Practical Joy Book Club
A 5-week creative reset for business owners whose work is solid and strategic, but no longer feels alive.
Before you optimize another message, refine another offer, or force yourself back into content mode, this is an invitation to reconnect with the part of you your business actually needs more of: your joy, play, and creative aliveness.
The Shift Most Business Owners Don’t See Coming
At some point, most business owners are taught to become very serious about their business.
You learn to refine the offer, clarify the message, improve the sales process, stay visible, make the content more strategic, build the system, track what works, and adjust what does not.
And all of that matters.
But somewhere along the way, something else gets trained out of you.
- You lose touch with the part of you that plays, the part of you that experiments without immediately asking, will this convert?, and the part of you that follows curiosity.
- You forget to make things simply because they want to be made.
- You neglect the kind of aliveness in your work that no strategy can manufacture.
- You lose touch with the part of you that once knew how to create without needing every idea to justify itself first.
In other words, you stop asking:
What do I want to say?
What feels true?
What wants to be made today?
And start asking:
What will land?
What will convert?
What will create sales?
And again—this isn’t wrong.
But if this becomes your only way of creating, something starts to erode.
I see this all the time in conversations with business owners.
They’re thoughtful and strategic. Their work is solid.
Yet, something feels like it’s missing.
When we start pulling on that thread, it usually comes back to this:
They’ve gotten so good at thinking about their business that they’ve slowly disconnected from the part of themselves that actually creates.
Because that’s what the market has rewarded: clarity, consistency, and strategy.
So, of course, you leaned into that: You were told that the way to grow was to be more accurate and optimize what was working.
And it was, to a point.
Until one day you’re sitting in front of your business thinking:
“Why does this feel so much harder than it used to?”
“Why am I bored with my own work?”
“Why does this feel and sound so flat?”
When your business becomes overly shaped by what performs, what converts, what looks professional, and what “makes sense,” you can slowly lose contact with the very things that make people remember you.
- Your play.
- Your point of view.
- Your artistry.
- Your embodied presence.
- Your joy.
This is where Practical Joy begins.
Book Club Dates & Times
The Practical Joy Book Club will meet for 5 consecutive weeks via Zoom.
- August 03; 10a-11a ET
- August 10; 10a-11a ET
- August 17; 10a-11a ET
- August 24; 10a-11a ET
- August 31; 10a-11a ET
Sessions will be recorded and available for replay.
When Strategy Becomes the Only Place You Create From
{I’m going to be very blunt with you for a moment.}
The reason your work stopped standing out and quit capturing attention is not because you stopped being consistent or because you aren’t skilled enough.
It stopped standing out because you got further away from yourself.
You learned how to:
- be clear and clever, instead of expressive and embodied
- be strategic in what you say, instead of immersed in your work
- be consistent and “top of mind”, instead of connected and resonant
- be polished and perfected, instead of present and passionate
And in doing that, you unintentionally filtered out the very thing that made people pay attention to you in the first place…
Your aliveness.
The version of you that:
- followed ideas because they were interesting
- said things before they were fully packaged
- experimented without needing permission
- created from obsession, not obligation
That version of you didn’t need to “stand out.”
You stood out without “trying”, because there was something ALIVE behind the work.
This is why “strategy” has quietly killed your creativity.
>>> When strategy becomes the only place you create from, your work can start to lose its texture.
Your brand, your offers, and your content may all still be clear, strong, and useful.
>>> But they don’t always feel like you anymore.
People don’t remember “useful” the way they remember something that feels alive.
>>> They remember the moment you make them feel again.
>>> They remember the personality, the perspective, and the energy behind your work.
>>> They remember the sentence that sounded like only you could have said it.
>>> They remember the story you told that made them feel it was crafted just for them.
>>> They remember your humor, honesty, and humanity.
None of these things come from better strategy. They come from you being more fully present inside what you create.
This is where so many business owners get stuck.
They try to become more memorable by getting more strategic, but the thing that makes you memorable is often the thing strategy has trained you to edit out.
The Part No One Teaches You How to Get Back
When it’s time to find your ALIVENESS and CREATIVITY again, why is no one offering help?
Because reconnecting to yourself is not a tactic.
It requires you to:
- slow down enough to actually hear yourself again
- create without immediately translating everything into output
- re-engage with curiosity, play, and experimentation
- rebuild trust in your own instincts
And most business environments do not support this. Instead, they reward speed, clarity, and efficiency.
(Not depth, exploration, or creative immersion.)
And this is why so many business owners feel like they’ve “lost something”—but don’t know how to access it again.
This Is Where Practical Joy Begins
It’s time to return to the part of you that your business cannot function well without.
Because here’s more blunt truth: Your business does not just need better thinking…
It needs a more CONNECTED CREATOR.
Having navigated a botched surgery that almost resulted in death, and a life that required me to rebuild in ways I never expected, I came to one undeniable, non-negotiable truth:
Experiencing joy in all aspects of life and business is not optional.
Joy became the standard, and that changed how I make decisions daily.
(Not someday or when things calmed down, or after I achieved the next milestone.)
What I started to see, both in my own work and in the clients I support, is that most people cannot actually identify where their joy comes from.
They know what they’re good at, what they should be doing, and what works.
But they are disconnected from the internal reference point that tells them what actually feels meaningful.
And without that connection, everything else starts to drift.
- Your work gets a little more performative.
- Your creativity starts responding to pressure instead of possibility.
- Your business can look successful from the outside while feeling strangely underfed on the inside.
Practical Joy Book Club
What Practical Joy Actually Is
This is not about adding creativity on top of what you’re already doing.
This is about changing where you create from.
Inside this 5-week Practical Joy Book Club, we shift you from:
- creating from pressure → creating from presence
- creating from expectation → creating from curiosity
- creating from performance → creating from connection
So that your work starts to:
- feel interesting again
- sound like you again
- hold more depth and specificity
- resonate in a way strategy alone cannot produce
That’s why this is not just a book club about joy. (Because “more joy” is not the actual goal.)
The real work is learning how to identify what actually creates joy for you and build a life and business that reflects it.
That’s what most people have never been taught how to do.
Instead, they’ve been taught how to optimize, perform, and achieve, but not how to build something that feels like it belongs to them.
And that’s where things start to feel flat.
This is not about joy as a cute idea.
This is about joy as a creative foundation, a decision-making filter, and the place you return to when your work has become overly serious, overly polished, or overly shaped by what you think the market wants from you.
Before you can create a brand that feels alive, you have to be connected to the part of yourself that FEELS ALIVE.
Why Play, Curiosity, and Embodiment Matter Now
We are in a moment where being knowledgeable is no longer a differentiator, being clear is not enough, and even being good at what you do is not enough to stand out.
People are surrounded by competent content.
- AI can produce polished content.
- It can generate ideas.
- It can make someone sound competent very quickly.
But AI cannot replace the lived, felt, specific humanity that makes your work unmistakably yours.
What cuts through now is presence, voice, perspective, and the feeling that there is an actual human being behind the work.
And that only happens when you allow more of yourself into the creative process in a way that is grounded and embodied.
This is why play, artistry and embodied experience matter more now than ever.
These aspects of your work are not “soft extras”, but they are the very things that make your business recognizable, resonant, and worth remembering.
Reconnecting With Your Creative Instincts
The shift into a more expressive, curious, and alive business and life asks you to create differently. Strategy still matters, but it can no longer be the only place you create from.
The deeper invitation is to let your work be rooted in something more human.
That’s the work of Practical Joy.
- Practical Joy is a daily practice, and a way of living, deciding, and creating.
- Practical Joy is a way of returning to the part of you that can still make something, simply because it wants to be made.
- Practical Joy is a way of letting your work carry more of your aliveness again.
It’s time to reconnect with your creative instincts before you ask your business to turn every idea into an outcome.
What Happens Inside the 5 Week Book Club
Inside the Practical Joy Book Club, we will use the book as a guide, but this is not a traditional book club where we read, discuss, and move on.
It is a 5-week creative experience where we use the concepts in Practical Joy to reconnect you with your values, your creative aliveness, your joy, and the part of yourself your business needs more of.
Each week will include guided reflection, conversation, and a creative or embodied practice to help you move the ideas out of your head and into your actual life.
You do not need to be an artist or be “creative” in a way that you do not currently connect with.
You only need to be willing to experiment, reflect, and reconnect with the part of you that has been waiting for more space to create.
The 5-Week Reconnection Process is a Structured Re-entry Into Your Creative Core
Week 1: Where You Disconnected
You will see clearly how and where you shifted from passion to performance.
Week 2: What Actually Matters To You
We define the values that make your work feel meaningful and alive (not just effective).
Week 3: What’s Been Overriding You
We uncover the patterns that have been muting your instincts.
Week 4: Rebuilding Creative Access
You re-engage with play, curiosity, and non-performative creation.
Week 5: Making It Sustainable and Bringing It Back Into Your Work
We turn what you’ve uncovered into repeatable, lived practices, and integrate this experience into how you create, express, and show up in your life and business.
Book Club Dates & Times
The Practical Joy Book Club will meet for 5 consecutive weeks via Zoom.
- August 03; 10a-11a ET
- August 10; 10a-11a ET
- August 17; 10a-11a ET
- August 24; 10a-11a ET
- August 31; 10a-11a ET
Sessions will be recorded and available for replay.
What Changes After This Experience
By the end of the 5 weeks, you will have:
- A clearer understanding of what actually creates joy for you
- A set of current lifestyle values you can use as a decision-making filter
- Awareness of the roadblocks that have been keeping joy inconsistent or unsupported
- A personalized list of passion projects, creative practices, and joyful experiments
- Simple daily joy rituals that fit your real life
- A deeper connection to the part of you that creates, expresses, and makes your work feel like yours
- A renewed sense of how joy, play, artistry, and embodied experience can make your business more human, memorable, and alive
And this experience helps you begin creating in business from connection and aliveness again.
- your ideas come faster
- your content has more depth
- your voice becomes unmistakable
- your work becomes more memorable
- your business feels like something you’re inside of again
Your Free Book Club Experience Includes
This 5-Week Book Club is free, but you’ll need a copy of the Practical Joy book to participate.
- 5 live weekly 60-minute sessions on Zoom
- Guided conversations rooted in the Practical Joy book
- Journaling prompts and creative reflection
- Simple embodied or creative practices each week
- Space for honest conversation with other successful business owners
- A supportive structure to help you practice joy in a way that is grounded, personal, and practical
Purchase your copy of Practical Joy below.
International Reader Note
For readers joining us from outside the contiguous 48 states, your book club registration gives you access to the book club experience, and you’ll receive details after registering about how to purchase the ebook. Due to shipping regulations, paperback copies are available for participants within the contiguous 48 states only.
An Invitation to Feel More Alive in Life and Business
If you are ready to reconnect with the joy, play, values, and creative aliveness that make your work actually feel like yours, this is where we start.
- If your business is working, but something in you feels underfed, this is for you.
- If you’re tired of being strategic at the expense of being alive, this is for you.
- If you know your work doesn’t need to be louder, but it does need to be more you, this is for you.
- If you’re ready to stop treating joy like a luxury and start treating it like the foundation, this is for you.
- If you can feel that your creativity has been waiting for you to stop optimizing long enough to listen, this is for you.
- If you miss the part of yourself that created before everything had to become useful, this is for you.
Come back to the part of you your business has been waiting for.
Meet Your Joy Catalyst
M. Shannon Hernandez is the author of Practical Joy and the founder of Joyful Business Revolution™️, a strategic messaging and business growth consultancy for established experts and expert-led businesses whose work has evolved and whose message no longer reflects the depth of what they now do.
Shannon has always been drawn to the moment when the right words make something click. Through Joyful Business Revolution™️, she helps clients close The Recognition Gap™️ so their expertise becomes easier to understand, easier to trust, and easier to say yes to. Her work is rooted in a simple belief: when people recognize the humanity and depth of your work, trust deepens, decisions become clearer, and growth can happen with more integrity and less force.
Shannon’s expertise has been featured on CBS, ABC, FOX, and NBC, and she brings more than 25 years of award-winning curriculum design experience, including work with the NFL and U.S. Military. She is also committed to philanthropic work that expands access to housing, fresh food, clean water, and medical care.
When she is not speaking, teaching, writing, or leading JoyFueled™️ conversations, Shannon is usually spreading joy, reading fiction, snuggling her cat, or living her best life in Valencia, Spain with the love of her life, Maria.
Purchase your copy of Practical Joy below.
International Reader Note
For readers joining us from outside the contiguous 48 states, your book club registration gives you access to the book club experience, and you’ll receive details after registering about how to purchase the ebook. Due to shipping regulations, paperback copies are available for participants within the contiguous 48 states only.