Episode 443: Work Less & Live More: How To Retire Often & Take Breaks w/ Jillian Johnsrud

Jillian Johnsrud 0:03

When people they know they're burned out, they know they need to rest, and then they get into the mini retirement. They feel super tired, they don't feel motivated. They're not doing the stuff on their to do list, and they start to internalize that this is somehow a reflection of their personality, of their morality, of their value, but it's just as crazy as saying I'm recovering from the flu and I'm tired and I want to be in bed. Maybe I'm a lazy person, maybe I'm not disciplined, maybe I'm not organized. No, you're just sick, like you're just recovering, and once you're not sick, you will be yourself again. T minus

Intro 0:41

10 seconds. Welcome to the journey to launch podcast with your host Jamila Souffrant as a money expert who walks her talk. She helps brave journeyers like you get out of debt, save, invest and build real wealth. Join her on the journey to launch to financial freedom in 5432, 94321,

Speaker 1 1:09

episode. Show Notes for this episode. Go to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this episode in the show notes, you'll get the transcribed version of the conversation, the links that we mentioned, and so much more also, whether you are an OG journey or brand new to the podcast, I've created a free jump start guide to help you on your financial freedom journey. It includes the top episodes to listen to, stages to go through to reach financial freedom resources and so much more you can go to journey to launch.com/jumpstart

Jamila Souffrant 1:44

to get your guide right now. Okay, let's hop into the episode. Hey, hey, hey, journeyers, welcome to the journey to launch podcast today I have on Jillian Johns rude who is going to talk about her new book retire often, but Jillian's been on the podcast before, and I just want to read you her quick bio or her background to now what she's talking about, which is this idea of retiring often. But she didn't think she'd be able to retire, but she thought of an idea to have sabbaticals often. And now, since she's been doing this, she's taken over a dozen mini retirements. It's allowed her to pursue dreams like living abroad, traveling to 27 countries, adopting four kids, plus two biological kids, investing in real estate and a lot more. She's talked about this for a while. She's actually been on the podcast, as I mentioned a couple times. So she's been on back in 2019 Wow. Julian that that was a while ago. That episode title was how to achieve flexible financial independence and create your ideal life. And then she was back on in 21 where she talked about how to fire the haters and find the courage to create online in a critical world. She's back on again to talk about this new book, retire often, and how we can bring that break, that piece that rests more into our lives without waiting until the ultimate retirement age. So welcome back to the podcast. Jillian, thank you for having me back. Well, I want to say that when I first saw your title announcement for your book, which was probably a while ago, I was like, this is actually at the perfect name of a book retire often no, because when I was doing research for my book, which has a very boring name, your journey to financial freedom, like I did all this research, and came across that books that do well or capture the attention of people are like books that usually, like, our two words, very short, and then have antonyms almost associated with in the book title. So Four Hour Work Week, where, you know, you think work week, it's supposed to be longer than that, but it says four hours, you're like, Hmm, what's that about? And atomic habits, just things that don't necessarily you'd see, but then you want to look at if you see the name, and when I first saw retire, often, I was like, oh, that's brilliant. Because people, especially who are looking for an escape, who want more freedom, like think about retirement in this traditional sense that it only happens once and far away, and to have this concept of retiring often, I think it's just really catching. And so I know you have just a lot to say on this, but first I want to kind of go into what your idea of retirement is, and how you talk about it in the concept of the book.

Jillian Johnsrud 4:33

So I think a traditional retirement, no matter what your age, whether you're 35 or 65 there's a permanence to it. You're going to do it one time, and it's going to stretch on for the rest of your life. And it's a little bit like running a marathon, you know? You're going to do this really long, kind of intensive, involved thing, and retiring often, or taking a mini retirement, is a little bit like a 5k Like it's, it's a small bite size, kind of more manageable, less scary, more approachable option that you can sprinkle in repeatedly. You know, I called the book retire off and not like, plan one epic mini retirement in your life. Like, we could make this a lifestyle. We can plan this into our career trajectory that maybe we step away every three years or every four years for a month, or three months or six months, and my definition of mini retirement, there's three elements. It has to be a month or longer. It's like a good amount of time to actually accomplish something cool. You have to step away from your nine to five. Doesn't mean you don't do other stuff. You might do lots of stuff, but not your primary career, and you have to focus on things that are meaningful and enjoyable to you. So it differentiates it a little bit versus, like, I got I was unemployed, and I just sat at my house and, like, watched Netflix for a month and was super depressed. I wouldn't necessarily qualify that as a mini retirement, but focusing on things that are really meaningful for you. So if you hit those kind of three check marks, I count that as a mini retirement.

