Summary
Brett interviews Joe Sanok, a business consultant, productivity researcher, and author of “Thursday is the New Friday,” about how a personal crisis — an unexpected divorce while living in a camper van with his two young daughters — became the catalyst for his deepest self-development. After 17 years of marriage, his wife chose to stay in California during their cross-country road trip, leaving him as a sudden single parent.
The crisis forced a shift from intellectual self-development to embodied practice. Meditation went from something he “should” do to something he needed — waking at 5:30 AM in the camper, not knowing what would happen, needing to ground himself to be the dad and person he wanted to be. He dove into Michael Singer, Taoism, and the practice of allowing life to unfold rather than trying to optimize outcomes. In hindsight, he recognizes that his optimization habit had kept the marriage alive artificially — “watering the lawn for two people” — when the natural disconnect would have surfaced years earlier.
The conversation explores how this surrender transformed his parenting. His seven-year-old initiated a “Zen Zone” in their house. His ten-year-old runs entrepreneurial experiments with his guidance but her initiative. He models emotional vulnerability (including a story about dropping the F-bomb over laundry and processing it with his kids). Throughout, Brett draws connections to Art of Accomplishment themes: optimizing for connection over outcomes, heartbreak increasing capacity to love, and letting things naturally unfold rather than forcing improvement.
Key Concepts
- Cracking open comes from need, not discipline
- Optimizing for others delays natural unfolding
- Children need connection not optimization
- Internal locus of control over external star charts
- Transcend and include rather than reject previous stages
- Model repair, not perfection, for children
Key Quotes
“My strongest meditation practice started then and it came from a place of need rather than a place of I should be doing this.”
“If I had genuinely stepped back and didn’t overcompensate as much as I did, most likely this would have fallen apart years ago because the natural disconnect probably would have been revealed much earlier.”
“I don’t want to overcompensate for someone else’s lack of their own development. I shouldn’t care about their development more than they care about their own development.”
“My kids’ human needs of connection, of love, of touch — that’s good enough.”
“Every minute that I spend working is a minute I could be doing a hobby, I could be cleaning the house… if I go into my work that way, saying I can’t dink around because it’s stealing from my family, that’s a different posture than being productive for productivity’s sake.”
Transcript
you know as soon as the sun came up at 5 30 or so like I was wide awake and so to say I’m awake what can I do to ground myself to be the dad I want to be to be the person I want to be to be the business owner I want to be my strongest meditation practice started then and it came from a place of need rather than a place of I should be doing this welcome to the art of accomplishment where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease all right everybody today I’m excited to speak with Joe sanak Joe is a business consultant and a productivity researcher he’s written five books on the topic the most recent being Thursday is the new Friday which is a book on the four day work week which is an idea that I can definitely get behind he’s also the podcaster behind practice of the practice the podcast how are you doing today Joe I’m doing great Brett how are you yeah doing well um I’m really really happy to have you on the show today yeah yeah this Show’s awesome so can’t wait to be here or I am here so can’t wait to talk yeah well tell me a little tell me and the audience a little bit more about yourself what did I miss there I know that you’ve also been uh living in a camper van with your kids tell me something more about Joe sanak to fill us in here yeah you know I took a really traditional path in regards to studying psychology and getting master’s degrees in psychology and counseling and worked in the nonprofit world for a long time and also just mental health had a private practice for a number of years so it was in the work of individual counseling and growing a group practice which uh I really helped and enjoyed helping angry kids for a long time so I think that really positioned me to know a few different techniques in regards to connection because teenagers just often rightfully so have a lot of boundaries up and uh Shields up so that’s part of my history I went into business and podcasting back in 2012 to just teach therapists how to start growth scale and exit their private practices and so I’ve been doing that work for a decade now I have two awesome daughters that are seven and ten and they are bold and creative and push back on things so you know it’s a two-sided coin lots of to find and lots of challenges beautiful well I want to get right into the meat of it then tell me something in in your personal Journey that shifted the way that you relate to either your therapy practice or your growth uh as a as a consultant and your growth in business yeah so the biggest thing actually is pretty recent uh in September of 2020 my family we went on the