Ep 151: How These Top 3-Day Workweek Myths Are Holding You Back (And the Truth That Set Me Free)
Episode Summary
What if this summer you could reclaim two extra days every week—without your income or clients missing a beat?
If summer has you juggling business with your BBQs, vacations, and kids, you're not alone. This episode shows why the real obstacle isn’t time but rather the myths that keep women from considering a different way of working.
In this episode, you will:
Learn which industries and types of businesses can have 3-day workweeks
Hear about the answer hiding in plain sight that allowed one entrepreneur to go from chasing no-show clients and working morning to night to cutting back her hours and watching one sales call after another happily pay in full for her entire package up front.
Discover the surprising way that boundary-setting might make people MORE likely to want to work with you, not less.
Press play and start designing the three-day workweek that lets you earn, live and enjoy summer on your terms.
Resources Mentioned:
Be the first to hear about our upcoming Days of Deals Week and get a special gift with purchase only for waitlist subscribers: A personal audit from Jenna of your website and social media to dial in your messaging, make sales easier, and move you closer to a 3-day workweek.
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Episodes Mentioned:
Ep #47: Safeguarding Against Burnout with Rachel Hale
Ep# 125: How to Go From Overworked to Easily Earning Multiple 6 Figures w/ Meg Smidt
Ep# 91: Q: My clients are exhausting me! How do I break the pattern of difficult clients?
Schedule a call with Jenna about joining the Clarity Accelerator--the same mastermind that we talk about in this episode--to unlock your inner genius, streamline your strategies and offers, and dial in the mindset that lets you work smarter, not harder.
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Sign up here to get on the waitlist for Power & Potency, the new mastermind for highly accomplished women entrepreneurs, and hear all new information as it's released:
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This podcast dives into the potential of balancing a business and life without sacrificing revenue or impact. It helps women business owners and mompreneurs overcome overwhelm, decision fatigue, and the guilt of working less and stepping away from hustle culture while increasing leadership, strategic decision making, alignment and delegation / team building. Learn to build powerful habits and mindset, embrace smarter and higher vibration work methods, and master time management by streamlining tasks, implementing business systems, and even prioritising self-care. We explore efficiency and energetics, productivity and filling your cup, automation and where to personalize your efforts … all to reduce overworking, and finally take time off—without the fear or shame—whether that is with high-ticket offers, scalable offers, or passive income. Say goodbye to imposter syndrome and people pleasing while running a small business: It's time to shift your mindset, reclaim your work-life balance, and thrive!
Full Episode Transcript:
Jenna Harrison: In this episode, you'll discover why the objections keeping you from a three-day work week aren't truths, they are traps keeping you overworked, underleveraged, and less fulfilled. Welcome to the three-day work, helping women entrepreneurs run profitable, meaningful businesses in just three days a week if they like, without stress, guilt, or sacrificing growth. I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, sharing practical strategies, mindset hacks, and even some will to help you work smarter, leapfully, and find true balance.
Let's dive in. Welcome, welcome back to the three-day work week. I love it so much, especially around here.
I love friends having barbecues in their backyard and the first dips in the water, which is so clear this time of year. And then the warming sun, it's heating up the pines and just releasing this core, just fragrance everywhere you go. And I love also that this is a time of year when I get to spend more time with friends and travel more, get my sons out of school.
And I know a lot of you are doing the same. Ah, it is summer. It is the time of year when we are spending more time with friends, we're traveling more, the kids are out of school.
And while all of that's amazing, it can also be stressful because our businesses don't just stop. And how do we get it all done? Some of us are just so burned out now that we're really grateful to have some kind of excuse to be able to take some time off, because we don't usually give ourselves time off. And so if family are in town or there's some other thing going on, we can finally permit that and give ourselves that permission.
But we know deep down that we're going to feel really guilty later or really frustrated with how things are going in our business. Others of us just try to barrel straight through. And I am proposing a third way where you intentionally scale back your weeks with the idea of growing at the same time.
There is no better time than now to put that into practice, right, to really streamline your operations, set yourself up for success with powerful offers, start thinking really strategically and leverage the intuitive hits that invariably come with some downtime. Which is why today we are dismantling the three top myths that I hear about three day work weeks that might be holding you back from seeing this as something you can do and something that you can keep doing and make it your new normal. I believe that you deserve to live your life really fully and deliciously and really squeeze the juice out of this really precious time on Earth.
I mean, statistically speaking, you probably have between 20,000 and maybe 11,000 days left on this planet. But not all of them will necessarily be high energy, healthy and free. We need to get real about how precious the time we have right now is.
Because who knows maybe the time we have is a decade, a year, a week. Who knows? The real question is, what do you want to do with that time? How many of those days do you want to spend burnt out? How many of those days do you want to be disconnected and not present with the ones that you love or even really cranky and aggravated? Which is invariably what happens when you are overstressed and overworked. This is something that you have a lot of control over.
You get to decide how you spend your days, especially as an entrepreneur. But you really need to take hold of that power rather than allowing excuses for why it can't happen for you right now. So this episode will help you not just reconsider your perspective, but also relieve any advanced guilt you might be starting to feel about whatever time you do choose to take.
In this episode, you will learn which industries and types of businesses can have three-day work weeks. And hear about the answer hiding in plain sight that allowed one entrepreneur to go from chasing no-show clients and working morning to night, to cutting back her hours, and listening to people on one sales call after another, happily pay in full for the entire package up front. And you'll discover the surprising way that boundary setting might make people more likely to want to work with you, not less.
So let's get down to it. Number one is that wouldn't work for me for my industry, my stage of business, et cetera. One of the most common questions I get is what type of business or stage of business does this work for? And the answer is every business.
Every entrepreneur has the power to determine the schedule they want and reverse engineer how to make that happen for themselves. Again, business isn't really rocket science. Yes, emotionally it feels really hard.
It feels confusing. It stretches us and our problem-solving abilities, but really we're just creating solutions for people. And we need to find out what solutions our people want, and we need to give them that solution.
I know, it doesn't seem that simple. We really overcomplicate it with so many different things, and it's distracting us from the one true thing that we have to do. Provide solutions.
Provide superior solutions. My team was recently pitching me on a podcast, and this was a podcast specifically for attorneys, and the first two idea topics we gave them were specifically around a three-day work week, and then there was another one about really a way to reset your nervous system so that you can do things like break past revenue plateaus or create more impactful thought leadership. And the host wrote back and said, Well, I feel like the first two don't apply to attorneys, so maybe we can talk about the third.
And my team kind of agreed and went on with continuing the email correspondence, but when I read over that when I saw it back, I'm like, no. Every entrepreneur, if you are the head of your law firm, for instance, I still believe you can create a three-day work week if you want to. You just need to work backwards from your end goal and figure out how to make it happen.
If they're saying they don't have time to just work three days because of this or reason or this other reason, they don't really have a time problem. They have a clarity problem. And this is true for any business that's in this situation where you're overworking.
You simply aren't clear on how to do it yet. It doesn't mean it can't be done. You don't know how to create that kind of focus for yourself or manifest in that way, or create a team or systems that give you time instead of take time from you.
How to package up really standout offers that are a custom fit for your ideal clients, or maybe you're not even very clear on who your ideal clients are. But when you start getting clear on these things and you align your business around your unique superpowers and that's valuable when people are seeking you out, work doesn't feel like work. It feels like flow.
And the universe conspires to help amplify that work that you're meant to do in the world. And you don't need to spend all of the time scrambling that we tend to spend. So a lot of people will say, well, but that only works if you already have a big team.
But the truth is that a three day work week doesn't require a big team. It requires smart systems, intentional offers, and better decision making. So solopreneurs can do that.
So many women launch businesses with very limited time because they are working a full time job or they are caring for children or they're going to school. I know of a woman named Janae Young and she launched a business while she was in college at a very challenging school and grew it to multiple six figures in college. So it's really not about the team that you have.
It's about how you think and how you build smarter. Because for everyone who says they can't do it because they don't have the team yet, there's someone else that comes to me saying, my business is already too big or too complex to simplify like that. But the truth is that complexity is often a symptom of an overactive mind, right? Of unclear offers, of bloated operations, a three day work week, it really forces an elegant design of your business, which is a gift to any business.
And it also helps you clean out that mind clutter. Some people will tell me it doesn't work for my kind of business because my clients won't respect that limited availability. That just won't work in their industry.
Maybe they're real estate agents or attorneys like we mentioned before. But the truth is that clear boundaries create trust and they elevate your perceived value. Clients actually don't need you 24-7.
They need you clear, confident, and excellent when you are present. For every client who is demanding and challenging to work with, there is another client who is a dream to work with. And your job is to bring in those clients rather than telling yourself that the only ones available are the ones that are going to make these demands of you.
