Welcome back to Your Win-Win Teacher Business. This is our second episode in the Business Book Club series and as you likely saw in the title, today’s book is called 12 Week Year.
Grab your copy of 12 Week Year here (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/3EpxZyA
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Read the transcript:
Janice Cook 0:00 Welcome back to Your Win-Win Teacher Business. This is our Business Book Club series, and today’s book is 12 Week Year.
Janice Cook 0:09 You’re listening to Your Win-Win Teacher Business, a podcast for teacher authors who want to make a big impact in the world for teachers and students, and have fun doing it. I’m your host, Janice Cook, here with a pep talk to start your week off strong. Some seasons of running a business feel hard and sticky, but it shouldn’t feel like that all the time. Let’s make your business a win-win together.
Janice Cook 0:35 Why am I sharing this book? This book is not a five star read for me, but I have read it multiple times. Relationship status, complicated. Let’s talk about why this book comes with complicated feelings for me and many of my business owner friends. The idea of a 12 week year, the system of a 12 week year, the tool of a 12 week year – I’m a big fan. The book? It’s slow. It wanders. It’s probably something that could be better served in a blog post or, hey, a podcast episode. It probably didn’t need to be an entire book, but I think if you choose to read a chapter a day over coffee or a chapter in the carpool pickup line, that it could deliver some good quotes and takeaways worth reflecting on. It covers many topics that business owners are well served by ruminating on. I don’t think it’s an enjoyable book to sit down and read in a longer sitting and I think that’s where the frustration sets in as people read it.
Janice Cook 1:50 So 12 week year is not just a fancy rebrand of quarterly planning. Traditional planning usually involves planning for a full year, breaking the goal into quarters and then breaking those quarters down into a weekly action plan. You might think 12 weeks sounds an awful lot like a quarter, but I think this book does raise some good points about why quarterly planning often falls short. You see, you don’t really know enough information about where your business will be in June to plan for July effectively at the end of the previous calendar year, and you certainly can’t understand the specifics of what the business is struggling with and needs the most in October at the end of the previous calendar year either. New challenges are going to pop up, and our planning systems need to reflect how rapidly things change in the modern online world of business.
Janice Cook 2:51 The book also talks a lot about urgency. When we have all year to achieve a goal, there’s no urgency. In fact, I think one of the reasons teacher businesses struggle is because there are very few truly firm deadlines in this line of work. There’s no excitement about rolling up your sleeves to start a goal when you have all year to make it happen. When the going gets tough, it’s so tempting to choose a comfortable path and just push that challenge into the future, because we have plenty of time before the end of the year. But the truth is, many of us thrive with a deadline. Think about how a gift giving event is firm and helps us be decisive about what gift we will select, when we will wrap it and how we will share it with the receiver. Or how planning a Disney trip suddenly motivates you to learn about getting a great deal on airlines, choosing food to eat each day of a trip, and how to pack efficiently. A TPT back to school sale is exciting and provides a burst of motivation and the final weeks of a tax year fill us with excitement to squeeze in one final revenue push before we officially close the books.
Janice Cook 4:09 The author talks about how powerful frequent fresh starts can be, and I recently explored this idea in the area of personal finance through debt free mom’s account. She talks about how sticking to a budget or a spending plan for a full month is really hard for a lot of people, but aligning your budget to a pay period that is a week long or two weeks long or half a month long can immediately feel like it sets you up for success. It’s easier to keep the wheels on the bus for one more day, and if something doesn’t go well, a fresh start is right around the corner. You can give yourself grace and get back on track so much faster. You can learn the lesson and keep the momentum going without giving up on the whole plan and the whole year entirely.
Janice Cook 5:02 The book also talks about laser focus. If you gave yourself permission to focus on one or two things and really achieving greatness in those two areas, how would that feel? Would it be more fulfilling than the feeling of being tired and achieving mediocre results in a larger number of areas? There’s something about the compressed timeline that helps us have what the author calls productive tension. After all, how many bad days and bad weeks can you afford to have in a 12 week time period and still achieve your goal? There’s nowhere to hide in a 12 week year. When a challenge comes up, instead of bailing, you’re forced to face the challenge and courageously troubleshoot. You aren’t allowed to be a victim of outside circumstances. You’re in control the whole time. You’re taking action. You can see your goal and you’re committed to moving closer to it every day for the full 12 weeks.
Janice Cook 6:07 As you read about the plan in this book, it probably feels icky. It feels icky because it’s different. It’s different than the way we’re used to doing things. One of my favorite quotes in the book is a question about people who make a million dollars a year. Do they work 10 times harder than those who make $100,000 a year? No, of course not. In fact, they likely work less, and they absolutely work differently. So maybe if what we’re currently doing isn’t getting us where we want to be, maybe we do need to try something different. And trying something different for 12 weeks wouldn’t be the worst experiment.
Janice Cook 6:57 So let’s talk logistics. When could you try a 12 week sprint? As I look at my calendar, I have two school aged children, I could start the week of March 3, 2025. That sprint would end on May 23 leaving me the final week of May for reflection, celebration, and starting to tie up loose ends before summer break. Another time period when a 12 week sprint could work well for me is the week of September 29 2025. That sprint would end on December 19, leaving me a few days before Christmas to wrap up loose ends before winter break and a shiny new year. Am I going to go cold turkey and completely ignore my business in January, February, June, July, August and September in this plan? No, but knowing in advance that those seasons will move at a different pace than these two focused sprints makes a huge difference for me mentally.
Janice Cook 8:09 So if I had two big goals for the year, and I allowed myself to exercise laser focus towards them in each of these two sprints, I would have a much higher chance of achieving the two goals than if I gave myself 12 months, or that expansive feeling of all year. It also operates as a gut check. Am I so serious about this goal that I’m willing to eat, sleep, and breathe it – and make it my focus for 12 weeks? Is this truly the next most strategic step for my business? If I only have space for two 12 week sprints this year, I’m going to be very careful what two goals I set. Because those are the two big needles that are going to move in my business in the calendar year. So for me, I think that’s the takeaway in this book. It’s not a five star read, but it is a really impactful system.
Janice Cook 9:18 So maybe you’ll read this book and maybe you won’t, but either way, I encourage you to consider trying a 12 week sprint as an experiment. And if you need someone to be your accountability buddy, you know where to find me. I find 12 week sprints can be very effective for batching out long form content and also work really well for product optimization goals so those are a few ideas to get your wheels turning.
Janice Cook 9:49 Thank you for letting me share this book from my bookshelf today. The book itself isn’t great, but the system might just be worth a try. And once you’ve executed a 12 week year one time, you can choose when to use it as a tool in the future. And remember you don’t have to run your business alone. Read books and talk about them with your business besties. Share about this book on Instagram and tag me @teacherjaniceva Slide into my DMs on Instagram anytime to talk about the ups and downs of running a business. Leave a review on Apple podcasts and share a takeaway from the book with others to help them on their journey. And if you have a book that’s collecting dust on your bookshelf that you’re hoping I’ll cover here on the podcast, I’d love to hear about it.
Janice Cook 10:41 Thanks for making this podcast a part of your day. To grab a link for the book we discussed today, as well as look at a growing list of all my favorite things go to cookfamilyresources.com/my-favorite-things I’ll also leave that link in the show notes for you. And if this podcast is becoming one of your favorite things, please consider heading to Apple podcasts to share a review so that I can connect with and support even more teacher business owners see you in the next episode.
Here is a playlist of other episodes about my favorite Teacher Business Books:
