Thursday is the New Friday with Joe Sanok
Have you been wondering how you can level up your business without burning out?
That’s just one of the many great topics I discussed with guest Joe Sanok on the latest episode of Empathy Rising.
Joe explained how he reaches greater levels of success in his business without crashing and burning.
It’s a really helpful discussion for those of us that want to build a business in a mentally and emotionally sustainable way.
CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN!
Full Show Notes (Transcript)…
Hey, risers. Welcome to episode 124 of Empathy Rising. I am so excited to introduce, well, probably not introduce, just to hang out with this guest today and have you be a fly on the wall in our conversation. Our guest today actually needs no introduction, it is Joe Sanok of The Practice of the Practice.
I have had the honor of being on Joe's show a couple of times, two or three times I think, as well as being a presenter at one of his amazing conferences, Killin' It Camp. Joe just really knows what he's doing, not only for clinicians but in the business world, and I really am excited to bring this show to you.
Joe has written a book, a traditionally published book by Harper Collins, like the big deal, something that I secretly aspire to doing myself, and that book is called Thursday is the New Friday. Go ahead and grab your copy, you can grab it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Any of the big retailers or at your favorite locally owned, independent, preferably person of color bookstore, where you can support a small business as well.
Anywhere that you buy books, you can grab a copy of Thursday is the New Friday. Joe is going to be sharing a little bit about his journey through growing his business, how he started out, as you know, a side gig consultant and grew this Practice of the Practice over the last decade or so and how it's culminated... I wouldn't say culminated... how it has now in this season transpired into a book. And we'll see what else Joe has in store for us over the next decade.
So I hope you get some nuggets and glean some wisdom from our conversation today, and let's dive into my talk with Joe Sanok.
[Marissa]: Hey guys, our guest today obviously needs no introduction. We're talking with the awesome and fabulous Joe Sanok. He's going to be sharing all about his new book today, which is really something that I'm looking forward to. I've pre-ordered several copies of it to give out to my close and trusted friends, but we're going to hear about not only what the book talks about, but I'd really love to hear his journey toward authorship as well.
So Joe, if you could just give us a very brief rundown, talk to us a little bit about how you started as a clinician and then your evolution. And then we can jump into some of this stuff that you're writing about and sharing about.
[Joe]: Yeah, thank you so much. You know, I took a very traditional path after grad school. I worked at residential facilities for angry kids all through undergrad and grad school. I worked at a runaway shelter and loved working with angry teenagers. Then eventually started working in a wraparound program through community mental health and worked in the court system and was a foster care supervisor, eventually.
And then I landed the golden handcuffs of a community college counselor job and thought that I was just going to retire there and have a pension and all that. But I started a counseling practice on the side in 2009 just to pay off student loan debt, and kept adding clinicians to that, and had four clinicians working for me while I had my full-time job and would scoot over at lunchtime or after work here and there.
And I remember there was a day I was coming back from my corner office view of the water at my private practice side gig, back to my basement office at the community college and realize I'm making more, you know, working outside of here than I am in my 40-hour job. And so started to transition in 2014, I was doing Practice of the Practice at the time also, and then eventually sold my counseling practice in 2019 and now exclusively do the consulting work and writing and podcasting as my main.
[M]: Did you kind of always know you were an entrepreneur or is this something you fell into and then really enjoyed and kind of cultivated more of?
[J]: I hated business. I thought it was slimy. The only business experience I had had is I had some friends that said, we're selling this new technology door to door and you can make a thousand dollars per sale.
Like, do you want to do it? I'm like, sure. That sounds great. And this quote, new technology, was a vacuum system. And so I entered into this pyramid scheme where I just sold a handful of vacuums over a summer. And they taught me slimy ways to sell this $2,000 vacuum in trailer parks. And it was just like, if this is business, I want nothing to do with it.
But I realized that when you don't believe in the product, it's a lot harder to sell the product. Then when, you know, when I had a counseling practice, it was like, people need this. I need to help people understand that counseling can help them. And how do I market it? And so it really shifted when it was my own counseling practice and saying, I didn't learn any of these business skills at all.
And then it got really fun because I was doing it my own way. I realized I didn't have to do these slimy tactics that I had initially been introduced to.
[M]: So, do you carry any of those old tactics over or did you learn what not to do from that and kind of did it... does it shape at all how you run your business now?
[J]: I mean, I think that there are tactics, like setting a time limit on something, or, you know, helping people understand the value and the function of a product that I learned.
But it's more, how do you do that in a way that doesn't feel super high pressure? Cause to me, if I'm on a pre-consulting call with people, I always start with we have enough people applying for every phase of help in practice that I just want you to have the best fit and I'm not going to try to sell you into something you don't need. And so some people might call that a tactic to have someone let their guard down.
That's honestly how I feel, you know, I don't want to put someone in a $20,000 podcasting program that we offer if really they could do it themselves, and they have the time and they want to bootstrap it and go through podcast launch school.
So I genuinely have that posture of I'm not going to upsell you or down-sell you. I'm going to just say here's where I think based on what you've told me you should be. And then if someone says that's too expensive or I want to move faster, we can always go up in sales or down in sales. But I dunno, I think that making people feel like if they don't buy today then they don't get it and that high pressure, it's a little much for me.
