After building Box of Crayons for nearly twenty years, Michael Bungay Stanier hit a fork-in-the-road: he knew that for his business to continue growing, it would be wisest for him (and more energizing) to step aside.

For two years he trained his successor, Shannon Minifie, then navigated the identity void of "standing in the valley of Box of Crayons" before launching into his new direction, including a new book and podcast.

Metaphors are powerful drivers for our mind—they allow us to quickly convey complex information to better understand abstract ideas. How do you think about business-building? Are you building a machine, managing a house, running a restaurant, or something else altogether? In this episode, we are discussing helpful aspects of all three analogies, and countering the role of entropy in any organic system.

"We don't write books, we craft spreads." Dr. Alex Osterwalder and his book co-authors pioneered the landscape, full-color, creative visuals format for simplifying complex business ideas. They consider every page of their books as a user interface, optimizing for simplicity, clarity, and fun. "Visuals don't become lipstick on a pig, they become an essential part of the reader's experience."

After reflecting on last week’s episode, here’s how I’m reducing friction and designing smarter systems for ongoing content creation.

Steven Morris's new book, The Beautiful Business, is an actionable manifesto to help business leaders and entrepreneurs work and live as human artists. Join us for a conversation on beekeeping, reclaiming beauty, and business building beyond money and metrics.

Are you what author Bridget Schulte calls OBL, Overwhelmed By Life? I am this week . . . maybe you can relate. This week I'm putting words to crunched time margin. In a future episode, I'll share what I'm experimenting with to transform to-do list drowning into gliding.

What do a flying money emoji, a stray takeaway coffee cup, and a heart have in common? Those were the starting clues I brought to Adam Chaloeicheep and his cofounder Marisol at Together Agency before starting work on the Free Time brand—as now expressed in the podcast, website, and book.

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 (releasing on 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.

If social media drains you, yet continues to dangle itself as a shiny should, this episode is for you. It's a crossover replay from one of the episodes that listeners share most often from the Pivot podcast, so I'm replaying it here for you.

I share my own process—mindset shifts and business focuses—that allow me to keep moving, even without platform-building or posting on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Tik Tok.

From a business perspective, social media is a means to two primary ends: social connections and media (consuming and contributing). I cover how I work toward both in energizing ways, even without directing my attention toward the platforms above.

Heart of Business founder Mark Silver shares his "pay from the heart" pricing approach, a step beyond "pay what you want" or sliding scale. In working with thousands of heart-centered business owners, he finds that the latter are often done from a place of unconscious money issues, and can lack acknowledgment of the business owner's needs. This method isn't for everyone, but it might be worth experimenting with! Mark also shares the four stages of business development for micro-businesses: Creation, Concentration, Momentum, Independence, and the challenges of moving between the last two.

"Don't write a check your body can't cash." This is a phrase I remind myself when my to-do list eyes are bigger than my available energy, something that has been happening a lot lately (and I know I'm not alone in this). As Anne Helen Petersen captures so perfectly in her recent newsletter, there are many reasons (we're or) You're Still Exhausted. Today I'm sharing a quick solo riff from the park: a personal "take two" on the day Ryder turned two.

“Glowing in the dark is the work of being a patient warrior for our gifts. Our light is the medicine our aching planet needs.” KC flips the traditional leadership script, giving us permission to pause, chill, breathe, and shine. We discuss unicorn symbology, vulnerability in launching big creative projects, identifying work that aligns with your soul, and what we can all learn from the art of making mix tapes.

This is the third and final (for now!) walkthrough of how I take big ideas from the organizing research stage toward tracking progress toward a final draft of the book. I call this board my Essay Tracker. Be sure to start with the first two episodes in the Notion walkthrough series: 034: Organizing Research and Ideas and 036: Shaping Big Ideas.

What would it be like if you became the only business that mattered to your customers? How can you get 100 percent of the people who eventually buy your products or services to tell their friends?

These are some of the powerful questions John Jantsch poses in his latest book, The Ultimate Marketing Engine: 5 Steps to Ridiculously Consistent Growth. He walks us through how to scale by ensuring transformation for your customers and clients. You grow as they grow.

What is the Ultimate Marketing Engine? As John says, "A successful customer."

Building on the first episode in the Notion walkthrough series, 034: Organizing Research and Ideas, in this session I'm sharing the next step: starting to shape big ideas. I share categories for notes that you can move across a nonlinear board as you map desired transformation for your future audience, when to map those to paper index cards, and why I don't recommend writing with long audio transcripts as a base.

“Whenever you have a choice of what to do, choose the more interesting path." (Credit to Dorie's friend Marion's mom)

In this conversation with DC, one of my closest friends, we discuss how she "optimizes for interesting," says no to good opportunities, builds relationships by following her "no asks for a year" rule, and when to call on trusted advisors to ensure you don't quit something too soon. We're discussing her fourth book, The Long Game: How to Be a Long-Term Thinker in a Short-Term World—be sure to grab your copy for even more insights on how to apply strategic thinking to your biggest vision.

Today I'm walking you through my systems for capturing ideas and organizing them, as part of a multi-part series on my favorite tool for organizing life and work: Notion.

**What makes you come alive? More specifically, how do you *uniquely* *exert effort*—for no other reason than the way it makes you feel?** as Jonathan shares in his new book, [Sparked](https://amzn.to/3BS9hBj), we’re all born with a certain “imprint” for work that makes us come alive. This is your "Sparketype®," your DNA-level driver of work that lets you know, deep down, you’re doing what you’re here to do.

Why are we so afraid of standing out? Being disliked? Trying business or marketing experiments that might fail? Jenny's longtime friendtor Mike Michalowicz is back sharing strategies behind his latest book, Get Different: Marketing That Can't Be Ignored!