Jamila Souffrant 6:08

I love that, and I definitely want to get into what you've been able to accomplish and your retirement. So maybe you'll weave that into, like, some of these questions that I have for you. But I think the biggest thing that comes up for people right is that there is this idea of, even if we're talking about early retirement right, that you have to save up enough, invest aggressively, so that you can do that before the standard age. And so that's going to take some working years. And then this idea of taking breaks, how does that impact? Or how do you prepare financially for that and get back in to a job. So I think there's two ways to think about this, as a nine to fivers who have to show up every day, and then maybe it's different for entrepreneurs who have a bit more flexibility. But how does one prepare financially to take breaks on and off when they have to pay bills during that time, and the things they want to do may cost money.

Jillian Johnsrud 7:01

Yeah, so a simple, kind of predictable formula for how much mini retirements cost, and this is just observation. I don't think it's necessarily a target, but what I've observed, looking at lots of different mini retirement budgets, is at the maximum, usually a mini retirement, whatever that activity you're doing is about 50% of your take home monthly pay. So if you bring home about 5000 a month, on average, people might spend an additional 2500 on their mini retirement. If you bring home 10,000 a month, they might spend 5000 if you only bring home 2000 a month, maybe set that target of I'll spend an additional $1,000 on my mini retirement. It's usually proportional to how much people earn. Which kind of makes sense, like they're used to a certain kind of lifestyle or certain kind of activities that they can afford in their take home pay. So if, let's say you, like this idea. I do want to retire often. I want to do this repeatedly. I want to bake this into my career and my life. If you save an additional six and a half percent of your take home pay, that would be enough money that every other year you could take a month off, it would cover that however much your take home pay is, plus that additional 50% and it really would fill your life with like a lifetime of incredible memories and accomplishments. You could truly retire often and an additional six and a half percent. It's not a huge amount of money for most people. You know, if you're making that three to 810, 1000 a month range, we're talking a couple 100 bucks. And this doesn't necessarily mean, for some people, your high leverage thing is just earn a little bit more. But you might be able to do dog sitting and earn two or 300 bucks a month. You know, you might be able to add something in. Or it's not even so much deprivation as it's just postponing, like, you might get Chipotle every Friday and meet that at your desk. And if you're like, actually, next year I want to do a month in Mexico, I want to learn Spanish, and I want to eat street tacos. So I'm going to, I'm going to skip the chipotle at my desk. Now, knowing that that money, I'm going to use it next year for street tacos, I'm just going to delay this. Not 40 years. We're delayed, like a year,

Jamila Souffrant 9:19

right, okay, that makes sense now, where I think people just the thought of and I, and this is more just relative, right? It's just like, oh my gosh, just a month doesn't feel like enough, right? Like I want to do more than that, which would take more money, but I guess I want to come back to, what immediately comes back for me is even when I think about taking vacation, right? I think about I need a vacation from a vacation I need, like, almost weeks, like, after the vacation, to catch up or days. And so I'm thinking about that too with mini retirement and taking a break. Is that the expectation that you're able to go back to your job? What if you don't have a job that you can take a month off from? You know, like, what does that. Look like to ramp up to think about your future expenses after that break.

Jillian Johnsrud 10:04

Yeah, so there's typically three ways that we access this time. We either negotiate it off from our current employer, and that's usually most feasible in the one to three month timeframe, because a lot of hrs are set up for people to be gone for up to 12 weeks, and all of the HR logistics on the back end still run. So if you want to negotiate time off, I always encourage people kind of a month, three months is the best time frame. If you want something longer, three to 12 months that usually best fits in between jobs. It's a little current or intuitive, but you know, part of the premise of the book is that many retirements can actually accelerate your path to financial independence, which it seems like, well, if I'm not earning money and I'm spending more money like that, should derail, or at least slow down my path to fi But oftentimes, if you think about When do people typically get the largest raise, and it's not, it's staying at the company, it's in that new job. And so if you were, I actually spoke at an event last month, and there was, like, I was maybe 2324 like, what would you advise people early on? I would say my best advice plan to take a mini retirement every three years, every three years and just switch jobs every three years. Take a month off between jobs. Take three months off because you usually go back to that next job at a 10% or a 20% raise, like a raise that you would never get at your current employer. You know, if you're making $100,000 you're not switching jobs, because the next one offers you 102 like, you're not switching for 2% if I ever 110 you're like, Okay, maybe I'll switch for 110 120 you're like, Yeah, I'll probably switch for 120 but that's your best bet, not just for that first year, but that increases your lifetime earning potential. It gives you so much power, not just to afford these mini retirements, but to get to fi much faster,

Jamila Souffrant 12:03

and I'm assuming, because what happens to is like explaining breaks within the interview process is, how do you explain those breaks? And you know, Will an employee look at you as inconsistent? How? What advice you have there?