[M]: Right, okay. So same type of question, but different topic. Did you always know you were going to be an author? Did you always know you were going to write a book or is that something that you kind of fell in?
[J]: I've definitely always enjoyed writing. So I used to write for the Western Herald, Western Michigan University's college paper. So I had an opinion column in there and I've enjoyed writing for different publications before, blogs were a big thing. So writing's always been something I've enjoyed and felt like came pretty easily for me.
So writing a book was definitely on the map, but it was figuring out what my unique kind of approach was to figure out my superpower in writing and not just regurgitating things that have already been said.
[M]: Yeah. Cause a lot of times, especially in the online space, you'll hear, write a book first, and then that's a low-price way to get in front of a lot of people and you can build an audience that way, but you've been doing Practice of the Practice since what, 2014, you said?
[J]: It was 2012. And I did publish books through their self-publish on Amazon just to kind of build some authority. But I would say it was more repurposing content that people may want to read.
[M]: That's interesting. So do you think... like almost a decade in, what was it about going the traditionally published route? And what was it about, you know, creating this book Thursday is the new Friday?
[J]: So every year I've really taken to heart what Jay Papasan and Gary Keller say in The One Thing: what's the one thing that if you do that, it'll make everything else easier.
And actually just yesterday we had Jeff Woods from The One Thing podcast come into Ask the Expert with Next Level Practice. It was awesome. He just blew our minds and helped us really focus in on our one thing. So every year I say like, what's that one thing. So early on it was: if I can get consulting clients that are twice the price of my regular counseling clients, that that's like a two for one.
And then it was: if I have a couple of mastermind groups where people are paying a certain amount. Now I'm going from one-on-one to one, to a handful. And then it was: if I can start next level practice where we've got a membership community, then I have predictable income. And so every year there's been this kind of big push of the new thing.
And of course, we have to keep the current things going, the ones that are pretty automated and, you know, the team is supporting it. Less of my time, then I can put that creative energy into the thing that opens unexpected doors. So in late 2018, I'm kind of looking forward. I said, you know, for the next two years, I really want to focus on having a traditionally published book that's a New York Times bestseller.
So it was just like, if that happens, that's gonna open a lot of doors and make a lot of things easier, hypothetically. And so I started that process where every time there was an author that was traditionally published on my pocket, I would just say to them, you know, I'm shopping around for a new agent and we'd love an introduction to your agent and they'd say, oh, okay.
And by a new agent, I meant I don't have one. It wasn't lying, but it was also "acting as if", which is something that I talk about in the book of how you can step into things without lying but also saying here's what I want. So within about a month 14 or so like solid book agents that I was talking with, I interviewed all of them.
There were two that really stood out that felt like our individual points of view really lined up. And then one of them lived in Austin and I was going down to Austin for a front-row dad's retreat. And so I met with my agent, Greg. We had lunch, great fit. He had a really big vision for kind of what I could do.
Then when I gave him kind of my first draft of my book proposal, he said this is kind of trash and we need to have you with a writing coach because I didn't know what I was doing. I mean, I had a friend who had done a New York Times bestseller and she had given me her proposal.
And then I just kind of copied the same format, but with my own content. And he was just like, no, like this is not good. So I actually worked with a writing coach from, I would say, April of 2019 until February of 2020 working on just the proposal. So this 20-page proposal. Outlining every chapter. I mean, every Thursday she and I would meet and she would just get me talking and I'm like, what are we doing here?
And she was pulling out these elements of Joe, here's your secret sauce. Here's what you've done with people. Here's the case studies. And so she helped me really organize the overall book, but then it was a lot easier to shop it around because she knows the industry she's able to... she used to be a Harper Collins editor.
So she knows what people are buying and what they just bought and you know, what they're interested in. So it made the actual proposal that we could position it where there was a gap in the market already.
[M]: Okay, there's three things from what you just said that I want to unpack, and then we'll dive into Thursday's the New Friday.
First thing, when you were talking about The One Thing, like what's the one thing this year, what's the one thing next year, or whatever, is there ever a cap? Like, is there ever enough or do you kind of just believe it's always about development, it's always about the next level?
[J]: Yeah, that's a really good question because I would say that for me, it's less about "Ooh, I need to make this much money this coming year.
I need to do these things". I do think that from a financial standpoint, there can be enough is enough and for me, it's never coming from, oh, I need a bigger yacht. I don't even have a yacht. So it's like, I mean, to me, if people are impressed by my money, those aren't the friends that I want to have anyway.
So yesterday I was walking with my friend and we went and watched the sunset, went swimming. And you know we were college roommates and I said to him, you know, no matter how much money I have, I'm still cheapskate Joe, you know? Like where I try to just live a life where going for a hike and watching a sunset is more amazing than almost anything else.
So for me, it's more living my deepest potential and impact on the world. And so to say like, what really could I do to impact the world. And the idea that Henry Ford in 1926 is pretty much responsible for the 40-hour workweek, less than a hundred years ago, that we could start a conversation or join a conversation around shifting for our entire society into a four-day workweek and that I could be some part of a societal shift, that to me is the exciting part.