road in a camper 37-foot pull behind camper I’d never pulled a trailer before uh you know there’s very few times in life that I’d never even backed up a boat uh and so there’s very few times in life that you have the opportunity to learn something new that if you do it wrong has the potential to kill people so you know took this on uh Christina who was my wife at the time uh it was her big dream and I was totally down for it and so we were on the road for nine months living in National Parks all over the nation uh but in February of 2021 we began our uncoupling and um in the middle of this road trip uh she decided she wanted to stay in California and not have the family stay with her um so we spent a couple months um kind of sorting through some of that and a lot of uncertainty and I mean 17 years of marriage where it was very confusing uh and so in that uh you know getting her a car getting her an apartment not knowing if this was temporary or long term um and then you know taking two little kids seven and ten across the country all alone uh you know I had never backed up a camper without another adult helping so to have you know these little kids with walkie-talkies helping me back up the camper and um having them have big questions like why isn’t mommy coming home and so then you know throughout that summer going through that uncoupling and eventual divorce and now being an unexpected single dad of two little girls that you know their mom flies in once a month to hang out with them for a bit but it’s one of those shifts that in so many ways um revealed in me my own thoughts and I mean we can kind of go into some of that but to really in the past I would have tried to optimize like how can we get marriage therapy how can we work on us how can we fix this but to really let that go and to go into my own self-development during that time to let things unfold really became a really helpful thing for me in a ton of different ways wow yeah that must have been really challenging to be going through and uncoupling with your kids going straight from being together 24 7 on a road on a you know living together on the road not just a road trip and then having the uncoupling haven’t happened in that in that process that must have been really hard yeah I think especially the two months before I left as I knew it seemed like we were uncoupling um and the girls didn’t know yet um to you know every morning when the sun kind of hit like we’re in a camper together you know we’re seeing each other every day you know as soon as the sun came up at 5 30 or so like I was wide awake and so to say I’m awake what can I do to ground myself to be the dad I want to be to be the person I want to be to be the business owner I want to be my strongest meditation practice started then and it came from a place of need rather than a place of I should be doing this because prior to that meditation was something that oh I should probably do that all the like smart people do that all the successful people do it but to really have it be a place of need where every morning I was you know doing Sam Harris’s 20-minute daily meditation um you know was reading the book awareness and then the book The untethered Soul uh to really just allow things to unfold naturally studying taoism a ton during that period of time to just let myself allow the world to unfold and to stop clinging to what I thought it should look like uh and then to have daily walks and daily plan tanks and daily push-ups to just get that physical you know frustration anger sadness out it set up a foundation for this new life that you know still sustains and has become something that uh are tools that I probably wouldn’t have learned as quickly if it wasn’t such an intense situation you mentioned that you you had studied psychology and you’d been doing therapy and then you had this realization that you really had this need for these for this deeper self-exploration and and these tools and what was it about your your way of being with yourself prior to having this experience that you now recognize wasn’t serving you I think I’ve always been we might call it like a knowledge broker someone that just craved knowledge and curiosity and you know I double majored in both psychology and comparative religion in my undergrad and you know after I graduated took a year off to travel and you know went to Nepal and Thailand and stayed in some monasteries and went to Haiti and you know met some Voodoo priests and so I’ve always been someone that wanted to see how other people view spirituality and philosophy and ways of thinking um but in a lot of ways it was kind of a slow creep to going from kind of your head to your heart and just allowing that to unfold and I think for me I’m not sure that it was that I did anything wrong prior but it’s more that I hadn’t I had been through really tough things like in 2012 uh my oldest daughter had open heart surgery and then you know a couple months after I was diagnosed with cancer and I mean that was 2012 was just a rough year but it didn’t really crack me open in the same way as you know having you know all this stuff hit the fan uh and there’s things that I wouldn’t talk about publicly in that but that were just terribly terribly hard and so to have that full on cracking open I think that was almost what was needed in order for me to go kind of deeper into