Jillian Johnsrud 12:18

Yeah, this is something I go into very specifically in the books, because I think I've noticed in one on one coaching, and I do group coaching around this, oftentimes when I explain how that conversation should sound, people are like, Oh, I like the sound of that. Like, wait, let me write that down. And so in the book, I gave really specific examples of these conversations and how to organize the conversations. And this doesn't matter if you're negotiating with your current employer, interviewing with a new one, you need to set the narrative. You need to create the narrative of how this is going to go. You don't want them to fill in all of their assumptions. And I call it memoir rules. If you're writing a memoir, there's two rules. It 100% has to be true. It all has to be the truth, not a time to lie. And the second rule is it cannot be the whole truth. The Whole Truth is too big. It's too fast, it's too nuanced. If you tell every detail, you lose the plot. And we want to have a real tight plot here, and so I encourage people kind of the five, the five attributes of how you're gonna organize. This explanation is it has to be positive, even if you're burned out, even if your mom got cancer, even if you were helping your dad who has Alzheimer's. Like, frame it in a really positive way. It has to be interesting, like, don't do boring stuff, at least do one interesting thing during your time off, ideally, something specific. So sometimes people be like, I wanted to spend more time with my kids, or I wanted to focus on my health instead of like, I want to focus on my health. Say, I trained for a triathlon, and if it can be one time, that's like, a great a great bonus. So if you said I was coming up on my 40th birthday, I always wanted to do a triathlon, so I took three months. I did the training. They had this event that was in Hawaii, so I flew over for my birthday. We spent two weeks. It wasn't the fastest one out there, but like, I'm so grateful I had that experience. Like, I'm not sure if that's something I could have done if I would have waited till I'm 65 the reality is there might be this assumption, oh, people who take time off are lazy or weak or disorganized. In reality, people who take mini returns, you have to be super organized. You have to be very disciplined. You have to be very motivated. You have to be courageous. You have to budget, you have to plan. You have to have kind of the guts to pull this amazing, unique thing off. And all of those are very strong skill sets that you bring to an organization. And if you were burned out saying, you know, I was talking to, actually, Joe Collins, Simple Path to Wealth, because he took many retirements all throughout his career, and he was like, I just realized, like, I. To work super hard. That's just my vibe. Like, that's how I go, and then I get burned out. He's like, so I would just work super hard for three years, and then I would take a break, and then I'd go to the next employer work super hard because I that was just my rhythm. And even if you're going into a very competitive like, there's no work life balance company, I would spin it. That's the fifth one. Like, if there's something in industry specific play on that, if it's like, you have no personal life, we just work hard all the time. Say I love that. That's my style. I want to just work like crazy. I don't want to focus on other things. So I take, I take, I took a break, I rested, I recuperated, I did this capital investment into my friendships and my hobbies and my family so that now I can come in and be 100% focused on work again, because I've made that investment that's easier to maintain. I don't need I don't need all this work life balance, because I did all the life and now I'm here to do all the work.

Jamila Souffrant 15:57

Yeah, no, that's a great spin. Hope you're taking notes and get her book. Guys retire often, but all right now, as someone who is thinking about this because they're like, You know what, Jamila, your idea of reaching financial independence early is great, but I want to do something like soon. What financial stage in life should they be? Should they do this? If they have debt like this is going to take planning, right? This is not something someone unless they just unless they just have, happens to have a lump sum of money and can take that break or is in between jobs already. Are they supposed to pay off their debt first? Like, how are they How should they set themselves up financially? And should they add more time and delay a mini retirement if they need to get more things in

Jillian Johnsrud 16:39

place? So initially, I think it's good to have your ducks in a row, like, you're living within a budget, if you have student loans, if you have a house payment for a car payment, like, that's totally normal, but you're figuring out how to pay off like that consumer debt. If your finances are chaos, I would take a year and figure out your finances first, because this will add more chaos, and so you need to be able to absorb some of that chaos. But in the in the book, one of the kind of tools I use is like this, this four box quadrant of your physical capability, which we can assume will decrease as you age. And your financial, like freedom, your financial just the amount that you've acquired, and we assume that over the decades that will increase. And so you have things in kind of this lowest quadrant. They take a ton of physical capability, but are super affordable. Going on a road trip, building a house for Habitat for Humanity like they don't cost a lot of money, but you need to be in pretty good shape to do them, backpacking across Southeast Asia. Super cheap, but you should be in good shape. And then as the other far side of the quadrant, like, maybe you're 70 and you don't have a lot of physical capability, but you've been investing for 50 Years boatload of money. Like, do the around the world cruise at that point, like, drop the 30 grand. You know, there's lots of 70 year olds cruising, and they're having an amazing time. And so I encourage people like, plot out all the decades of your life. And if you're earlier in your financial freedom, figure out which ones fit best in your 20s or your 30s. You know, doing things that are more affordable but maybe also require more physical capability, and then kind of front load those and save the more expensive ones for the end. And there is this wonderful correlation, for some reason, that the really affordable things sometimes take more physical capability, and the really expensive things, you know, a five star hotel in Paris and fine dining. You don't have to be super fit to do that and to enjoy it. You can save that for your 60s and 70s. And there's tons of affordable options like this. Doesn't have to be expensive if you want to learn to play guitar, if you want to form a band and practice, it's not going to cost you a lot of money. You can take a month off and do that. I took a month off last year, and I learned Tango for a month, and I set myself $1,000 budget. I said, I'm gonna give myself one month and $1,000 to learn tango. And it was amazing. I had such a good time, and I kind of, I kind of learned tango, but a capital investment that I'm gonna enjoy that for decades of my life, but it was 1000 bucks. Like, it wasn't, it wasn't super expensive.