So it's less about just "I need to make more money or have more influence", but more like, "what can we do for humanity that we can look at history, learn from it and then say, what's our role right now as the generation that's post-pandemic and can absolutely shift society to be healthier".
[M]: A hundred percent. I want to follow up on that, but I want to get my other two points before I forget them. The second thing that I wanted to follow up with was that "acting as if" like you guys can't see me, but when Joe was talking, like my eyes were wide and I was just like, that's amazing because he wasn't talking about the agents like "I'd really like to find an agent. I'm thinking about a new book".
Sometimes it sounds like semantics, but the fact that the words that you chose with "I'm looking for a new agent, I'm actively seeking a new agent", or I forget exactly what you said, but it's just a shift in energy. It's a shift in mindset and yeah, no, you didn't have an agent, you'd never done it before, but the way you approached it, people were like, oh, of course, I'll introduce you to mine. So can you elaborate on that a little bit? Cause I thought that was fascinating.
[J]: I think what's interesting is we think that there's people that have their act so together that they don't have any internal monologue or internal dialogue. And as I hang out with bigger and bigger influencers... like I was just a podcast movement and had the opportunity to hang out with Kate and John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneur on Fire like a ton. I mean, I hung out till like four 30 in the morning playing corn hole with JLD at a bar.
Even the John Lee Dumas' of the world, like, when you really dig in have their own stuff they have to work through and their own people that they look up to that they want to be like. And I think that we hope that there's just this time that we feel like we've arrived and we get rid of that.
And of course, we do our own self-development. We maybe are more grounded. We have our own tools like meditation or whatever we have to feel more secure in ourselves. But if we can act as if, and just realize that there's a lot of people that are acting as if, they all feel like they have imposter syndrome or they're like, what am I doing on this stage?
Or I can't believe this many people are even listening to my podcast and just realize that that's just part of the human experience. That feeling like uncomfortable in our own skin at times is what it takes to get to that next level. And so I'm constantly trying to push myself to have those new experiences where I feel uncomfortable, where I say, what am I doing here?
Cause then things open up where you realize how there's a lot of people that feel that way. And really it comes down to that. Like we're human in a much deeper way than maybe we give these celebrities credit for.
[M]: And I think your mental health background, you know, speaking for the listeners, I think our mental health background, it gives us such a unique perspective on entrepreneurship.
We understand that human experience differently than somebody who didn't take this path. They went the traditional business or corporate path or whatever. They have a totally different outlook. And so I think that that gives us a unique superpower when we are going to the next level or where we are acting as if because we can understand people from a different state.
[J]: Yeah, and I think that even just the ability to have conversations differently. There was someone that I got to meet at Podcast Movement that I've respected their work for 10 years and are just like this big-league person. And I ended up talking to him and he's a father of three girls. And so we talked for an hour about that, cause I have two girls and I'm a single dad.
And what do I do to like, be a great dad? And we talked for an hour about raising girls and it just was the kind of conversation you just want to have instead of just diving into the business world. I think then, I mean, of course, that's going to have business benefits because, you know, the next day I was having coffee and just sitting alone and kind of getting ready for the day and this person came over and sat down with me.
And so in some ways that I guess made me look good to the people around me, but that wasn't the point. It was that I connected with this person on an emotional level and the skill set that I have as a therapist that just come naturally to ask those deeper questions to go there. So you're absolutely right.
[M]: Yeah. We have such skills that we don't realize the business world just doesn't always a hundred percent. Alright, my third follow-up topic was the fact that you got help, right? Like 10 years into business. And you're sitting here saying I don't know what I don't know. And there are people who do know this stuff, they're connected in the industry, and they can help me get to my goal of New York Times bestseller and all that stuff.
So was there any humility or did you eat any crow getting help, or were you like, no, I'm getting a coach today?
[J]: You know, one thing I've really realized as I've got to know some of these really high achieving folks that are doing things that I want to play at that level is there's so much... I don't want to say pay to play. Cause that seems like you're paying to get through the door, but maybe pay to speed up that we're past the information age and we're definitely in the implementation age.
And so, I mean, to have a writing coach that knew the industry that could say, this is exactly how we're going to position you. Here's the type of book we're going to pitch it as it sped things up. So 0.5% of books that even get read by Harper Collins, of the pitches, I got to be read by Harper Collins.
And then of those, I got an interview with them where I'm interviewing them, they're interviewing me. And then I got a contract because this lady and my agent were all on that call. They'd done the work. So seeing how these top performers often are hiring people, if they want to start a mastermind group, they'll hire the best in the industry.
They'll hire Jamie Masters from The Eventual Millionaire to teach them how do you run an amazing mastermind group. If someone wants to grow in their health outcomes, they'll hire other people that are just amazing at it, or even fly that person to their house and drop 10 grand for them to come, which are numbers that I, the average person, doesn't have the privilege to play with.
But what's that next small step to be an equal with some of these people even hosting a drink meetup with John Lee Dumas, where it was like, I'm going to give Entrepreneurs on Fire a thousand dollars to get drinks for their people, like that puts me in a positioning. That's different by saying, I want to be an equal with you. I will give you money for your people. And then JLD is like, hey, Joe's the one that's sponsoring this. You should have him on your podcast.
