Joe Sanok Talks About His New Book “Thursday is the New Friday” | GP 82

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Image of Joe Sanok. On this therapist podcast, podcaster, consultant and author, talks about how his upcoming book, Thursday Is The New Friday.

How well do utilize your time at work? What are the differences between the industrialist and organic models of work? Which work model is best for you and your needs?

In this podcast episode, Alison Pidgeon speaks with Joe Sanok about his new book, Thursday Is The New Friday: How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What You Want.

Podcast Sponsor: Therapy For Your Money, Green Oak Accounting

An image of Green Oak Accounting, specialized accounting for therapists, is featured as the sponsor on the Grow A Group Practice Podcast.

Are you ready to make data-driven financial decisions for your practice? You’re in luck! Check out the Therapy For Your Money Podcast, a podcast all about money and finances for therapists in private practice owners, hosted by Julie Herres.

As an accountant and owner of Green Oak Accounting, Julie chats with industry experts about a number of financial topics, from KPI tracking to group practice compensation. Head over there to listen to the latest episodes, take a look at their therapist resources, and much more!

Meet Joe Sanok, author, podcaster, and private practice consultant

A photo of Joe Sanok is featured on the Faith in Practice podcast. Joe is interviewed by Whitney Owens where they speak about his new book, Thursday Is The New Friday.Joe Sanok is the author of Thursday is the New Friday: How to work fewer hours, make more money, and spend time doing what you want. It examines how the four-day workweek boosts creativity and productivity.

Joe has been featured in Forbes, GOOD magazine, and the Smart Passive Income Podcast. He is the host of the popular The Practice of the Practice podcast which is recognized as one of the Top 50 Podcasts worldwide with over 100,000 downloads each month. Bestselling authors, experts, and scholars, and business leaders and innovators are featured and interviewed in the 550 plus podcasts he has done over the last six years.

Visit his website, listen to his podcast. Connect on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. Subscribe to his YouTube channel.

Order Thursday Is The New Friday, check out the bonus offers too!

In This Podcast

  • Industrialists versus organic model
  • Time is not permanent
  • Learn more about yourself

Industrialists versus organic model

There is a slow change happening on a global scale with regards to working hours, how to do business, and productivity, and some people are being pulled into the industrialist model and others are being pulled into a more organic model.

The industrialist model:

  • Views people like machines,
  • Does not care for personal time over work time,
  • Approves and respects burnout.

The organic model on the other hand looks at how people develop within their roles:

  • What do you love doing right now that you want to keep on doing?
  • What do you hate doing that you want someone else to do?
  • Where do you see yourself headed?

Know that to make more money you don’t have to just become a supervisor, but you can develop a role that you actually want to do. (Joe Sanok)

Time is not permanent

This idea that the week is something that’s permanent, that we’ve always had weekends and we’ve always worked five days is a very recent way of viewing our week. (Joe Sanok)

What we are living now is true for us in the present moment, however, it has not always been true throughout human history.

We can change the way we work and live to better suit our needs as they develop over time, instead of feeling like we have to constantly be trudging through our days.

Learn more about yourself

Taking the knowledge and implementing it is not about mimicking the lifestyle of someone else, it is about structuring the kind of life that suits you and your needs best by empowering yourself with knowledge and the know-how.

Observe in which environments you work best in, or if you prefer to do admin first thing or all together on a particular day. When do you feel most creative? What do you need time for?

You can use different brain techniques such as:

  • Wearing a particular piece of clothing when you need to get something done,
  • Setting the lighting a certain way,
  • Listening to a certain playlist or artist when you work,
  • Having a routine.

All these techniques can be used to get your brain on board with your work. By using the power of association, you can work alongside your brain instead of against it when you are pushing yourself to do something that is not sitting well with you right then and there.

I used all these brain techniques so that when I was going to kill it, I was absolutely going to kill it, and get it done … and getting into that habit of working less to actually get more done. (Joe Sanok)

Books mentioned in this episode:

An image of Thursday is the New Friday by Joe Sanok. The book covers How to Work Fewer Hours, Make More Money, and Spend Time Doing What You Want.

