Time Freedom: Rethink Your Work And Money With Brian Herriot

Welcome to the Creative Penn podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur. Bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots more at thecreativepenn.com and that's Penn with a double end. And here's the show. Hello creatives, I'm Joanna Penn and this is episode number 883 of the podcast and it is Saturday the 19th of September 2026 as I record this. In today's show I'm talking to Brian Harriet about time freedom, how to rethink your work and money. We talk about how writing, speaking and podcasting can build authority without social media. What time freedom is and how it differs from work life balance and financial freedom, how to design your year around seasons of work and rest, as well as the three money personalities, how to build flexibility into your work and how a nonfiction book that leaves nothing out can be the foundation of a business. So that's coming up in the interview section and also a reminder, if you are interested in learning about money, I have a book on money list at thecreativepenn.com/moneybooks and I have covered this sort of topic several times over the years. But if you want to learn more about investing and money mindset, I'll remind you of that link again at the end. But the interview with Brian is coming up in the interview section. In writing and publishing book marketing, thanks to Thorne, who recommended a podcast episode with Seth Godin, nonfiction author, marketer and entrepreneur on his Akimbo podcast, which went quiet for a while. But he put this up, it's actually a talk and a Q&A with an organisation called Greater Public, which helps local US public radio and TV stations. And it's called the end of the spectrum. And it's sort of addressing the fact that public radio and TV stations are losing their market share. And Seth says, like many industries, something has happened, something they didn't ask for. In this case, spectrum, the slot on the dial, it's not worth what it used to be anymore. And I think that's relevant to all of us because thanks to technology and culture changes, a piece of our foundation, whatever we're dependent on is changing and changing fast. He starts with two questions, what do you make and what do you own? What do you make and what do you own? It used to be that these stations could make a show and put it out and everyone would see it or hear it as there was little choice. But now there is unlimited choice and we also live in this world of abundant choice as authors. So this is what they discuss in the Akimbo episode. So rule number one, he says, you have to earn permission. The privilege to go back to people again and again. And you can easily burn that permission by spamming people or changing what you do. And you have to be careful. You can't take your audience for granted. Just to be clear, I don't take you for granted. Thank you for listening. I know you could choose to go elsewhere. And in terms of our books, it's delivering on the promise of the book under a particular author name. So when people think, okay, so a book by so-and-so name, should I go back to that book? Should I buy that book? Does it consistently produce what I need? And so as Seth talks about, we need to consistently produce and delight our audience or be useful. Whatever it is that you promise you need to deliver. And he says, what you really care about is mattering. You don't want the largest possible audience. You want the smallest viable audience. So which audience would be enough? And who would miss you if you were gone? This is a tough question I know and it hit home because I've been thinking a lot about this lately. And I have actually just put up my lessons learned from 15 years as a full-time author entrepreneur. I put that up every September. And one of the things I mentioned is that sometimes you need to step away to remove yourself from the drama and the noise. And I am so grateful for you as listeners in my Patreon community, people who buy my books. And I feel like ever more I am looking at focusing on serving you, the people who listen to me, rather than trying to bring in a bigger audience. So trying to consistently appeal to people who have already opted in for what I do as opposed to trying to reach out to a mass market. And that's really what Seth is saying. You just can't be mass market anymore. And focusing on serving a smaller audience rather than that mass market can actually help. So for example, this show a few years back lost a lot of listeners when the AI drama got really noisy. I mean, it's still noisy, but it's not here very much anymore because those people opted out because of my AI positive slash AI curious openness. That is not what people, some people want to hear about. So a lot of those people left some of you stayed. And those of you who are listening to this, you stayed. And I care about mattering to you. And you know that I also very much care about the artisan author approach. And the AI assisted artisan author is what I kind of talk about these days. But I obviously very much care about creativity. I very much care about writing craft. I very much care about high production quality and doubling down on being human. And you understand there is nuance in this. This is not an either or situation. So I care about mattering to you. And perhaps that helps you too because you have to think about this for your audience with your books or whatever you do. So often we think about reaching this mass market. It's a group of almost faceless people out there when we should focus on serving our little niche with our weird little books with our weird little selves. And it is much more freeing this way because we can be ourselves. I will come back to my 15 years post in a minute, but just to continue with Seth's a Kimbo episode. And I'm paraphrasing to be more specific to authors. How are you going to build a platform or an author business that pays for itself, that scales, and that is joyous. He uses the word joyous, which I like. And of course, if this is a business, it doesn't have to be a business. But if this is a business, you have to figure out where the money will come from. It's going to come from the people who would miss you if you were gone. And he said, you're not going to do it because you're crying wolf or moaning about how bad things are. That's my paraphrase. He uses the phrase crying wolf. But the sort of, oh, things are changing. Oh, poor me, poor me, give me money. That just doesn't work. It might work once, but it doesn't work ongoing. He says, people are going to pay you because it gives them connection, status, belonging, affiliation. Because it makes them feel better to be part of what you're building. You have to grow towards something. You have to be positive in order to keep people coming back. And that's what I'm trying to build here. That's what I'm trying to build on my Patreon community. A place where you feel better for belonging. Like, I love our office hours. I used to dread doing video and live things. And now I love our office hours. We have loads of fun, and we share lots of information. And I am going to do some more webinars before the end of the year. Many of you have asked about doing some kind of live event. And I have actually booked to go visit a retreat centre near here in November. So maybe 2027, it might happen. I know that wouldn't be for everyone, but it is something I'm thinking about. Another thing Seth says. He says, nobody is keeping you from publishing as many things as you want. The question is, what can you do well? This is so important to think about in the age of AI. As you can spin out AI generated social media