Jamila Souffrant 19:27

And what I'm hearing too, is the discipline necessary, right? Like, it's not like you said, it's almost to me when I tell people, you know, quitting a job and then becoming an entrepreneur, I think in some ways, having to be self disciplined, because no one's telling you what to do is is harder in a lot of ways. And so with this, yeah, being disciplined with spending money, right? Like so preparing while you're working, while you're figuring things out, I think, is an indicator on if you're ready to be disciplined while on the mini retirement because you do it, you. Like you have unlimited money coming in, and so if you say you're going to spend only $2,000 for the month, you only can spend that. And are you prepared to stick within those confines and still be happy with your choices?

Jillian Johnsrud 20:15

And this is like a little a little funny hack, if you're trying to explain this to friends or family or your boss, and they're just, like, very skeptical, especially in American work culture, any like work focused culture, to say, Well, I've been planning this for a long time. You know, we've been saving for a lot. I knew we really wanted to focus on this. So now we're finally to the point where we're ready to do that. And there is something about a work culture that, like, if you have planned and if you have worked for it, if you've put in the effort, you have earned the reward, and they're just like, oh, you earned it. Okay, cool. Then that's that's perfect. Like, we're happy for you, versus, like, I don't know, super burned out, so I just, like, peaced out for a month, and then they're like, Oh, we don't like you, but there is something that we put, like, a lot of morality around. If you're disciplined and you planned and you put in the work, then, okay, well, we think it's okay that you get this little reward.

Jamila Souffrant 21:13

What would you say now, though, for people who have a lot on their plate, I would say now that just going back to this perspective of being a parent, you know, maybe a woman, a wife, a mom, who feels like there's a lot on their plate. So I feel like there's a couple ways to approach this, where even if you take a break from work a nine to five, or even if you're entrepreneur, there's still so many things that come around being a parent, especially at certain ages of their lives, where even if you took a break, it doesn't feel like a break for you, because there's so much going on. Like I can envision someone that says, You know what, I want to take a sabbatical break because I want to be maybe more present for my children, and to do these things without being stressed. And then I could see someone saying, Well, I want to take a break, not unfortunately, but I can't even really feel that I'm taking a real break because I have so much of these things that come with being a parent. Is that like a different thought process and planning process for someone? How do they figure that part out?

Jillian Johnsrud 22:11

Yeah, I think being clear on what your intention is so kind of in step one of the book, I encourage people like pick at most three focuses, like you can't do 87 different things. 87 different things just don't go together, and you're not going to do them well, and they might cancel each other out. Pick one or two or three things. And if you really want to have that quality time with your kids, I might have five kids. And the reality is, like, in the daily kind of grind, there's not a lot of moments of like, this is super joyful and super creative when we're doing these really interesting things. No, we're like, doing baths and they're doing homework and we're trying to get dinner on the table and, like, get the dishes done. So if you like, I really want to do these more interesting, fun memories that like, I'll cherish with my kids. And this doesn't mean that you have to go traveling. One summer we did. We called it daily adventure. And every day we left the house and did an adventure. We were kind of like, it was kind of like being tourists in our own town. And some of it was simple, like we went out to ice cream, or we'd go to the park. Sometimes we would do things that were a little bit more complex, like go to, kind of the tourist attractions and do those things. But every day for a whole summer, we did daily adventure, and it was so much fun. But if you're like, I need time for me. I need to recover from burnout, like there's stuff that I need to attend to. Now, you can maybe do that alongside of being a parent, especially if your kids are in school, to be very disciplined. And you know what, 830 to 330 that's just me time. I'm not doing any housework, not buying any groceries. You know, the time that I was working. I am not filling in with daily tasks. I'm going to be very disciplined. I'm going to go for a walk, I'm going to go to yoga, I'm going to have lunch with my friends, I'm going to meditate, I'm going to journal, I'm going to leave the house so I'm not tempted to run the dishwasher through, like I'm going to be hanging out of the library and I'm going to do this self care, and that's awesome. And the more radical, controversial suggestion I would have, because I did this a couple times, you know, I was married, I had a spouse, I left the kids with him, and I was, I was on, actually, Paula pants show, and she asked me a question that I was like, I was baffled. She was like, Wait, how did your husband feel about watching the kids? Like, was that an issue? And it honestly had never occurred to me that it would even maybe be an issue. I was like, I married a grown ass man. He wanted to have kids. He knows how to raise kids like he had children, therefore he can raise children like but I was also we were part of a military couple, and in the military, one spouse leaves for weeks or months or a year, and the other spouse figures it out, because. Is there a capable human being who can figure it out? I am. I had a miscarriage. A lot of people have miscarriages, and it's like kind of a blip, and then they like, continue on their family journey. It broke me down, like I almost had a mental breakdown. It was like a lifetime of trauma that I had successfully avoided all of a sudden caught up with me super fast, and I took a month off of work, and my best friend and I did a road trip DC to Seattle and back. And we like, drove through cornfields and mountains and we camped and we slept on people's couches, and we almost got trampled by bison one day, like, it was a perfect trip, and it was 100% what my soul needed. You know, it is kind of controversial, like, especially as a woman like, Can their father care for them? And I hope the answer is yes. It isn't always yes, but maybe you have other people that, if you're like, I'm not doing great, and I really need some help that will step in and be like, yeah, you need some help. Like, take a month figure your crap out, and then, like, come back as a better mom.

