[JOE]: This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 371. I’m Joe Sanok, your host. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. We’ve been doing five questions for private practice that every practitioner needs to ask themselves over the last five weeks and what five weeks it’s been. Hopefully, you found some great help not only with the podcast but with the complimentary YouTube videos and the blog that goes along with it.
If you didn’t check those out, you definitely want to check that out on the website or on our YouTube channel. And we’ve also been promoting a lot of it on Instagram. So, that’s going to help you continue to level up your practice. And that’s what we’re all about here; is helping you level up your practice, but also to go after those big ideas and to have it all match your lifestyle.
So, today on the podcast, I’m actually talking specifically about Slow Down School. And Slow Down School is an event that kind of came out a couple of years ago. My wife Christina and I, we were headed down to Asheville, North Carolina for another event I was putting on with Alison Puryear and Jane Carter called Brew Your Practice.
And we had some time in the Detroit airport and my wife had this adult coloring book that she was just kind of coloring and we were kind of joking and riffing off each other. We didn’t have the kids. It was nice to just be away. And I said, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a conference where you just kind of slowed down?” And she’s like, “Yeah, there could be like coloring books or like play or just go for hikes and stuff.”
And so, we were kind of like riffing off each other. And then in typical Joe and Christina form, she took a nap from Detroit down to Asheville and I sketched out an entire conference. And as soon as we landed, I bought slowdownschool.com, from my phone. And so, at first kind of Slow Down School was just going to be like a self-care retreat where you kind of just slow down and that was all there was to it.
But then as I really talked to people that were interested in it, it kind of morphed into something that was bigger than that; that it was slowing down with the purpose of refocusing. So, sort of this idea of being refreshed and then re-energizing and refocusing because we know that the brain does its best work when it’s not in that kind of fight or flight or freeze mode when it’s not stressed out and putting out fires in your practice. That’s not when you make your best decisions. It’s usually when you step back when you allow yourself to get centered. And it doesn’t usually happen in an hour or you know, half a day. It’s usually when you can take a couple of days. They’re just really, rejuvenate.
You know, I think about when I go on vacation the first like day or two, it often takes time to just be like, “Okay, don’t check your phone. Don’t worry about business stuff. Just kind of settle into it.” And then by the end of the vacation, it’s like, “Oh wow. I have to go back to work. Let’s gear up for this.” So, yesterday, you know, the time of this recording, was my first day back from spring break and I know this is going to go live kind of in early May.
But when I recorded this, the focus was, you know, on coming back to work. And so, on that day, you know, I dressed up a little bit more. I wore a suit coat to work. I just wanted to feel a little bit more professional than I had on vacation and got me in a mindset of like, “Let’s go kill it.” So, Slow Down School is really meant to be that refocusing. And I’m going to walk you through exactly what it is because I know a number of you are interested.
I get a lot of calls about it, a lot of emails, and I thought, let’s just do a podcast where I talk about the purpose of it, who it’s right for, maybe who it’s wrong for and, you know, it’s right around the corner. And so, want to make sure that if you are interested that you come to hang out with us. And so, let’s think through like kind of that idea of different phases of practice.
And so, first and foremost, you know, when you’re first getting going in private practice, there are a couple of things that you know are kind of big concepts you want to kind of worry about or think about. And so, those are, the time is really your biggest asset. When you’re first starting and growing, you want to kill it, you want to run after it. You’re really not thinking about slowing down because you’ve been so excited about launching this practice.
But there’s a certain point and usually it’s when you start to add a couple of clinicians, when you start to think bigger about things beyond just the practice that you realize, you know, the time for money exchange just isn’t quite worth what it used to be. That sitting and doing 30 or 40 sessions in a week like that’s not really how you want to live your life. And then that continues to grow. And if you don’t kind of step back and say, “Where am I intentionally going to grow?” What happens is things just kind of takeoff.
You get more clients, you start adding clinicians and before you know it, a lot of your systems are messed up. You don’t have a good handle on your practice, you’re not sure really what’s happening. And you also have oftentimes big ideas that go beyond the practice that you’re not going after either.
