Episode 192 Thursday is the New Friday: Interview With Joe Sanok

Chris McDonald: What if I told you there was a way for you to create the schedule you want, work less, have a greater income, and allow more time for what's important to you? Would you be interested? Join me today as we dive into a groundbreaking conversation with Joe Sanok, author of Thursday is the New Friday.

Discover how re imagining the work week can transform your productivity, well being, and overall life satisfaction. In this episode, Joe shares his insights on why the traditional five day work week is outdated. the benefits of a four day work week for mental health and work life balance, and practical tips to implement a shorter work week in your own life.

Tune in and learn how you can work smarter, not harder, and reclaim your time. Don't miss out on this life changing episode you don't want to miss on today's episode of the Holistic Counseling Podcast.

This is Holistic Counseling, the podcast for mental health therapists who want to deepen their knowledge of holistic modalities and build their practice with confidence. I'm your host, Chris McDonald. Licensed therapist. I am so glad you're here for the journey.

Do you have any ethical or legal concerns about blending holistic modalities with traditional therapy? Is this holding you back from integrating these? You are not alone. There are some things to consider to protect your license and practice before diving into holistic counseling strategies. This is why I created my one hour recorded training, The Ethical and Legal Considerations of Holistic Counseling.

In it, we will explore how to protect yourself against liability as a holistic therapist. You will learn more about scope of practice versus scope of competence and informed consent. Also addressed is how you can expand your therapy practice ethically into the holistic realms and where to draw the line.

I also address the ethics of research based interventions and how this works for holistic counseling practices. You get all this plus one continuing education contact hour. To learn more, go to hcpodcast. org forward slash ethics course. That's hcpodcast. org forward slash ethics course. Welcome to the holistic counseling podcast.

In today's episode, we delve into an intriguing concept of Thursday is the new Friday. As the traditional work week evolves. We're seeing a shift in how we approach our schedules, productivity, and our overall well being. More and more people are embracing the idea of a four day workweek, which brings with it a host of benefits and challenges.

But I'm super excited today to share with you today's guest, Joe Sannak. He was, is an amazing podcast coach and helped create this podcast and is so inspiring in all he has achieved in helping clinicians. Joe has established himself as a leading figure in private practice consulting through his role as founder and lead consultant at Practice of the Practice.

Through this organization, Joe helps fellow practitioners achieve their dreams of building successful practices that bring them true joy. He's the acclaimed author of Thursday is the new Friday, how to work for your hours, make more money and spend time doing what you want. So whether you're considering a shorter work week for yourself, your clients, or your organization, This episode is packed with valuable information to help you understand and navigate this transformative trend.

Let's go ahead and dive in and explore how Thursday is the new Friday and could be a game changer for your overall holistic wellness journey. Welcome to the Holistic Counseling Podcast, Joe.

Joe Sanok: Chris, thank you so much for having me.

Chris McDonald: This is so interesting to have you not as my coach, but you're here as a guest.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, I know. It's great to be on the show.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, this is amazing. So for listeners that don't know, he helped me come up with this concept for this podcast, the holistic counseling podcast. So I have much thanks and inspiration from Joe.

Joe Sanok: Yeah. I mean, I love what you're doing with the show and just this whole kind of mindset needs to, needs to spread.

So it's awesome that you're doing it.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, absolutely. But I thought if we could start with what interested you in that concept of a four day work week, because most people aren't thinking that way. So I'd love to hear where this came from.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, you know, it's interesting is as I wrote the book and then started talking more on podcasts about Thursdays, the new Friday, I got this question a couple of times and I really kind of thought through it and it really started at my freshman orientation for college.

I remember I was, you know, sitting there and they did the orientation in smaller groups. I think there's probably, I don't know. Eight or nine of us, and they kind of talked through the different options. And I raised my hand and I said, do we have to go to class on Fridays? And they said, this is college, do whatever you want.

Like, you know, as long as whatever schedule works for you, if you aren't a morning person, don't do eight AMs. If you want classes at, you know, the 6 PM ones do that. And so through all of undergraduate. I did a four day work week except for one semester where there was a required psych 360 class that I had to take in behavioral psychology on 8 a.

m. on Friday was the only time it was so, but other than that, did it throughout there and then my first job out of grad school, I negotiated a four day work week with them kind of pitched it as I was gonna be driving doing therapy in a bunch of different places and said, You know, this is going to save a lot of drive time, uh, you know, a full day.