Jamila Souffrant 26:11

Hey, journeyers, if you are loving this podcast, then you will love my book, Your journey to financial freedom, a step by step guide to achieving wealth and happiness. I wrote this book for you. This book is for you if you want a clear and enjoyable path to having more money, options and a rich life. This book is for you if you hate your commute and the fact that you need to seek approval or permission from a boss. I hated that when I worked. This book is for you if you weren't born into wealth. You didn't marry rich or won the lottery, but you still want freedom. This book is for you. If you're at a crossroads, a major decision or event is imminent, maybe a career change, marriage, starting a family, pressures are reaching a tipping point, and the discomfort and the desire for more can no longer be ignored. And this book is for you if you find yourself zoned out at meetings, looking out the window or daydreaming about the life you truly want. So go pick up your journey to financial freedom.com. So I can show you how to map out how to get from where you are today to where you ultimately want to be and enjoy the journey while you're on the path, head over to your journey to financialfreedom.com to see where you can pick the book up. It's available on Amazon, bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, your local bookstore everywhere. Go to your journey to financialfreedom.com to get the book now, I know that it is often like, sounds good, like you have the actual break or the time off, but you feel guilty, or there's all these things you feel like you should be doing so you don't actually enjoy it. You know, you think of all the missed opportunities or things that can be done. And so that basically takes over in terms of your mental and emotional state to actually enjoy the physical rest. So how do you come to terms with that and mentally and emotionally be okay with the break?

Jillian Johnsrud 28:10

Yeah, that's a real thing. So in the book, or in my group coaching, it's four steps, and the fourth one is, how do we navigate this journey? Because it can be a little unexpected, but I kind of use the analogy of like Lewis and Clark, you know, they set out to, you know, traverse the country and back to this land that was very unfamiliar to them, that they had no experience in. But the reality is, it wasn't Uncharted. It wasn't undiscovered. There were a bunch of people living there that knew all about it. And so sometimes, if you're going on this new journey finding, finding people who've lived there have spent time in this that can be like, Okay, here's how you handle this. Because it's not, it's not, they're not impossible challenges. They're just really unfamiliar, if you've never done it before. And in the step four, I talk, I talk a lot about, like, this idea of, like, unnecessary emotional suffering, like, there's necessary suffering, it's time and it's hassle and it's work and it's logistics, and there's no way around it. You just have to do it. But then there's emotional suffering that's unnecessary, that we kind of add to ourselves, and it's good to start to sort through that and find mindsets that can be helpful for you, like and especially if you're thinking about, Well, I want to retire early if this mindset is so problematic for you to take a month off, imagine how much more difficult the marathon is going to be. If the 5k you're like, I'm super intimidated, and that's going to go real bad. The marathon's not going to go better, like it's. It's even bigger. It's more intense, like it's forever, which is really scary and intimidating, but giving yourself that that permission and that focus and that intention, it's real interesting, especially when people are trying to recover from burnout. Burnouts a fascinating biological phenomenon that is incredibly useful. It's the motivation and the ability to get out of a bad situation. It narrows our focus. It narrows it shrinks our creativity. It shrinks like just so we can, like, escape, escape someplace we're not supposed to be super important biological function. If we're, like, escaping a war torn country or a dangerous thing or a famine, and like, we just have to keep going. You have to keep going. Even though you have so little to like, you have so little energy, you have to keep going. But it's a little bit like recovering from the flu. When you start to recover from burnout, your body's trying to convince you to continue to rest. It's like, oh, we have access to rest now. Oh, we're finally safe. Oh, thank God, we can rest. And your body motivates you to rest by decreasing your motivation, but making you feel super tired by making you kind of disorganized. It's kind of like recovering from the flu, where you're like, I just I don't want to get out of bed. I can't do anything. I'm not going to unload the dishwasher. Like, you get super fatigued really early, because your body's trying to convince you to continue to rest, to recover from the flu. And our body is smart. It knows, if you had all this energy and all this optimism and all this motivation, like you would not lay in bed and rest, you would go do all the crap that you need to do. And so it's really funny, like when people they know they're burned out, they know they need to rest, and then they get into the mini retirement and they feel super tired. They don't feel motivated. They're not doing the stuff on their to do list. They don't have, like, any enthusiasm to tackle new projects. They were like, I was kind of hoping I would clean out my garage. I have no desire to do that. I was thinking I was going to run every day, and now I just want to nap every day. And they start to internalize that this is somehow a reflection of their personality, of their morality, of their value. But it's just as crazy as saying I'm recovering from the flu and I'm tired and I want to be in bed. Maybe I'm a lazy person, maybe I'm not disciplined, maybe I'm not organized. No, you're just sick, like you're just recovering, and once you're not sick, you will be yourself again. So I've heard clients go through this like, well, maybe I'm not cut out to maybe I'm not cut out that. Maybe I have to be in a job. Maybe the only way I can be accomplish anything is with the structure of work. Maybe I'm actually disorganized and lazy and unproductive, and I'm like, or, and you can tell yourself that story, and it will create a tremendous amount of unnecessary emotional suffering, or tell my group coaching clients, or you can just say, Huh, I guess I'm more tired than I thought I was. It's a good thing. I'm on a mini retirement and can take a nap and that's it. You can just be like, Oh, it's a good thing. I have time to rest, because apparently I'm super tired.

