Take A Week Off Every Month Without Losing Income

Ready for a smarter path to better clients?

You’ve tried. You booked the vacation. You protected date nights with your spouse. You planned family adventures and blocked time for your workouts.

One by one, those things slip away. Partly because you’re so committed to serving. And partly because it feels like the moment you stop working, the money stops flowing.

That’s scary. Extremely intimidating. So let’s install a sanity-saving strategy instead. We call it Thrive Week.

Thrive Week is one week a month for thriving. You work on yourself and on your business, instead of in it.

Credit where credit is due. We were working with Laurel Portier, who coached us on our ad strategy. I noticed something on her calendar. Meetings every week, and then the whole last week of the month was empty. No calls at all.

When I asked her about it, she turned me on to Nic Peterson and his book, Bumpers.

His example is bowling with your kids. If they throw ball after ball down the alley and score no points, it’s not fun for them. Put the bumpers on, and you’ve built a system that helps them win.

Thrive Week is that system for your business. To be a great servant to the people I serve, I have to take care of myself first.

Here’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. We have a higher quality of life, no doubt. We have higher profits (that one shocked me). And we get more praise for getting better outcomes for our people.

Individual results vary. These are our results and our clients’ results, from our own offers and audiences. Yours depend on your offer, your audience and your follow-through.

Now the downside before we started: absolute fear. I had two big ones.

I’d been there for my clients week after week, every month. What would happen when I pulled back one week and asked them to focus on implementation?

They loved it. I was inadvertently flooding them. The week gave them time to catch up, implement, do what they were asked, and report back with their next move.

They loved it for a second reason, too. It gave them an example to follow. Our medical clients told me they felt like hypocrites trying to fulfill their Hippocratic oath. They told their clients to rest, recoup and stop eating meals in front of the computer. They weren’t doing any of it themselves.

So they tried Thrive Week. Before I knew it, it had spread through our community like wildfire. It’s had a positive impact on their income and their client outcomes. They had the same fears I did, and they got to overcome them too.

If I’m not on deck and my team isn’t taking sales calls, what happens if we drop the ball?

This fear is real. It’s especially true if your only form of income is trading time for money. That’s why step four below is picking the income stream you’ll build or bump up first. We have three different income streams that don’t demand our attention every day. [See Step 4 below.]

Don’t picture me sitting around eating bonbons. (That’s not my style anyway.) A Thrive Week can hold three things:

• Rest. Family vacations and romantic getaways, so you stay passionate about serving the way you’re committed to serve.
• Sharpen your axe. Up-level your expertise and stay at the forefront of what you do.
• Uplevel your delivery. Better systems, more ease and flow, and new ways to help clients get better outcomes.

It did not start with the whole last week off. We started with the last Friday of the month.

Once I had that down, I added the Thursday. Then Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Day by day, until the whole last week of the month was ours.

Here’s the bonus. Plan out your year and you’ll find a few months always have five weeks. Those months get two Thrive Weeks.

The 3 income streams that pay us while we’re out

1. Ads and affiliate partners pointing to low ticket offers. Our ads run to the book funnel for Get Cash-Pay Clients. They keep running during Thrive Week.
2. A steady stream of weekly content. I show up every week with something helpful. That doesn’t stop on Thrive Week.
3. Recurring revenue. We sell group programs and run a mastermind. Once people enroll, those monthly payments stay steady over time.

Those three are why the business sustains while we’re out. You don’t need all three to start. You need one step.

Step 1: Pick your first Thrive Day. Pick a Monday or a Friday, at the beginning or the end of the month. Stack your days together. Multiple days in a row feel far more rewarding than days scattered across the month. Mine was the last Friday.

Step 2: Pick how fast you’ll add a day. Add one day every month and you’ll have a full Thrive Week in five months. Want to build your confidence first? Add a day every other month. That’s still a steady build.

Step 3: Fill your Thrive Day with something meaningful. Make sure it leaves an impact on you. Feel in your body and your mind the way you aim to feel once you’ve hit your financial goals and your work goals. That’s the magic of pulling it into the now.

Step 4: Take one step toward income that has nothing to do with your one-on-one time. Lots of options here:

• Upfront lab tests. They can sell from social media posts. You charge an education and resource fee, and those fees keep coming in during Thrive Week. (Labs offered to people who aren’t yet patients need to go through a signing physician.)
• Supplement bundles. Non-prescriptive bundles you make a profit margin on.
• Affiliate products. Products you recommend and earn a commission on. Disclose them. In some professions, it’s legally required.
• A book. Mine runs while I’m on Thrive Week. Through Book to Buyer, people create their book in five days.
• Paid workshops. Once you’ve run a few, sell the recordings again and again.
• Group programs and community detoxes.

Pick ONE. Declare your first step and commit to a date, so you hold yourself to it.

The FREE Thrive Week page walks you through all four steps and builds your Thrive Plan. Then you can copy the plan and add your Thrive Days to your calendar.

You can keep squeezing your own life into the gaps. Or you can put yourself first and start building toward your Thrive Week.

Start with one Thrive Day on the calendar this month. Version one is better than version none.

Open it right now and pick your first Thrive Day before you close the tab.

Here’s to your first Thrive Day on the calendar this month.

Ready to take that first step now?