Cause I was driving about two and a half hours a day. And so they bought into it. And after that, it really, there was jobs that, you know, were five days a week. But when I then left, uh, full time work and did my private practice and was doing the consulting that first summer, I said, you know what, I'm going to just, I'm going to do a four day work week.

And at that time I took Wednesdays off and I think that was around my kid's schedule or something like that. And it was awesome. I'd work two days and then, you know, have Wednesday off and then work two days. And by the end of the summer, every month had been better financially than the month before. So I kept the experiment going and, uh, really haven't looked back.

Chris McDonald: And I appreciate you sharing it as an experiment to see. So maybe even listeners can think about this as something as an experiment. Cause I think that most people were kind of stuck on the seven days a week, 40 hours a week or more. So where does that come from? in art culture in the U. S.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, it's funny because, you know, when I was writing the book, uh, I like to really look at like, what's the, the history here?

And so I started looking at, first I was just like, what is time? I mean, one of the big picture things, if we're talking about a four day work week, uh, big picture, what's time? And so, As I looked at the way that we classify time as humans, you know, months are loosely related to the lunar cycle. Days are obviously very clear with, you know, the sun rising and setting.

And when we look at weeks, there's nothing in nature that points to a seven day week. And so I started to really look at it and it went back to the Babylonians that they looked up and they saw six major celestial things. You know, they saw the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, and Mars, and they looked down and saw earth.

Uh, and he did that because he wanted people to have weekends so that in Michigan, as he paid for all these roads, people could go buy cars and get away from town, get away from Detroit. And then it started to take off. And so when we think about it that way, To me, I'm like, okay, my, my great grandparents or my grandparents were some of the very first people to experience a 40 hour work week.

That means that baby boomers are the first kids to experience that, which means Gen Xers, millennials are only like a generation or two away from the beginning of this. And so this thing that has felt so ingrained in us, the 40 hour work week is actually brand new. It's less than a hundred years old and we can then challenge it.

It makes it a lot easier to challenge it if we know where it comes from.

Chris McDonald: That makes a lot of sense. I never even thought about that. Like how it was created and it's so ingrained with this is what you do. You grow up and then you work eight hours a day, five days a week.

Joe Sanok: Well, it seems similar to like my daughters have never lived life without a cell phone.

You know, they're, they're nine and 13. It's like just even explaining to them what life was like, we would have one family phone. We had a notebook that if my mom got a message, I had to write it down as a kid. And it was just like, that's how life was. I mean, imagine in 50 years when people. don't even have a concept of what it's like to have a landline or whatever life is like.

It's like that monumental of a shift where this thing's brand new and we just don't often appreciate that things that are brand new, you know, are a lot easier to change than things that are thousands of years old.

Chris McDonald: True. Well, I know you offer lots of different things in your business. You have over a thousand podcasts for practice of the practice.

You have multiple streams of revenue. How do you do this in four days a week? That is my

But then when I left that full time job, I started to really think through like, what first do I hate doing? And so just what are the things I hate doing that I really need to have somebody help with? So right away for me, it was bookkeeping, my accounting, keeping track of the money coming in and out.

Like those are things that I'm just not great at. I'm more of an ideas person. But then there was a category of what are the things that I. like doing but really shouldn't be doing. So every podcast episode, I would be the one that did the editing. I'd make the art for each episode. I'd put it into social media.

I'd email the guests. I did all of it. You know, I'd do the recording. Then it would take me two plus hours to do all of it afterwards. And, but I loved it. It scratched that itch of like doing art, which I really enjoy. But then when I hired someone out and initially I think it was probably 50 bucks an episode, to do that, it became so much easier to do more episodes.

I'm like, Oh my gosh. We can do two episodes a week now, and I'm not burned out from it. And I can do this work that I love and sustain it. We're now up to seven days a week, but it's because I show up, I interview, and then I'm done. Everything else happens with the team. And so just over time, starting to notice where are the areas that I'm less interested in.