Jamila Souffrant 33:20

Yeah, it sounds like reframing, right? And controlling that narrative that you what you tell yourself and why you're doing things, is important? Yeah, I can definitely see that. And kind of going back to navigating this with people in your life, right? I feel like part of the benefit of maybe just being by yourself is not having to maybe explain or compromise with anyone doing something like this, versus having a partner, having kids and, you know, responsibilities that are outside of you, right? It feels like more of a task to bring those people into what you want to do. So any advice for how to broach this subject with others?

Jillian Johnsrud 34:00

Yeah, one of the tools in step four that, honestly, the whole workbook, the whole book, this is probably the most important one, is a weekly check in meeting. And if you're single, you can check in with yourself. How is it going? How am I feeling? Am I accomplishing the things I wanted to accomplish? How are the finances going you know, you can focus on different topics, like your goals, your finances, your career. How do I think the job market it's doing? Should I start applying for jobs like giving yourself that opportunity to check in and to adjust course? But it's super important if you have other people in your life who might have expectations and they might have assumptions to have those conversations, not in the moment when you're unloading the dishwasher and people have a bunch of big feelings about those assumptions not being met, but in advance to say, Okay, I'm going to be off work. Do you have any assumptions of what this will look like, and your spouse might. Say, well, like, I guess, I assume you'll probably take the kids to their gender disappointment. Like, I won't have to take off to work to do that, and maybe you'll do more of the grocery shopping, or, like, go grab the prescriptions if you have that free time, and you can bring here are my goals and intentions, and here's theirs expectations, and try to fit those together to where you both get enough of what you need, and you both get enough of what you want. And same thing with your kids, you know, and your kids probably don't know that they have expectations, but I would ask them, Hey, I'm going to be off for a month. What would be fun for you? What would you enjoy? What would make this time really special? What would you be so excited if we did this before the end of the month, and try to meet some of those, if that works together, but then check in every week. How did this work for you? How did it work for me? Am I hitting my goals and intentions, or did it kind of go off the rails? Like I felt all week I was just running around, doing errands and all of those active rest activities I planned. None of those happened. And sometimes people have expectations that they don't know they had, until you're in the moment, and you're like, Well, I thought if the kids needed to be picked up from school because they're sick, like you would do that, right? Because you're off of work, and so you have that opportunity to renegotiate those things. But even if you have, like, family, you know, especially if you're taking a longer mini retirement, like a year. You might ask your mom or your sister or your friends like, Are there any expectations of how you think our relationship will look different over this time? Because your mom might be like, well, you only normally get to spend three days at Christmas with us because you have to get back to work. I'm kind of hoping you do nine, like nine days, and then you can be like, yes or no, or maybe, or something in between. You know, your friend might be like, yeah, like, I think we'll probably go out to lunch every week, because now you're off. And maybe that aligns with your goals, and maybe it doesn't, but just having that opportunity of expressing those expectations and doing a little bit of compromise before you're in that heightened emotional Well, I'm really disappointed that I never see you. We never got to lunch. I thought, you know you're gonna be off work. This was finally our chance to reconnect, and now you're just as busy as you were before, like doing that work ahead of time and doing those check ins.

