[JOE SANOK] This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session 711. Does that mean we get free Slurpees?

I’m Joe Sanok, your host and welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. Oh, man, life is good, isn’t it? Even when it’s bad it’s interesting. So interesting how parents across the board do things so differently. I have some friends that I swear their kids are in every activity and like three or four at a time. Sometimes it comes from a place of lacking or keeping up where they’re in two sports and in music, and they’re doing some sort of like language and these kids oftentimes just look so overwhelmed. Our kids, I say our, my kids, they are pretty good at figuring out what their bodies need when they want to just kind hang out at the house or be outside and play or color. I think that when we encourage kids to do that, they can pretty intuitively know when they need to slow down when they need to speed up.

Even yesterday, both my daughters woke up with headaches and stomach aches and they said they didn’t feel well so I kept them home from school and throughout the day, I don’t know if it was anxiety or they had just come back from their mom’s or what it was, but by the end of the day, they were fine. They were playing outside and weren’t really sick, sick, but their bodies were saying the pace that I’m going right now, I can’t handle this. That’s true with adults too, except often as we ignore it until our bodies just force us to shut down, our backs flare up, or we get sick easier, or we’re just so tired that we crash. The idea of starting to live more in alignment with our natural neuro syncing is something I’ve really been studying.

With Thursday is the New Friday, I spent a lot of time talking about slowing down and the importance of that. But that natural neuro syncing of what do we naturally need in our bodies? It’s interesting how, when we slow down, we actually, the research shows speed up our creativity and our productivity that when we’re stressed out and maxed out, we’re just not as effective. We make more mistakes. I remember it was the other week I was prepping to leave for a conference we were hosting and I was up later, I had hung out with a friend and then was packing and it had been such a busy week. I don’t know, it was probably 12.30 at night and I had wanted to be in bed by 11 and I think I had to wake up, let’s see, I had to leave the house by 5:00 AM.

So I already knew I wasn’t going to get much sleep. I’m getting everything ready. I’m hurrying throughout, my daughters were already gone so that I could leave first thing in the morning. I took my blanket to just make it nice and flat before I jumped into bed for just a couple hours and I hit this glass that was on the nightstand and the glass just went flying and shattered everywhere. I’m like F and A, like, I do not need to clean up glass now. I’m so tired, but I’m not going to leave just broken glass all over the place. So I cleaned it up and did all that and went to sleep but that idea that when we’re speeding and hurrying, we make so many more mistakes. We’re not paying attention to things we’re reckless and careless and then have more cleanup.

If I had just said, okay, I’m going to take these dishes downstairs and take my time, it would’ve saved me time to slow down. So really that’s what Slow Down School. The event we put on every summer is really based on, that when we slow down, we do better work. We clarify what we need to work on, and we can then run full tilt towards the big things that we’re going after. So today I’m going to walk you through what the schedule of slow down is like, who Slow Down School is really for, and who’s going to benefit the most, how to sign up for Slow Down School, and then see if you’re interested in joining me.

So Slow Down School’s an event that we’ve done for several years. We didn’t do it in 2020 or 2021 due to the pandemic but it’s back. We are really, really excited about Slow Down School. So it’s July 24th through 30th, 202, so the last weekend, July is almost always when we do it because Lake Michigan is about as warm as it’s going to get. So you fly in to Traverse City, or if you drive in we give you the place to meet. We pick you up at the airport, you get driven out to the Lena School, which is this great boarding school, right on Lake Michigan. It has a beautiful river that cuts through it, the Crystal River. You’re 200 yards from the beach. If you’ve never seen the great lakes, it looks like an ocean. People are often shocked that you can’t see Wisconsin, and it’s not, if you’ve only seen inland lakes where you can see the other side this is more like an ocean and it’s facing west, so we get beautiful sunsets all the time over the water.

Sunday we kick off with some activities to help you meet people, help you connect with people, go deeper with people, frame out what the week’s going to look like. It’s a smaller group, usually around 20 people. It’s really aimed at being an impactful conference that is for a smaller group of people. So we put you into what we call families for that week. These are folks that you can go back to, so usually groups of three to four people that have similar goals as you. The two main goals people come from are growing their practice, so people that have a strong solo practice all the way up through a mega group practice. If you’re brand new to private practice, you’re probably not going to get as much out of it.

Now I’m not going to just sway you from coming but you probably won’t get quite as much out of it as the people that maybe are thinking bigger about launching big things. But we’ve had people that are just starting a practice that came and still got things out of it. So we kick it off Sunday night, we have an executive chef that’s there that has a partnership with all sorts of local farmers, where they list all the food where it’s from, which farms it’s from, they grow their own kale and things in the summer. We had one lady who was vegetarian or no vegan, and she said it was some of the best vegan food she had ever had and had another person who was on the keto diet and stayed in ketosis all week long. So I figure if we can manage those sides of the food spectrum we can do just about anything.

Then on Monday we, we spend the whole day slowing down. I encourage you to only have your phones out if you’re taking pictures, that you’re not emailing, you’re not responding to clients, that you’ve set up all those automations to actually be away for the week and to dig in. Really this is about getting to know other people on a personal level, not diving into talking business and not letting that business part of your brain take over and that achiever side, because most of us are pretty high achievers. If you’re not that’s okay. You’re welcome as well. We need your balance with the group.