Useful links mentioned in this episode:

Check out these additional resources:

Meet Alison Pidgeon, Group Practice Owner

An image of Alison Pidgeon is displayed. She is a successful group practice owner and offers private practice consultation for private practice owners to assist in how to grow a group practice. She is the host of Grow A Group Practice Podcast and one of the founders of Group Practice Boss.Alison Pidgeon, LPC is the owner of Move Forward Counseling, a group practice in Lancaster, PA and she runs a virtual assistant company, Move Forward Virtual Assistants.

Alison has been working with Practice of the Practice since 2016.  She has helped over 70 therapist entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses, through mastermind groups and individual consulting.

Transformation From A Private Practice To Group Practice

In addition, she is a private practice consultant for Practice of the Practice. Allison’s private practice ‘grew up.’ What started out as a solo private practice in early 2015 quickly grew into a group practice and has been expanding ever since.

Visit Alison’s website, listen to her podcast, or consult with Alison. Email Alison at [email protected]

Thanks For Listening!

Feel free to leave a comment below or share this podcast on social media by clicking on one of the social media links below! Alternatively, leave a review on iTunes and subscribe!

Podcast Transcription

[ALISON]
We are pleased to have the Therapy For Your Money Podcast as a sponsor for this podcast. Are you ready to make data-driven financial decisions for your private practice? You’re in luck. Check out the Therapy For Your Money Podcast, a podcast all about money and finance for therapists and private practice owners hosted by Julie Herres. As an accountant and owner of Green Oak Accounting, Julie chats with industry experts about a number of financial topics from KPI tracking to group practice compensation. Head over to www.therapyforyourmoney.com to listen to the latest episodes, take a look at their therapist resources and much more. .

You are listening to the Grow a Group Practice podcast. Whether you were thinking about starting a group practice or in the beginning stages, or want to learn how to scale up your already existing group practice, you are in the right place. I’m Alison Pidgeon, your host, a serial entrepreneur with four businesses, one of which is a large group practice that I started in 2015. Each week, I feature a guest or topic that is relevant to group practice owners. Let’s get started. .

Welcome to the Grow a Group Practice podcast. I’m Alison Pigeon, and I am very excited to have my mentor and the head of Practice of the Practice on the podcast today. I got the chance to interview Joe Sanok about his new book called Thursday is the New Friday. I’m really excited to share this with you. He actually allowed me to read the book ahead of publication so I have had the opportunity to read the book and it’s excellent and I would definitely recommend it for anybody who owns a business.

So in case you’re not familiar with Joe, let me tell you a little bit about him. In 2012, he started Practice of the Practice to blog about what he was learning in business and private practice and he had his own group practice and he started a podcast to share with other people what he was learning about in business. And it took off and in 2019, his consulting business was doing so well. He sold his private practice. He’s been a keynote speaker, a TEDx speaker, he’s worked as a business consultant and he has the number one podcast for counselors, which is the Practice of the Practice podcast cast.

Without Joe, I would not have this podcast. He has been my mentor for the past five years. I was the first consultant that he brought on to Practice of the Practice and in the fall of 2019, he asked us all if we wanted to start a podcast of our own, because he saw what a huge opportunity and value it was for his audience. So that is how the Grow a Group Practice podcast came to be launched in the spring of 2020.

