Welcome to Season 2 of the 4-Day Work Week Podcast! In this season I’m going to be focusing on the 4-Day Apprentice: someone who isn’t yet working the hours they want or earning the income they need. This stage is all about looking at the big picture, and about optimizing different areas of your lifestyle to help you enjoy your free time more. One of the most important tools to get you started is the 4-Day Work Week Game Plan, and in this episode I’ll go into lots more detail about how to get the most out of this amazing free tool.

Welcome to Season 2 of the 4-Day Work Week Podcast! In this season I’m going to be focusing on the 4-Day Apprentice: someone who isn’t yet working the hours they want or earning the income they need. This stage is all about looking at the big picture, and about optimizing different areas of your lifestyle to help you enjoy your free time more. One of the most important tools to get you started is the 4-Day Work Week Game Plan, and in this episode I’ll go into lots more detail about how to get the most out of this amazing free tool.

Hi, Wade here, author of Put Your Money Where Your Soul Is, and creator of Four Day Workweek Academy, where we help entrepreneurs, employees, and freelancers create a four day workweek lifestyle so you can better enjoy your friends, your family, and your life. So this is the second season of the content I'm creating.

You might be following this on videos or in the podcast. And what I'm going to be focusing on this season is the apprentice role. Now, if you go back to one of the first episodes, you'll hear about the different stages in the evolution from somebody who does not yet work a four day work week, or somebody who's already even just an employee in this stage and they've not yet reached a point where they're even making the income they want yet.

Working the Hours They Want, and How the Stages Proceed from an Apprentice to a Worker, to a Freelancer, to an Entrepreneur, to a Business Owner, and so on. And one of the things in the first season of the show that I did was really just focus on a lot of the big picture concepts that are most important to help you create a four day workweek lifestyle.

And one of the things I kept referencing, Was the Four Day Workweek Game Plan. Now, the Four Day Workweek Game Plan is a tool I have. It's actually a combination of a tool and a process that helps you create your game plan for creating your four day workweek lifestyle. How you want to spend your time, who you want to spend it with, when you want to do those things.

How you can afford it, how you can make it happen, and so on. And so what I want to just throw in here for you to consider is in all of this, you're not going to get to this four day work week if you don't have some sort of plan. So whether you're an entrepreneur who's already making perhaps the amount of money you want, but you're not yet working the hours you want, or if it's vice versa, you're kind of working the hours you want, but you haven't yet figured out how to generate the income you want.

Or if you're a person who's an employee who's just trying to figure out, wow, how can I even get ahold of any of this? I'm going to suggest to you, whatever stage you're at, the Four Day Workweek game plan is going to be an anchor for you. What I'm going to do in this episode is walk you through what we cover in that.

So you can get a sense of what's going on and why it's so relevant to helping you create your Four Day Workweek game plan. What I'm going to do is just take apart Some of the workshop materials and go into it and there's a couple other pieces to it than this and I'll allow you to if You want to see those by opting in for it.

It's a free giveaway It's go to 4workweek. com Slash game plan or 4daygameplan.com and you'll get this and really there's a few parts to it and the first part of the 4dayworkweek game plan is to envision what's possible And so I sometimes just use the word see it And in the see it stage, there is four specific steps to make that happen.

There's 12 steps in total in three sections. And the first stage is to just see it. And the first thing you do is you list the people who you'd like to spend your time with and the activities you'd like to spend your time with, or the organizations. What would that be? And you just get clear about, here's how I'd like to spend my time if I could.

If I didn't have anybody in my life, Determine how my time was spent. Here's how I'd spend my time, or invest my time, and envision specifically when you'd be doing those things. And again, I'm giving you the short version of this. There's more to it in the online version of this that goes into the workshop, pieces to it, and the tools which you can get there as well.

But so you envision what you're going to do, and then you envision when you're going to do those things, and then the third step is to actually start scheduling these things. And so much of this is is something that happens outside of your work hours. So this is first about in this game plan, creating your game plan for outside of work.

What would you do with your time? And so much of this is about also creating a clear sense of why you would do this. The activities, the people, the enjoyment. If you don't have a strong reason why you would do this, you're not going to go through the steps because it's going to require some change. At the same time, if you realize there's things you're missing out on, things you used to do.

I used to wakeboard a lot. I enjoy doing that. I used to play volleyball a lot. Then I stopped doing that and I really missed that. So I got back to doing it. There's all these different opportunities, whether it's spending time with friends and family, having alone time, simply getting caught up on chores and errands so that when the weekend comes you can be fully present.