my psyche and into my own role within that couple for 17 years yeah so tell me having having had that cracking open one of the things that you know Joe other Joe and I often talk about is that heartbreak increases your capacity to love it allows you to see the world more clearly beyond your ego beyond your identification and it’s something that we often avoid and in the avoidance of we end up recreating for ourselves and then when it comes we find that we’re we we tend to find if we’ve processed it fully that we’re actually okay as we are and have everything we need and what is it that if that resonates with you what are a couple of gems that you pulled from this heartbreak yeah I think the the biggest thing is uh you know as Michael Singer talks about it that natural unfolding of life um I’ve always been a achiever someone that goes after big things I’m an Enneagram three and you know all those you know type inventories point to that I like to get things done um but to really understand what it means to find peace kind of in the moment without having achievement be the thing or that external reinforcement be the thing that provides that you know my dad is a school psychologist you know in that era of psychology behavioral Psychology was a huge thing and it was a big step forward for the evolution of parenting to go from the World War II generation that oftentimes hit their kids to I’m going to give them a star chart and give them rewards like that’s a huge step and it also created in me a ton of external reinforcement the star chart that someone in Authority gives me that doesn’t always help the individual develop internally to find the internal Lotus of control and so to be able to get to that point where I’m able to say okay I’ve achieved so much great but I also have a life that millions of people would die to have this life exactly how it is yeah I’m curious and this might be a vulnerable question to answer and you don’t have to but to what extent did that you know external star chart get projected into your relationship and how much did that impact it I mean I think that I I’ve been aware of kind of that star chart mentality um for a long time and so I’ve been doing a lot of work you know even since College in adding to that because I don’t think it’s necessarily bad to have that as a starting point I think too often we just throw out the way that we were raised and say it’s bad um you know there’s this uh philosophy of personal development called spiral Dynamics with you know the first tier each phase you’re kind of saying that the group behind me is so dumb because they think this way now I’m so evolved but kind of the next step is what they say is transcending and including to take the best of things and include that and to just say the other things don’t serve me and so I think that um within the relationship itself I definitely had a there’s a way to do this that people have studied and figured out so the Gatman Institute they’ve been studying marriage for 40 years they have all of these great research techniques why wouldn’t we Implement those within a marriage um and so I would say it probably wasn’t as Star charty as it was we can optimized this we can optimize this and and probably watering the lawn for two people and that’s why the grass was green rather than letting things naturally unfold if I had genuinely stepped back and didn’t overcompensate as much as I did most likely this would have fallen apart years ago because the natural disconnect probably would have been revealed much earlier at least you know in hindsight but who knows you know I mean if we could always replay history in a million different ways if I could have done this or done this but I mean I think what I’m seeing is for me personally I don’t want to overcompensate for someone else’s lack of their own development like I shouldn’t care about their development more than they care about their own development yeah or try to fix them or think you know better for them on what how they should develop yeah and then have that energy in a relationship I’m curious how your relationship with your children has changed having undergone this experience and you know whether whether it’s on the axis of the star chart or optimization or some other major axis of shift that has occurred yeah I think there’s been a lot of positive things that have come out of this to be the primary parent I mean in a lot of ways the structure that I just have for my own life to be able to do things that I know are good for me and my kids is entirely in my control now and so that’s really helped our relationship for the three of us to say hey we all value a straightened house we all feel better mentally let’s just together keep the house clean and so we do so it just becomes part of our new family culture or we converted one of the rooms in the house into a Zen Zone which my seven-year-old initiated she said what if we had a room that was just for meditation and calming down when we’re upset so they got all their toys that are more kind of like self-development toys or you know ones that will help them relax if they’re frustrated and you know we went to Target and got a really soft comfortable blanket and uh you know put things in there that they’ll see and they’ll say oh this would be great for the Zen Zone picked out a carpet that they can kind of Trace when