posts, videos, books, stories, articles, anything. You can pretty much generate anything on automatic pilot every hour of every day if you want to pay for the tokens. And they can actually be very good now. But what can you do well and what is worth doing for you? What is the point? How does it help you? How does it help others? Or does it just add to the noise? Now Seth talks about the race to the bottom in counting clicks or measuring things that don't really matter. He says, you have to do the hard work of measuring things that actually matter. Who's lives did we change? Who is talking about this? What productive outcomes occurred because we did this? Now this is hard to measure, but it's more important. Maybe that's emails we get about our books. And in fact, I got a lovely one this week about my book pilgrimage and how this person feels like they may be going on a long walk might help them at a difficult time in their life. Now, if I just measured that as one book sale, that wouldn't be that big a deal, right? It's not that much money income from one book sale, but the meaning of that person's change is far more important to me. And in fact, Seth himself says, I write books and I don't want to be on the bestseller list. I do nothing to get on the bestseller list. I am not keeping track of how many books I sell. So what am I measuring? If I get a note from someone who says, I learned something from someone who learned something who learned it from you. I measure that. I love that. You hopefully are learning something from Seth Godin because I learned it from him and in turn it was recommended by Thorn who learned it in that way. So this is how human culture works, right? So that is on the Akimbo podcast aka imbo podcast with Seth Godin. Thanks for the recommendation Thorn and as ever I love Seth Godin's books. I'm actually rereading his this is strategy at the moment as part of a book I am doing which I will tell you about in a minute. So just circling back to my 15 years article, you can read it all and all my articles around my growth over time at the creative pen.com/timeline, all of them a link there or it's on the blog this week. Just a few key points so number one, sometimes you need to step away to indulge your curiosity and fill the creative well and of course I talk about my masters and there is a photo of my death bookshelf. So if you want some death book recommendations have a look at that. Number two, as I mentioned, sometimes you need to step away to remove yourself from the drama and the noise and it has been so good to ignore almost all the drama in the community and I will not be going back to a lot of social media. So I'm really happy with that decision. But step three, stepping away for whatever reason will inevitably impact the business. So I created a lot less than my usual outputs. I did do a short novel, bones of the deep and I did a short book on writing short story. That's about all I've done with all my essays and I feel like I am behind in my Joanna Pen books. I need to update some additions. I am behind in my usual schedule for my arcane thrillers. I have this huge pressure. I feel like there's a dam being building up and it's going to release and instead of juggling everything with study, I feel like 2027 is going to be expansive indeed. But what is interesting is number four, increasing my use of AI tools for the business and marketing enabled me to save time and money. And in fact, I made more profit in the year than I did the year before because of how useful, Claude code and chat GBT and other tools have become for me. So if you have a look at that blog post, I go into some of that and of course I share it on the Patreon. So that's the creative pen.com/timeline. And then on this, I did want to share, this is just happened today as I'm recording this. On the AI business side of things, my sister just messaged and said, she shared an advert on Instagram for cat food. Healthy cat food and said, is this your voice? And indeed, it is. And I actually love it. Of course, I have two cats, Keshia and Noise and I love being the voice of healthy cat food on Instagram for this particular ad. And I've talked about voice licensing before, but I haven't mentioned it for a while because I put my this podcast voice up as a conversational voice and just let it loose into the world and didn't really do anything. And just suddenly hearing it on an ad has delighted me. Obviously, it's for a happy positive ad, but I hope that's generally what people use an upbeat voice for. So this is Joanna, warm and upbeat. If you want to use it on 11 laughs and I am being paid for that voice usage, I am being paid every week, in fact, for my voice, which is very cool. Not a ton, not a ton of money, but since you can clone a voice with three seconds of audio and I am all over the internet already, it makes sense to clone and license and actually do it in a legal official way as opposed to people potentially pirating it. Now, of course, people can do that anyway, but it's good to have a legal option because most businesses do want to do these things properly and 11 labs pay for their voices. So I thought I would mention this one because you might randomly hear me on an ad. Also, I will tell you if this on my podcast is not real me, this is, of course, real me. And I don't think my voice cloned laughs, so you will know with my giggle that this is real me. I, since this has now started earning sort of better money, more than $5 a week, I am now releasing Joe Francis. So my JF Penn audiobook narration voice, if you've listened to Death Valley, if you've listened to bones of the deep, in fact, or what else is it? Blood Vintage. That voice, I'm also releasing, so that's going to be Joe Francis for dark suspenseful narration or like a darker voice. And then also Joanna for self-help narration, which is my nonfiction audiobook. So if you listen to how to write a novel or the how to write short stories that I just did, that voice is also being licensed, so that should be out in the next few weeks. Now, you might be thinking, but you are one person, how do you have three voices? Well, of course, when we use, when you have a voice with certain intonations and genres, they are different voices. So even though these are not different accents, like I'm not putting on any accent, this is my voice. But for this clearly conversational voice has much more variation in tone than a narration for my audiobooks, which just has a different pacing style as well. So yes, three voices, three different sides of me. And we shall see, I'm very interested to see whether this turns into a reasonable stream of income. It made me laugh because of course, a few, I guess even like a few years ago now, my videos on YouTube, so particularly YouTube.com/TheCreativePen. So the CreativePen YouTube channel is set that up in 2008, I think, that YouTube channel. So we're coming up for almost 20 years of a YouTube channel, and I make very little from that from as very little. And in the last month, I have made more from voice licensing than I have on YouTube. And so it makes me think that since I have my stuff on YouTube, then this would just be another way forward. As ever, this is not a recommendation for you, but it is as we move into a different phase of the world, a different phase of the industry. I think this is worth experimenting with for me. Obviously Simon Patrick is the king of this. And Simon was on the show last year in June 2025, talking about producing AI-neurated audiobooks using 11 labs. And so you can go and listen to that. I'll link to that in the show notes. And I will also be updating audio for authors next year. I think that will probably be my, on my list for updating next year