Whatever those things are, you get clear about what those things are, when you're gonna do them, and specifically then start scheduling them into your schedule. And again, this is whether you ever change jobs or not, and certainly something you can do before you even look at the prospect or the possibility of either starting a side hustle or changing jobs or moonlighting or however you want to word that, but basically just start making the most of the time you have.

And then finally, step four. is to make that decision of when you're going to make that happen. And ultimately, all of this is a decision. This is about deciding you're not going to simply take what life gives you. You're going to make something greater than what there is. Right now, at least in the U. S.

economy, less than 7 percent of people work less than 40 hours per week. And that in and of itself is something that is for most people desirable. Even the people I know that work at high levels tell me, Wade, if I could really get the impact I wanted to in 30 something hours a week, I know there's other things going on in the world that I would enjoy.

I just, I want to reach a certain amount of people, let's say they're focused on impact, or I need to make a certain amount of money or whatever it is, but it's not so much that they can't think of something else to do, it's just taking them a while to get those results. But if you could get the results, if you could make the income, if you could make the impact, what would you do with your time outside of work?

That's the first half of seeing this in your four day workweek game plan. Once you've gotten clear on that, the second step is about planning it. And in the planning stage, it becomes a lot more mathematical and a lot more grounded. So the first stage is kind of easy, because we're seeing it, we're envisioning it.

And yet, that's a requisite stage, that's required if you don't see it, if you don't decide you're going to do it, if you don't create the schedule, it's really not that likely it's going to happen. But once you do that, you get to this planning stage part, and the second part of this starts going into a couple things.

First of all, it goes into calculating. What are your expenses? Where do you need to have money for in order to maintain the lifestyle you most desire? Now, this might involve you deciding certain expenses aren't as important to you, or maybe they are. That's for you to decide. And then identifying, where are you going to make the money to pay for those things?

Now, what you'll notice is already, what I'm looking to do is have you start thinking more and more like an entrepreneur and a freelancer rather than an employee. So if you're currently an employee, this might be a jump in your mindset and your way of thinking. And instead of thinking, well, all of my income is going to come from one place.

Maybe it comes from one place. Maybe it comes from multiple places. The more you can create multiple streams of income. You can create more freedom of choice for you to do what you want. It's been reported many times that the average millionaire has seven streams of income. So it's not always this one stream of income or this one thing going on.

And being an entrepreneur, especially these days, is sometimes more of a fluid thing as, well, Wade, first I was an employee and then I started making some money on the side and I made some money. And eventually I kind of bought my way out. Whereas maybe 20 years ago it was I lost my job, I can't get good part time work, I either have to find a new job or I've got to start a business at night, but there's, you know, there's no internet.

There's no um, internet marketing opportunities. There's no freelancing opportunities online or virtually. So many fewer opportunities were there a long time ago. And now there's a greater opportunity to make more things happen. So once you get clear about what it is you need to maintain your lifestyle, the income you need to do that.

and where those sources are going to come from, then you start looking at the next two parts, and those are, what are the things you're currently doing that you need to eliminate? And what are the things you need to do that you need to delegate? And you might say, well, Wade, I'm not an entrepreneur yet.

How do I eliminate things? How do I delegate things? Well, certain things to eliminate might be activities. Wade, I'm going to no longer watch a certain amount of TV, of stuff that's really not that helpful to me, if I have a bigger vision of what I'm going to do with my Fridays. Or, Wade, you know what? I'm going to stop investing my time with these people, or these relationships, or whatever it might be.

But also, Wade, at work, I'm going to stop looking to do that lower end work and I'm going to push to be doing the higher end work. If I'm an employee, I might have to do it that way. If I'm an entrepreneur, I might be able to say, wait, I'm just going to stop doing that lower dollar per hour work and I'm going to eliminate some of it that really I could do without.

And then some of it I might need to delegate to somebody because it has to be done or I need to honor that. Maybe I promised it to my clients or whatever it might be. And so I'm going to get clear about how I'm going to start freeing up some of my time by eliminating some things that are really low dollar.

and starting to invest some of my money in the lower activities that need to be delegated to get someone else to do it for them. And once I do that, then I can start mapping out how then I'm going to do this. So I've seen it, I've planned it, and now that I'm going to do it, I'm going to specifically look at going back to these numbers.

What's the specific project? that I'm going to do to make this happen and make this possible. And once I'm doing that, I'm now going to finalize my schedule, exactly what my schedule looks like, for me to determine what I'm doing both inside of work and outside of work. And then on a monthly basis, I'm going to track where that's happening, how that's happening from an income standpoint, how that's happening from a time investment standpoint.

And then tracking over time, how did things work out, income wise and hours wise, did they work out the way I was hoping, or did they not? So that's the four day workweek game plan. And, again, there's deeper levels of planning that we go into in the courses I have, in the trainings, in the books. But the Four Day Workweek game plan is always the foundation, it's the starting point, just to get a first big picture of what you want to see happen.

One last thought. A lot of people that I talk to really have this very impossible view of Four Day Workweeks. And what I mean by that is they've determined it just can't happen. Wade, no, never happened. So I say, okay, let's think about this. You've worked at a job. Tell me what you make now. What do you mean?

Well, okay, let's go with your hourly income What do you make per hour? Let's say the person might say, Wade, I make 30 per hour. Okay, maybe you make more Maybe you make less. Let's say they say 30 an hour. Okay, you make 30 an hour. When you started, what did you make? Well, Wade, I made 10 an hour when I started and then I worked my way up and over time I got different jobs I got promoted, I got raises Okay, so now you make 30 per hour, which if you multiply that times 2, 000 hours in a year, which is a normal 40 hour work week times 50 weeks, at least in the United States.

Well, the math is the same everywhere, but that's common for the United States. So 30 an hour times 2, 000 hours. Wait, I make 60, 000 a year. Okay, great. Well, there was a time when you made 10 per hour, right? Okay. Well, that means at that time you were making 20, 000 per year. Now you make 60. You make three times as much income.

Yep. How did that happen? Well, Wade, I decided to. I chose that I was going to do that, and I studied, or whatever it was, the mechanics of inside that job position, and I learned how to be worth more. Okay, great. So, there was a time you made 20, 000, right? Yep. Then you made 40, 000. And you might say, Wade, when I was making 20, 000, I was living with my parents, I couldn't pay all my bills.

No problem. When did you move out? Oh, when I made 30 something thousand. By the time I was making 40, 000, Wade, I lived by myself. I was able to afford an apartment, whatever it is. Don't know your particular math, but okay, great. So at 40, 000, you were living on your own and you were paying your bills. Tell me something, when you got a raise, did they make you start spending more money?

Was there a law that said once you start making more money, you have to spend more money? Um, no, Wade. Okay, so you went from making 40, 000, at some point you made 50, 000, at some point you made 60, 000. What if you simply, instead of working all the number of hours you're working, You maintained your 30 per hour rate and worked the amount of hours that would get you 50, 000 or 55, 000 or whatever it was.

You kept your expenses lower. You didn't keep raising them. And you reached a point where you said, actually, I don't need to work all these hours to make the income I want. I can simply work less hours, make enough income because my hourly income has gone up, and I'm good. So this work less, make more thing is very possible.

It's all based upon you being more valuable in the marketplace, whether it be to your employer. to your clients or some mix of the two. And usually there's really not too much of a difference in that. So if you're an employee thinking it's magical to be an entrepreneur, you still have to help your clients and satisfy them and make sure they're happy.

It's very often as an entrepreneur, you simply have a lot more, uh, bosses, whereas as an employee, maybe you have one boss or two bosses, but overall, this is something that's very possible. It's something that takes time in most cases, it takes work, but it's very doable if it becomes your focus. And so the game plan can help you do that.

So if you don't have a game plan, I really encourage you to start creating yours. And again, if you go to 4daygameplan. com, you can find the tools, the templates, and some additional training pieces to help you do that. That's all for free. So you can start moving towards your four day workweek lifestyle and creating the lifestyle you want.

Whether it's exactly four days, or the days your kids go to school, whatever it might be, but you can find that there. So I hope you find this helpful. If you have any questions on this, please leave them in the comment section below, or if this is on a podcast, or if you're listening just on audio, you can email me at Wade at 4dayworkweek.com.

That's Wade at the number 4dayworkweek.com I look forward to helping you create the lifestyle you most desire, so you can greater enjoy your friends, your family, and your lives. And while you're at it, if you have friends who you think you'd like to have hang out with you on a Friday, tell them about this, share this with them or rate the podcast for us if you would, or leave us feedback if this is on YouTube or whatever it might be, spread the love, share the word.

​And as always, look forward to helping you make more money in less time, do what you do best so you can create the lifestyle you most desire for you, your loved ones, and your life. Thank you.