they’re frustrated and so I I think there’s a lot of like what are we feeling and what do we have control over and what do we not have control over that has helped us kind of together Bond differently and I also think that you know in parenting so often we see people on Instagram or other social media showing how to be the optimal parent you know give your kids milk don’t give your kids milk you know give your kids a high protein diet don’t give your kids a high protein diet and and there’s this idea that you can always optimize your child and honestly at this phase they just need a lot of hugs they need a lot of like down time they need to have time that we’re creative and we dance and we move and we spend time outside and those really kind of simple human needs are are primary and so we’re not going to be in a million Sports we’re not going to do a bunch of things where we’re running around we’re gonna have weekends where we play the piano and you know we play outside and you know maybe invite a couple people over for a campfire so it’s really I think paced us out to say my kids human needs of connection of Love of touch like that’s good enough and I can provide that all the time and so I think it’s really been a settling for the three of us into it something interesting in that is like what is what do you optimize for optimizing is a is a skill that can be very useful in life and especially in the example of with children but also in the example with business or with uh in in the therapy practice optimizing for connection seems to get better results every time yeah well even just saying what’s a kid who becomes an adult really need to be a successful adult so sure there’s a basic level of reading and writing and communicating and math that all adults need sure uh you know most kids need to have at least you know eighth grade reading and math skills to be an adult but if I really think about the people I see that are successful what can they do they can relate and connect with almost anybody and so making sure that with my kids sure I’m gonna have them keep up with their homework but you know if we had you know an outdoor um uh fire a campfire thing where we had three different campfires invited a bunch of people from the school and neighborhood uh you know wore masks and all that but there isn’t a person that I’m really good friends with that my 10 year old hadn’t met and so I introduced her to Jay and he said hi and she was about to leave and I said wait a second why don’t you ask Jay how his weeks been or something about himself so she’s getting in that habit of having conversations with people different than herself and so to to then see her have this kind of micro conversation a little bit of back and forth and to get better at that over time you know the next weekend she was sitting down with one of my closest friends Paul who she knows really well and she just sat down next to her and said hey Paul how’s your week been it’s like this is a 45 year old guy that my 10 year old just sat down and was chatting it up with so yeah so to me discovering what are the true things that I want out of you know the limited time that I get to be a parent for them to have as they go into adulthood yeah interesting something I wanted to go back to you mentioned that your seven-year-old came up with the idea of having a Zen room someplace where they can go to to calm down their anger and among other things and I’m curious how how you approach emotions and difficult emotions such as anger with your kids you know whether it’s on that spectrum of you know a star chart too these are the kinds of emotions that we’re going for versus letting things just develop how does how does anger show up in your family and what is what is the way that you hold it yeah so just yesterday my ten-year-old she had been in quarantine uh for five days the me and my seven-year-old tested negative and so you know she had had a number of days all alone but she had all this homework she needed to do and she had been amazing like more amazing than I expected for such a difficult situation for a 10 year old but she just like hit a Breaking Point yesterday and was screaming at me about I’m not gonna do my homework and this and that and so I just said I’m gonna step out for a minute I’m gonna come back in a few minutes and let you cool down so allowing it to unfold allowing her to regroup but I would say centering ourselves is a big conversational piece so saying what do you need right now to to regroup or to recalibrate or to re-center um to get back to your Baseline um so really letting them initiate that process but then you know in that situation she she was very mad and I just said to her I think you need to go outside for a little bit to just get back to Baseline and you know usually she’ll listen and other times like yesterday she was like I’m not gonna do it and I just said to her I know this is what your body needs please do it and at that point she listened and went outside and then she’s able to process she built a snowman she or a snow woman uh a very nicely sculpted snow woman and then she she came back in an hour and a half later and uh uh I said you know Daddy I’m sorry I shouldn’t have yelled at you I don’t want to do my homework but I need to and so being able to then say we’re all gonna get angry that’s part of having different