Joe is also going to be going on a book tour this year for Thursday is the New Friday. So I’m really excited to see he’s already getting some press. The book hasn’t even come out yet. He in the past has been in different media outlets, such as Huffington Post, Forbes, Readers’ Digest. He’s been interviewed on the podcast Entrepreneur on Buyer and Yahoo news. So without further ado here is my interview with Joe Sanok.
[ALISON]
Well, I’m really excited to have Joe Sanok on the podcast today. I have known Joe since 2016, but I started listening to your podcast I think the year before that, and you have been instrumental in helping me grow my group practice. And I’m really excited that you are about to publish a book and that’s what we are going to talk about today. So welcome
[JOE]
Joe. I am so excited to be hanging out with you, Alison.
[ALISON]
Yes, I feel like, is this the first time I’ve interviewed you instead of you interviewing me?
[JOE]
I think, was I on early on in this show? I don’t know.
[ALISON]
Maybe. I’ve lost track, but anyway, so obviously you have done a lot of things, consulting, podcasting, keynote speaker, and now you have written a book called Thursday is the New Friday. So do you want to give us a little bit of an overview about the book?
[JOE]
Yes. When I started kind thinking about what’s something that I can to the business world that both helps my own audience who already listens to my podcast or follows my work, but also helps kind of branch out into a new audience, it took a while actually. Like I worked with a writing coach that she just got me talking and we worked together for almost a year, figuring out what’s the idea and the uniqueness of what I had to say. And really when I drilled in, working fewer days in a week is something that I have realized I’m pretty good at. Even back in college, I think I had one Friday class. That’s because you had to take it on Friday. There was a Monday, Wednesday, Friday. That was the only option. My first job when I was working at Teaching Family Homes of Upper Michigan, I negotiated to work a four day week and they had to give me a car and pay gas mileage and pay me whenever I was in the car driving someplace.

So this idea of working less and having longer weekends, I realized kind of through that process was something that I’ve done for a really long time. And so to then say, well, what would a four day work week really look like if we were to try to enact that across the whole society? That’s a big question. And little did I know, as I started writing this book COVID happened and we all are questioning or have questioned the way that we do work. And I mean, there’s so much whether you’re looking at New Zealand or Spain or Iceland who are doing these nationwide studies of the four day work week. It really, this book couldn’t have come at a better time.
[ALISON]
Yes. I feel like ever since you told me that you’re writing this book, I’ve seen more and more people talking about this concept obviously even before your book has come out. I know Amy Porterfield did a podcast recently about how she moved her staff to a four day work week. So I feel like you’re just hitting it at that time where it’s really like reaching a crescendo, which is really cool. And I’m sure it’s cool for you to be a part of those kind of conversations and see how the pandemic too has accelerated all of that.
[JOE]
Yes. It’s pretty bonkers to see just how much media, the PR company’s able to get for this. Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg News, Pat Flyn endorsed it and calling it the new four day work week or four hour work week. So it’s really interesting how it is really kind of hitting where I think a lot of us are at. When you really look at just what the industrialists gave us in the early 1900s, it was great for that time. Before 1926 when Henry Ford switched Ford over to a 40 hour work week, which was primarily to sell more cars to his own employees, because he is like, if they don’t have weekends. If they don’t have things to do, they’re not going to buy cars from me. So he knew right away, all these people were going to buy cars from him, so he’d double his profits or whatever.

Before that the average person was working 10 to 14 hour days, six to seven days a week. So what the industrialists gave us was appropriate for its time. It was the next step of business evolution. It was the next step in health, but we’ve outgrown that. I mean, you think about the eighties and nineties, TGIF on ABC watching full house and Steve Ikel, like Fridays were kind of already this blow off day and it’s when we had birthday parties or baby showers or we do a visioning retreat and team building activities like the trust fall or something. And people never, they don’t really take Fridays that seriously, typically at most businesses. And so if it’s already half lived and we’ve seen this kind of industrialist model moving away from us. Like why would we continue it?

There’s so much that the industrialists gave us that we’ve already left. We don’t see our staff as part of a machine that are emotionless and that we can just fire and just treat really poorly. We don’t do that anymore. Our school systems still look a lot like the industrialists designed it. There’s a lot of remnants of it, but I do think that when we look at COVID 19 in this massive global research project of can people work from home, can they work differently, we see that like the actual satisfaction went up, we see that health out outcomes are better in regards to just like how people view work. We are moving away from the typical 40-hour week.
[ALISON]
Yes. So I took from the book and I appreciate the fact that you let me read it early, before it got published. I took from the book that really the new kind of economy is really measuring like outcomes as opposed to time. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that. Like how do you think the looks in our current day and age?
[JOE]
Yes. So I think we’re in such a transition right now that we are in the messy middle. So a lot of us will be pulled kind of in the tendency of the industrialists whereas I would say a lot of people are moving towards more of what we might call an organic model. So the industrialists, they were like machines, you know here’s exactly how everything’s done, conveyor belts. Whereas this new organic model, what we’re looking at is first, how do people develop within their roles? So even with Practice of the Practice we routinely ask what do you love doing right now that you want to keep doing? Second, what do you hate doing that you want someone else to do? And third, where do you see that you’re headed? So whether it’s you or Whitney or the Sam’s, they are not in the same position they were in three years ago.

