He Grew 492% By Treating Recovery Like a Profit Strategy | Special Guest John Briggs

So John, when that realization happened that something had to give, but at the same time, you still had a growing family to support, what'd you do?

Yeah, I wish I could say I flipped a switch and the next day I came home at 5 o'clock and everything was great.

It was a journey, but that did start me down the road of being curious, of realizing maybe this line of this is how it is and you just have to accept it isn't the truth.

So I approached everything that I did at that point forward like, is this actually true? And if it's not true, what else could be true? And so that helped me find the history of how did we even come up with the 40-hour work week the way it's designed? And then that led down to different studies of how are people being more productive, different techniques people use and how some of those techniques don't work.

Different countries, what have they done to try to help with this concept of work-life balance, which is not a concept.

That's why I purposely use the word work-life harmony.

And then eventually all that stuff made it into the book, which is the things I started implementing in my own firm.

Look, we're a tax firm and I don't know how familiar people are with CPA firms, but minimum requirement for most firms during tax season is 55 hours.

That's if you want to keep your job.

If you want to do a good job and get promoted and be recognized, you work 70 to 80 hours a week.

Our firm has had multiple years where we've averaged 42 hours a week during tax season.

And I would still say we're pretty darn successful.

As Wade mentioned, the three years following us implementing this rule intentionally, we grew 492%.

Yeah.

And like I said, I think there's a lot of lessons here for business owners.

I don't care if you're a CPA firm or a construction owner or whoever you are.

This hustle mentality, this culture, you know, I think part of the point is at some point you're not as productive.

This myth that it's like, okay, business success, only after you hit some level, you'll be able to relax.

And a lot of times that doesn't happen to people.

It's just ingrained to us.

And then when they actually hit that level of success, the neuropathways of the brain are so strong, they can't stop from working those many hours.

They've created the workaholism and they can't fight it.

They just won't give themselves permission because their brain is now wired that way.