Episode 528 | Host: Emilie Aries | Guest: Jillian Johnsrud

How would a one-month sabbatical transform your mental health?

I know I’m not alone in feeling burnt out these days. The economy, the political situation, and the general wear and tear of balancing career and family responsibilities have tons of people harboring escapist fantasies or dreams of quitting the job they’ve been clinging to against a dismal job market.

There couldn’t be a better time to sit down with Jillian Johnsrud to talk about her mini-retirement philosophy and her new book, Retire Often. Before you write this concept off as the privilege of late-career child-free executives only—Jillian is in her 40s, raising five kids in the U.S., and she's no nepo baby born into generational wealth. And yet, she’s taken a dozen mini-retirements already, during which time she’s learned to tango, lived abroad, traveled the country with her family, and reaped the myriad benefits of taking breaks before her career could break her down.

Jillian is the expert you want walking you through your first mini-retirement!

Why mini-retirements feel so radical

Your mini-retirement doesn’t need to be vastly expensive or long-lasting. Even a low-cost 4-week break can work wonders. So why aren’t we already doing it?

Employers aren’t encouraging it

My European listeners—for whom a month or more of paid time off each year is the norm—must already be wondering why we’re struggling with this concept of extended time off. But in the U.S., where 11 paid vacation days per year is common, and none are guaranteed, taking a month away from work feels radical.

So many U.S. employers expect that we’ll slog away for 40 years before ever asking for more than a week off at a time. This works great for the employer in the short term, but it burns out employees at far too high a rate to be sustainable.

Longer sabbaticals could return employees to their work mentally and physically refreshed, more motivated, and more productive. Why, Jillian asks, are companies willing to invest millions to keep their machines in tip-top shape but balk at the idea of spending a fraction of that on supporting workers?

We don’t believe it’s possible

The permission of the people in charge isn’t the only thing keeping us from taking work breaks when we want or need them. Especially these days, we’re facing a constant fear of layoffs and job scarcity in what’s widely perceived as a treacherous job market. How can we take that much time off without looking dispensable?

AI is going to keep getting better at the more menial tasks, Jillian says, so humans have to get better at bringing the humanity. The only way we can accomplish that is by living life fully engaged. We can’t unlock our human potential if we’re trudging through our careers exhausted and overworked. We need the creativity and the gumption that perhaps only regular breaks can deliver.

How to define your mini-retirement

Chances are, you have plenty of ideas about how you’d spend a month off. But as Jillian explains, trying to pack too much into four weeks can cripple the target: rest and recovery. Too many goals will just leave you feeling like whatever you’re doing at any given moment is the wrong thing.

Borrow Jillian’s personal mini-retirement definition and its three essential components:

It lasts for at least one month;
You fully step away from your primary career;
You focus it around something meaningful to you.

Jillian doesn’t shy away from the fact that planning for and acting on mini-retirements is logistically challenging and emotionally fraught. That’s the cost of admission, so it’s important to make that first one really impactful. That way, you’ll be motivated to continue reaping the long-term rewards.

Jillian describes a couple who returned from their first simple, low-cost mini-retirement and immediately renovated their house to add a small apartment that could bring in some additional income. They returned more motivated than ever to make mini-retirements a regular occurrence, not a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Now, they can finance all their future sabbaticals with their additional resources, which they deem well worth the sacrifice. But it took that first extended time away to light the spark.

The impact of mini-retirements on women compared to men

What Jillian’s describing strikes me as a radical act of feminism: a seizing back of our leisure time. I was curious to get her thoughts on the challenge that women, in particular, might face. We hear about the consequences of going on leave. Being put on the “mommy track” results in lost wages, reduced social security contributions, and stifled career trajectories. Is taking this kind of time off worth the potential risk, and do women shoulder more of that risk than men?

Jillian notes that in many families, a larger percentage of the home responsibilities falls to the woman: the leisure gap, as it’s referred to in research, is a well-established phenomenon.. Because of this unequal distribution, Jillian argues, the novelty of mini-retirements can have an even more intensely positive effect for women.

As for consequences, Jillian recommends a risk–reward lens. Taking a year or two off to lean into motherhood may carry more risk than taking a month or so off. But just one month brings rewards, especially for women, that could be worth the risk.

Keep in mind, taking a month off doesn’t necessarily require quitting your job.

How can you make a mini-retirement a reality for you?

Sometimes, life naturally provides opportunities for a career break, in the form of caring for an aging parent, maternity leave, or a layoff, and you can take steps to inject intentionality into these periods. But if you need to take matters into your own hands, here’s the advice Jillian shares in Retire Often.