for sure. So in personal news, as I mentioned, I kind of feel like this huge wave of energy is coming upon me. I have had a little break after my finishing my dissertation, but it's so interesting. I feel like this is almost because the academic writing actually found very almost debilitating, super, super dense and tiring and detailed. And in fact, my eyesight this last year has got worse because all these papers that I've had to print out and look at that, you know, they don't allow you to adjust the font size because they're in PDF and all this. So I feel like I'm just desperate to write commercially useful practical fun books. So yeah, I have actually gone straight back into it and I am writing the new edition of how to market a book. Now the last edition was in 2017. So this is desperately needed and I have so much to share. And I went back into it. I thought, oh, I'll just lightly go back through and see what's missing. But actually I am completely rewriting the book. I want to redesign the structure of the book. I am actually doing this right now. It's a complete mess right now. I'm having great fun and Scrivener just redesigning what I think book marketing should be. And so the book will be hopefully super useful. It won't be a cut this, cut that because of course that changes all the time. It's not like a how to make a video for TikTok. Obviously that would never be my book. But it's not like how to do exactly this. It's all the different things you can do for marketing, but also I want to cut through the noise. And it's a lot of principles. It's a lot of thoughts as ever. It's very known nonsense. The first chapter is marketing is easy. Marketing is hard. You get to choose. So I enjoyed even just writing that first chapter. And as I said, it's a complete rewrite, not just an update. I would like to make sure it is super useful for you because the other thing I realize is that I guess I have quite a lot of experience now. So in order to ensure I don't miss anything, I have a short survey. I would love you to do. The survey is at TheCreativePen.com/Marketing26, the letters 26, TheCreativePen.com Marketing2626. And that survey if you could do that before the 7th of October, 2026. So before the 7th of October and I will then essentially use those questions. So it's very short. It says what questions do you have about book marketing and where are you in your career and do you want to tell me anything else. And but essentially even if you just go in there and put down your top question that will make sure I cover everything in this book. I want to make sure it is really super super useful. So yeah, that is what I am working on right now. I've already got into it. Obviously there's a lot I want to say. I just want to make sure it is got everything in. Also on a personal note, I am in Los Angeles this week as it goes out. I am in LA for the Moon Shots podcast event. And this is one of the techno optimist podcasts I listen to with Peter Diamandis and others. And keeps me feature focused on the positive side of technology, which is my happy place, enough with the doom and gloom. I like seeing the other side and all the positive things happening with AI and technology and how things are changing. This is always good to think with whatever the news is. Obviously people love sharing miserable news, but there's always lots of positive things going on as how I prefer to look at things. Yes, of course I hear about all the negative, but I love to go looking for the positives. This event is also associated with the film competition I entered, which was about positive views of humanity with technology and the winners will be chosen at that event. Now I did not make the short list. This is not unexpected given the many thousands of entries and the numbers of professional filmmakers who author entered. But I have now made the Cathedral Zero trailer live on my YouTube channel @JFPenOrtha so you can see what I built. And on my Patreon I shared how I made it with Claude mid-journey and runway using the C-dance model. So you can go check that out. Again, I'll link in the show notes so that's Cathedral Zero and I might even write that book next year as well. So much to get on with. I think 2027 I am super excited about 2027. That's for sure. So thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week. Pete sent me a picture of kangaroos roaming around a cemetery in Perth in Western Australia, enjoying the lush, green, green grass and the fresh flowers. And it made me laugh because here in Bath there are signs up around the cemetery that say, "Please don't leave flowers here, the deer's come and we'll eat them." And so of course the deer's here are about the same as the kangaroos in WA. So thanks for that Pete. Also lots of comments on Dan's interview about learning everything at C-D-Gill on YouTube said, "There is a huge resurgence in the USA of classical education because parents want their kids to stop having to learn through computers and get back to pen and paper." And also said, "I saw a man with a memento mori tattoo at the pool this summer and almost asked him if he knew you." But of course, memento mori is out there for anyone to use. Yes, of course. It's certainly not anything original from me. It's sort of, you know, ancient ancient times, humans have been thinking about death. So, yes, but again, I love it when you all see memento mori out there in the world and think of me, think of me and remember you will die as a great place to live. Also, Nina is left a comment and said, "Podcasts totally sell books. I have now lost track of how many I have bought off the back of your podcast episodes. Jessica Brody's paperback of page 1 to Dun just arrived. I bought an immediately read Riccardo Fiet's book and I've also bought Tracy Cooper Posey's productive indie fiction book, not even counting your own short story book, which is technically off the back of the podcast. Your guests may like to know about the incredible content marketing, content celebration, thanks, Nina. And yes, if you want to sell books getting interviews on podcasts, it's always a great idea. And of course, that is not a reminder to pitch me, but pitch podcasts related to your books. And since I get many, many pictures every single day, do not start the pitch as dear podcaster or just hello. And make sure it's a good fit for the audience. And again, this is something I want to get more into in 2027. I want to get more interviews myself, preferably in podcasts that are tangential to the writing community. So, let me know if you listen to a podcast you think I might be a good fit for. And yes, let me know. Finally, Karen said, also, I wanted to let you know I have taken you to the dentist. I had to have a filling and was listening to the Patreon Q&A to distract myself. And it worked well. Excellent. That is very, very good. Thank you, everyone. And of course, you can leave a comment on the podcast show notes at the CreativePen.com or on the YouTube channel at the Creative Pen or email me, send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery, churchyard, or Memento Mori art. Joanna @TheCreativePen.com. I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. So today's show is sponsored by Kobo Writing Life, the self-publishing platform built by authors for authors. KWL is dedicated to empowering your indie career and helping you connect with readers worldwide. Ready to amplify your book's reach and boost sales? Kobo Writing Life offers a powerful suite of promotional tools designed to put your books directly in front of eager readers. Leverage strategic percent off sales, buy more save more bundles, and prime home page placements to drive discovery. On a personal note, I