So I, I don't know all the things that someone that runs the practice right now knows. So bringing in consultants that can do that, uh, having trainings from the moment someone starts a practice all the way through. So I would say big picture, it's just noticing over time, where's my energy? Where's the profits?

Where does Joe have to show up? You know, there's like welcome parties for our memberships. You know, me showing up is, is a big kind of stamp of approval, uh, where people feel more secure joining those memberships. They may not see me every single week, but I need to be involved in some capacity, um, to help people feel like this isn't just me starting a product and me disappearing from it.

Chris McDonald: That sounds like really prioritizing where it is most important for you to show up and what tasks are best for you to do and what is best for other people to do. Maybe really delegating that.

Joe Sanok: Yeah, and I think noticing we will change over time and I think a lot of people are scared of that. You know, for me to give up to put my counseling license in retirement, I mean, I worked so hard to get a master's degree.

I didn't end it so I can't go back someday, but it's in retirement mode. My insurance is in retirement mode. That was a part of my identity, but I no longer wanted to do that. And so being able to change and adapt to say, okay, like that kind of client, I don't enjoy seeing that much, or I don't like seeing people after a certain time.

Or I used to be able to do eight sessions a day. Now I can only do five. Like that's okay. Um, we just have to figure out how then do we keep meeting that need and balance that with our finances and the joy that it brings us.

Chris McDonald: So what does the research say about a four day work week? What are some of the benefits?

Joe Sanok: Yeah, so there's a few different ways we can address that. So one is to look at some case studies and some is to look at kind of what ends up kind of happening when people work the four day workweek. Then there's also science that points to things that happened during it. So I want to start with just a couple case studies.

So Golden, Colorado, if you just type in Golden, Colorado, CNN on any search engine, CNN did a huge thing about them. So they as a town switched over to the four day workweek. What I love about using them as an example is one of the most common questions I get is, well, what happens with ambulance? What happens with police?

What happens with other 24 7 needs that we have? And what Golden found was that by switching all of their staff over to a four day work week, they were able to save so much in just overtime pay and be able to recruit people to their town to work that maybe were a few towns away, maybe in different parts of Colorado because they knew they could work a four day work week and enjoy those three days.

They ended up saving millions and millions of dollars as a result of that. They were able to better serve people. You know, I don't want an ambulance driver that's been working, you know, 60 hours in a week and it's burned out. I want someone that is refreshed and able to help me or my family members. So Golden, uh, did that.

Um, it's a smaller town, so we still have yet to see how that would apply to kind of larger metropolises. But then we'd look at a number of the UK studies and other studies throughout Europe that had over 200 different businesses that did the four day workweek. And they not only saved money and attracted people.

But they also found that the productivity was the same or better as a 40 hour work week. Most of the research shows that that last eight hours, so a 32 hour week, um, we're getting about the same amount of productivity as a 40 hour work week. Because you think about how much time we spend, you know, in a meeting, people show up late or we aren't focused on what we need to do, or we're just.

tired and we aren't doing as strong of work. The last piece that I think is really important to go back to is Parkinson's Law. So Parkinson's Law is something that's been along around for a long time. There's two parts to Parkinson's Law. One is often reported, the other part isn't usually reported as much on.

The first part is that work expands to the time given. And so you think about back in college, if you were given a month to write a paper, you'd spend the first week doing research. You'd do some drafts and going to the writing center. You'd do all these things and it would take you till that day before usually to have that final paper.

So it took a month, 48 hours before you remember, Oh my gosh, I have this paper due. You got that paper done. It may not have been your best work, but you got it done. So in general, work expands to the time that we give to it. But the second part of Parkinson's law is that there's a natural bloating of organizations.

And so he studied a variety of big organizations like the British Navy and found that if you put any piece of signage, check it off, um, new policy into a system, it was near impossible to pull it back out. So what a four day workweek does is it limits the amount of time we give to tasks and forces us to prioritize.

So if I used to be able to get 20 big picture tasks done in my life or business, uh, in a week, and now I can only do 15 of those 20, am I going to do the best 15 or the worst 15? I'm going to do the ones that, For my business, give me the best profit, give me the best joy, have the most impact and those things that I don't really want to do, like cleaning my office, I'm probably going to forget to do those or just say, that's not as important.