So the idea that in an organic way that we are going to evolve and we’re going to move into new territory and we’re going to try new things. Like I remember a number of years ago when I asked Sam what she wanted to learn, she said, “I want to learn video editing.” She found a course in Cape Town that she could go through. She earned that. She added that to what we could offer. And to know that to make more money, you don’t have to just become a supervisor, but you can actually develop a role that you actually want to do, I think that’s one of the first things. I think second, what you’re talking about right there of it’s not just ours in the chair, it’s looking at outcomes. But this is tough. So I think about if I hired someone to say fold my laundry, because I’m lazy, which at one period of time when the girls were younger, we hired someone to fold our laundry, because it was just such a busy time for us.

Of course that’s a place of affluence. And I know a lot of people online get mad about that place of affluence in regards to hiring someone, but at that time we needed to do that. We were following apart. So if I paid them by the hour, they would probably do a little bit better job because they would take their time with it. The edges of the towels would be tighter. If I paid just by the job, well, I they might be able to be more efficient. They might get more done and then they’re rewarded for that. But maybe the quality isn’t the same. So if we just take that example and say, if we move towards an outcome-based model, it’s important that we have very clear expectations. So if someone is going to fold all our laundry and it’s just a mess and they’re like, I got it done. You owe me $200 versus I’m going to pay you $200 in time. Like it needs to look good. So in our businesses, we need to know what’s the expectation if it’s outcome-based? Otherwise people will cut corners and then we won’t get the same standard of work.
[ALISON]
Yes. And I think that’s such a mental shift for so many people, especially when you work in an industry that is so time-based, like counseling, when the insurance company says, you have to spend 53 minutes with this client in order to bill this code to make this amount of money. So to take something that’s that time structured and think about how do we change it to make it fit more of what people want today or fit more of the, kind of the outcome based model? Like what sorts of suggestions do you have? Not that I assume you have all the answers, but maybe what are some things we can think through that might help us figure out what the answers are?
[JOE]
Well, I mean, even just looking at what are the typical number of sessions that you as a clinician do with a new client? So say it’s 14.2 sessions. Like if you can get better outcomes and do that in 12 sessions, you have no financial interest in saving the insurance company money. It’s not like if you do 12 sessions with someone instead of 14.2, that they give you a bonus or anything like that. So I do think that there’s some macro level things that insurances should look at and say, okay, like if the average is 14.2 and we’re looking at these types of health outcomes, but then what we see is some human behavior where people then maybe in the intake adjust it so that they’re going to get it differently, there’s so many different variables that we’re going to work them out together. But right now we have no vested interest in actually helping people get healthier as therapists.