Like that does something different to the dynamic than just saying, like I'm below somebody constantly, you know, where I'm kind of looking up to them. And so it's interesting to see how, if you want to kind of get to that next level sometimes, doing a bulk book buy from someone to get on their radar or, you know, saying, hey, I'd like to buy 50 books from my audience, like it just helps you play at a different level.
And it's an investment in yourself that at least for me with this phase has just made things multiply so much faster than if I had tried to bootstrap it at this level.
[M]: Okay, so a couple of things, I think what you just, the way you phrased it at the end connected with me a little bit more, seeing it as an investment in yourself. Like, it's not like, hey, let me give you money so you notice me. It's like, okay, this is going to have a return for me. And the return on this investment is. So there's intentionality there a little bit.
And also what would you say, cause my listeners and me, we're certainly not on this level that you're talking about right now... hopefully, one day, right? But like, I wouldn't tell my listeners necessarily like go in debt for your business at this point, because you want to get in the room with this person or whatever.
So I don't like the term pay your dues, but is there a little bit of that? Like, you know, delay some of the stuff, it's okay to be at the level that you're at now knowing that maybe you're working toward these higher levels, or how do you...
[J]: Yeah. I mean, it's taken me a decade to get to this point. And so I think a lot of people, I think it was Gary V that said people overestimate what they can do in a year. And they underestimate what they can do in a decade. I mean, that's so true. It's like, it took me saying, okay, I'm charging $150 purse counseling session. I need to charge $300 for consulting.
And then I had a handful of those people for a year. And then the next year it was like, I'm going to do a mastermind group and launched that and then got that going, right? It's not like this just happened. It's these small steps that every single year kept positioning me for something bigger.
And so I think a lot of times we want to just fast forward and say, I want the book deal. But traditional publishers, they want to see an audience. They want to see that you can sell the book as much as they can sell it. They want to see that you have the hustle that, you know, my August and September, which are like the most beautiful months in Michigan of the year, I'm going to be on constant podcasts for four days a week.
Like yesterday I went from 8:00 AM till 6:00 PM with a 15-minute break. I was like planning out, when am I even going to go to the bathroom? Why did I do it this way? So publishers want to see that level of hustle and push, especially right before a book launches.
And so to be able to plan that out and see, okay, this is what I'm willing to do for a period of time to make sure this is my single focus, that doesn't happen overnight for most people.
[M]: So let's dive into Thursday's the New Friday, because there's a couple of things that you've talked about so far that are remind me of your book and also are really kind of in line with what I'm experiencing as well.
So my audience has heard this story, but I had kind of a profound experience with quarantine and with the pandemic. Like some existential crisis, which I think all of us were going through. But like, you know, my husband's in the army, the most like locked down contractual occupation you can have.
And then I have this like freedom-based, time-based, uh, location... whatever, you know what I'm trying to say, a business that can go with me anywhere. And I'm saying there was this tension because it was like, why are we living here anymore? Why are we in the south, in this area that I don't care for? Weather-wise, mentality-of-the-people wise, like, why am I here?
And it's because we're stuck here, contractually stuck here. So there was this push and pull and this tension that we experienced, but it did kind of open up his eyes to potential and to possibility.
And the other thing that happened for me is this idea of slowing down, which is something that I know you mentioned. We, my kids and I, we dug in the dirt for like hours. We found roly-polies and we planted a garden and some of the stuff that we had just been quote, unquote, too busy to do before.
And part of my calling, and I've been mentioning this, dripping this into the podcast here is a little bit of this societal change, this structural change, which is what you were kind of mentioning before. So let's dive into the book, let's dive into all these things that you're kind of talking about in Thursday's the New Friday.
[J]: Well, I think a lot of people during the pandemic had a similar experience to you where there was a push and pull. A lot of us were busier than we expected in some areas by having our kids in zoom school and all of that. And then in another areas, we had a lot of freedom because maybe we didn't have as many of the social pressures to go to this and go to that.
So we found ourselves with extra time to just try new hobbies. I mean, for me, it was sourdough bread and Tiger King, you know, for a lot of people that was that. But every single day we had a non-negotiable afternoon walk. I was like, we're going to move our bodies every single day rain or shine. And we just had a saying that there's no such thing as bad weather, just bad dressing and so rain and sleet and everything and we had some of the most fun in the worst weather when we should not.
But it gave us a little sense of adventure. And so I think what you're tapping into is that we know that slowing down helps us do better work. When we're maxed out, when we're stressed out, that's not when we do good work. But as a society, we've allowed it to get away from us where, you know, most people they're working Monday through Friday.
You know, if you're lucky, eight to five, usually you're doing email after the kids are in bed or on the weekend. You might be getting texts from an assistant or whatever the structure of your business is. And then on the weekends, you know, maybe Friday night, have friends over, or then you have soccer practice on Saturday, and then you got to go somehow get the food for your house and keep it clean and mow your lawn.
And then by Sunday, you're like crap, Monday's right around the corner. And you're just stressed out all the time. And so stop for a second and say like, what is the history of time into how we got here? I mean, when I started writing this book this wasn't even a part of the pitch, but I just thought like, how did we even get the seven-day week?