So then it starts to reveal that bloating that we've just taken on where instead of, you know, working on our business, we're working in it, we're just bootstrapping everything. We then are able to more clearly see, okay. For two or three weeks, I haven't done these things I'm supposed to be doing. Clearly, I need to hire a bookkeeper because I don't want to do that.

And I don't see that as a good use of my time. So it helps us then have a leaner business and also a leaner life where the things that actually bring us joy, we do and we prioritize instead of just doing something just because we have the abilities to do it.

Chris McDonald: I appreciate that clear explanation because I understand the Parkinson's law because as I created my yoga basics course for therapists, I did it as I went and at first I was panicked about it because I'm like, how am I going to do this?

But I did it and every week I knew that was coming up that people were waiting on this course each week. So I had to, you know, just do it and find time. So I, I, I really understand that. And I think that can apply to for any time that we have limited time. We have to not waste time, we have to prioritize our time and make things a priority.

That makes a lot of sense.

Joe Sanok: Well, and then we don't get paralyzed by perfection. We don't overthink things as much. When I started Practice the Practice, one of the first opt ins we had was the one year practice plan. And we still have it. It's a weekly email that walks someone through starting a practice right when they get going.

And I had one person sign up, you know, within the first month and I just had to stay ahead of them. So I knew they were on week six. I had to write, you know, seven, eight and nine. And then, you know, Hey, anything we're missing? Oh, okay. They give you inspiration. Then you can create things that your clients actually want instead of just hypothesizing as well.

Are

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Check it out at hcpodcast. org forward slash workbook. That's hcpodcast. org forward slash workbook today. Well, I wonder logistically for a lot of therapists listening are in private practice, how could this work for therapists in private practice? And some might be solo practitioners and, you know, they may be wondering, Oh my God, do I have to see 10 clients a day?

And how could this work for me? What do you think?

Joe Sanok: Yeah, I think there's a few different ways. Um, so one natural problem is when your time equals your money, whenever you're not seeing people, you aren't making money. So we all make that choice already to say, how much do I want to make? How many hours do I need to work to make that?

Here's how many sessions I need to do in a week. Now we can just start with, OK, is that in balance? You know, we already say, OK, 52 sessions a week is too many in a week. We don't usually do that unless you're. Crazy. Or maybe you have to pay off a lot of debt or something, but we're already setting limits on that.

So first starting with, okay, are the number of sessions that I'm seeing in a week, can I do what I want in my life? Uh, can I do what I want in my practice? Can I grow? Then just start to look at ways to optimize that, that time. So say you say to yourself, okay, 25 sessions a week is the total sessions that I want.

But I want to make more money, but I don't want to work more. Well, then you need to either raise your rates, you need to add other products or people. So that could be e courses that could be selling a book that could be public speaking. That could be consulting or it could be adding other either contractors or W2 employees to your business that see maybe only five people a week that help with that overflow.

We don't always have to go into group. practice, but then it's not only based on us showing up to work to make that money. So then once we do that, we want to also then look at, well, what's draining the money out of the business so that we can optimize it. So are there things that we're paying for that we really don't need to pay for?

Are there areas that we could raise prices or we can improve services or add additional services? And so part of it's. Kind of critically thinking about our business and saying, okay, I do have a service based business right now. If I don't show up, I don't get paid. How do I optimize that? How do I expand it beyond my time?

Even just saying, okay, there's lots of great, you know, AI progress note types of things out there. If you're spending three hours a week on progress notes, you know, the average clinician spending five to 10 hours a week on progress notes. There's AI software that can bring that down to minutes that will summarize.

It's all HIPAA compliant. Little things like that. Can then help you be able to take back some of that time and either then have more billable time or have that be time outside of the practice.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. And I think you can bring up a lot of good points, especially finding what are some alternative streams of revenue, right?

That you can create for yourself. And of course, this does take some investment ahead. I know everybody says passive, it's not passive, but cause there's always some back work initially to get things rolling. But I think that that's something for solo practitioners to think about, you know, is there other ways I can earn some money so that.

Maybe if this is a goal that you could do four days a week.