And I’m not saying that as a critique against our field, but the longer someone works with us, unless the insurance says you cap out at 20 sessions a year like that’s the only real interest. It’s like, okay, let’s get your 20 sessions a year. So figuring that out, there’s a lot of ways that we could do that. But I think if we look at well, what would it look like if we said there was going to be some sort of bonus for health? What if the actual client had a tracking app to look at sleep and eating and exercise and socialization so that they had a financial interest in getting healthier? Our entire in medicine is based on pain and curing that pain. So, I mean to look at healthier outcomes, we’d have to look at other countries that are doing it well because our model is pretty terrible.
[ALISON]
Yes, for sure. And actually, I know you’ve been talking about this concept for a long time about can you move away from the 40 hour work week. So when I switched my staff over to W2 employees, I have them work on a 25 hour a week, work week. So they have to do 25 billable hours and then if they have their notes done, like they’re done, they can go home. There’s no reason why they have to be there for 40 hours, which is pretty typical and like an agency model. And I remember when I introduced that to them and they just sort of looked at me like what right. You know, it kind of took them a little while to wrap their brains around it. But I think it’s really been so positive for them because they see it as work life balance. They only have to work four days a week to be full time and get benefits and make a good salary. So yes, I guess all that being said, like, I appreciate that you kind of pointed that seed in my mind because that’s something that I’ve been doing in my own business. I think it’s just been so positive for my staff.
[JOE]
Well, and I think there are industries that are more butts in a chair. It’s like ambulance drivers. We can’t just say no one’s going to drive an ambulance on Fridays, but we can be creative with how we do scheduling. We can be creative in saying we want the healthiest ambulance drivers out there. We will want them to think clearly. We want them to be able to not be so tired from doing a 12 hour shift, that that person that gets the tail end of the 12 hour shift, doesn’t get the same care as the person at the front of that 12 hour shift. So there’s tons of room for creativity. But I think about even just like Kalamazoo Valley Community College, so KVCC is in Southwest Michigan. I went to school in Kalamazoo. For years they’ve done a four day work week in the summer.

It all came from this HVAC instructor who looked at, how the actual systems at the college worked. So unlike at a house, in a house, your air can kick on, then the heat can kick on. You can have a range where it keeps it within a certain range for you, with really large furnaces or HVAC systems. You pretty much choose is it going to be heat if it’s going to be heat, it turns on and it turns off. If it’s going to be cool, it’s going to turn on. It’s going to turn off. You’re not going to have this mixed model. Well, he figured out that on Fridays in the summertime, there were very few students that were actually on campus and they were chilling all of these buildings. So he went on the roof every Friday for most of us summer and just took pictures of the parking lot, knowing that he was just gathering data.

Well, he eventually shared that data with the board and showed how much money, for just cooling on a Friday, how much that costs the college. They ended up switching over and just from their AC costs savings, they’ve saved millions of dollars. But then you look at all of the health outcomes by people having Fridays off in the summer. You look at that work flexibility, the work culture. That’s a big thing for people to have to give up if they’re thinking about switching to another job. So there’s been all this ancillary benefit from an institution that is typically pretty locked down. Colleges and universities are one that you’d be like, you can’t take Fridays off. But they’ve shown that you really can,
[ALISON]
Yes, I remember reading that in the book and I was like, that’s amazing, because I feel like that’s what it’s going to take to have people who are in charge make those changes or if you come to them and say, look, we’re going to save so many thousands of dollars by not having the building open on a Friday and that’s how we’re going to affect that change. That’s a really cool example of that.
[JOE]
Well, then when you really think about just what it’s costing us in creativity, and so do we want people to be more creative in their work? Do we want people to think out of the box? Do we want people to say they do childcare? Do we want those people to be stressed out and maxed out when they’re working with our kids? Do we want our teachers to not be creative and feel like they’re kind of burning the candle at both ends? I would guess that most of us would say we want more creativity in the world and that’s going to help us. So if we have that time to slow down first, then we can kill it later.
[ALISON]
Yes, exactly. And I see that too in my staff. Like they say how different it feels from when they were in the agency and it was normal to see 35 clients a week. And the fact that they only have to see 25 feels like a world of difference and they feel like they actually do have that work life balance and time to spend with their families and all of that kind of thing.
[JOE]
I bet that they’re better at setting boundaries around the time that they’re away. Because it’s like when you’re on call 24/7 and you’re working these full 40 hour weeks with 35 caseload, I mean, then it’s like, well, I’m already in that work mode. So if someone texts me on a Saturday from work or says, “Hey, check your email.” Like you’re not even getting into that calm down on the weekend when you’re burning kind of so fast.
[ALISON]
Right. I’m curious if you found anything to be really surprising when you were doing research for your book.
[JOE]
I mean, one of the things that I found most surprising and I talk about right at the beginning is where we even got the seven day week. That wasn’t even in my original proposal to Harper Collins. But I often will take something and then kind of work backward and say, well, where did we even get this? Has this be the normal thing? So the whole 40 hour week, say that’s less than a hundred years old, Henry Ford gave us that less than a hundred years ago. So we kind of made that up. And then I started thinking, well, where do we get time? Like how did that even start? So a year totally makes sense because we go around the sun and a day makes sense because we spin for a day, but there there’s nothing that’s in nature for seven days.