It doesn't even make sense in nature. You know, the earth goes around the sun in a year and it spins for a day, but there's no seven days in nature that naturally occurs. So I dug into it and several thousand years ago, the Babylonians, they had seven major celestial things that they observed the sun, the moon, earth, mercury, Venus, Mars, and Jupiter.
So they said, let's do a seven-day week. The Romans had a 10 day week. The Egyptians had an eight-day week. It wasn't even until around 300 when the emperor of Rome became a Christian that he said, let's make it a seven-day week. And so if we just start with a seven-day week is completely made up, we could totally have a five-day week and have 73 of them in a year.
So then fast forward to the late 1800s, early 1900s, the average person was working 10 to 14 hours a day, six to seven days a week. They were just working all the time. And then Henry Ford in 1926 said Ford is going to switch over to a 40 hour week because he wanted to sell more cars to his own people.
His idea is that people aren't going to buy a car to get to work faster, but they will buy a car to get to recreation on the weekend faster. So it was literally to sell more cars.
[M]: And you're from Michigan, so you probably know this, but you know, employees and kids of employees from like Chevy, they get their employee discounts or their employee rebates. I wonder, did that come from Ford?
[J]: Yeah, I mean, Ford's whole thing was to sell cars and so, you know, people start buying these cars and that was a great shift for society going from working as much as evolution. But if we say, okay, let's fast forward to the eighties and nineties, Friday started to slowly disappear into the weekend.
It was when we hosted birthday parties at work, when we have a baby shower, we might do a cheesy team-building activity. I like to joke that, you know, Friday has been having an affair with the weekend for a really long time. Let's just call it what it is. Cause the productivity we see on Friday just isn't the same as Monday.
And then the pandemic hits. And we just see that the way that we've been working does not have to be the way that we continue working. And so I would actually argue the industrialist mindset was very helpful for a period of time. But we've outgrown that and we're ready to evolve past it. We don't think about people as machines that are stagnant.
That they're just how they are. There's so many things that the industrialists gave us that were important for the time, but no longer applicable to us. I'd say we're moving into more of an evolutionary model for both our businesses and for us personally.
[M]: There's so much there, and I love that you're talking about seasons and cycles because this is the stuff that I've been just fascinated by. And it's true, like we have four seasons. Spring, summer, fall, winter, is an observable measure of time, but this arbitrary assignment of seven days - who says?
Okay, so an emperor and, you know, we can go with historical stuff. But now today I think that we are more in the driver's seat. We get to say. I think as entrepreneurs, of course, we get to say, but even employees.
One of my students inside hustle right now, she's creating a program for remote workers and one of her modules is how to ask your company to be a remote worker, you know? And so it's not only entrepreneurs that are driving this anymore. It's employees of companies that are driving this.
[J]: A hundred percent. There's this guy, Ted, or who works at Kalamazoo Valley Community College. So very traditional institution. He's an HVAC instructor, so he's teaching people how to run heating, cooling. I mean, just a very kind of blue-collar guy. So he started noticing that in the summertime on Fridays, there were very few student cars in the parking lot.
So every Friday he went up on the roof and he took a picture. Every single Friday for a whole summer. And then he started running the numbers because colleges like large buildings, you either turn the AC on or you turn it off. It's not like our home where it can fluctuate and you have the heat and it's more agile.
So he actually ran the numbers on if we just turn off the AC on Thursday night, how much money will we save? And he figured out that over the years, it would be millions of dollars. And so KVCC switched over to a four-day workweek in the summertime several years ago, and they've saved millions of dollars on just AC costs, but there's a lot of unintended things like better health outcomes for their staff.
They have their staff work 36 hours instead of 40. HR "donates" the last four hours of the week. So the offices are open a little bit longer. They have more flexible schedules. So then the students now have better outcomes because they can come in earlier. They can come in later to offices. And then also you look at just staff retention for these traditional businesses, where, who wants to leave a job that you have a four-day workweek in the summertime.
And so if people are going to stay there longer, if somebody leaves a position, oftentimes it'll take six or 12 months or even longer for that new person to get up to speed. So you're not losing any of that either. And so when businesses start to look at it, in countries, you're actually seeing that the productivity stays the same or better, the creativity goes up in the wellness goes up.
[M]: So let's say we all moved to this Thursday as a new Friday, we're talking about wellness. We're talking about extra time, at the kind of surface level of this, but something that I experienced this year late, well, I guess late 2019, but then 2020 was insane. And so really I've really noticed it in 2021.
But I brought on an OBM basically, an online business manager, and she handles a lot of the stuff that I used to do behind the scenes. So really I show up for this business, like once a week or no, sorry, one week a month. And then I have three weeks where I might be seeing my students and stuff, but I'm not doing like the marketing or any like output really.
And there is an adjustment period of restlessness. Like, what do I do? I'm so used to being so wound up and now I've unwound. I've hired. I've made a move in my business to give myself more time. And not only do I not know what to do at that time, but I am anxious and restless, like having an emotional experience to this extra time. Is that common or what have you seen, or did you do any research on that kind of stuff?
[J]: Yeah, so that's actually super normal that people have that type of reaction. And I even see that on a micro-level at Slowdown School, when, you know, the first day we're genuinely sitting around and we're going for hikes, we bring in a massage therapist and yoga teacher, and people are like, "I want to talk business.