go into KWL every few weeks and apply for every promotion I can. I won't get all of them, but I get some of them. And if you have a backlist, you can always bundle them up and bundles do really well in Kobo promotions. They also have opportunities for books in translation, as they have partnerships with many independent stores in different countries. So if you want to go wide with translations, check out Kobo as well. Start promoting on Kobo today at TheCreativePen.com/KWL, and that goes to a landing page with all my books on Kobo in ebook and audio book, and also useful episodes of the Kobo Writing Life podcast, which you can also listen to wherever you're listening to this. This type of corporate sponsorship pays for the hosting, transcription and editing, but my time in creating the show is sponsored by my community at patreon.com/thecreativepen. Thanks to the three new patrons who joined this week, and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. If you join the community, you can access to articles, video and audio, covering writing craft, author, business and AI tutorials. Last week I shared my monthly patron Q&A, which is an extra solo show, it's sort of 45 minutes to an hour, where I answer questions and generally riff on topics. So if you enjoy the introduction to this show, you will enjoy the extra solo show. The Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month, or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com/thecreativepen. Right, let's get into the interview. Brian Heriot is a financial advisor, professional speaker and the author of Time Freedom. rethink your work and money to create a life you love now. He's also the host of the Time Freedom Podcast. So welcome to the show, Brian. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, this is a great topic, but first up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and publishing. Yes, so I am a financial advisor, and now I am an author officially. I found writing just short of three years ago. I was actually on behalf of my wife doing some research for her because she's always been an incredible writer in the fiction side of the world, and so I was researching different writing programs and things like that and came across one that I thought, hmm, this is for nonfiction and boy, it sounds very interesting. I think it's something maybe I need to do. And the reason why I was looking at all, even for myself, is I was transitioning into a new line of work and it was work where you needed to develop some authority and visibility and everything everybody was telling me was that I needed to do a lot of social media, which I did not want to do. And so I had a somewhat, I forget where I heard it, but they're like, or you could do the author speaking thing. And I thought, ooh, that sounds a lot better. And so that's the path that I ended up on. Interesting. Can you tell us what that different path you were looking at? Well, a lot of what you see at least online if you're to develop a personal brand and try to attract business in this case into my financial advisory firm. Everyone says, well, you need to develop an online presence. And I had used, you know, in the business world from a long time ago, and I had used LinkedIn, but not for anything like developing personal brand. And so then all the advice started turning to, oh, well, then you need to get onto Instagram and TikTok. And I've just never, I don't know, I've always viewed that that is all that scrolling is kind of a waste of time and I'd rather put my mind towards something more productive. And so I was just so apprehensive to try and get into that space that I just kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off until I heard a podcast. I've always listened to lots of podcasts and I heard a podcast that said, well, instead of developing authority that way, the other path that you could take would be through writing because it's obviously longer form. You can put your thinking into it. And then that can then lead to help in getting speaking as well and between those two, you can develop some of the same authority that you could if you went the social media route. There is also the podcasting part which I do love and that's been one of the most fun things I've been doing lately. So I do podcasting, writing and speaking instead of social media. I love that and I know a lot of people listening love that too because and I don't think this is an age thing. I think this is an aptitude for video, short form video thing. I'm the same as you. I don't really into the short form video and this is actually for people listening. This is an audio only podcast partly because I don't want to do video. (laughing) And that's beautiful. Like that's the beauty of working on your terms, right? Which we'll talk a lot about. Yes, exactly. And so I love that you from the beginning were like, no, I'm going to go the long form route and reach people that way because you absolutely are and I mean, I personally would always rather read a book than watch a whole load of snippets or video online to learn about this kind of topic. So let's get into the book. So let's start with that sort of concept of time freedom. What is time freedom and how can we change our mindset to believe that it's even possible because it feels like we're working harder than ever. Yeah, and the way that I like to explain this is first by discussing what time freedom is not because of how it fits. And I have this right up front in the book and that there's this whole concept of work life balance, right? And work life balance to me at least coming from the professional and the employed worlds is that you're just like stealing an hour during the day here to then make it up later in the night. And oftentimes, at least when I was living with work life balance, I was probably more busy than I even was if I would have just worked straight from eight to five. And it's very like week by week focused, day by day focused, and that is not time freedom. And on the other side is this idea of financial freedom, which time freedom also is not in my mind. And financial freedom is where you are, I mean, the simplest thing is you're either retired or you're independently wealthy or in some other way, you do not have to work anymore. And so you've got this absolute freedom, which for me is kind of a boring because I get a lot of joy from the work that I do. And so in the middle is the idea of I think time freedom where you do still have to work, but you're able to design work in a way that works for you. So you can do it on your terms. There's a lot of choice, there's flexibility. If you want it and all of those things, and I think that somebody that optimizes for time freedom looks at their year and says, this is how I want my year to go. There's a seasonality to it from my personal experience. I do most of my work work, the work that I need to do to get paid and live in what would be equivalent of the school year because my wife and I have a son. He's a sophomore in high school. And that's just the way that our life is lining up right now. But then during the summer, we're fortunate enough to have this, you know, not so great cabin, but on a beautiful lake back where we both grew up. And in the last five years, we've designed our life so that we can go back there and live a different season during the summer. I've always loved summer. And during that time, that's when we rest and relax and we water ski and we fish and we do all the fun things that you could do at a cabin. But then also, there's this time when you're starting to think bigger or differently or make creative connections about things in the work that you do. And I don't know, I find