opinions your opinions that are different than mine are important but we also need to say hey I’m just here to help you with your homework ultimately you need to get your homework done and you know was that anger serving you in the way you wanted so helping her understand like the function of her anger that it’s normal but it’s more are we injuring people through that anger and then are we resolving in a way that’s healthy yeah what what’s a a good example of when you’ve had some unexpected or uncomfortable emotion come up with your kids in ways that you’ve you’ve owned it and shown that vulnerability and and let the wisdom of that emotion come through you in in the most productive way I’ll tell a backstory before I get into the story answering your question so uh within the family I’ve recognized that as a child there were things that were always right or always wrong uh and there wasn’t much gray area whereas in adulthood there’s a lot of gray area and things often aren’t just right or just wrong so that’s a philosophy I’m trying to teach my kids so in one area swearing I’ve taught them that I’ve said their words the society says are bad I don’t believe that they’re necessarily bad but there are situations where you will get in trouble for saying these words so they know the f word they know the SH word they know all these words we talk about where would you say those words uh and use it in appropriate context where you might get in trouble school around the grandparents probably around their mom um so they understand that when could you use the f word and I wouldn’t make you get in trouble for that and so we we talk about when that is appropriate to express us an emotion that you can’t just say but I’m you know that’s so stinking stupid has a different feeling than that so effing stupid and so teaching them that even as seven and ten year olds the nuances of that so there was this one day so they’re responsible for putting their own laundry away so I wash it and bring it up dry it bring it up to the room and they were both being little stinkers and would not do it and I had had a long day and I was sick of it and I was also frustrated that I’m an unexpected single dad and there was just a lot that was emotionally piling up for me and they just wouldn’t do it and they were being super defiant around it and I just said put your effing laundry away but I didn’t say after and I said the full word I’m not sure how family friendly you want the show to be and I like stormed out and I was just like so mad and then I went and regrouped got back to my Baseline uh came back and talked about how I wasn’t happy that I let go of my emotions but also why did I feel like the f word may have been somewhat appropriate in that situation so we we hashed through it about how there’s times when you are just so mad that you can’t find another word than that and that also could injure them emotionally by you know being scary or feeling unsafe or feeling unloved and I don’t want that for them you know and I should have stepped out what should I have done what could I have done and having that conversation around dad just dropped the F-bomb is that appropriate um when do we do that when do we adjust how do you recover how do you apologize and then what can I as a dad learn from that what can they learn from you know how stressful it can be if you don’t put your laundry away what else should I have done through the day to not get to that breaking point over laundry yeah this sounds like a common theme of the way that you and your family relate is to be sitting in the question of how do we want to be right now how do we want to be with this emotion how do we want to be with this situation rather than should and you know I heard you mentioned just a moment ago like what I should have done but I still hear you I hear that being something that you’re just going back and replaying and being like okay now now that I’ve been through that experience what is it that I would like to do differently what is it how is it that I would like to relate to this and I think sitting in that is something really beautiful to be teaching teaching your children which is not that certain things are good and bad but that certain things have various consequences and those consequences are different based on your context and life is an exploration an experiment where you learn what happens when you are a certain way and deciding which way you want to practice being from a place of discovering what is actually authentic for you yeah and I think you know one one mindset I have as a parent is that you know when they turn 18 or 20 or whenever they decide to leave the house there’s going to probably be only a handful of major lessons that that they hold with them on a regular basis uh and so what are those handful of lessons I want them to leave with I mean one as a woman is that you know consent is something that you should expect you know in regards to relationships with other people and so everything I do is around consent if I’m you know gonna give them a hug I’ll say do you want a hug you know if if we’re you know wrestling or tickling or something and they say stop I stop um and so making sure that consent is a strong part of of their lives to make sure that um you know having some element of choice you know so many kids you know they can’t eat any sugar until