Two steps to convincing your boss

Jillian hears a lot of people say they can’t take a mini-retirement because their company doesn’t have that policy, it’s too uncommon, it will never be approved. Once you’ve planned out your own small sabbatical, try her two-step method to get to that leadership “yes.”

First of all, craft your story. Follow the rules of the memoir: it all has to be true, but it shouldn’t be the whole truth. You need a straightforward narrative that gives enough information that your boss won’t fill in the blanks with their own assumptions, but not so much that you leave their head spinning with unnecessary details.

Focus on four things:

Keep it positive. Avoid framing your request as a much-needed escape from your annoying coworkers. Instead, it might be, “I’m hiking the Camino de Santiago, which has been a dream of mine since I was a teenager.”
Give an interesting reason. Highlight one of the particularly captivating parts of your plan. “I’m tackling a bucket list item with my mom, who’s been a painter her entire life and wants to catch peak wildflower season in the Rocky Mountains this spring.”
Make it specific. Instead of “I am going to spend more time with my kids,” say “I’m taking the kids on an RV trip out west and we’re hitting up 3 national parks along the way.”
Frame it as a one-time thing. You’re asking them to experiment, to take a chance, so for now, spare them the worry about how they’re going to swing this every summer.

Once you’ve polished your message, step two is to drive home what a committed employee you are. When you walk into that office, you’ve already thought through all the challenges your boss is likely to bring up. Before they have the chance, float them yourself, along with your solutions to each one. This proactive, conscientious approach invites your boss to join you in a collaborative, creative mindset right away.

Fitting it into the budget

There are as many ways to go about a mini-retirement as there are people, since your plans are based on your personal values and aspirations. But even knowing you don’t have to spend tens of thousands to cash in on the rest and recovery benefits, it’s understandably stressful to think about your financial situation during this period.

You might have stocked up enough PTO, or maybe you’re reducing the burden by splitting paid and unpaid time off. But for some people, a mini-retirement will require financing all four weeks themselves. Luckily, Jillian has some practical recommendations for balancing the budget, whatever it looks like.

For starters, take stock of all the things on your bucket list. You’re only going to tackle one for your first mini-retirement, and it absolutely doesn’t have to be the most expensive one. Frontload the more affordable dreams. That much-needed reset can come from taking a month to learn guitar as well as a month on a luxury cruise.

Then, think about all the opportunities you have to finance your break. Jillian thinks of these small savings opportunities as “delays”. What if removing that Friday latte from your weekly spending will help facilitate a trip to Paris a year from now, where you can spend each morning dipping fresh biscotti into a French latte?

Just how many lattes and other savings will you need to squirrel away? Jillian recommends a starting budget of 50% of your take-home for one month. In other words, if you make $5000 a month, aim to save $2500. If that still feels unattainable, go low-budget the first time or two. Once you get in the flow, and those logistical and emotional challenges become more manageable, you can consider scaling it up with more extravagant adventures.

There’s no minimum frequency requirement here, either. If one mini-retirement a year prompts an instant flop sweat, shoot for one every two or three years. Jillian suggests once a decade at a minimum. Go much longer than that without a reset, and you’re headed for a burnout. We need these little breaks—which serve restfulness, as well as a reminder of all the other important things in life besides our jobs—to help roll back the clock.

Just think—if you were diagnosed with stage one cancer, you wouldn’t tell the doctors to hold off on treatment because you’re “still managing just fine.” You’d seek treatment right away. Why would you treat your mental health any differently?

Have you ever taken a sabbatical or mini-retirement? What do you make of this whole concept? I’m eager to hear your thoughts on regular career breaks, so get involved in the conversation through our Courage Community on Facebook or our group on LinkedIn.

Related links from today’s episode:

TAKE ACTION to advocate for better work/life balance for all:

[INTRO MUSIC IN]
EMILIE: Hey and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 528. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today's episode will resonate with you.
[INTRO MUSIC ENDS]
If, like me, you're feeling a bit burnt out these days, maybe you've been having escapist fantasies about leaving it all behind. Or perhaps you've been daydreaming about quitting that day job you've been hugging onto or clinging onto for dear life. Whatever your current state, mental health wise or employment wise, today's guest, Jillian Johnsrud, has some really interesting things to share about her philosophy on taking frequent mini retirements.
Jillian herself never expected to be able to retire early, as has been a big trend circulating in the personal finance world over the past decade or so. So instead she hatched a plan to retire often. Inspired by the idea of sabbatical years, she set out to sprinkle retirements throughout her life. At 40, she's taken over a dozen mini retirements. These allowed her to pursue dreams like living abroad, traveling to 27 countries, adopting four kids plus two biological kids, investing in real estate, and touring the US in a camper.
Jillian has taught, coached and wrote about mini retirements for almost a decade. She hosts the Retire Often podcast and is a popular speaker and consultant for mini retirements. She lives in Montana where she spends time in the garden drinking tea. And she's taken some time to talk to us today. Jillian, welcome to the Bossed Up podcast.
JILLIAN: Thank you so much for having me.
EMILIE: Thank you for being here. I'm so excited to dive into the topic of your new book, Retire Often. Tell me first how you came to write this book and become sort of the queen of not early retirement, but frequent retirement.
JILLIAN: Yeah, yeah, Retiring Often. And it was kind of that idea. I didn't anticipate being able to retire early. That seemed fantastical and impossible. Like me and my spouse at the time, we had a pile of debt, like $55,000 of debt and we both chose low earning professions. So like not the winning combination. But I still had these like, goals and these dreams and these really ambitious things that I wanted to do. So these idea of mini retirements or like sabbaticals, maybe this is the tool, like, maybe this is the container that we could put those goals and dreams in that was accessible and affordable, like, available to us.
EMILIE: Yes. And possible. And like there's something about this concept that validates what you just described with your many ambitions, beyond your career ambitions. Like, there are other ambitions like to spend quality time with the people in your life or unlock adventure, as you put it. Like, those ambitions matter. And yet, particularly in America, it seems like we've been conditioned to just accept our fate as career professionals who have to slog away for 20, 30, 40 years and then we can go, you know, recreate an identity beyond that career. What's broken about that paradigm?
JILLIAN: I mean, that works fantastic for companies. They can extract all of the value and they don't care if you have a breakdown. They don't care if you bankrupt your personal life or have a health crisis or like, don't, you know, have conflict with your kids, because they got what they needed. But it's not really working for everyone else. And I would argue long term, it's also not working for those companies. Because when you run your most precious assets into the ground, does that make sense? Like, I have a coaching client right now that is in a tremendous asset and saved her company a tremendous amount of money.
And I just remember thinking, okay, so people aren't machines. Like, I don't make people machines. But if she were a machine with the amount of money she has saved her company, why would they not invest a year's worth of salary into maintaining and repairing that machine? You save your company 60 million dollars. Like, why not spend 2 or 3 hundred thousand to upkeep the machine that has worked so well? And it's crazy to me that we will treat and invest in machines better than our human assets.
EMILIE: Yeah. When you said, like your best assets, I was like, we're talking about humans, human capital.
JILLIAN: Yeah.
EMILIE: Which in this age of AI, it's starting to feel like we really don't value human capital, right? Like, every company right now is looking at all the people they employ and saying, can I somehow train a large language model to do your job? So there's just this, like, deep seated insecurity that I'm sensing that came up in our listener survey around, you know, this, like, constant fear of layoffs, this constant fear of scarcity in the job market. The retention index is higher than it's ever been since they started measuring it.
The perception that people have is that the job market is really treacherous. And so how do we square this concept of, like, just take sabbaticals, you know, like, give yourself a month off regularly with, how do I also show my organization, my company, or my job prospects, future employers, that I'm committed, and in this scarce environment that's so full of insecurity?
JILLIAN: AI is going to be fantastic at doing routine things, it's going to be fantastic at doing low level labor. And that means that, that human capital, you have to show up extra human. You can't show up like a mediocre machine. And one of the things I love about mini retirements is that it helps you recover from burnout in a way that people come back energized, they come back motivated, full of gumption, full of creativity, full of motivation. They come back at their best human self. And I think to be competitive and to stand out in this job market, you can't just trudge into work and put numbers in a spreadsheets, and like, just slog through your career. Like you have to bring the human capital, you have to bring the creativity and the motivation and the gumption to do the things that AI can't do.