it really rejuvenating so that when I come back in the quote unquote school year, then I can get back to work and do some really interesting things. And so the time, the person who pursues time freedom is really optimizing their life around this freedom and flexibility. Maybe they're working longer and later into life, but they're doing it in a way that works for them. They're not necessarily optimizing to steal that extra hour that day or optimizing for wealth, which would be the financial freedom path. - Yeah, I find this very interesting. I like that it's not financial freedom because I'm an investor as I mentioned to you and many of us are, but that tends to take more time. So if you're aiming for financial freedom, especially if you start investing later in life, you're not gonna get that at 45 or 50 or maybe even 60. So defining this as separate is really good because you're kind of saying, well, you can start changing things now and you might, yes, you might have to work a bit longer, but if you love your work, it's not a problem. But I wanna come back to this idea of seasonality and planning your year around the seasonality idea. How does that work with the potential of other people's timelines or other people's possibilities and serendipity? Because I have some plans, but then like this year, this thing came up, just a very intuitive thing and has kind of changed the next few months in a completely different direction and blown all my plans out of the water. So how do you balance a sort of planned seasonality with serendipity? - Well, first, what I wanna mention is, if you can figure out a way to organize your year so that you have these extended periods of time off, that's a wonderful thing. And it's not something that I think you can do with the staff of the fingers. When I had this realization that I even wanted to do this, of course it wasn't even me that came up with it, it was my wife, when I said, this was during a time when some of the stock market had crashed and I was suggesting to her that we were not gonna be financially free anytime soon. And when she asked me what financial freedom looked like to me, it was that I still, I said that I still had wanted to work just more flexibly and she said, well, let's do it now, right? So back to my point, we couldn't do it now. We had to get the money confidence to be able to basically figure out how could you work for nine months and have that support 12 months of living. And so it's not immediate, but once you get there, the way that I have kind of looked at it, you know, compared to like serendipity is, if I can structure the work that I do, and again, it's so dependent on the type of work that your listener does do, right? And in my particular case when I was able to do this, I was doing independent consulting projects. So I was able to line up projects that would never overlap in the summer. I mean, and sometimes they would go into June because it had to, right? But I did the best that I could and tried to be as flexible as it was. But then when I had the time, then I was able to do whatever came up during that period of time. And usually what started as just taking a break, resting and not doing so much work, but by the end of those three months, you really start to want to get back into things. And I think you do have to just go with what your body's telling you, you know, and what your mind is telling you. And I don't know if that answers your specific question, but like when you say something happens, right? And you want to take advantage of that opportunity, you got to do it, right? I think flexibility is probably the value that comes through the most in the book, is that even when you think you figured it out and you finally got that perfect seasonal year, well, something will come up and happen. And then just I think part of what time-free to miss is being able to take advantage of the opportunity when it comes up, right? - Yeah, I think able to choose. And that's the key point. I mean, I'm in a situation like you where I run and in a pen of business. So I do get to choose, but it's just funny because I read this and I'm like, I do kind of have time freedom, but I fill my time completely so that I do have enough time, but I fill it with more and more creative projects and I'm not very good at stopping. So while I do have flexibility, I also have a very full calendar. And I've been trying to put long term nissen as well now, I've asked this of other people as well. And I was very interested in that you took a transformative sabbatical in 2023. And this is something I keep coming towards and then backing away from. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Like what was that and how did you manage that? Well, what we wanted to do, my wife and I took a trip and I think it was 2015 or so we went to Italy for just two weeks. And we did, I mean, you could easily spend two years, I feel in Italy and still feel like you missed out on things, but art vacation was so packed. It was very typical of the American vacation, I would say. You know, and I remember coming back from that vacation going, you know, I'm more exhausted now than I was when we left. And so we always wanted to figure out a way to do some slower travel and the way that it so worked out after we had a revelation about how we wanted to design our lives was that we were gonna take what ended up being four weeks. So I knew that I was gonna have my first fully free summer off in 2023 and we decided to purposely go slow and we traveled in and around Portugal for four weeks. It's kind of funny when we flew back on the flight back and we were going through customs the gentleman asked how long We'd been in Portugal and we said four weeks is like, what did you do for that? Why were you here for so long? But we the beauty of it was we could if we had like a day when we weren't Feeling up to going to see something we just didn't It was wonderful. That was just a wonderful experience and we were able to line it up so that we met other friends So we almost had like a vacation within a vacation We had a no pair that we hadn't seen for years who flew over from France and met us. It was just a I Imagine just very not typical of that. At least that I'm familiar with the American work lifestyle But it was just anything but that and it was just wonderful and it really Pulled our whole family just out of the conventional way of thinking and that was Incredible for us and really then triggered how we spent the last few years of our lives And we haven't had that same long trip yet part of it has to do with now our sons in high school And he needs to be here and home around his friends But he'll be off the college soon and then we can go do it again Yeah, it's so interesting isn't it? Sometimes you have to really step away from your normal life and the kind of the grind of it in order to Think differently and it's quite funny because as a Brit and a European myself I actually find coming over to America is a way to almost change my mindset So it's often just going into a different culture perhaps. Yes, absolutely. I think part of this whole Living with time freedom aspect for me is just leading a more interesting life And and I owe this really to my wife. I mean, I think I I always Through schooling and coming out of college. I just almost had these blinders on like well You're supposed to just get to work and do your work and this is what you do and She's the one who's always asked me why are we doing this like why could we not experience something a little bit different And that's that's what makes for an interesting life Yeah, and also from what you've said you're not spending up big time like you don't sound like