I mean, I've been, I've been listening to your podcast forever". We're not talking business until Wednesday. And then often what happens is Tuesday morning, they wake up and it's like, this film has been lifted from their face. They've been given permission to just slow down and skip stones and play spike ball on the beach.
But I think that there is an adjustment where we've been so addicted to our business, and I actually go into some of the research of overvaluing work and undervaluing fun, and just refining ourselves. And you know, so much oftentimes of our ego, our creativity, our self-worth comes from what we do for work, which isn't necessarily bad.
We want what we do in our work to help the world, to mirror our values. All those things are good things, but oftentimes we've done it at such a pace that it actually doesn't do the best version of us. And so by pulling that pace back and feeling that anxiety and wondering like, okay, what's going on here in Joe or in Marissa, where we slow down and we have all these narratives, that's good to work through that.
So I remember when I changed my schedule so that I could go work out every morning. And it was like, you know, I'd work out from nine to 10 30 or so I'd go swimming or whatever. And I remember having all these weird narratives, like what if people think that I'm unemployed? What if people think that I'm ultra-wealthy?
What if people think it's just like, who cares? That there's a bunch of like 80 and 90-year-old guys that are working out at the gym at that time and I, one of the few people, my age they're like, who gives a rip. And so it was good for me to work through that and just say, I want to feel uncomfortable and I want to be able to design the life I want to live. You know what, it's good for me to address that discomfort and work through it.
[M]: Yeah, that's so funny. Whenever I'm at a cafe working on my laptop, people think I'm a student. They're like, well, what classwork are you working on? Actually, I'm running a multi-six-figure business, but thanks. And so funny, the stories that people assume or the stories we think people are assuming. So what tips do you have for people to start slowing down?
[J]: Yeah, I would say first let's look at setting some hard boundaries and some soft boundaries. So for example, if I had a pre-consulting call with someone and they said I'm only available on Fridays to do consulting with you, I would never say yes to them.
I mean, I wrote a book about taking Fridays off. That's a value that I hold. And so that's a hard boundary that I'm not going to take on a client that needs me 24/7 is going to be texting me at 11 at night is going to want to work with me on a Friday. No, that's just not when I'm working. And so I'm not a fit and maybe there might be someone else that's a fit that I can refer you to.
Also having very clear bookends for those hard boundaries. So every day that I go up to work, I give my girls a hug and I say, daddy's going to work. And then they may go off to be with my sister, or they may be with my parents. They might be on the iPad for a little bit. And then when I'm not working I say daddy's home from work and they give hugs.
So they know that I'm back. That I am not going to be multitasking and thinking about work and then on email. And if I do need to do that, I'll say, you know, I'm not done with work. I'll say, I'll give you hugs, but I need to focus on some email for half an hour. Do you want to set a timer for me? So you can tell daddy when to get off the computer.
And so setting some very clear boundaries, not just for yourself, but for the people in your life, because what kid wants to get yelled at because you're interrupting mommy or daddy now to just say I'm going to work now, this door is closed. Don't interrupt. They've never interrupted throughout the entire pandemic because they knew that boundary.
So then I would say there's also soft boundaries to set. So what are the soft boundaries? So for example, if something happens on a Friday morning and my director of details just says, oh my gosh, your lawyer just sent this. And these things are going on and things are exploding with Whitney and Alison, and there's all of these things in the podcast world.
Like, I'm not going to just let my business fall apart. I'm going to address it and try to take care of it if it's a genuine emergency. If it can be delayed till Monday, I'll do that. And so I think setting those things is important. And then the last thing I would recommend is to add one thing and subtract one thing.
And so what I mean by add something is have something scheduled that you have to do. So for example, every Wednesday, I'm part of an improv group. It's so funny. I laugh. It's an hour and a half of my week that I don't think about anything other than being in the moment and making these other people laugh that I find hilarious.So that's locked in.
A couple of years ago, I started curling cause I thought it was just a weird sport. I thought I want to learn to curl. So I started curling so that that's locked in. And so adding something to your schedule either on the weekend or throughout the week, it's in there and you can't let other people down.
And then I would say subtract one thing. So is that mowing your lawn? If you find that there's one thing that just you can tell that it just weighs on you. I mean for one summer we hired someone just cause I was sick of folding laundry to just come up, and it was when our kids were really little, to just come up and fold their teeny tiny shirts.
And not everyone has all the privilege to be able to, you know, buy all these people to help. But there's probably one area that, you know, the $15 an hour you might pay, someone is really going to emotionally help you, you know, to have them come for two hours a week to pay that $30 or $40 to someone to help.
And so really figuring out a couple of things that you can add and that you can subtract really helps you have a stronger weekend when you're slowing down.
[M]: Yeah. It's funny. I call this the three D's: ditch, delegate, and do. Ditch is stuff that you don't have to do at all. You just... society or pressure or whatever is telling you it has to be on your to-do list.
Delegate: does it have to be done by you? Right? Let's say it has to be done, but it doesn't always have to be done by you. And then if you go through those two things, your to-do list of the part that has to be done, and it has to be done by you is going to be significantly shorter than where it started. So I love kind of a similar process there.
