[JOE SANOK]
This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, episode number 617.
[JOE]
Well, I am Joe Sanok, your host. Welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. I hope you are doing amazing today. Man, this has been so fun every week to do these Ask Joe shows where you get to submit your questions. Make sure you keep those coming in. We’re going to do it as long as they’re coming in over at practiceofthepractice.com/askjoe. We’ve got quite a few coming up ahead of us, but we’re bouncing all over. So some of the people that just submitted questions were actually doing those because they’re new questions. There’s some questions that kind of overlap a little bit. So want to make sure that we are getting the best questions for you.

So today we have Beliza Perez from Perez Counseling Services in Oviedo, Florida, I hope I said that right. This question I’m really excited about this question and the timing of this question for this week because Beliza asked how to manage burnout, prevent it, how to stay passionate and goal -driven, how to choose from so many ideas. She put this that I was allowing the worries and fear of COVID to take over my business. So I hired someone to help me hire and grow my practice. I stayed active and kept learning personally and professionally. That’s such just some great tips of what she did. So how to manage burnout, how to prevent it, how to stay passionate and goal -driven. Well, let me first just talk from my own perspective of how I do this. So for me, I look at my business as, you know there’s the 80% that is going to bring in the majority of the business and that I’ve got to kind of get that going and be automated.

So when I had my private practice I got to keep the clinicians full. I’ve got to try to have a lot of that marketing and that reaching out automated outside of my own time. So for me, the metaphor that makes sense is we got to keep those plates spinning. Those just got to keep going. We got to automate that as much as possible. So with practice of the practice each year if we add new thing, we want to do that really well. And then we want to figure out the systems for it, the automations for it, so that it can run pretty well without me putting tons and tons of time into it. So first I’d say you want to look at what are the main revenue sources within your business, and then how do you make sure that as much of that is automated outside of your own time. So you’re not taking all the intake calls. You’re not pushing all the blog posts out. You’re not planning out social media. You’re not managing all of the Google ads, that in general, the business is sort of running itself outside of you doing your clinical time.

So once you get that done, then when that’s kind of going pretty well, that allows you to have the emotional space, to be able to work on bigger things. So to think about what is that big next step? So in the previous Ask Joe, I was talking about some creative things that you can can do. So that could be creating e-courses or a podcast or on other people’s podcasts or doing all sorts of other things. You want to create that space. And I think one guiding principle I have is that the person I am this year is not going to be the person I am next year, that I am forever changing and reshaping myself. You know, three years ago, I was running six mastermind groups with probably eight people in each one. A bunch of them came to Slow Down School.

At the time that was fun. It was what I wanted. I was doing a lot of practice development, a lot of, kind of big ideas groups. And I realized having that many groups in a month that I was responsible for was not what I wanted by the end of it. I finished out those groups, then I didn’t offer to re-up them anymore. I moved into something else. That’s when we started the Done For You Podcasting Services. I wanted to be able to help people in a very particular way level up and be able to have a podcast, have an audience that are building, that that would make everything easier for them. So then I stopped doing as many mastermind groups, but then in order to keep those plates spinning, Alison and Whitney took over most of those mastermind groups and the leveling up.

Then we said, well, where are we missing things? We’ve got Next Level Practice. When people get to the end of Next Level Practice where they’re rocking out their private practice, what’s next? Well, most of them want to start a group practice. So that’s when Group Practice Launch started as a six-month program. Then Group Practice Boss is that supportive community that comes in after it. So being able to think about, well, where is my audience? What’s that natural path for them? So personally, when you have those plates spinning, you know that reliably, you can kind of show up and do the work. So I still have to show up, I still have to do the work, I still have to do the consulting or the things that I’ve figured out or scheduled, but I can then stretch into bigger things like writing Thursday is the New Friday.

So there’s these big goals that I have that are total gambles most of the time. I don’t know if they’re going to work out. Lots of the times they do, because we do a lot of research on it, but you have no idea. I mean, Thursday is the New Friday just came out yesterday. At the time of this recording, I have no idea how that’s going to turn out. I have no idea if it’s going to be a New York Times best seller like I’m hoping but I’m doing everything I can within my power to make that happen. So because of that gamble, I can gamble and not care about the outcome, which I think makes better and more creative work.

So back to your question of how do you manage burnout and prevent it? Well, first and foremost we need to slow down before we can speed up. I see this all the time at Slow Down School, where we slow down for two days, people just chill out, we hang out on the beach, it’s just this amazing event. We have the pre-release if you want to be on that interest list for 2022, assuming we don’t have another pandemic then. Go over to slowdownschool.com. But then with a lot of things we want to think through how do we genuinely slow down? So oftentimes our kids are in bed and we’re checking email or on the weekend and we’re just so burned out from going to soccer and groceries and mowing the lawn and all the things that it takes to be an adult that we don’t start with what’s going to optimize my brain so that I genuinely slow down this weekend and excited about next week.