We just as easily could have had 73 weeks that were five days each. So what happened was the Babylonians only recognized seven celestial beings or their astronomy was that they saw the sun, the moon, Earth, Mercury Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. And they said those seven are the ones that count. So we’re going to have a seven day week. The Egyptians, they had an eight day week. The Romans had a 10 day week. Actually with all the calendars, all of our global calendars really didn’t even align until the mid 20th century. So this idea that the week is something that’s permanent, that we’ve always had weekends, that we’ve always worked five days is a very recent way of viewing our week. You know, up until the early 1900s, people were working six, maybe seven days a week. A lot of them were farmers that just couldn’t take the day off. So what we’re living now feels very true to us, but it’s absolutely not true for human history. So that really surprised me that even the seven day week, that feels like, well, that’s just how it is, that was completely made up by some people that didn’t understand the stars. So it’s like we can recreate this. We can change this in a way that actually looks different and better for what humans need.
[ALISON]
Yes. That’s really interesting. And I wonder too, like when you started working on the book, and I know you’ve been thinking about this concept for much longer than you actually really have been writing the book, but have you gotten any pushback from people? Like when you tell them about the concept, have people been like, “Well, what are you talking about? Of course we have to work five days a week.” Have you gotten any of that criticism?
[JOE]
I mean, the people that criticize that are people that want a four day week, but they’re like, “I just don’t know how that would work with my boss. You haven’t met my boss.” And I do think that in the same way that there were people in 1926 that still wanted to have all their folks work six or seven days a week, it’s going to take some major shifts in kind of the way that we think about work. It’s going to be people that are in power. It’s going to be the Henry Fords of our day that say we’re moving to a four day work week. I mean, imagine if Elon Musk and then say Virgin Airlines and Virgin Galactic and Amazon, they all said what, this whole four day week, like we’re going to shift to that. We think that’s better for our staff. We’re going to have more creativity and then Google’s like, “Oh my gosh, we to get on board,” that would really help the cause.

But there’s a lot going on already. Like we were talking about even kind of before we got recording how many different folks are talking about four day weeks? There’s so much research that’s emerging, especially the Iceland study that just came out, 2,500 people in different industries and surprise, surprise, they were more calm, they were more happy and they got more done. So the fears more and more are just not justified in the research, which is great, when the research can kind of tell you something intuitively, which most people say a four day week, I would love that. You know what I’d do on a Friday? I’d get all that crap done so then I’d have two full days with my family. And it’s like, yes, imagine how you would feel on Monday if you knew that your yard was how you wanted it, you had your laundry and your groceries done all on Friday or whatever day you choose. And then Saturday and Sunday, you get to fully relax and set great boundaries and your brain is optimized to be as creative as possible for four days. You’re going to kill it in those four days. So I think that most people are responding with, “I would love that. I just have a boss that I might need to buy that book for.
[ALISON]
Yes. Okay. Well, that’s good. I’m glad to hear that there’s not widespread criticism. I think it’s just, again, the mental shift of figuring out how does it work for my particular industry or the work that I do. I’m also curious too about what has moving, I believe you’ve been doing a three day work week for quite a long period of time. So like, what has that changed for you? Like what effect did that have for you?
[JOE]
Yes, so I actually got down to a two day work week every other week. So four days a month while we were on the road. But that was to test it out, to try to see if I can really like build the systems of automation as much as possible. I took my kids on a road trip where we lived in national parks from September of 2020 until April of 2021. So I’ve definitely, especially with this book launch, moved back to my regular work week. But I think that what was nice, especially in writing the book was, when I was writing the book I was doing the three day work week where I had worked two days doing podcasting, consulting, doing things with our membership community. And then on Thursday was completely book day. I felt, because I had already got the big work out of the way, it felt like a lighter day for me whereas I don’t tend to like it when I have to work on something creative, knowing that I have like two days of work after that.