EMILIE: That's a really powerful point. I think a lot of people feel disengaged and a lot of my listeners feel like, oh, I just want to feel inspired again at work. And we can sort of wait for our employers to design that, those conditions for us. Or to your point, like we can take some ownership over that responsibility of our own feeling of engagement in the world, in our life, right? Like, in our identity beyond this sort of like, going through the motions corporate drone that so many of us can become.
So, so walk me through what these career sabbaticals have looked like for you. For starters, just to paint a picture of what we're hoping is possible for my listeners today. And then let's break down how to make it, make it so. But what did those look like for you?
JILLIAN: So I define a mini retirement, my own personal definition, with three characteristics. It's a month or longer. I find a month is that minimum effective dose. But if we start thinking about this, a month is possible. It's feasible. Like, you can negotiate this off. Like, you don't have to quit your job for this. This isn't, it's not super expensive. So it's a month or longer still stepping away from your nine to five, stepping away from your primary career.
So sometimes people do, do other professional things during their many retirements, but you're stepping away from the normal way you make money right now. And the third thing is to focus on something that's meaningful for you. And when we look at it through this frame, we might have a couple opportunities for this. We might be switching jobs, we might be moving across the country, we might need to take a leave of absence to care for our parents, we might get laid off, like, we might have kids and step away from the workforce for a period of time. Life might provide some opportunities naturally. And my hope with the book is that people will have this framework and these ideas of how to add some intentionality to those natural opportunities.
And for me, I've taken a dozen of them, and they have spanned the gamut. I think mini retirements are very much like a Swiss Army Knife. Like, they're a multifunctional tool. There's lots of different ways you can use them. So I've used it to travel through Europe, to do road trips with my kids, to learn tango, to build a food forest, to do a month of intensive therapy, like, all sorts of things. But it's finding the thing that you need for your next mini retirement, because I didn't name the book, take one epic massive mini retirement in your life and do all the things. No, retire often. Retire often. This is going to be something you're going to do repeatedly. So pick the thing that makes sense for the next one, either financially, on a career side, or personally. Like, what do you need right now in the season of your life?
EMILIE: Yeah, that's so interesting. I wish this wasn't so radical. And yet it really does feel super radical, right? I bet our European listeners are like, what is wrong with…
JILLIAN: I know
EMILIE: …Americans, like,...
JILLIAN: why is this even a conversation?
EMILIE: a month off is just untenable, yes…
JILLIAN: That's August.
EMILIE: …literally. Like, a month off feels so out of the norm in America, right? And, like, I've taken two weeks off and I'm like, wow, that was luxurious. So let me ask the question of, like, the multiple whys behind a mini retirement, because you've alluded to a few. There's a couple of instances where you've talked about burnout and mental health, and I think that is an interesting one to sink our teeth into. But then there's also, like, adventure that feels rather different than a mini retirement to recover from or prevent burnout. So, what are some of the reasons that you encourage people to take these mini retirements or that you have yourself?
JILLIAN: Yeah, I wouldn't say encourage. I would say, let's look at maybe what you need, what you value, what's missing in your life right now to sort that out for yourself. Because, like, I don't know you. You know, you. So for a lot of people, that is. That is burnout. I encourage people to try to limit the scope. Pick one thing, two things, three things. It's really easy to be like, I have 47 things on my bucket list, and I'm going to do all of them. But what ends up happening is that you don't make very much progress on any of them actually.
And there's this interesting phenomenon where if you have too many goals, you're not sure what you should be doing right now in this moment, but you're pretty sure it's the wrong thing. Like whatever you're doing, it's the wrong one.
And so creating these distinct phases that allow you to lean in. Like, phase one, I'm going to recover from burnout. So if you're like, I want to take a nap, you're like, yeah, that's what I should be doing. That's exactly the right thing right now. So recovering from burnout time with people they love slow travel is a big thing. Stuff that you can't fit into nights and weekends. Like you're not going to hike the Camino on a four day weekend. You're not going to do a massive road trip with your kids on a Thursday night. Like you need to create for some of these goals, some of these dreams. You need bigger chunks of time or else it passes you by.
And I think that's another powerful motivation for people is that there's seasons in life with expiration dates and if you don't lean in and do the thing, the opportunity is going to expire. It will not sit on the shelf for 40 years. Like I did a 10 week road trip to 10 national parks with my 5 kids in a pop up camper like many years ago. And I remember we were maybe on park number seven like Yosemite and my kiddos were like 2 to like, 11. They were all itsy bitsy like strollers and bags of Cheerios and like the whole thing. And I remember thinking, oh, I can't do this in 20 years. In 20 years they'll all be in their 20s and their 30s and they'll have careers and family. They're not going to all gather in a pop up camper with me for 10 weeks. Like,...[LAUGHTER]