Jamila Souffrant 37:19

Would you say that this process is different for entrepreneurs or people who have their own business, and because I think I feel like it'd be harder, maybe just because you you are in control of your own schedule, so versus like a job, like you leave it like you could physically say, Okay, I'm not going into work, like physically or logging in, right? Like you give the computer back, or you just that's done. But I feel like part of being an entrepreneur is, you know, you work when you can, you work 24/7 you know, maybe not 24/7 but there's all these things that come up, right? And so you even have to have more boundaries around it, because it's very easy to be like, because I've experienced this where I've said, Oh, I'm going to take the summer off, or I'm not going to work during this time, then things come in. I'm like, well, I might as well do it. And then, you know, one thing leads to another, and I'm like, Well, I feel like this is definitely doesn't feel like a real break, because I'm still working. And so, like, as you're talking, I'm like, you know, I definitely have been working a lot less, but like to take a true, I don't think I've taken a true break where I'm like, All right, I'm not gonna post, or I'm not gonna do anything which I think would be nice, like, for a few months, versus I still feel like I'm showing up and having to do these things.

Jillian Johnsrud 38:27

Yeah, it's very different. And it's funny because nine to five employees are like, Oh my gosh, you're so lucky. That would be so much easier because, like, you're your own boss, you can't say no. And entrepreneurs are like, I think it's more difficult for a number of, number of reasons. The logistics are much harder. And the reality is, like, you've spent a lot of a lot of your life, months, years, decades, building something that when you come back you would prefer if it hadn't burned down. Like you're really invested in the long term outcome, where, if, like, you leave your corporate job at Coca Cola, it's not going to burn down while you're gone, like and maybe even if it does, you don't care. World needs less soda. It's fine. So I have a whole chapter in the book just dealing with self employed, because it's a very different, very different process. And I encourage people to kind of go through the four steps being self employed. It's a little bit like spring cleaning and like cleaning, like decluttering a closet, it's gonna get a lot messier and harder before it gets better. The amount of upfront work you have to do is very difficult to get your business ready for you to be able to extract yourself from it, but the upside is, when you come back, you have this clean house and this organized closet, and you get to enjoy those benefits ongoing, because you've put in the work to modify and like optimize your business. So what. Have people start with, kind of the four basic steps for entrepreneurs is first to simplify things. There are complexities in our business that we just deal with, because we can deal with them and, like, it's a little it takes a little bit more time to fix it than to just, like deal with it. And we don't really want to put up that extra time, so we just like deal with the inefficiencies, because we can, so you have to actually go through the work and fix all of those things and simplify those things so that you can get to the second step of being able to automate some stuff. There's a lot of stuff we just manually do because we can and we know how, and it's pretty easy. It takes 10 minutes, it takes 15 minutes, and it's going to take an hour to figure out the automation. So just week after week, we do the 10 minutes and not the hour. You need to put in that extra work to create the automation for this stuff to happen a little bit more easily. And then the third one is documentation, which, oh, we hate, like, we hate it's so tedious, and there's a lot of emotional components to this as well. Like, sometimes we don't want to simplify things because then we're not as necessary. We don't want to automate things because our manual input isn't needed as much, and we definitely don't want to document things, because this is our magic, and we have a little bit of ego, like, you cannot document what I do. I bring creative magic to everything, and it's my inspiration, and there's no way I could, like, write this down on paper. I had a client. Sometimes I work with entrepreneurs, and we were talking about documenting sales response emails when someone inquired to his business. How does he send that email? And he's like, Well, I can't, there's no process. Like, I can't document that, because every email is unique and, like, it's my expertise and kind of my magic. And I'm like, okay, that's crap. Yes, there is probably a framework that you use in each email, you might address the person's concern. You might thank them for emailing you. You might provide potential solutions, and you might suggest a phone call to go over this. You know, in person, there's probably a few consistent things that if you documented here's like the four points I hit when I respond to a sales inquiry. Another person could see 10 examples, and they could probably write it, they could do it at least 80% as well as you do. And so the documentation is a pain. You might need a babysitter, honestly, to do it that just like sits down with you and forces you to describe what you're doing and how you're doing and how you're doing. It's like, when your grandmother never wanted to write down a recipe, like, sometimes you just have to, have to observe and be like, I think that was half a teaspoon of salt, like, and write it down because she's not going to write it down because that's her recipe. Like, she brings that magic. She doesn't want other people to bring the magic. That's why she's important and needed. She's the keeper of all the recipes. And we kind of get in the same mentality, but once you do those first three steps, then you can start to delegate things. It's simple, it's automated, it's documented. You can actually delegate and that person be reasonably effective, but there also has to be a compromise. You know, I had a client once who was a mom, she also had like, five kids. She's like, I don't understand why. I just can't find a babysitter who can homeschool my kids and make, like, simple, healthy meals and keep the house clean. Like, why is that so hard? And I'm like, Are you joking me, you've had 10 years of practice to do that. If you could find a person who could do half of what you do, that's incredible. Like, so there has to be some flexibility. And if it's your first time, I do encourage entrepreneurs like, risk reward, try to cut your work. Don't try to get your working hours to zero. Like, I'm gonna check out and I'm not gonna even peak. If things are burning down, it's okay if you put in four hours or five hours or 10 hours, over a week, over the month, just to do those things that you're like, I really don't trust anyone else to do this one little part. Trust them for the other 90% this 10% I need to have eyes on, and that's okay, especially as you train your team and you optimize your business, it's okay to incrementally, kind of build up to these mini retirements.