you're having extravagant Times at the at the lake or when you're traveling it so I often think that people feel like you have to have So much money in order to do something. I remember being in I think I was I must have been New York And I was talking to someone and she said oh, it's my dream to go to New Orleans And I recently been there and I was like well, why haven't you been it? It's really easy You're in America like you could just fly there or that you think I've even got trains in America Which I know a lot of Americans haven't but there are trains and all of this And I was like well, why haven't you been it's like people having their minds all these barriers and money is a big barrier Right, but you don't need as much as you think perhaps It's true. I mean, there's all of the series of podcasts and blogs and everything about how They will write that when you do this long travel or slow travel I think is what they call it You don't have to stay at hotels you could stay at an Airbnb and rent a place for two or three months and it's far less per day Then it costs in the analysis that I've seen is how sometimes If you say maybe rent it out your house back in America when you were going to Europe and then you did your Traveling it's actually cheaper to go and take a long trip than just stay put and you actually make money on it It's very I mean, of course it all depends, but it's eye-opening Yeah, I mean you mentioned Portugal We're actually going to Portugal walking in a couple of weeks and Portugal for example is much cheaper than Italy a lot of the time So it also depends on on where you go but coming back to the book So you mentioned a few minutes ago as well. You mentioned money confidence and I think this and in the book You have these money personalities and many of my listeners as creatives and authors There's quite a lot of scarcity mindset in the author community Fear of of financial things. So maybe you could just talk about what this money personalities and how we get to money confidence Yeah, this is the the track that I took in the book was to before I could just say oh go live time freedom And having consistent income and take these extended periods of time off I I couldn't do it without addressing how I felt which was like well, can I afford this right and so the the money piece of it is extremely important The money personalities is something that I feel like I learned far too late in life and How I describe money personalities and there are different ways of talking about this, but it's it's based on how you were raised and experiences that you've had with money From when you were a child when your family and then what happened kind of in early life like how how has that impacted you behaviorally in terms of how you view money. So for example my Growing up we lived in a small rural part of the Midwest and so we had money. We didn't have a lot of money But I can remember every Saturday morning my mom clipping coupons right because that's how we bought our groceries And so I do come from this you know, let's get the most value out of everything that I buy and I'm gonna You know restrain my spending and because who knows if I'm going to have enough in the future kind of a constraints mentality Whereas I've met other people now that I've been an adult who Their parents had their own business and they had booms and busts and so there were good times and bad times And so when they get money they spend it so that they can enjoy it and I just I realized that people come with this I don't want to say baggage because it's a bad thing, but they people come with These experiences that influence how they think about what's possible as it relates to money and I think that For one people need to understand how what that is for them and how that works. I also think that You can use it then to your advantage in figuring out how to then gain the money confidence to step off into a life of time freedom So the three that I really highlight in the book are The one that is called what I call the money minimizer, which is the individual who Doesn't like to think about money or would rather rather not think about money or just doesn't Money is not a big part of their life or they feel constrained by money I have elements of this in my background and in this case a lot of times you may not need as much money to Live off of to be happy Which is actually a huge advantage because if you don't need as much money to live on then you don't have to go save up As much money or you don't need to make as much money the other type is the money manager and this is someone who's Much more into saving and investing and understanding how all this works This is the type of person that like a financial advisor loves to address because they have money to invest and this is someone who's Getting into their 401k right out of Into in their first job immediately and Compounding their wealth over 40 years. It sounds like you have a little bit of this in you based on what you were saying And there's some advantages to that too and then there's someone like my son who Despite all of the saving and investing in our family He wants nothing to do with it. He believes that if he wants more money He'll just go figure out a way to make more money and so this is the money maker It's the entrepreneurial type the person who's in sales the person who kind of can Manifest money and all of all of these different types of money personalities I think if if it is you there's ways that you can leverage those to figure out how to make money work for you So that you can have time freedom That's really interesting and I think with we have a money journey I know some people don't like the word journey, but I like it and when I I come from a very scarce background poor, let's just say it we know we were poor and For a while and then over time things kind of changed within various family members and I I think I really so I was a minimizer Just by upring it and then I discovered the maker and I manifested and I worked my butt off And did all of that and understood that you can make money you can earn it and make it in different ways And then I learned about investing and then became more of that manager But I absolutely was afraid of feeling stupid So I wondered if you might address that because this is what stopped me for a long time You know, I'm pretty smart person at least I think I am I can learn things But I just found the financial world just made me feel stupid And so I minimized it because I was like well if I don't I I'm not going to understand it Therefore, I'll just dismiss it and That fear of feeling stupid and other people might have fear of judgment or fear of all these different things Can you maybe talk about that and is the financial world really that difficult? It's so unfortunate that The reason people feel stupid is because I think the financial industry wants you to feel that way So that you then need their help to manage your money And it's full of acronyms and this and that and the other thing and it is not that Difficult. I think there's a little bit of math involved You know the numbers and I think if if people lean more to the The other side of their brain that there tends to be a little bit of fear there, but I I believe that there are basic concepts that can be understood like if you were to invest in something that covers a lot of stocks, it's called an index, right? And if you keep the costs low on it, you're going to earn much more money. I feel like there's 10 things that you could learn and it would get you 90% of the way there. It's just that you need to find the right resources to explain it to you in a way that's understandable. And I'll tell you this book is, it's kind of a lifestyle slash entrepreneurship slash money book, which is a unique combination. But the money chapters are some of those that I had to revisit like twice as much as the rest of them because it was so important to me that there was not a lot of acronyms and difficulty kind of getting through it. I just, I really wanted to break it down to the basics. And I don't know, I hope hopefully you felt that was the case when you read through those chapters because it's so easy to make it sound complicated so that then people feel that they need the support of the person who's explaining it in the complicated manner. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I totally do the one. I think when I discovered the low fee index funds, I was like, sorry, what if I just put some money in that, that's a good way to start. And I was like, really? Okay, then that's strange. And I, I, I think I had over complicated it in my mind. And as you say, the industry does that in a way. And the publishing industry does it too. I mean, you've obviously been learning loads of stuff about publishing in every single niche area. There's language that shuts out other people. But yeah. And also, I feel like as as a British person in the UK, obviously depending on the country you're in, there's different language as well. And yet so many of the books are American. So for example, your Roth IRA is, is an ISA here. And your 401k is a SIP. And then someone in Australia, it's something different, someone encountered it's something different. You know, and so that also makes it complicated was once you can do some mapping and to go, okay, when in your book, if you say an IRA or a 401k, this is what it is in my country, it kind of simplifies it. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I did take special care at the beginning of the book to say, I'm coming at this from an American angle. Yeah. But then I would also say what I was saying this to my husband the other day, I'm very grateful. And I know this isn't true for every country, but I'm very grateful that I can invest in American indexes and stocks and all of that kind of thing. I think you can invest globally as well as earn money globally. And I think that's really exciting. You know, as an individual person, I can do that. And like I've got investments in Australia because I lived there for a while. And that is actually a real privilege to be able to invest that way. And I didn't know how many Americans invest outside of America. Is that something you talk about? The only way that I've really seen it is through an American-based fund that invests in foreign companies and foreign countries. But no, not by buying something from the Australian market, for example. Yeah. But you made me realize I need to create a little cheat sheet that just shows, okay, we're talking a company retirement account. What is it called in all of these countries? That'd be nice. You know, just a nice little cheat sheet for people. Yeah, and it literally, most of the time, it's really a one-to-one because, as you said, it's not that complicated. But yeah, it is. When I was learning all about this, I was in Australia. And just so much of the information is from Americans. So you have to do this translation in your brain. So yeah, that'll be a super useful cheat sheet. Okay. So in terms of other things, you've mentioned obviously enjoying your work. But you talk about different ways to build flexibility into your work. So it's not all or nothing. So what are some of the ways that people might do that? Yeah, I think this is one where you have to think, okay, am I employed or am I self-employed? Because I think there is a big distinction there in terms of what you're able to do. And again, shout out for early readers of books. But early reader of my book suggested that in addition to just saying, "Oh, you know, live by a seasonal schedule and take three months off in the summer," they said, "What are some other things that we can do to get toward that, right, so that we can take incremental steps?" And so some of these ideas can be done by anyone that's working in a more typical employer position or others might need to be if you're in an entrepreneurial kind of scenario. But I feel like a lot of it comes down to how you can structure the work. So at least in America more and more of these days, there are more companies than usually they're smaller in the mid-sized ones, but where you can find companies that are doing four by ten hour schedules. So you're getting like working four days and having three days off, which then gives you like a Friday every week to do something that you want to do or start to build a skill that you could then turn into something that you could do independently like starting as a side hustle and then moving into something differently like that. Other early strategies that I've seen people do just to experience what it's like to take an extended period of time off, like especially in America, this isn't done that much, is to take a two week trip that you have over the holidays and put a week on the front of it and a week at the end of it and have a full four week, full four weeks off. During a time of year, that's usually a little slower anyway, so it's a lot easier to perhaps have your manager approve of that, but these are just a couple of ideas on the on the self-employed side. I have seen more than a couple people now work this schedule where they do three weeks on and one week off and then three weeks on and one week off and then just figured out how to put the systems in place in their business to allow for that one week to be away. And I guess if you're just taking off for a week every three weeks or a week every month, you're never so far away from the work that needs to get done. It's just a different style, but what happens is if you can do some of these different techniques and then you add them all up, it almost adds up to the amount of time of a full three months off. And so again, you just have to test and try it out and do these different strategies based on the type of work that you do in the place of employment that you have to see what might work. And also almost just planet, like I said before about that person who wanted to go to New Orleans, you know, choose a time next year, like eight, six months time or nine months time and just book a flight. It doesn't have to be that hard, does it? No, no, that's right. And there's other like, now that I was kind of talking schedules, but there's other things that you can try to start to create work that's more flexible, like for example, like something that often happens in in America at least is you're working in a corporate setting, somebody retires, but that person has so much skill and knowledge about the business that then they immediately turn around and are hired back as an independent consultant. And early in my career, I just saw this happen all the time and I remember thinking, why did they have to wait until they turn 65 and retire before they do that? Couldn't you just say, hey, I've decided to leave my corporate position, but I'm going to become an independent consultant because I have a valuable set of skills. And I'm going to turn around and just contract back to where I used to work initially as like that first step. But that's kind of an interesting technique. This you had highlighted the idea of like a hobbyist entrepreneur. This is usually the one that sometimes a lot of existing retirees will do right out of the bat. Like I met a friend of my wife's parents. I had a very successful corporate career. And as soon as he finished up, again, people that are productive, I think struggle when they