And I think that really taking Fridays off in addition to Saturday and Sunday is one of those keys to burnout because then it forces you to be more efficient Monday through Thursday in a way that maybe you wouldn’t have been, if you just kind of like limped along a little bit. So I would say taking Fridays off, make Thursday the new Friday, for sure. Read the book, Thursday is the New Friday. That will give you tons and tons of tips in regards to specifics on how you can avoid burnout and then do even better work. And then how to stay passionate and goal -driven and how to choose from so many ideas.
[GUSTO PROMO]
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[JOE SANOK]
So I love this question because as an ideas person, I frequently have tons of ideas on my whiteboard over here. I have ideas. I have a note section in my phone that’s just ideas. Sometimes ideas need to simmer for a little bit and having a couple filters that help you decide which ideas to go after I think is really important, So when you’re going to put that time into the big gambles, into the new ideas, I think, don’t play too small because it’s a gamble. So play bigger than maybe you think that you should be playing. Act as if it’s going to happen. The whole posture towards Thursday is the New Friday For me, it’s been that this will be a New York times bestseller. Does that mean it’s going to be that I’m going to manifest it to the universe that it’s going to happen? I don’t know.

I don’t know if it’s going to work, but if I go into it acting as if it’s going to happen that way, then I can reverse engineer it and say, what does it take to have a New York Times’s best seller? What is the formula for the type of book that becomes a New York Times’s best seller? What level of interviews and investment in finances are people putting into creating a New York times best seller? So being able to say, okay, I’m going to put all of the money that Harper Collins gave me into advertising. I am going to follow the lead of John Lee Dumas and do over 200 podcast interviews between August and October 5th. I mean, every single I was doing 20 to 30 interviews during that sprint time to get on shows, to get in front of podcasters, to get in front of business leaders, to make those connections.

So I can do all that and it may not work out. That’s okay. I would love for it to happen, but what I’ve done is best positioned myself to be able to do that. So then the question of how do we pick from the ideas? I think there’s a few different things. I think starting with where things are easy or easiest is one of the big ones. So often we feel like, okay, I want to do this, but then to do this, I have to educate people on why they need this product. They have to learn this and this and this. And it’s just, there’s so many barriers that actually just continuing to do counseling would probably actually be a better financial decision for you. To say, what’s motivating this? Is it just the money? Is it a passion? What would I define as success? So when we have these ideas, letting them simmer for a little bit and really saying, what’s that idea that is really going to open unexpected doors, or it’s going to allow us to have a big step?

So for example, let me go back a few years when I was working at the community college. Here’s how I kind of walked through things. I had my community college job, had my counseling side gig and Practice of the Practice the podcast was the gamble. So I start the podcast, I decided I’m going to do that weekly, I’m going to put money into the website. I remember that $500 that I put into upgrading Practice of the Practice to be a good looking website, seemed like so much money at the time. But then the numbers really went up when I had a good looking website, I had a good looking logo, was able to do the show every single week, at least once a week, those numbers went up. So then the next year, the big I idea was if I can get a handful of consulting clients that are twice my rate of my counseling, that would be amazing.

So I think my counseling was $150 at the time I got a handful of people that paid $300 an hour to talk to me. My mind was blown. So then it was like, what’s the next thing? Well, the next thing was doing the mastermind group. So now I’m going from one on one to one to many. And then after that, it was the membership community. Now I’m going from one to many to one to more, so it’s this group that has predictable income, but it’s still based on my time showing up for that and to making sure that we’re doing good outcomes, but it’s helping people to start their private practice. So then from there, okay, now we need to automate some other membership communities. So we launched Group Practice Launch and Group Practice Boss with Alison and Whitney while I was then working on Thursday is the New Friday.

So if Thursday is the New Friday, if I get a traditionally published book, if I get access to all sorts of people, I normally wouldn’t get access to, that’s going to open up doors that I have no idea where they’re going to take me. I have no expectation of what’s going to happen, because that’s just going to disappoint me. But if I’m just open to the unfolding that’s where really unique things happen.

So be open to the unfolding. That’s good. Should I have a t-shirt that says that? Awesome. So we have these Ask Joe’s every single Wednesday. Make sure you head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/askjoe. That’s where you can submit your question.

Really want to thank Gusto for being our sponsor today. Gusto.com is the best payroll solution out there. So many of our Group Practice Boss, people are using it for their W2 employees. We personally use it with Practice of the Practice. It just automates the tax bill and all of that like it should. So make sure you go over to gusto.com, use promo code Joe to get three months for free and then they know their marketing dollars are working too. Test it out. It is amazing.

And don’t forget to pick up your copy of Thursday is the New Friday this week., We want to sell 10,000 copies this first week. We are so close and we need your help to get over that line. Would love for you to buy 10 copies on Amazon or wherever your favorite book dealer is. You can then be a part of our mastermind group over at thursdayisthenewfriday.com. That’s where you submit your receipt.

And thank you so much for letting me into your ears and into your brain. Have an awesome day. Bye.

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