Jamila Souffrant 44:24

Yeah, no, that's that's really helpful. And I think the just also preparing to come back from a mini retirement, like, I'm assuming planning is key to all of this. I believe, like, you know, it's something that you do in advance. You look forward on your calendar. You like, it does take, it seems like definite planning. And then when I'm thinking about this, it's almost like, again, like I said in the beginning, it's I would need, like, a few weeks or a month just be even though that wouldn't be my break, that'd be a working break before I, like, enter back into the world. Because, you know, you have to, like, ramp back up and get the content going so you're not so overwhelmed for. When you're you're back. Jillian, maybe if there's something I didn't ask that you feel like is very important that the audience should hear, if they're listening to you and they're like, Wow, this sounds really interesting. I think I want to, like, read more, find more information. Is there anything you want to leave the audience with in terms of thinking about retiring often and how they can start and then we can tell people where to find the book.

Jillian Johnsrud 45:20

You know, especially for other women, if you're mom or or not single, like sometimes it's tough to give ourselves permission to take care of ourselves, like we're really good at taking care of everyone else, at our work, at the projects, at our cowork, like our coworkers, at our kids, at our parents and our spouse, like we're good at seeing what they need and making sure those needs get met. And it's tough to apply that same process to ourselves, like, what is it that you need? And are you making sure those needs get met? My podcast, I talk about this idea of like, some people have a tremendous capacity to suffer, and other people have a tremendous courage for change. And I see a lot of women who fall on that, like a tremendous capacity to suffer like we're just real darn good at it, and we can do hard things for long periods of time and do it pretty darn good, and that's a great thing. But I think about these two as like muscle balance, if one is so over developed, the other one gets real weak, and to bring them back into balance, it takes a tremendous amount of effort to focus on that weak muscle and strengthen it, because that strong muscle is always going to take over and legitimately some women, myself included, this is how I know this. It's easier to suffer than to change. It's just easier. It's easier to keep going, easier to keep doing the thing. Like it feels lighter, like I would rather suffer than deal with the courage to change. So I would give permission and I would give encouragement. Like, both of those are important skill sets, and having that balance to where you can access whichever one is most appropriate in the moment is really valuable. So like, when I'm working with clients, it's kind of like self identify on this on this spectrum, courage to change, capacity to suffer. Where do you fall? And what could we do to maybe bring that more towards the middle,

Jamila Souffrant 47:36

right? I love that. Oh my gosh. Okay, so Jillian, please let everyone know more about the book, where they can get it and anything else do you want to share? You mentioned the podcast, so tell people about that

Jillian Johnsrud 47:47

too. Yeah, retire often.com. I've got free worksheets there. You can find the book for all retailers there. I've got group coaching if you're thinking about doing this in the next 12 months. That's super helpful to like, get you prepared and get you the courage to do it. And the podcast, if you want to hear other people's stories, of people who've just done mini retirements and how they did it, why it was hard, why it was awesome, all of that lives@retireauffn.com Awesome.

Jamila Souffrant 48:14

Thank you, Jillian again, for coming on this show and sharing all

Jillian Johnsrud 48:18

this with us. Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 1 48:22

Don't forget, you can get the episode show notes for this episode by going to journey to launch.com or click the description of wherever you're listening to this. And you can still grab your jumpstart guide for free to help you on your journey to financial freedom by going to journey to launch.com/jump

Jamila Souffrant 48:38

start, if you want to support me and the podcast and love the free content and information that you get here, here are four ways that you can support me in the show. One, make sure you're subscribed to the podcast wherever you listen, whether that's Apple podcasts, that purple app on your phone, your Android device, YouTube, Spotify, wherever it is that you happen to listen, just subscribe so you are not missing an episode. And if you're happening to listen to this in Apple podcasts, rate review and subscribe there. I appreciate and read every single review. Number two, follow me on my social media accounts. I'm at journey to launch on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and I love, love, love interacting with journeyers, there three, support and check out the sponsors of this show. If you hear something that interests you, sponsors are the main ways we keep the podcast lights on here, so show them some love for supporting your girl. Four. And last but not least, share this episode, this podcast, with a friend or family member or co worker so that we can spread the message of Journey to launch. All right, that's it until next week. Keep on journeying. Journeyers. You.

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