: Shaping Big Ideas — Notion Walkthrough #2

  • 038: Tracking Progress Toward Finishing a Book (or Big Idea) with an Essay Tracker — Notion Walkthrough #3

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📝 Check out full show notes and share with a friend: https://itsfreetime.com/episodes/189