We hike at one of my favorite spots. Then from there, what we’ll do is we come back, have lunch, have a massage therapist come and do chair massages outside and spend time on the beach, really just spending time relaxing and connecting with each other. Then on Tuesday, same format, go to a different place that I really enjoy and we go for a hike there. Then after that come back and we have a yoga teacher and massage therapist and genuinely slow down. We really see that on that first day, oftentimes people are like, oh, I want to start working on my business, I want to start working on my business, and then by Tuesday it’s like, wow, I haven’t slowed down like this in a really, really long time. To just allow your body to feel what that feels like to rest. We’ve had people that just sleep in and say, I’m not going to be there. I’m going to miss the hike. Okay, great. You listen to your body, let your body lead you in what you need.

These last few years have been so stressful, so much has hit our businesses, our personal lives, even our ability to work. How often do we get time to genuinely slow down, to reconnect with our bodies, to think about what we’re working on in our businesses and to connect with other people that think like us and want to do big things. That’s what Slow Down School’s all about. Slow Down School is the event for people that are high achievers that want to do big things, grow their practices and big ideas, and they don’t want to kill themselves doing it. They want to be smart about where they spend their time. They want to learn to sprint, but they don’t want to kill themselves in the process. At Slow Down School you’ll be in Traverse City, Michigan on the beautiful shores of Lake Michigan, July 24th through 30th, 2022.

At Slow Down School, we’re going to spend a few days slowing down hiking. I’ll bring in massage therapists and yoga teachers and healthy food and time on the beaches with sunsets and just connecting with other folks like you. Then we’re going to run full tilt towards your business towards your big ideas, towards your private practice, using all of Killin’It Camp sprint types of being able to get so much done in a short period of time. We’ve seen so many businesses grow and expand and launch as a result of Slow Down School. I would love to join you in that process. Slow Down School tickets are on sale now. Make sure you grab them before the early bird. If you get them after the early bird, that’s totally fine too. We’d love to have you involved with Slow Down School, July 24th through 30th, 2022. Head on over to slowdownschool.com to grab your ticket today. I can’t wait to see you in Northern Michigan.

Then on Wednesday I do some teachings around sprinting around running full tilt towards your business around goal setting to help you most effectively use the sprint days to get a lot done. I have things that are planned, but then really looking at where the groups at making sure that we have some understanding of where are we at? What do we want to do and having it be an agile process where we have some hot seats, where we have some laser coaching, we have some times where you go off on your own and work on things. It’s been amazing to see what has been launched out of Slow Down School.

Simplified SEO consultants, Jessica’s business that helps therapists with their SEO just came out of Slow Down School and having conversations. Looking at the Empowered and Unapologetic podcast, Veronica really started that at Slow Down School. Michael Glavin wrote five or six chapters of his book he sketched out in a 20-minute sprint at Slow Down School. So just seeing the leveling up that happens within Slow Down School and to see the influencers that have come through there. people like John Clark and Dr. Jeremy Sharp and seeing Alison Pidgeon and Jessica Tappana, all these people that are totally reshaping the counseling world that they came through Slow Down School. So there’s quite a legacy there.

Then on Thursday we do the same thing where we’re running full tilt towards your big ideas and your business. So it may be that you’re launching e-courses or wanting to do podcasts or wanting to really sketch through different things. Then we come back together, talk about where you’re stuck and just keep breaking through. Then we wrap up on Friday morning and then Friday afternoon we go do some cherry tasting because we’re the cherry capital of the world. We go wine tasting, chocolate tasting, Grocery’s Daughter is this amazing chocolate tier here in Northern Michigan.

They walk us through chocolate tasting and learning about different forms of chocolate. It’s just such a fun thing that we do. Then we wrap up on Friday evening and early Saturday morning you get transported back to the airport because most people are going to have an early morning flight. Traverse City has just a handful of flights out, so very early morning on Saturday morning.

But the outcomes that people get are really thinking through where they’re spending their time and what they need to start outsourcing. It’s amazing how every single year we see these emotional breakthroughs of, oh my gosh, I need to stop doing all these different things. I still remember when Dr. Jeremy Sharp, Testing Psychologist podcast, when we walked through his schedule and looked at what he needed to change and him having a conversation with his wife, Carrie, and just having tears in his eyes of, I need to do something different. He’s one of my better friends now, because on the road trip spent quite a bit of time out in Fort Collins. So to be able to help people understand their use of time and dig in is what Slow Down School is about.

So early bird is open now and that actually closes on May 15th. So you want to grab that ticket as soon as possible. If you grab a time to chat with me, if you meet after May 15th, sometime in May if you can’t get into the schedule before then you can always email Jess or but we’ll respect that early bird if you schedule that. So you want to make sure that you at least grab a time to chat with me about it if you’re not sure. Tickets are $2,900 early bird, which includes all of your food, all of your lodging, pretty much from the moment you land in an airplane, unless on some of our free time afternoons, some people will pay to get a ride into town to do some shopping or if they want to do that sort of thing. They’ll have to pay a little extra for that.

But for the most part everything’s covered. So all of that food, all of those connections, we have snacks and beverages and sunsets. We don’t charge you for the sunsets. So that’s all included in your ticket price. After the 15th, then that bounces up to $3,900. So you want to grab that right away if you can. If you want to grab your ticket and then if you want to talk with me about it, if for some reason you get your ticket and then we talk and it’s not a fit, we’ll just refund that money. So yes, that’s going to be in late July. It’s coming up very soon. We already have almost half the tickets sold, so you’ll want to grab one quickly. It’s going to be so much fun.

Every year it just blows all of us away in regards to just what can happen when you have the right people in the room. We’d love to have you be one of those people. Head on over to slowdownschool.com. You can read more about it. You can see more about the area and be able to just have those deeper discussions with folks and spend a week together on the beaches of Northern Michigan. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. Slowdownschool.com is where you can go read and learn more.

Thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. I’ll talk to you soon.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the producers, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.