they’re 18 and then they go crazy it’s like your whole life you’ve been told you can or can’t do these things and haven’t had to make your own decisions around food how you spend your time how you spend you know all sorts of things I want them to have a lot of choice and have a lot of accountability around that and so that’s going to inform things differently so for example um yesterday while my daughter’s in quarantine a friend just to you know drop something off that would make us feel better while we’re all kind of locking down dropped off a bag of Cheetos so I gave her a little bowl of Cheetos and I said I have a surprise for you it’s behind my back but I want you to think about what’s something you want to do for yourself that’s going to make it feel like you’re moving forward in any area and that you can choose to use this thing I’m about to give you to reward yourself and so instead of it being me giving her the external reward it’s her saying here’s a goal for myself I’m gonna achieve it and then I’m going to eat these Cheetos that she didn’t yet know she was gonna get and so I showed her the Cheetos and then she’s she had said okay I could watch a video do an art project about the documentary I watch and then when I’m done with that documentary about otters uh I could eat the Cheetos great do it for yourself like it’s for your own sense of self but you know you’re rewarding yourself with the Cheetos so being able to have those handful of things that I focus on but those are things that in my own life even outside of being a parent I’m going to think about that intentionality Beyond just being a dad yeah and I’d love to tie this back into into your work as well you’ve written five books and I’m curious how you’re writing and your approach to writing as a practice has shifted through this journey yeah I think that um when I used to write it was more like what does the audience want what what’s the positioning that I want to have for myself whereas Thursday is the new Friday has definitely been about the macro societal shift like do I believe that the way we’re living with a 40 hour work week plus is that good for society and so uh you know realizing as I dove into the history around the 40-hour work week and actually how recent it actually is um and how uh the studies are showing that it really isn’t needed to have a full 40 hour work week that most of what we can do in building creativity and productivity could be done in F32 or fewer hour work week that process for me first was just Gathering as much data as possible to me having as much research and citations that is beyond you know a lot of coaches or self-proclaimed experts out there will just write their opinions or you know a few case studies to me I wanted the actual evidence that shows this and the historical evidence stories behind it and then you know finding those stories as well so case studies businesses um even just interesting stories about how the seven day week the Babylonians totally made up you know 3 000 years ago because they could only see seven major planets uh and so we just as easily could have had you know a thousand day week uh if they had had better telescopes so it’s like the Romans had 10 day weeks the Egyptians had eight day weeks so this thing that we think is really normal the seven day week is completely made up so discovering those cool things and saying where would that fit in the book and then whiteboarding out each chapter saying okay what are the main points and then just killing it as much as I could every Thursday when I was writing yeah all that’s really fascinating and I’m also curious how how your approach to your internal locus of control your like internal reward system has moved through this through this process do you do you write books with the similar with sort of a similar approach to prior to this decoupling experience you know I would so I finished the book before we hit the road so it was due by October 1st and I finished it on September 1st uh so I wanted to not have that hanging over my head and could just focus on the media side of of things when we were on the road um because I just knew that the focus would be much different when I was in a camper and things could go awry much easier when you know whether it’s water systems or septic systems or who knows there were so many things that went wrong um in addition to the uncoupling right but I would say that my process in writing the book really I was learning Neuroscience around how to be more productive that I applied immediately to be more productive in writing the book about how to be more productive so it was very meta in that you know like the University of Illinois had this amazing research study that looked at vigilance decrement so vigilance how well you pay attention to something decrement meaning that it goes down over time so tasks that are somewhat boring get more boring over time you make more errors you’re not as productive but they found that even just a one minute micro break every 20 minutes completely eliminates vigilance decrement and so even just saying okay I’m going to set a timer for 20 minutes and even if I’m in the middle of a sentence I’m going to get up I’m going to do a plank I’m going to walk downstairs I’m gonna get a glass of carrot juice whatever it is that I need to do for my body to feel like it’s going to be