Joe Sanok: Yeah. And I think that that idea of kind of passive income, I like to think of it more as like, what's scalable income. So me, me being a solo practitioner and only getting paid through doing counseling is not scalable. So I can keep raising my rates, but there's a certain threshold that I'm going to limit my client access for that.

But what's scalable, what's something that you could create that you could sell 10 a day and it wouldn't be more work. So, you know, courses, podcasts, things like that are much more scalable. So just finding some of those things to experiment with, I think can help people then have that take back some of that time that maybe they want to take back.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. And I think when you initially told me about four day work week, when I was working with you, I was like, Ooh, I don't know if I can do that now. I haven't done it yet, Because building courses is, makes it very difficult to do. But now I think that is that, could that, and think of IFS perspective, is it a resistant part of us sometimes that are just like, Oh, that can't work.

You know, maybe that's some internal work that we have to do as well as therapists.

Joe Sanok: Oh, I think so. I mean, I remember when I first started like going to the YMCA and it was like in the middle of the day worked best for me because my kids were in school and you know, I just blocked it off and did it a couple of times a week.

And I would look around. It was a bunch of guys in the locker room that were in their like 80s. And then a guy that looked like maybe he didn't have a job or maybe worked the night shift. And there was a lot of internal dialogue that was like, do these guys think I, I don't have a job. Do they think that I, and it's like, no, they don't care.

They really don't care. No, no. But that would, that whole idea of I should be working. Cause it's during the day is such a strong narrative. And for us to say, well, is that, Really true for what I want out of my life.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. Cause I, I guess, has it brought you more closer to your values and being able to live more of value driven life?

Cause you can do more of what you want to do in your life and what's important to you. Yeah,

Joe Sanok: definitely. I'm a single dad that has almost full custody of my kids. And so for me, when school's in session, I want to. Walk them to school. We're walking distance from the school. My sister lives in the neighborhood.

So the nieces and my daughter, my youngest daughter, we all walk together every morning. So school starts at 9 a. m. So my first meeting every day when I'm working is 9 30. My last one is at 3 30 because it's four o'clock pickup. And I want to walk down and, you know, talk to the neighbors and have that community.

That a lot of people don't have, uh, in their schools, um, because they're in car line, just dropping people off. And so I then have a closer relationship with my neighbors just, just yesterday, my backyard neighbor, Marty, he had a brunch thing on Sunday morning and had a musician come play and he does really cool beats and stuff and like a bunch of the neighborhood came and, and so.

Having those relationships to me, I'm allowed to do easier because I can have that flexibility with my work. Also, you know, on Fridays, I tend to run around to, you know, get food for the weekend, straighten up the house so that we can genuinely play over the weekend. And of course my daughters have their own cleanup they have to do.

I'm not going to just clean for them, but it's like, you know, uh, a lot of those things we spend like, you know, all day Saturday doing yard work. And it's like, next thing you know, the weekend's gone. So I want to, with my daughters. Have a life of creativity of socialization of time in nature of time swimming or skiing or snowboarding all those things that we enjoy doing and by working a four day work week, I then have the clarity when I come back on Monday morning to run full tilt to I mean, you know how I am as a consultant.

It's like, take a breath, Joe. Like, I have that energy because I take that time to slow down.

Chris McDonald: Hmm. Cause you take the time to slow down. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Cause I could see that otherwise if we keep going, going, we burn ourselves out too is the other end of the coin. I think that's one of the reasons that for a therapist to think about that.

Cause what is the impact on you by not slowing down and really consider that.

Joe Sanok: Yeah. And I think that, you know, like I have type one diabetes. I support someone who, um, has a chronic illness podcast. And as me being her consultant, um, I was like, Oh, I never thought of myself as having chronic illness. No wonder I'm tired sometimes.

And like, as I dug into it, you know, having diabetes, having a history of cancer, having had back issues and surgery when I was 21, like, yeah, I do have health needs that if I just went full tilt, I couldn't respect and I can't be the person that I want to be and have the energy I want if I don't take it at a pace that my body needs.

Chris McDonald: And I think it is trying to find the balance too. I know balance is not always possible, but having that time, cause I know sometimes I've taken some Fridays off and just allow for that space to do chores and do these other tasks and errands and, you know, get my hair done, those kinds of things that take up time, but then we don't want the whole weekend gone with all these tasks.