And so, it kind of becomes this big cluster of stuff that’s just kind of happened to you and you feel successful, but you don’t feel like you have control over it. And that’s really, I think where a lot of people, can feel when they come to Slow Down School or they know that there’s something more, that they have some of those systems down and they are just ready to scale and be around other people. They want to launch big ideas and want to launch practices. So, you don’t have to be at this point of desperation by any means, but really, it’s meant to be a clarifier. So, what is Slow Down School? Like who is it for? Who is it not for? So, it’s really kind of for people that want to focus on what is the best use of their time.
You know, this book, The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, they ask the question, What’s the one thing that if you put time into that, it would make everything else easier? I mean, that’s a really big question that we need to ask ourselves because if you’re not putting time into the thing that really moves things forward, you’re not going to grow as quickly.
Like, I remember a number of years ago when I first started really kind of thinking through this, it was, “I need to add more clinicians to my practice so that time and money are not just based on me. That money can be coming in whether or not I’m here so that when I’m on vacation, money can still come in.” You know, the next year it was then, “If I can have consulting clients that pay two to three times what my counseling rate is like, if I can get that going and attract that kind of person, that’s going to be a game changer.”
And then when I did that, it was, “Okay, I need to start small groups, some mastermind groups that are cheaper than the individual consulting but the overall, I get a higher hourly helping more people, helping launch more people and scaling in a different way”. And then after that, it was, “I really want to have a membership community that goes well so we have a predictable income, but we can help people at a much lower price point.”
And throughout all of that kind of launching conferences so that I can get to know people in person and help them kind of personally because that’s really where the real connections happen is when you’re around the right people. And then this past year, kind of my goal for 2019 and 20 is if I can have a traditionally published book with a traditional publisher, get some really big kind of fortunate 500 speaking gigs and keynotes that that’s going to continue to help me grow and launch even faster.
And so, you know, I met with an agent when I was down in Austin, Texas and my attorney’s looking at that contract now. By the time this goes live, I’m sure that we’ll kind of have an idea of that, getting the book proposal together and learning all about how the publishing world works in that way. So, being able to say, I need to set time aside to first work on those things that are the big steps forward. And then I’ll put out the fires of the practice, put out the fires of the consulting and Practice of the Practice. That then allows me to move forward faster and to have people that support me be able to kind of lift up those other areas. So, that’s the kind of focus that you want to be at if you’re going to get to that next level.
And so, the kind of person that comes is someone that really wants to work on the systems of their practice or a big idea like an ecourse or consulting or launching their own conferences or membership communities. Those are the kinds of people that are coming to Slow Down School. You know, it kind of, in summary, it would be people that want to be in the right environment with the right people to get the right actions. Let me say that again. It’s people, they want to be surrounded by the right environment, with the right people to get the right actions.
You know, if you want to be refreshed and refocused, then that’s probably for you. Slow Down School is probably for you. So, let me walk you through what it looks like. So, that’s kind of like the big picture of who it’s for, what people are trying to achieve through this week together. So, first, let’s look at the actual dates. So, this year Slow Down School, it’s going to be July 21st until July 27th, 2019. So, on the 21st on that Sunday, everybody flies into the Traverse City Airport here usually via Detroit or Chicago. Wherever you live, you could fly into Chicago then Chicago to Traverse City or Detroit to Traverse City.
Depending on where you live, tickets are 500 and some dollars or so depending on when you buy it and all that and who you fly with. So, you fly into Traverse City in the afternoon, we pick you up around four o’clock from the airport in a big yellow school bus. This big yellow school bus shows up. I’m on there. We welcome you. We make sure everyone’s there. I’m texting everybody to make sure like nobody’s stuck. And, like last year we had people that landed and they wouldn’t let them off the tarmac because of some storm that was happening.
So, people sat on the tarmac in Traverse City from like noon until four and we were like, “We’re not leaving without you.” But if for some reason you miss the bus, you can take an Uber out to where we put on the event. So, we ride the bus for about an hour. We start right away with kind of some ways to help you feel connected to each other, to just start to slow down, to frame it out for you. And then that night we spend some time talking about the intention of the first part of Slow Down School. What is Slow Down School? Why is it important to slow down? We pair you up into families of three or four people that have similar goals as you, you connect with those people. We go through some experiential activities to frame out the slowdown portion of Slow Down School.
And then on Monday and Tuesday of that week, we go for hikes at some of my favorite places. I have a massage therapist come in, Thai bodyworker, a yoga teacher. We have time hanging out on the beach, skipping stones. You can take time alone to just kind of go sit in the woods and journal and to think. We really encourage you to turn off your phone during that time unless you’re taking pictures.