Like that sense of relief I figured out in myself. And that’s actually something I talk a lot about in the book; is figuring out your menu versus just saying, here’s the menu I’m supposed to follow. So even figuring out your sprint type and how you do that. So I was sprinting every Thursday working on the book. And I got the book contract in April of 2020 and it was due by the end of September, by October 1st, 2020. I turned it in with 83,000 words. So I was 20,000 words over what I was contracted to do. I only was contracted for 60,000. I just wanted to have tons room to cut the fat, because I figured it’s easier to cut the fat than it is to be like, we need 10,000 more words for you to come up with and I’m like, but I don’t have 10,000 more words.

So I was able to do that because of being able to know how I could sprint, being able to optimize my brain so that I’m ready to work when I show up, little things like setting up my, in a way that kind of triggered I’m about to write. So I had different lighting when I was writing. I had a playlist that I listened to. I’d even keep that playlist going when I ran downstairs to make lunch. I sat in a different spot. So I used all these brain techniques so that when I was going to kill it, I was absolutely going to kill it and get it done, you know writing a book mostly one day a week and then letting my brain kind of work on things outside of it. So getting in that habit by working less to actually get more done, I learned so many techniques that I applied immediately because I’m in the middle of writing a book about this stuff and then I could kind of discover these things for the book and apply it and see how it worked.
[ALISON]
That’s awesome. Yes. And then what did having those, you outside of work time, then how did that affect your personal time? Like, did you find that you had more time to think of creative business ideas or you just had more time to spend with friends and family or?
[JOE]
So I think a lot of entrepreneurs get in the trap when they stop working. Their brain is still rolling in business mode. And that can be helpful to an extent, but there’s a certain point when you need to just kind of let that thing pause. So for me, even just making sure that I didn’t even have a spot to write something down at certain points because I wanted to fully engage in the activity at hand. So setting some hard boundaries about even when I’d pick up my phone or when I would brainstorm. What I did do is at the end of each day on Thursday, I would whiteboard out the next week’s chapter. So I’d whiteboard out the big five to seven points of that chapter, I would put down all the big questions that I had, where were there gaps, how did the chapter flow together? What were the stories? What was the research? What did I need?

And then I had a couple people that were helping me find some research and do a few other things. So they would do some of that work and then a lot of that would just germinate in my head. So by the time I got back in the office on Tuesday, if I had a 15 minute gap between consulting clients, I could just kind of go down a rabbit hole and start to answer some of those questions. So it was sort of like my brain just was simmering for a bit. I wasn’t actively brainstorming during that time off, but then because my brain was ready to work on Tuesday when I came back in, it was like any little gap in my schedule I could fill in with the most efficient, 15 minutes here, 15 minutes there. And then on Thursday, when it was time to write, I had enough different things that I could bring into that writing session that really, it was the most effective time together, together as in me and my book. There was no other together; me and my book holding hands like you do.
[ALISON]
So it sounds like what you were doing was you were planning the week prior so that when you did come back to work the following week, it was like, you just hit the ground running. It wasn’t like you were making a bunch of decisions about what do I work on now or what should I do this week or how do I spend this time?
[JOE]
Yes. The actual flow of kind of how I wrote it was I had a Trello Board where each individual chapter had a list. So I knew what the main point of that individual chapter was. And then I wanted to have at least two good stories for each one and two good pieces of research, if not more. So at the very beginning part, I just started gathering stories and gathering research, not knowing where they would end up. Then after I would kind of get going, I would look at, okay, what’s the main point here? So for example, one of the internal inclinations, I talk about three of them, the most effective things that top performers do. So one of them is curiosity. So then I looked at what stories come to mind for curiosity and white boarding this out off of the Trello Board and then say, okay, curiosity, what comes to mind? Just brainstorm, curiosity.