So to really focus on, you know, self care to do those things, because I always hear therapists say, I don't have time for self care. Well, maybe you got to really prioritize and figure out what is a way to make your schedule work for you.

Joe Sanok: And I think seeing it as an experiment, like we started with, you know, maybe take just the first Friday off every month, put that in your calendar, tell your clients, I'm not, I'm not doing first Fridays anymore.

Schedule something in, I would say, you know, if it's in your schedule, you're more likely to do it. So maybe the first Friday. Always do lunch with a friend of yours. Like do a different friend every month, you know, join a walking club and, you know, you know, join them on the first Friday or something, or, you know, schedule a hike in with somebody, um, do something that is in your calendar.

Get a massage, try every massage therapist in your community and see which one you like the best. Make it a, make it a game. Um, so I think that if we do something like that, where we say, I'm going to do this on that day, not just leave it up to you that morning, how do I feel? I'm Oftentimes our default is, well, I'll feel less stress if I just do 10 more emails.

And if I just, you know, do these few things, or if I run around town for work and, you know, pick up sodas for the, for the cooler or whatever, we then don't actually take that day off. And that's retraining our brain to not always be in work mode. That's hard. It's hard.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. Hustle culture.

Joe Sanok: And I mean, there's so many layers to it.

I mean, there's such a like comparison culture to where we see other therapists or other influencers and it's like, Oh, they have more followers or they're doing these events or I have to work harder to me. I think it's just like, sure. We do some, you know, self promotion. Everyone has to kind of putting your head down and doing the work and just going like just pacing it out is going to get you so much farther than the flashiness that oftentimes people compare themselves to.

Chris McDonald: And again, going back to prioritize, and I think that's what's helpful because if you can prioritize, because I know my problem is I will try to schedule each day too many things I can't possibly get done. So if, so if everybody listening to can think about what, what is realistic for me, what do I really need to be focusing on and how does this, I guess if we're looking at goals, where are your goals for your practice?

And are you really spending the time on the goals of where you want to be?

Joe Sanok: Well, can I ask you some questions about what gets in the way of a four day workweek for you? Yes. Give you some free consulting. Oh, I mean, like when, when you think about what would happen if for the next three months you took every Friday off, like tell me all your worries, all what would happen?

Chris McDonald: I would, I would feel like I wouldn't get everything done.

Joe Sanok: And tell me, like, what's everything?

Chris McDonald: Well, I've been working on this course and figuring this out and trying to get it so I can have more CEs available to be able to offer that and get that ready for that to, to go. And then, yeah, there's just a lot with that.

Joe Sanok: So if you hired like a project manager, like, would that kill the budget? Would you just be like, Oh, like, we're not at a point that I can hire someone for 25 or 30 bucks an hour to organize that and take some of that on?

Chris McDonald: Now that's a great idea though. That could be helpful.

Joe Sanok: Well, and I think that's where there are times in your business that you're like, no, we are bootstrapping it.

So sometimes they can be like, okay, my practice makes say 80 grand a year. My family budget is I got to take home 60 grand a year for my part of the family budget or whatever your numbers are. So it's okay for me to, you know, spend some of that on something that may not make money right away. Now there's other times that it's super razor thin and you have to say every single expense I've got to think through, but I would say, let's think about it.

Let's think through if you did how many more sessions, you know, say you did one extra session a week that may buy a project manager that can work three hours, four hours a week. And so that one extra hour of work could actually maybe fund one of those positions. So I think that's just, I would think about that.

What else do you think gets in the way of trying it?

Chris McDonald: I think because this is something I've never done before, too. Like you said, could this be an experience? I like what you said. I wrote down what you said about one Friday off a month even and see how it goes. And then maybe add it on from there. So it's kind of that mind shift.

Yeah.

Joe Sanok: You know. Well, and I think looking at like what what would you need on a dashboard to know if things are going OK to do an experiment like this? So it might be total income per week. It might be, you know, total hours I put into my Practice versus into my big ideas, you know, what are my extra expenses?

And if you have those kinds of KPIs of, okay, I I've done enough sessions to pay for the family budget of what I need to bring home. Like I I've made it everything after this, I can choose to work or I can choose not to work.