EMILIE: Yeah, they'll have free will.
JILLIAN: …yeah. So there's those moments, whether it's our own health, you know, our parents. Maybe right now your parents are young enough to travel with you in Europe to do a bike trip through Croatia. But if you wait 20 years, maybe, maybe not totally.
EMILIE: I'm way too hormonal to go here because you are just like hitting me right in the, right in the heart. Because my little, littlest one just turned one like a week ago and you're just like, wait, where did the time go already? Like, all of this is happening so quickly. So it's.
I'm so glad you mentioned your five kids to make this sound practical, because I can just hear my fellow working parents right now who are paying record amounts of money to, like, navigate childcare, just so we can work full time, just so we can pay for childcare, just so we can work full time, just so we can pay for childcare. And we're just on this, like, hamster wheel that feels really hard to step away from. How do you pull the brakes on that? How do you, particularly as someone who has responsibilities, who has financial commitments. Maybe you're caring for elderly parents, maybe you're not a parent yourself. Maybe you've got it. Just, like, there's so much momentum in capitalism. How do you take your power back and ask those bigger picture questions of, like, what am I going to miss about this season? How do I make sure I live it?
JILLIAN: In my book, I set up four steps, and the first one is thinking about this first mini retirement, because you need to have that vision. Because that vision is going to give you the motivation, because the cost of mini retirements, here's the catch. They're logistically challenging and they're emotionally fraught. So that's the price of admission. And we need something to pull us through those logistical challenges and that emotional fraughtness. But once you start to see how this is possible or how it could look like, it could be a lot more affordable than you think.
You mentioned childcare. I interviewed someone on my podcast that him and his wife had two kiddos, little kiddos lived in Boston. They both had jobs, they both had careers. It was great. They moved to France for a year, a year in France with their two little kids and lived in this, like, small, provincial town, like, I don't know, Beauty and the Beast like,…
EMILIE: I was about to say, that's a lyric that brought me back to 1992. Thank you for that.
JILLIAN: …Yes. But in Boston, they were paying $40,000 a year for child care. Their year in France was $40,000. They lived a year abroad, just with the cost of one year of childcare. And so sometimes we think, well, this will be astronomically expensive. It might be cheaper than your real life.
EMILIE: Real life is astronomically expensive.
JILLIAN: Yes, it is. And there's so many ways that we can hack this. I just interviewed someone that him and his fiancé spent six months traveling abroad. Southeast Asia and Switzerland. For each of them, they spent $9,400, not per month, for six months for the both of them. They rented out their furnished apartment in Austin. It was cheaper for them to travel the world than to live at home. So I think we have to kind of reimagine of like, what could this even look like? How is this maybe more possible than, than I've imagined?
EMILIE: Yeah. As someone who paid $57,000 this past year for childcare for two like, that is not surprising to me at all. I guess the question that hangs in the back of my mind as a good feminist, right? Is, we've long told women that there are real consequences to taking time off. And I think we're having this big societal debate right now between the trad wives and the girl bosses. By the way, all those trad wives on Instagram are entrepreneurs.
JILLIAN: Yeah, they're girl bosses.
EMILIE: Yeah.
JILLIAN: Yeah.
EMILIE: But they're selling this idea of tradwifery. And so it's like, the fear is the economic consequence of taking time off that, you know, it's debatable how well established this is in the research. But there's a real mommy track that we know that women who take time off to care for children or care for loved ones can face when on ramping back in the paid workforce.
They're not making, you know, social security contributions during that time that impacts retirement earnings down the road. Taking time off from your career can inhibit your ability to earn more later. So I think the question I'm getting at here is, is this worth the potential risk from your vantage point? And do you think women face more risk than men who take mini sabbaticals?
JILLIAN: Yeah, it's a really, a really interesting question. And I look at it like risk, reward. So the risk of taking a year off, two years off, three years, that's a high risk. And maybe there's some reward for having that time with your kids, for sure. But there's a high risk and a high cost. The risk of taking a month off is pretty low, but there's a massive benefit. And so, if we can skew the risk reward, because the reward on that side I think about like a 400 meter dash, if you were a runner and all the runners are about the same pace. But if you go and do something for a month and you come back and you're 10% faster, you don't win 10% more races. If you're 10% faster, you win all the races. [LAUGHTER]
And in some businesses, in some professions, being the best matters. And it's highly compensated and being the best is highly rewarded. And when we think about AI and specifically, like you mentioned, mothers who, they're oftentimes women statistically carry more burden outside of the home. So do they have the same time and opportunity for classes, for reading books, for professional development, for that rest and recuperation that makes their male colleagues excel? Well, what if we could give ourselves the gift that the men naturally get from being married and like, using all of that labor that their wives provide them? We could create more quality in the workforce.