[J]: Yeah. And the brain research is showing that when you do give yourself less time, you're going to focus on your best thing. So if you're working four days instead of five, or two instead of four, whatever the shortening is of your days, are you going to pick the worst use of your time or the best use of your time?
So let's say you're the average clinician and you're bootstrapping it and you've given yourself less time and you keep forgetting to take out the trash and to vacuum like used to. That's going to then reveal something to you about how much of a priority it is for you to be the one cleaning your office.
And maybe that's something that you delegate and you outsource. And so you're going to slowly find the single best use of your time. So it's like I can't send my director of details to show up for an interview with you. I have to show up for the interview. So I'm going to do the best use of my time.
But then I have a whole team that's supporting me to be able to have those other things, not fall through the cracks if they're important to have done.
[M]: Okay so the last thing unpack is it sounds like we've been talking about kind of two things simultaneously, both slowing down, but yet also next leveling or leveling up. How do those two things work together? Because on the surface they seem almost opposite. So how have you found a way to make those two things?
I know you said like a season of hustle of like, this is the time that I know I have to be producing more... sorry, cat pulling microphone. They'll edit that out, or not. Yeah, leave it in.
So you said something about this is the season where my output is higher for August and September. Is there such thing as balance or how do we simultaneously slow down, but yet cultivate maybe this higher level lifestyle that we're looking for?
[J]: So I think the typical model is we have a productivity book that's very prescriptive and doesn't really teach you to think for yourself and you're either in or you're out or on the other side we have this kind of woo woo manifested, have a vision board, but don't really actually do any action and sit and be okay with yourself side.
But the brain research is actually revealing that it's those two things concurrently that when you slow down, it actually unlocks the better ideas. And so when we can merge those two, and that's really what my book is trying to do, it then becomes a menu for you to learn more about yourself instead of here's the prescription if you do it or don't do it. You're in or you're out.
It's more, okay, let me teach you how to experiment in a few different ways, some principles to try for yourself, notice how your body feels, notice how your family feels, notice how your business feels, and then here's how you can adjust and learn over time.
It's that whole evolutionary model of saying we're going to build a better business and a better you. By you being at the center of it, that you're smart enough to figure this stuff out and to say, here's the guide, here's the steps. But then it's actually you learning over time how to do this on your own instead of just being dependent on some prescriptive model.
And so when you're able to do that, that slowing down, then you get to work on Monday or Tuesday or whenever you work. And you're just ready to sprint full tilt. And most people don't even know how to sprint. And so that's where the last portion of the book dives into some really effective blueprints on when you're ready to kill it, how do you absolutely kill it?
[M]: Yeah, and how do we do that? Do you have any tips for us for that?
[J]: So there's a couple of tips. So one would be looking at your environment and being very intentional with that. So for example, every Thursday I wrote this book that Thursday was my big writing day. And so the week before I would end the week with sketching out on a whiteboard the next week's chapter. And so it'd be kind of the big five to seven points of the chapter.
What are my big questions that I still have? What are the things that are kind of lingering? So it would just be sitting there, kind of for the week, kind of marinating in my brain. So then on Thursday morning, I would protect my brain, which is something we want to do where I'm not looking at texts. I wasn't looking at the news. I mean, in the middle of COVID, so there was plenty of things to be frustrated about in the middle of it.
So I protected my brain. I then made sure that I had a healthy breakfast, a kind of healthy morning. And then when it was time to start writing. I set up my environment in a few ways to trigger my brain into a flow state quicker. So I changed the lighting. There was very different lighting in here when I was writing. I moved the chair that I sat into a different spot in the room. That was my writing spot. I had my Bose noise-canceling headphones that for that season I only used for writing and I had a specific playlist that I listened to.
And so very quickly my brain is saying, okay, time to get back into writing. Instead of, oh, I'm looking at this blank screen. Where do I even start? No, I had it all structured out so that I had my Trello board with what are the main points, put that on the whiteboard that I'm writing through each section. So when we do things like that for different tasks, it then triggers our brain to be more effective and jump back into that flow state.
[M]: That's really cool. And I know you say like structure and plan, but I'm also hearing intentions, right? Like intentionally, I'm going to intentionally curate my environment.
I'm going to intentionally only use these headphones for this purpose for this season. So I thought that was really cool. Alright, last question, cause I know we're getting close to time, but when you know you have a sprint coming or you have a season of hustle, you talked about bookending these boundaries. Do you bookend those seasons?
Or how do you get yourself geared up to have maybe a period of hustle, and then how do you unwind from that at the end? Or how do you handle that?
[J]: So one thing that most books on sprinting or batching, what they miss is that we actually have a unique sprint type. In the same way we have personality types, we also have sprint types. So there's how we sprint and when we sprint, and so there's actually different types of people in how they do best. Cause a lot of times people will try to sprint or try to batch and just be like, this doesn't work for me. But it's actually that they haven't discovered their sprint type.
So the first thing that you want to look at is how you do the work. And so there are time-block sprinters and there are task-switch sprinters. So a time block sprinter is a person that does better where they're working on one task for a period of time. So when I was writing my book on Thursdays, it was just writing the book for that period of time.