Chris McDonald: Yeah. That makes sense to look at financially too. Cause it could potentially work as well as if you're looking at the financial piece and kind of seeing where you land.

Joe Sanok: Well, then the other side is like, what kind of ideas could you possibly have that would like even more increase, you know, your podcast listeners, your social media, following the, the things that you have as aha moments for your audience that then differentiates you even more. Um, and so it could be that you actually end up creating even more of a following and wealth and joy by being slower.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, that's

Joe Sanok: true.

Chris McDonald: I appreciate your. Support as always.

Joe Sanok: There's one exercise that I think, um, and even if they're not doing the four day work week, they can be helpful. And it's called the plus one minus one exercise. So what you do is you think about some things that you can add into your weekend that are going to help you live a better life that as an experiment.

And so viewing the weekend instead of as recovery from the week before to see it as preparation for the week to come to say, okay, if I spent an hour on Saturday morning. drinking green tea and reading a book that's not about business, but it's something I just purely want to enjoy. And I talk to my kids and I say, girls, dad's got to read for an hour.

I'm going to do this for the next couple of Saturdays. Please don't disturb me unless something is going wrong. And then to just see, like by adding that in. Is that something I can add to the menu that is something that can make my weekends even better? And then the minus one is saying, well, what are some experiments that I can do that might show me what I need to take off my plate?

You know, maybe there's a toxic friend that wants to get coffee on Saturday morning. And I say to myself, you know, I'm too old for toxic friends. Like I feel drained after that person, or, you know, maybe I go grocery shopping on Sundays. Usually maybe it's It's time to have those groceries delivered, you know, in the winter.

I don't want it to snow blow. There's so much, you know, snow that comes. Maybe I outsource that and see. So taking things off our plate to have a menu, we're not going to necessarily do all of that all the time, but to just say, am I recovering this weekend or am I preparing myself to just really bounce back?

And I think that that then becomes a mindset of when we feel off, we can just start to pepper those things in that we know have worked in the past.

Chris McDonald: I like the simplicity of that plus one minus one thing and. Cause you mentioned groceries. I hate grocery shopping. Yeah. I appreciate you even relooking at that.

Like, how can we do it different? I

Joe Sanok: mean, even just thinking about like, sure, with, with tip and the extra costs, maybe it costs you 30 or 40 to have it delivered, but then how much time were you spending on that? Could, if you went for a walk for that time, how much would you pay a trainer? To get your butt moving, probably 30 or 40.

So, so even if you just went for a walk for that, instead of going grocery shopping, just starting to think a little bit differently to say, let me just experiment with this experiment with where I'm going to spend my money and experiment where I'm spending my time and just see where it lands.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, I think that's really helpful for listeners to to be considering to like, how are you spending your time on your weekend?

And if you despise something, then maybe you've got to hire out or look at it a different way, right? Is there something to take off your plate for sure? Yeah. So what's a takeaway you could share with listeners who may be like me and hesitant about the four day work week and unsure if it could work for them?

What would you say to them?

Joe Sanok: Yeah, I would say, yes, we have to acknowledge the factors that influence our world. Like, we can't just have a magic wand that just creates the life you want right away. But I think we often underestimate how powerful we really are. You as Chris and me as Joe, we are the only ones that fully experience our lives.

You know, there's people in our lives, you know, whether it be partners or kids or coworkers that overlap in different aspects, but you and I are the only ones that are experiencing what it is to be Chris and what it is to be Joe. And we're responsible for what that experience is. And oftentimes we, we think that we have to follow a script because previous generations have taught us that that's how you're supposed to do it.

The script of the 40 hour work week started to untangle in the 90s. You know, we, we see, I like to joke that That Friday has been having an affair with the weekend. Let's just call it what it is, you know, casual Fridays, people working, you know, half day Fridays, it's when people would bring in muffins and do team building days and birthday parties like Fridays.

We already don't really work that hard anyway. And so we have the ability, especially if we own our own practices to create the kind of schedule that we want. There's just some logistical things. Like how do we make sure that we have enough money? How do we make sure that we're putting time into the things it takes to run the business and how do we plan for those things?