productive it can’t be looking at a screen it can’t be continuing working just using that Neuroscience you know around sleep around you know how we structure our days about how we do Sprints looking at my own Sprint type all those things you know I was writing about in the book but then directly applying as I was writing the book behind all this productivity I’m I’m curious what is your what is a deeper motivation for you to be productive because a lot of a lot of people will find themselves in a loop of being productive for being productive sake for churning out more more work products and I’m curious for you what is where is it the deeper the deeper want and the deeper need that you’re fulfilling in this productivity that you that you practice to me productivity is the end of the cycle uh we have to start with slowing down first um to allow our brains to rest to allow those good ideas to come out and then to spend our best time on the best movements forward instead of just across the board so when I enter into productivity every minute that I spend working is a minute I could be doing a hobby I could be cleaning the house I could be you know putting my kids laundry away if I made if I didn’t make them put it away that you know I could be doing something different that is good for my family or my friends or my relationships so if I go into my work that way saying I can’t dink around uh and be unproductive because it’s stealing from my family it’s stealing from my friendships is stealing from my exercise or my body that’s a different posture than being productive for productive sake productivity’s sake then it becomes if I’m gonna work it needs to be the best use of my time in regards my business so I can’t just waste time to waste time now there are times that I choose to intentionally slow down I choose to intentionally allow my brain to free associate so that those good ideas can come to the surface because we know from the Neuroscience that when we’re stressed out and maxed out that’s not when we have good ideas it’s when we’re taking a shower going for a walk on a long drive without music on and so just allowing those intentional times to slow down and have those hard and soft boundaries then allows me when I am going to work to have the most productive days possible yeah yeah and it sounds like what you’re saying there was recognizing that everything that you’re doing in your productive space is in some sense stealing from some other area of your life it sounds like what another way to say what you’re saying there is just that it’s it’s a choice you’re you’re optimizing for a different thing and if you optimize for productivity you might forget to optimize for connection with your children you might for you might not optimize for connection to the source of inspiration of what it is that you’re being productive around yeah absolutely because I think it goes back to those those core teachings of you know who am I in the world who do I want to be how how am I intentional with my family my friends my hobbies my health all those you know domain areas that Joe often talks about if we’re not intentional in those areas then the work we do is that what you were talking about that productivity for productivity’s sake yeah so how do you that’s sort of my final question for this episode how do you teach your kids or how do you model for your kids how you approach your purpose in such a way that will help them find their own purpose from their internal locus of control without pattern matching too much what Daddy does right right well we did a podcast together while we were on the road called leave to find uh which now has a bit of an ironic uh title to it so the leave defined podcast for for us to say what’s interesting to us um so I reiterate that I get to do work that I absolutely love doing and it helps a lot of people so do I want my kids to be podcaster sure if they want to um I could care less how they choose to make money as long as they choose to contribute to society do it in a way that can eventually sustain themselves and doesn’t hurt other people so for me it’s less important to say here’s how you have to do it but let me give you opportunities to explore so for example my seven-year-old when we were at the Fort Collins Children’s Museum they have this whole amazing section that’s a Hands-On like DJ scratching mixing section the kids can do this kind of two turntables into microphone type stuff from that she said I want to be a DJ and so my backyard neighbor is like he does that he’s amazing at it he has a new sequencer he just got and um so giving her the opportunity to just explore and play and to me at this age let’s explore and play so you know my my 10 year old a couple years ago she wanted to do a lemonade stand and so I said well let’s talk about this um you know there’s really two types of lemonade you know you’re going to have the powdered mix which is really easy you’ll probably be able to charge 25 cents or so for that and there’s hand squeezed lemonade which you probably could sell for two dollars each here’s what that would Encompass you know making simple syrup maybe having to be fancier with basil leaves or frozen strawberries like which do you want to do so then we brainstormed she said she wanted to do the hand squeezed one and then we said well you know if you just set up outside do