So doing 20-minute sprints to 40-minute sprints where I'm just like rocking it and standing up for a couple of minutes going into nature, which those micro breaks research has shown can really help you reset, and just doing that over and over in the same type of thing, whereas a task switcher needs to have that variety.
And so if they can figure out, okay, I'm going to do a 20-minute sprint around my e-course, then I'm going to go do some therapy sessions, and then I'm going to do a 20-minute sprint around banking. They need that variety. The second part of it is: when do you sprint?
And so we have people that are automated sprinters, where it's just automated in their schedule. It repeats. So that's what I was with my book. Every Thursday. It's just on repeat, blocked out. Joe's working on the book. Nothing else got scheduled. And then the other types are intensive sprinters. So an intensive sprinter is someone that needs to go away.
They need to go away for a retreat. Dr. Jeremy Sharp from the Testing Psychologist Podcast, he does this a couple of times a year and I spotlight him in the book and how he does it. He's very intentional on how he does it.
He goes to a different city. He finds an Airbnb that has an outdoor space that's walking distance from a vegan restaurant where he's looked at the menu ahead of time. So he knows I'm going to go over there. I'm gonna order this for breakfast. I'm going to have this for lunch. So he's able to just quickly go get the food that he wants to eat. And so he has all these criteria that he goes away and he does a ton of different types of tasks.
So he's a task switcher within that intensive type of retreat. So when you can figure that out, you know what, honestly, for me to get more done, every quarter, I just need to go away for three days or, you know, I need to just go write all these blog posts and just focus on that one thing for two or three days, then you start to unlock your own kind of personal DNA for your sprinting.
[M]: This is the part of the book that I'm the most excited about because my audience knows when I brought on this OBM person, I had to start batching because she has a team that has their own workflow. And so I had to produce for her on a timeline that I wasn't used to performing on when I did everything myself.
So it was really hard, a harder adjustment to switch over to that. So now it's probably because I was doing it wrong according to my type or whatever. So that part I'm really looking forward to diving into.
[J]: Yeah. It's so cool to see how when people kind of understand their internal inclinations and then they're able to really look at their sprint type, some of the assessments within the book and then apply that in a way that the research supports, they just get so much more done and it feels better cause you're doing it in line with how you are on the inside.
[M]: So do you have any kind of parting thoughts for us or biggest takeaway that you want everyone listening to today to kind of take away from our episode?
[J]: Yeah. At the core of everything we do, we do our best work not when we're burned out and stressed out, but when we've slowed down. And so if we have the slowdown be first to set us up for success, instead of as a reaction to just recover, that's really what we want to focus on.
The slowdown comes first and then the massive action comes after it. We don't want to just skip over to the productivity. We want to do that internal work to make our bodies and our minds best set up to do the most creative work that we can do.
[M]: I love that. Okay, so where can we get the book? Is there a place that's best or is it just all bookstores?
[J]: Yeah, it's available in all bookstores. So if you have a local bookstore you can have them pre-order it for you, Amazon, or you know, we always want Amazon reviews and all of that. So if you order through Amazon, then you'll be a verified purchaser.
But all the lists of all the places is at thursdayisthenewfriday.com. Or you can just go to Amazon or wherever you order your books.
[M]: Awesome. Thank you so much, Joe. This has been fun.
[J]: This has been awesome, thanks so much.
[M]: All right. I know there were so many takeaways that I got you guys couldn't see my face when we were recording obviously, but there were so many times where my eyes got wide or I had this giant smile on my face, or I was nodding because there's so much that we can learn from people who've gone before us.
Also, I know I don't talk a lot about this on the show, but obviously, we're working within a system of patriarchy here and I'm going off on a tangent, but just to listen to the way that a man approaches some things, and that may not seem open to us if we're women or if we're listening and we're women or women-identifying. I get so much insight from hearing how people who are different than me approach business.
And so I hope that that was inspiring for you to also hear that there is a different mindset here and there is a different mentality and approach that we can adopt. We can "act as if" I believe is how Joe kind of put it in the episode. So I thought that was fascinating and something that I really keyed into while having this conversation. Make sure to go out and grab your copy of Thursday is the New Friday.
And if you are interested in this idea of a four-day workweek and having more time, exchanging less of your time for money, something to think about is that applications for my programs Side Hustle Support Group are officially opening this week. This is the most comprehensive program on the market.
I call it the MBA in online business. It speaks a therapist language but also moves you all the way from idea to income. This program has it all, and if you have been looking to have a long-term sustainable business that makes you money, that allows you to shrink your caseload, that allows you to claim an idea or claim an identity outside of the therapy, go ahead and apply for Side Hustle Support Group.
This is the program that's going to help you make it happen. Applications can be found at marissalawton.com/side-hustle. You'll also be able to see all of the information about the program there, how the three phases, everything that we cover, how we move from concept to market to sales and our goal in that program is not only to help you have a new way to impact people, but also a new way to make income.
I want everybody within that program to have money in the bank to show for our work together. So go ahead and apply for Side Hustle over at Marissa lawton.com/side-hustle, and I can't wait to connect with you more. All right, we'll be back next week with another episode and until then keep on rising.
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