But you have the power and the responsibility to create a life that's stepping towards that life that you want.

Chris McDonald: Yes. And that's great words to remember. We have that power, right? And the flexibility, especially with private practice, we can do this. And if you're not in private practice, if you work for someone, there are ways to, cause I know you've advocated for yourself as well.

So finding the benefits and sharing that with the boss, right?

Joe Sanok: Yeah. Even talking through, you know, with your boss, like I, when I was in child welfare, I was like, I don't. Really wanting to, like, go out to lunch for an hour every day like everyone else does. I'd rather just, like, eat my lunch at my desk so I can either leave early or work less on Friday.

Like, are you cool with that? And they're like, well, you know, employment law says you're supposed to get a break. I'm like, can I just waive that? And like, I don't care. I'd rather be working on a report and just be home early, uh, than just go out with co workers. Honestly, I didn't really want to hang out with, so it was like, Oh, so, so just being able to like flex your schedule a little bit, or think creatively about it.

Or if you came in half an hour early, if you have to work exactly 40 hours to say to your boss, well, like, what are the things that I'm judged on in this role? If I can reach those in less than 40 hours, like, do I have to be here 40 hours or is there some flexibility there? More and more people want to keep and retain quality talent.

And that flexibility conversation. There's a, we can link to it in the show notes. Um, there's a whole article that I wrote for Harvard business review about how to ask for the four day work week, and it walks through the exact structure and how you can go through that with your boss. So if that is you, then you definitely can get that as well.

Chris McDonald: Yeah, we can definitely put that in the show notes. So what's the best way for listeners to find you to learn more about you?

Joe Sanok: Yeah, so I have the podcast practice of the practice. Uh, we also have the website practice of the practice. We help therapists from the moment that they want to start a practice.

So they may have that idea even in grad school. We have services and products to help people from that all the way through. We're selling the practice. We have a mega group practice. I want to write books and do keynotes and start a podcast. Like Chris, uh, we have services across that board, including it services, social media management, all sorts of different things.

Um, so get that on your calendar for that first week of May.

Chris McDonald: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming on the Holistic Counseling Podcast, Joe.

Joe Sanok: Chris, thank you so much for having me.

Chris McDonald: This has been great. And listeners, thank you for being here. I have a question for you. Are you struggling with feelings of burnout and emotional exhaustion in your counseling practice?

Do you always put others first? But it's time for you to put yourself first. The Self Care for the Counselor Companion Workbook is ready to go and written with you in mind. It helps you power up your self care. This workbook provides simple strategies that are not only practical, but easy to integrate into your busy life.

Dive deeper into the world of holistic self care with interactive supplementary activities, bonus content, and links to audio and video meditation and yoga. Check it out today at hcpodcast. org forward slash workbook. That's hcpodcast. org forward slash workbook. And once again, this is Chris McDonald sending each one of you much light and love till next time.

Take care. Thanks for listening. The information in this podcast is for general educational purposes only, and it is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are giving legal financial counseling or any other kind of professional advice. If you need a professional, please find the right one for you.

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James Marland: there. I'm super excited to welcome you back to the brand new season of Scaling Therapy Practice Podcast. This is the show where we encourage you to take deliberate steps towards sustainable growth. I'm your host, James Marland. In season two, we're specifically focused on one main topic, marketing for mental health providers.

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I'm not going to be doing the show alone. I've got some awesome friends who are going to be joining me from the SciCraft network. You're going to hear from Lisa Mustard. Steve Bisson, Dawn Gabriel, and other special guests. We've joined forces for this season to share helpful advice on things we've learned and even the mistakes we've made so that you don't have to make them.

As the weeks go by, listen to us cover lots of topics on marketing, such as social media, how to market your own therapist, How to speak in public and even how to start your own podcast or even just guest on podcast shows. We really want to hear from our listeners. So send us your questions, your comments, your thoughts to jamesatcoursecreationstudio.

com. That's jamesatcoursecreationstudio. com. Make sure you check out season one, which is out now, and it has lots of tips on scaling your therapy practice. Just go to CourseCreationStudio. com and click the podcast section. So join us every Monday. We're going to learn a lot about intentional and sustainable growth for your therapy practice.