And when women come back in their full strength and their full power, like I used to think when I was younger, I used to look at middle aged people and be like, they're so boring. They're so boring. They don't have goals, they don't have ambitions, they're not energetic, they're not passionate. And then I hit 40s and I was like, oh, we're tired. [LAUGHTER] We're just so tired. We're not boring, we're tired. But what if we weren't?
One of the interesting comments I get, I'll meet people. Like, I go dancing and I do things and eventually some people are like, oh, do you have kids? And I'm like, yeah, I've got five kids. And they're like, what? Wait, what? Because I don't seem like I have five kids because I'm not tired, because I have enthusiasm and I'm fun and I have energy, and I'm creative and they, they don't. Like, they're like, if you're middle aged and you have kids, you're just worn out pulling yourself through life. So I think that advantage is actually much higher for women than it is for men, because men have more free time, they have more leisure, they do less domestic labor. So they have that built in.
EMILIE: Okay, this is like, you're blowing my mind right now, Jillian. This is like the radical act of feminism in the form of taking our leisure back, taking our life back. How old are your kids now?
JILLIAN: Oof. My oldest turns 18 today.
EMILIE: Oh happy birthday.
JILLIAN: I know. And then we've got the next one's almost 17 and then 12 and 13 year old girls. So that's a lot. They're in junior high and then I've got a nine year old. So we're in this whole. We're, we're in the thick of it.
EMILIE: Good for you. I'm, I'm impressed and amazed and in awe. And I haven't slept through the night in a year, so I'm just also like, that sounds like, maybe you're getting some sleep. Like, I'll, dial me in for that. But also, there's something very radical here that you're describing, which is like, women, moms, take your life back. Like, through this radical act of demanding leisure. And not just like, one night a week.
Like, I'm trying to, like, sneak out and ban it. I like to call it boycotting bedtime. Like, at least like once a month or once a week. Ideally, like, getting out of the house and leaving my husband to do double bedtime with the two littles while my girlfriends and I go together. That feels radical. So, like, work me up to negotiating a month off. Like, how. What does that look like? Because I am, I'm intrigued. And I know a lot of listeners are going to be like, how do we make this happen?
JILLIAN: So it's a lot more possible than people assume. There's two things that you need to do. But I have so many people, because I've coached hundreds of people through this that are like, well, my company doesn't have that policy. Nobody does this, like, I work in the government or I work in this industry. Like, it's not common in, like, startups. Like, these two steps. Try these two steps.
The first one is you have to craft the story. What is the narrative of how you're going to pitch this? Because if you don't create the story, someone else will backfill it for you. So let's get ahead of this. And I institute memoir rules in that, two things, it all has to be true. It cannot be the whole truth. The whole truth is too big, it's too vast. If you tell all the details, you're going to lose the plot, you're going to lose the story. So let's narrow it down to these four.
EMILIE: The truth, but not the whole truth. Got it.
JILLIAN: All true. Not the whole truth. So these four things. One, it has to be positive. Do not go in with, like, I cannot stand y’all’s faces anymore. I need a break from you. You smell. The second has to be interesting. So not like, I need to go eat Doritos for a month. Find an element of your mini retirement that's interesting. The third, make it specific. This isn't as intuitive. So instead of like, I want more time with my kids, I'm going to do a road trip to this many national parks with my kids because it's something that my parents did when I was younger. Like, it's a very specific story which draws us in and makes. Makes people more emotionally invested in that outcome.
EMILIE: And I would imagine, like, less suspicious.
JILLIAN: Yeah.
EMILIE: Like, there's not this, like, to your point, they're not filling in the gaps with their own narrative of this person's a flight risk, this person's not dedicated, this person's not committed. You've, you've got a positive pull towards something. Not a running away from something, that's so smart.
JILLIAN: And then the fourth one, frame it as a one time thing. This is not like, if you say, yeah, every summer I want to go to the lake house that my family owns. They're like, because they don't want to sign up for this every summer. This is a risk. This is an experiment. They can't commit to a lifetime of this, so make it a one time thing. I want to go hike the Camino. Or hey, my 40th birthday's coming up. I've always wanted to run an Ironman. I've been training. I need a couple weeks of intense training. I want to go, you know, it's happening in Hawaii over my birthday. I've got a week of leave. I just need three weeks unpaid. Can I go do this thing?
So you frame the story with those four elements. And then the second part is that you have done the mental, emotional labor of thinking through all of the challenges that your boss will think up, think through all of them, bring all of the solutions to those challenges, and then you're going to articulate the challenges for your boss. Don't make them tell you. Show that I've thought this through. I'm empathetic enough to understand the challenges. I'm willing to have these difficult, awkward conversations about, like, what could kill this amazing dream I just pitched you because it gets them in this really creative, collaborative energy right away instead of like, them being like, oh I don't want to be the bad guy, but I have concerns.