So, in order to do this, in order to take a week to step back and work on yourself and work on your practice, you have to have some basic systems in place. So, it may just be changing your voicemail to my phone number. “Hey, if there’s an emergency contact Joe Sanok. Here’s his phone number.” And then I’ll let you know if there’s an emergency that comes through or maybe that you have a virtual assistant that’s answering phones and getting people scheduled and all of that.
So, Monday and Tuesday of the week, that’s what kind of happens. And then on Wednesday we just get ready to kill it. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we run full tilt towards your practice and your big goals. We do a number of activities to help you kind of take that stepping back of the two days. And we do two days because the first day it really, it’s like resetting and it feels kind of awkward but by day two it’s like, “Oh this is so refreshing. I need to do this more.”
So, then by Wednesday, your brain is ready to run. And so, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning we run full tilt towards your practice and your big goals. We do a bunch of activities, we do some sprints, so, 20-minute sprints where you frame out what you’re going to get done in that 20 minutes, what you need to kind of get together in order to have a successful sprint and then you report out to your family what you got done during that sprint.
And people get a lot done. They have breakthroughs. Like we had one lady last year who was building a consulting practice. She had been stuck in a number of areas, but she figured out who her target market was. She figured out the name for her consulting, her initial offerings, and she had bought the website all in 20 minutes. And so, we’re used to seeing that kind of speed when people actually slow down in the first couple of days.
So, then Wednesday, Thursday, Friday morning we do that. And then on Friday afternoon, we have a wine tasting in that big yellow school bus. And if you don’t drink, we’ll get you some Kombucha or coconut water or something like that. Northern Michigan is one of the top kind of wine areas in the nation, if not the world. It’s a beautiful area. Every year we have, you know, 10 or 12 new wineries opening, and I want to say we have 40 or 50 this year.
So, it’s really kind of a cool area to go wine tasting and to just have that kind of landing of the plane of the week so that we can frame out what we’re going to do moving forward. What’s the plan going to be? How do you keep this momentum really just going to continue to stretch yourself and to keep up the relationships? We want you to be in that right environment with the right people to then have the right actions to take home with you.
And then on Saturday morning, early Saturday morning, the bus leaves, takes you to the Traverse City Airport, you head out and we wave, we hug, we give high fives and you’re often running. So, Slow Down School really does make an impact. And we have a ton of testimonials over at slowdownschool.com of people talking about it. We have a video over there. I want you to feel like it’s right for you if you’re considering it because Slow Down School is this unique event where we take time away, right on the beaches of Lake Michigan to take kind of a collective deep breath and allow ourselves to be refreshed with the purpose of then saying, “Okay, now we need to refocus and say, what really is the best use of my time here? What am I doing with my business? Like is this what I want? Do I need to step back in some areas so I can accelerate other areas?”
Those are things that are going to help you live a better life, have more time for your family and friends and hobbies while still making more money and working less. We want to be able to have that impact so that you aren’t burned out as a result of being in private practice. I want you to be able to say, “Man, this is the best business decision in my life. This is what I should be doing with my life. I feel so inspired.” And when you do that, it helps you be able to help the community more. And really, you know, failure is not an option. You have these skills for a reason and these skills can impact the world and I want to help you do that.
So, head on over to slowdownschool.com. There you can schedule a time for us to talk to see if it’s a fit. I talk with every single person that signs up for Slow Down School. If you don’t want to go there, if you just want to email me, you’re welcome to just email me directly. It’s just [email protected] and me or Emily will help coordinate a time for us to chat for about half an hour about where you’re at to see if Slow Down School is a good fit for you, because this is for people that are really excited about growing their practices or their big ideas or both.
And we want those people together in one spot. It’s amazing to see what happens when we put the right people together in the right environment to get those right actions. So, head on over to slowdownschool.com, apply to come today. The tickets are going to be closing soon because this is happening in July and we want you to get your plane tickets as soon as possible. We know that plane ticket prices go up through the roof when it’s less than 60 days away. And so, make sure you do that right away.
We’re going to be closing tickets in just a couple of weeks here. So, make sure you do that. Again, that slowdownschool.com.
Thanks for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an awesome week. I’ll talk to you soon.
Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for the intro music and this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It’s given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.