Okay, curiosity killed the cat curiosity. Like where did that come from? How do we in research actually look at curiosity? So I have all these kind of questions and then it starts to really form what are the big five to seven points of that chapter? So then taking the time to like Google, “Hey, curiosity killed the cat, where the heck did that come from?” And finding legitimate sort like the Washington Post that talked about how this cat got stuck in a chimney in 1910 or 1911 and it was this nationwide, everyone’s wondering is the cat going to get out? And it’s like five or six days. This dang cat is in the chimney. And eventually curiosity killed the cat and that was on the front page. And it’s one of these things that, okay, curiosity killed the cat.

What’s that tell us? It tells us curiosity is dangerous, that you shouldn’t be curious, that bad things happen to people that look in dark corners. Well, what does that do for creativity and for our kids, that kids are naturally curious, but then when they grow up, they learn they shouldn’t be curious because curiosity killed the cat. So then just letting that kind of flow out, say, well, what would this look like as a chapter intro of curiosity killing the cat, and then going into some of the research around curiosity and how people thought about it and all the weird studies they did in like the sixties and seventies to try to quantify curiosity. So then I break down each chapter in those different ways and by the time I’m actually writing it, I’ve been enjoying learning about curiosity killing the cat. That’s just a weird story that this cat got stuck in a chimney and it ends up on the front page of the Washington Post. Like that’s weird and that’s funny. And finding those hooks that pull people in is just one of those things that, I mean, I could write so, so many more books because it was just, it was so enjoyable.
[ALISON]
Yes, and that was one thing I really appreciated when I was reading it is that you were like connecting the dots with different ideas that have never really been put together before. And I was like, oh yes, that is a different way of thinking about it. So I think that’s one of the really great things about the book.
[JOE]
Well, I love people like, like Malcolm Gladwell, who do that really well or I mean, there’s so many other great authors that weave these stories and research and things like that. And to me that’s personally what I like reading. When I’m reading a nonfiction, I don’t want just here’s what you do. I want some interesting stories that make the point. I want interesting research. I want different ways of linking things together that haven’t been linked together. So mine is an attempt at doing that, that same sort of thing around the idea of the four day work week.
[ALISON]
Yes, absolutely. Cool. Well, can you tell the audience how they can get their hands on the book?
[JOE]
Yes. So on October 5th is when everything goes live and gets shipped, but right now you can pre-order the book wherever you pre-order books. So that could be Amazon. That could be anywhere. And then when you get at least five, you get a free ticket to Killin’It Camp. So we’re putting on Killin’It Camp in Estes Park, Colorado in mid October. So it’s perfect timing for you to buy that right now. So all you do is go to thirsdayisthenewfriday.com and then that’s where you enter in all the info. You put your receipt in there. We make sure you get at least a ticket for every five that you do. We also have mastermind groups that are walking through the book and a half day retreat with me if you get 25 or more. So all those details are over thursdayisthenewfriday.com.
[ALISON]
Thank you. Yes, and I’ll be at Killin’It Camp as well. So lots of cool things happening there and always great to see people in person, especially after living through the pandemic.
[JOE]
Oh my word.
[ALISON]
And only seeing people on Zoom. So if you actually want to feel the energy of being in a room with like-minded people, Killin’It Camp would be a great event to come to.
[JOE]
Yes. It’s going to be awesome. We have so many fun surprises. Dana, our conference manager is just doing such a great job and coming up with just some fun, crazy things that we get to do.
[ALISON]
Yes. I so appreciate your I’m coming on the podcast today. It’s been great hearing all about the book and yes, I think it’s such a great concept that we should all as business owners be talking about. So thank you.
[JOE]
Yes. Thanks so much for having me.
[ALISON]
Thank you again to the Therapy For Your Money Podcast and Green Oak Accounting for being a sponsor of our podcast. We are a big fan. I use Green Oak Accounting for my practice. And if you want to check out my podcast episode on the Therapy For Your Money Podcast, I was episode number 20.

So as Joe and I discussed in the interview, if you want to come to Killin’It Camp, definitely consider buying five of his books. That is actually cheaper than buying a ticket upright. And then you’ll have gifts to give away to other people. And if you want check out more details about Killin’It Camp, the website is killingitcamp.com.

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This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regards to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.