EMILIE: Yeah, I love that strategy. And, and from a financial standpoint, you've already alluded to unpaid time off. Like, there's a lot of great stuff in here. I know you just keynoted the FinCon conference as part of your launch for this book. What are some of the, I know we don't have to, like, as much time as you could probably talk all day about the financial aspects of this. But, like, from a practical standpoint, some of the ways in which you've seen folks take mini retirements, how do they fund it? How should we think about wrapping our heads around the finances?
JILLIAN: Yeah. So a couple things. If you've got 47 dreams in step one, I go through, why don't we sort those by cost. And what if, if you're early in your financial journey, front load, the affordable ones. Don't start with an around the world cruise. Like, I took a month off to learn tango and I gave myself a thousand dollar budget. Like, start with the thousand dollar one. Like learn guitar, do a road trip, go stay with friends and family. Like, go camping. You can start with affordable things that you might actually spend less than when you're at home.
If you're road tripping and staying with friends and family for a month and you're renting out your house, like, there might not be any additional cost to that, for sure. And then the other thing is like looking at your opportunity. And I'm not really one to, because it's such a bummer to be like, don't eat your Chipotle bowl on Friday at your desk so that when you're 65 you can like, buy a new water heater. Like, that's so lame.
EMILIE: You're not gonna take my latte away from me? Okay.
JILLIAN: Oh my gosh, it's so lame. So instead I think about, what if we delay it slightly but for the same thing. But maybe it's an upgrade for you. So instead of Chipotle burrito bowl for two years at your desk on Friday, that's a hundred burrito bowls. What if you're in Mexico in two years for a month eating street tacos and that 10 bucks you spend on the burrito bowl will buy delicious street tacos and a margarita three times a day.
And so you're not denying yourself Chipotle burrito bowls, you're saying if I have to choose between sitting at my desk and eating Chipotle burrito bowls or learning Spanish for a month in Mexico eating street tacos, I want the second one more. And you're just pushing that expense into the future.
EMILIE: And you talk about like, budgeting for this in very practical terms. Obviously what we're talking about here is even a relatively cheap mini retirement is better than no retirement, like, no mini retirement.
JILLIAN: Absolutely.
EMILIE: We're not saying this is going to be Instagram worthy luxury month long vacations, right? We're saying give yourself some breathing room, even if it's a little scrappier, right? We're talking RVs. We're not talking like, what's the name of a fancy hotel? I can't even think of one right now. But like the Ritz Carlton, right? We're not the worst Carlton for a month. What do the numbers look like in your budget or in the folks who you coach?
JILLIAN: So I say max budget as a starting point, do 50% of your take home pay for that month. So if you take home $5,000 a month, budget an extra $2,500 for whatever this adventure is. If you bring home $10,000, budget an extra $5,000 a month for this adventure. Because it kind of scales with your lifestyle.
But the reality is, if finances are the limiting factor, do affordable things. Like it doesn't have to be expensive. And if you think about the idea of retiring, often you're not doing all the things right now. So start with the affordable ones and work up to the more expensive ones. Like I talked about, that kind of risk reward. Let's start with a low risk, high reward. And then as you gain that confidence and that clarity and you get in the rhythm and you're motivated and you're understanding how this works. Because we're not good at things we've never done. You've never done this. Like, you're going to have to work through the logistical challenges and it being emotionally fraught. But each time you do, it's going to get better and you can scale it up and you can do more extravagant things.
You know, I had a couple I interviewed on my show that did a month. They did a month like, and they just went to a lake house the first month they were super burned out and she trained for a marathon and they just hung out. But then they came on their way home on the road trip home. They were like, that was life changing. We're doing this every year. And so they came home super motivated and they decluttered their house and they took out a small section of their house and they made an apartment inside, with its own separate entrance. They invested the money and now that one apartment will pay for every mini retirement indefinitely. Indefinitely. But you don't have the motivation to do that before you've experienced the mini retirement. [LAUGHTER]
EMILIE: Yeah. So interesting. I mean the thing that uh, originally came to mind for me was that also this doesn't have to be an annual thing, right? We want it to be frequent, but it doesn't have to be every single year. So if the budget looks weird one year, you know, your earnings are impacted, like, put it back in the budget next year. So you know, we're talking about like, if you need longer to save up for this, just don't make it 40 freaking years. Don't make it four decades, right? Like that would be an improvement upon the model that's been set for us.
JILLIAN: I think minimum, I would suggest once a decade. I find that after about 15, 20 years of hard continuous labor, the human body hits a wall. Just, just in my observation, like, that's when people start to experience that burnout in a way that they assume is them aging.
EMILIE: Yeah,