I have an episode that I'll link to on how to navigate, particularly challenging clients. And I'll also link to an interview that I did with a client of mine, Rachel Hale, who was in a situation where clients kept asking her for jobs and to go above and beyond and to be available to her at all times. And what happened when she shifted that so that you can hear it from somebody other than me? Because imagine if you were working three days a week or four days a week, what if you were working the time that you wanted to work? Not that you felt you had to work.
But the true time, if you were to sit back and design your life, your uncommon way of living, you said, I want to work this many hours and I want to be doing these kind of things in these hours. With these, like we said, 10,000 or however many thousand of hours I have left, this is how I want to spend them. And this is the proportion of the life that I want to spend on each of these things that actually mean something to me.
And then imagine that you had a business that supported you in that. And that you had clients that supported you in that. And that you were no longer having any doubts about that being possible because you were living it.
That's what you need to be setting your mind towards instead of all of the reasons that it can't happen. All right, the second myth that I hear is, okay, maybe it is technically possible for me, but if I did, I wouldn't make as much or I wouldn't be as successful as I could be if I continue to work my current work hours. Or like I know so many of you are thinking, if I just had more time, if I could just work a little bit more, if I did a few more posts, if I did a few more of this, then I could make more money.
But actually the truth is that when you stop spreading yourself so thin, you can build better offers. You can streamline system. You can focus on what actually drives the income.
Look, it really just, it comes down to three things. It's about the thing that you're selling. It's about the way you run your business.
And then it's about who you are as a CEO. Those are the three things you need to focus on to create the life you want. One of my clients, Meg, who's also been on the podcast, so we'll link to her episode as well.
She really only had to do one thing differently. To shift from working from early in the morning until late at night, often chasing clients who wouldn't even show up for calls, and then trying to recruit payments, and regretfully telling her aging mom that unfortunately she couldn't take time off to go and see her. She was just too busy and had too many clients scheduled.
To shift from that to, yes, being able to take that time off, but also having clients that were so excited to work with her and happily paid in advance in advance for her packages and actually having time to, you know, make a juicer a smoothie in the morning and be really just present in that moment instead of so stressed and rushing from one call to the next. But she just, that one thing she needed was just to get clear on what her unique superpowers really were and, of course, speak to the clients who wanted that. And that was something that was really hidden in plain sight because she was so close to it.
She'd been living with it for her whole life, and she just couldn't see it for herself. She thought this thing she did was just what everyone does, and that couldn't possibly be that valuable, and it was so helpful for her to have me, but also all of her mastermind sisters and the clarity accelerator to be like, we see this in you. This is amazing.
People want this, and then she was like, all right, well then let me give it a try, and the rest is history. I'll let you hear it from her on the podcast. And along these same lines of I wouldn't make as much or I wouldn't be as successful, I think there's also a fear in a lot of us that's related, which is that we will lose our momentum if we take time off, right? The only thing that keeps us going, like we're really afraid of being lazy.
I'm going to do a separate episode just on like the guilty feelings, the guilty myths, the ways in which we feel guilty, that also keep us from moving into a three day work week. But it's stuff like this where you feel like you might become that kind of person that you don't want to become, where you just would never get back into the swing of things if you started taking like a four day weekend, which I get because now if you were to take a four day weekend, now that you're so tired, you probably would not feel like doing much of anything. It may be hard to get yourself back into the groove after that.
But pausing regularly and not getting to that point of exhaustion and running on fumes, when you pause, then it refuels your clarity and your creativity and your ability to make strategic moves. You come back to work more excited with more ideas and then you knock stuff out in record time. It really flows in a much different way.
Rest is a performance tool. And if you don't like thinking of it as rest, think of it like I do as CEO time. Very important CEO time.
It's just like plugging your phone into the wall and it might be the most amazing phone. But if the battery runs down, it's not going to do anything for you. That's how we are and we have to see our liquid gold, our energy as just that valuable.
The truth is that so much of your time is wasted on busy work and overthinking and cleaning up simple mistakes that happen when you're rushed or your foggy brain or decision fatigue or revenge scrolling because deep down you're crying out for a break. And since you won't allow it of yourself in any other way, you subconsciously do it this way by getting lost in the scroll. Right.
So many things are going on in these days that are not really serving you and they're not really serving your business. But when you don't have time for any of that stuff and then you couple that with your well being really full, then you're focused skyrockets and so does your output. So take a second and just imagine that.
Imagine you have just had a few days where you were doing the things that really really give you energy and bring you joy. Maybe that is connecting with friends. Maybe it's being out in nature.
Maybe it's just like if you're a mom checking into a hotel room and having complete silence. And I don't know. Maybe getting a massage or maybe it's completing this great project in your garden and it's amazing because you've been moving your body that whole time.
You've been out in the fresh air and it really feels like this project accomplished that may make your outdoor space just such a gorgeous place to be that you say I can't even believe I live here. Right. Something like that where you're so well nourished and then you've noticed that these ideas have been popping into your head and you're really itching to get back to work.
And when you sit down, you don't have to come back to a mountain of things that are waiting for you like when you get back from a normal vacation. But actually you know that everything is set up and things are still flowing. Right.
You can actually get into doing the high level work that you do best. Right. That really creates the money in your business.
And you can do it without guilt. You don't feel guilty about the time that you've just taken off. That is possible for you, my friend, but you have to believe it's possible and then you have to work backwards and make it happen.
Alright, the third myth that we're going to talk about today is that now it's just not the right moment to embark on a change like this. It's going to be so challenging to bring on the right team member and to create these systems and to overhaul my offer. And again, I just want to bring you back to A, sometimes it's just a tweak and B, if you don't have time to build better systems, that's exactly why you need them.
It's like the saying, if you don't have time to meditate, that's exactly why you need to meditate. And the longer that you delay on doing these things for yourself in your business, the longer you stay stuck in a cycle that drains your energy and caps your growth. Even small little shifts like streamlining one recurring task, that can start a domino effect that frees up hours and hours over time.
You don't need more time to start. You need to start to create more time. Some people will say, well, I just need to get through this launch or this season or this year or first, right? And the truth is there's just always a next thing.
That's what comes from us being visionary, idea focused people. We create ideas. We create possibilities.
And of course, there's always going to be a next thing. So what you need is a new way of working. And that shift begins when you stop postponing that new way.
Because how many of those remaining days, going back to those remaining days again, will you be saying maybe next year to the things you really want? Are you going to wait until you have 9,000 days left to start living those 9,000 days well? Are you going to wait until you have 5,000 days left to really start living a life you can truly be proud of? I think this is such legacy thinking because it really stems from what we've been conditioned with, where in the old days you would work for until you retired and then you'd finally be able to live well. And of course, we say, oh, we're too elevated for that now. We don't live like our grandfather did.
We're doing better. But the truth is, if you actually step back and look at it, it looks very, very similar. We may not be saying that we're going to wait until we're 65 anymore.
But if you look at our actions, we kind of are. And this, after I do this, then I can. That's another of those little sneaky guilty mindset things where it's like, I don't quite deserve it yet.
That is totally made up in your head. You get to choose how you live your life today. No one can choose it for you.
So let's start living a life now that you can truly be proud of. Because the truth is that success doesn't create your freedom. Freedom starts in your mind.
And what creates freedom is you building the habit of freedom. The longer you delay, the more ingrained those patterns of hustle become. My mom is visiting now.
And of course, a lot goes back to my mom and I just want her not being able to sit down because she wants to help in the kitchen. She wants to take tasks off of other people's plate. But it's because she's been doing it her whole life that she can't rest.
So start it now. There's a Chinese proverb that says, the best time to a planet a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is right now.
If you haven't created these patterns for yourself and these habits for yourself and this mindset for yourself and this business for yourself yet, then do it now. Set your future self up for success. As you do so, you'll start attracting more and more of what enables your freedom too.
Because you'll be focused on that rather than focused on the busyness all of the time attracting more and more busyness. We want to bring you more wealth, more support, more talented team members, more opportunities. And so it starts with us doing it for ourselves because we teach people and the universe how to treat us.
All right, my friends, if you are feeling like on fumes and really wanting to set yourself up well for summer, but you just don't know exactly how to do it, that's exactly why I've created the days of deals offers that are coming to you in June. It's going to be one week with a different offer released each day. They're going to be very bite sized, very easy to digest and perfect for setting you up for success this summer and beyond.
If you want to start creating that reality now, get on the wait list. We'll link to it in the show notes, of course, but it's the uncommonway.com forward slash DoD bonus, days of deals bonus, because when you do purchase something during the days of deals, if you're on this wait list, you'll also get a personalized audit from me. I'm going to go through your website, your social and really help you improve those to make your life so much easier, bring in sales more naturally and organically.
And it's something I really never do except for my clients, so you want to hop on this now. Okay, my friend, your life is opening for you. Go seize it, have an amazing week, and let's talk again on Tuesday.
Thanks for joining us here at the uncommon way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the clarity first strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit the uncommonway.com. See you next time.