immediately retire. And so he's like, I need to figure out something to do. And he flexed his creative side. And they lived in Northern Wisconsin, which is a fishing is a big thing there. So he would craft these large like fish mounts, but out of wood, he wouldn't make these wooden fish that were very creative and very cool. And they would like have golf teeth for teeth and some like that. So you could sell them to people that like golf. And he created them for all of his friends. And then he ended up with some sort of Etsy store that he sold a bunch of these. And then after a while, he's like, yeah, now it's too much like a job. So I'm going to do something different. But it's just little ways that you can make money here and there that allows you to work on some things that you are interested in. Yeah, and it's interesting because the other thing about the sort of retire retire and live off your pension idea is that the the assumption is you'll never earn any money ever again. And so you'll just be drawing down on that money. But even as you say like that, that guy with the wooden fish, if you can make even five, an extra 5,000 in a year or an extra 10,000 in a year, you don't have to draw that down from the pot of money that you saved or invested or your pension or whatever. So that actually means that it can last longer. And so I feel like people forget that even the smaller amounts of money, which you can make as an author as well, you know, or a speaker, as you say, and these are things that just mean your retirement potentially can be better. financially as well. It does and it's another another thing that it gives you is the ability like when maybe the market is down for two years and then it's hard to pull money out of your savings when it is negative right and in those months then you or in those years or whatever it happens to be you say oh well maybe I'm going to do my little side gig that I'm going to do twice as much this year because that'll allow me to spend that money instead of having to pull it out of a down market. Yeah exactly. So we do talk about the business of being an author on this show and at the beginning you mentioned that writing this book was part of developing authority so that maybe you can also get speaking. So how does this book fit into your business? Is it purely business card authority or are you is it designed as an income stream as well and any advice for other people who want to do something similar? Yeah it's so interesting you said the phrase up like a better business card kind of concept and I when I think of that I think of some of the places that will teach you how to like write a book in a weekend or a month or three months or something like that and I was very wary of that I really wanted to have a book that stood on its own so I think of my book as more than a business card certainly but something that's really the foundation of my business so here's how it kind of flows for me so the ultimate product that I sell is I invest people's money for them at half the cost because I that's very important to me and in a way that is commensurate with somebody that wants to live this type of lifestyle so that's ultimately what my service offering is the way that people enter my world is kind of I have the like a quiz a little nine question quiz that's my little lead product that I use but that gets them interested in this idea of time freedom if if they come across time freedom or they are interested in financial freedom and they're searching around for a book the book is the main thing and there's I'll tell you I've left nothing out of the book like the book contains everything that I ever did everything that I ever do for clients it's all there and I learned again that from somebody early in the process which is like you don't want to hold anything back in a book a business book you know business related book because I don't know it's just not right the thing is people some people will go and run with it which is great but some people need accountability or they need someone to hold their hand which is fine or they need you know in some way need to connect with you and that is then where you offer the next level so somebody could read my book and do everything themselves or I also a few times a year offer a group coaching program where basically we go through the book we prepare what I call a time freedom plan which is like a financial plan with the individuals in the group and again it's it's crazy there's nothing that I'm helping with that's not already in the book so we go through the concepts we prepare our time freedom formula we use the time freedom calculator that I have that's again available for free anyone can use it but we work on all these things together to prepare a time freedom plan and what a time freedom plan it is what ultimately gives you the money confidence to live this lifestyle so you project the money that you're going to earn and spend through the rest of your life to give you confidence that you're not going to run out and then that allows you to step off into time freedom in a year or three years or 10 years or whatever it takes and then as part of that process there are a certain number of people that will have some money that need to be invested and managed in a way and for those people then those people can turn into customers of mine on the investment management side so that's kind of how it flows and so I have a huge goal to just get this book out to as many people as possible because I want to help as many people as possible of course but then also some small percentage of the people that read the book will ultimately want to work with me. No that's great and that is the sort of textbook ladder that's a nonfiction author does but I also I love that you put everything into the book I think it's super useful I really enjoyed it I think it's got some good questions in even if you are I guess someone who is already investing like me it's good to think about the time freedom as well as the financial side so where can people find you and the book and everything you do online? Well people can find the book anywhere books are sold that's wonderful I do have a podcast as well but everything is linked to from kind of my initial website which is timefreedom.life so you can find everything there. Brilliant well thanks so much for your time Brian that was fantastic thank you so much this is a true pleasure so I hope you found the interview with Brian interesting and it's made you think about your time and money in a different way and just a reminder of my books on money I have a list at the creative pen.com/moneybooks not books written by me but books I recommend and the psychology of money by Morgan Houseall is another good place to start if you haven't read that getting to grips with your money is one of the most empowering things you can do and it doesn't have to be difficult so let me know what resonated with you from the interview and also from my introduction leave a comment on the podcast show notes at the creative pen.com or on the youtube channel or email me Joanna at the creative pen.com send me pictures of where you're listening or your favorite cemetery or churchyard next week I'm talking about writing and creativity in midlife with Jordan Rosenfeld so happy writing and I'll see you next time thanks for listening today I hope you found it helpful you can find the backlist episodes and show notes at the creative pen.com/podcast and you can get your free author blueprint at the creative pen.com/blueprint if you'd like to connect you can find me on facebook and x at the creative pen or on instagram and facebook at js pen author happy writing and I'll see you next time