JILLIAN: They just assume, well, this is what it's like in my 30s or this is what it's like in my 40s. But I've seen people take mini retirements and emotionally, energy wise, roll back the clock to where they were 40 and they're like, I feel 35, wait another month in, I feel 30 and then they start to feel 25. They have that motivation, that optimism, that excitement, excitement, that vision that they had like that zest for life that they had for 20, at 25. They're not feeling it at 45. And you come back into work with that energy, but this skill set and knowledge of a 45 year old and just crush it.
EMILIE: I love that. I need to play this clip for my husband, Brad the dad, 40s have hit him hard. And also the addition of our second has hit him hard. We just haven't slept through the night in a year. But, so that's hitting us both hard. But I think you're really onto something there and it sounds more within reach than we might think.
One thing I definitely wanted to mention and talk with you about before we part ways was creative ways to access leave. So you already mentioned like PTO, sure. Unpaid leave, sure. What other options do you see people leveraging that you want to make sure folks feel entitled to?
JILLIAN: Yeah. One, think about natural career breaks. If you're going to be between jobs, if you get laid off, if something bad happens, if you need to take care of parents. But the other thing that I see especially women struggle with is valuing their mental health, like their physical health. Every time I speak at a conference or a convention, someone raises their hand and they're like, I'm really burned out, is it okay if I take FMLA for my mental health? And I'm like, oh, is mental health real health? Like, does it matter? Yeah, yeah, it does. They're absolutely combined and one affects the other.
But there's this hesitation because especially women will say, and men, but they'll say, but I'm, but I'm doing it. You know what, I'm getting up, I'm getting out of bed, I'm showing at work. Maybe I'm not 100%, but like I'm surviving and my head's above water. Some days I feel like I'm drowning, but for the most part it hasn't killed me yet. And that's our threshold. It has not killed me yet. Therefore, I should continue in this.
And I compare it to, like, if you found out you had stage one breast cancer, and the doctor's like, hey, we should seek treatment because it's way more easy and effective if we seek it soon. And you're like, you know what? I think I'm okay. I am getting out of bed. I'm getting to work. I don't feel awesome, but I'm pushing through, and my work really needs me. I'm so important. Like, I'm so important and essential at work.
And then you wait till it's stage five. And that's a really complex problem. That's a hard problem to solve. The likelihood of you fixing the problem is much lower. Why not get ahead of it early? Why not say, you know what? My mental health is health. I want to be 100%. It's like, if you got injured at the gym, just being like, you know what? I'm just going to keep, keep coming to the gym. I'm going to keep working that muscle. Yeah, oh, drag along for two years. I'll, I'll nurse this injury ongoing forever, maybe, or just, like, leave the gym for a week or two, heal up, recover, come back 100%.
And, like, don't, don't live your life, there's, there's this thing that I talk about with my friends. Like, some people have a tremendous capacity to suffer, and that's such an incredible gift, like, maybe we just had, like, that perfect sprinkling of trauma in a childhood where, like, we can do really hard things for a really long period of time. And that's amazing. But sometimes we take that and be like, man, we're so good at outrunning bears. I think I'm just gonna outrun bears all the time. And it's like, or, or we can leverage that sometimes, but we could also, like, take care of ourselves, too.
EMILIE: Yeah. I feel, like, very called out by this in a wonderful way, in that this, like, martyrdom kind of badge of honor thing that we do is very common. JoJo wants to say hello on the mic. Thank you, Jo. Especially in motherhood, right? Like, our capacity to just push through is insane. But then also how absurd it sounds when you liken it to a sports injury, how ridiculous it sounds when you liken it to cancer, and yet so many of us are doing that exact thing.
Jillian, you've inspired me. I feel like I'm going to leave this conversation. Go talk to my husband right now about like, making this happen. Where can my listeners learn more about you and your coaching and all the great advice you've got if they want to do the same?
JILLIAN: Yeah. RetireOften.com you can get the book, coaching, consulting. I have a newsletter that's very random and unhinged. So if that's your sort of thing, it's there and then on social media, I'm @JillianJohnsrud.
EMILIE: Amazing. Jillian, thank you so much for being here.
JILLIAN: Thank you.
EMILIE: For links to everything Jillian and I just said spoke about. Head to bossedup.org/episode528. That's bossedup.org/episode528. While you're there, you'll see a blog post summarizing Jillian's key points and a fully written out transcript if that's your thing.
And now I want to hear from you. As always, the conversation continues after the episode in the Bossed Up Courage Community on Facebook and in the Bossed Up Group on LinkedIn. What resonated with you in today's discussion? What do you make of this concept of mini retirements and sabbaticals? I don't know about you, but I'm like, motivated more so than ever before to make this a reality in my life. Or maybe I'm just so burnt out I'm like, sign me up for whatever. I need to take some time. It's just that time of year.
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So if you feel me, I want to hear from you what's going on in your neck of the woods, in your career. And if you've successfully taken a career sabbatical, tell me about it. As always, you can email me at emilie@bossedup.org. My inbox is always open. And until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose and together let's lift as we climb.
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