you think many people are going to come by no like what other things where might be a better traffic area well our friends Paul and Diane have a house that’s right on a main area you know most lemonade stands you don’t realize there’s a lemonade stand until you drive up on it what if we had signs before it there was a marathon that was going to be going on what if you did it on Marathon morning okay Marathon morning what else do people drink in the morning oh coffee so we brainstorm all of these things that she’s helping lead and come up with the solutions for and then I’m helping to support she ended up making 90 an hour and so it’s like she killed it I mean like these people are giving her tips they’re like I can’t believe there’s basil and frozen strawberries they’re taking pictures of it and you know she was selling coffee for two dollars and lemonade for two dollars and just absolutely killed it and she actually hired one of the neighbor boys that was older than her to help because it was so busy and I’m like you need to pay Finley like a good wage at least ten dollars an hour so after she paid me back after she paid this kid and paid her sister she still need 90 bucks an hour so to me giving those kind of opportunities and thoughtful discussion and you know if she she didn’t want to do it the next two years and then she just said you know I think I want to do the lemonade stand again I said well then you need to call Paul and Diane and see if you can get on their calendar to either rent out their front yard or you know have them donate that space for you to use it so she’s going through that process of just learning how do you think like an entrepreneur without it being something I force on her yeah fascinating one thing to kind of poke a little bit that I noticed is that in in a lot of what you’re describing there like she had the idea and then it seemed like you came to her with a bunch of suggestions as well and I’m curious to what extent like when she went to do the lemonade stand the second time to what extent was she coming up with like oh I remember we did this that time this the other time and extrapolating from that I could also experiment in this way uh to what extent was that coming up for her internally and to what extent were you going like straight to suggestion mode yeah fortunities so she decides she wants to do a Power powdered lemonade stand and sit all day out front in front of our yard and make two dollars that’s fine I I could care less she’ll learn from that experience just as much but I think most kids at her age don’t even know the options they don’t know how Lemonade’s made uh they don’t know what simple syrup is they don’t know that people like frozen strawberries and basil in their lemonade they’ve never made a cup of coffee and so just being able to say here are opportunities like we can do this it’s going to be more work what questions do you have about it well how much how much does a pound of coffee cost well it’ll cost you 12 dollars or we have a friend Jen who works at a coffee shop maybe she’d donate it you could call Jen and ask her if she’d donate that so Higher Grounds Coffee donated like three pounds of coffee to her first round kids just don’t know and so saying here’s a bunch of options what sounds good to you um so they said you know when we got home they didn’t want to keep doing the podcast okay great now they do and so how do we make it different than just being on the road because we’re not on the road anymore so now we’re making a list of just people they think are interesting that they want to interview so their grandparents our friend Marty he uh you know he’s a DJ like let’s have these interesting people that we just interview so letting them take the lead kind of second round and third round while still supporting him and giving him ideas yeah one of the things that I really like about what you’re just saying is that there’s there’s this impartiality to the outcome you’re not concerned with how much how successful the lemonade stand is for your daughter and that it makes a bunch of money you’re excited that it worked out and that wasn’t really the thing you were aiming for what you seem to be aiming for is being in connection with your daughter your daughter being in connection with what she’s doing and providing as much guidance without becoming overbearing as possible so that she is able to optimize her learning and optimize her enjoyment and I think that’s a really great way to parent yeah I mean I think so many parents have their egos wrapped up in their kid my kid got into this college or my kid you know got to the state finals and of course you want to be proud of your kid um but if your own ego and sense of self-worth is coming through your child’s volleyball game in fifth grade like you probably need to do some internal work yeah indeed well uh thank you so much for joining us Joe I really really love this conversation and I’m excited to check out your book too it seems interesting thank you so much for having me on the show this has been awesome thanks for listening to the art of accomplishment if you enjoyed what you heard today please subscribe and rate US on your podcast app we’d love your feedback so feel free to send us questions or comments you can reach out to us join our newsletter or check out our courses at Art of accomplishment.com