Joe Minock is the creator of Deliberate Work—a methodology for designing how your business actually operates.
The Deliberate Work framework emerged from 25 years of building operational systems: industrial robotics, software platforms, eCommerce workflows, and coaching systems. It's what happens when you apply the principles of deliberate practice to business operations—transforming accidental chaos into systematic excellence.
You don't need my whole life story. You do need to know whether this book is coming from someone who likes drawing boxes on whiteboards—or someone who's spent years making messy, real-world work actually flow.
I've been doing the second one for about twenty-five years now. That's where the Deliberate Work methodology comes from—not theory, but practice.
Where the Obsession Started
In my junior and senior years of high school, I spent half of every day at Pinckney (MI) High School's cooperative Robotics and Automation program. While my friends were in general classes, I was:
- → Programming industrial robots and logic controllers (PLCs)
- → Wiring sensors, control panels, and safety circuits
- → Designing workcells where parts moved from station to station
Two years in a row, our workcells won Best of Show.
I didn't have fancy language for it then. I just loved making systems where the right "part" showed up in the right place, in the right order, with as little babysitting as possible.
You pushed the green start button and the system just worked.
That feeling has driven everything since—and it's the feeling Deliberate Work is designed to create.
The $0.75 Donut
Toward the end of my first business, I was so broke that spending seventy-five cents on a donut at the grocery store was a real decision.
My bank account fluctuated between negative and positive on a weekly basis. Overdraft fees stacked up. My banker called to remind me that if my car payment went past sixty days, I'd lose my only way to get to work.
I was a starving entrepreneur, and I stayed on that train longer than I should have.
Here's the part that still stings:
During that same period, I was delivering systems and workflows to my clients. I was helping other businesses get organized, get efficient, get their work to flow.
And my own business? Pure chaos. Accidental Work at its finest—the opposite of Deliberate Work.
I just had no clue how valuable systems and process were for me—even though that's exactly what I was building for everyone else. That irony took years to fully absorb. But once I did, everything changed. That hard-won lesson is embedded in every page of the Deliberate Work methodology.
Twenty-Five Years of Building Flows
The Deliberate Work methodology didn't emerge from a single insight. It's the product of two and a half decades building operational systems across wildly different contexts:
Industrial Automation
Started in industrial automation, working full-time for a distributor of sensors and components while continuing education in robotics, automation, and business. First exposure to designing work that flows without constant intervention.
2004 — Mobile Office Systems
Left the auto industry and built my first business around keeping people out of the office and in front of their customers—tablet PCs and the workflows that made them useful.
2005 — BuyJoe.com
A "point and click" local directory for early smartphones. Instead of typing a query, you tapped one of 36 common needs and got nearby options. Early lesson in Deliberate Work: remove friction from the workflow.
2009 — eCommerce Consultancy
Helped brick-and-mortar businesses move online. They thought they needed "a website." What they actually needed were systems and processes. We built flows, not just pages.
2013 — PaymentScholar
An eCommerce and reporting platform for schools and districts. Raised investment capital. Turned paper forms and manual payments into an end-to-end digital workflow.
2016 — AthleteProgress
A mobile coaching app used by coaches and athletes around the world. Turned feedback into a flow: capture, attach, deliver instantly. Deliberate practice meets deliberate workflow.
2019 — Ski Club Leadership
Ran a non-profit ski club. Implemented eCommerce, communication systems, and coaching systems rooted in deliberate practice. Another laboratory for what would become the Deliberate Work methodology.
2023 — The Solar Operating System
Built a web-based operating system for solar installers. From lead capture to system turn-on—the full customer journey designed as a deliberate workflow.
If I had to summarize those twenty-five years in one sentence, it would be this:
I've been going deeper and deeper on understanding what an atomic unit of work actually looks like—and what happens when you design it on purpose. That's what Deliberate Work captures.
The Other Laboratory: A Life in Sport
There's one more thread that shaped the Deliberate Work methodology—and it started long before I had language for it.
As a young speed skater, I was a national champion overall runner-up and national record holder. The training was structured, feedback was immediate, and improvement was systematic.
We didn't call it "deliberate practice" back then—we just called it training. But as a lifelong athlete, when I later read Anders Ericsson's research, everything clicked. The way I'd trained my whole life finally had a name. That's what we were doing all along.
That same approach carried into alpine ski racing, which I've been coaching since 2004:
2013
Technical Coach for Brighton High School Ladies Ski Team. Michigan State Champions—MHSAA Division 1. That wasn't luck. That was deliberate practice at work.
Today
Top-ranked Masters Ski Racer in the USA. Still competing, still learning, still refining.
Athletes don't improve by accident. They improve through deliberate practice.
I've lived that truth since childhood. The question became: why don't businesses work this way?
And then I looked at how businesses operate.
Most companies are doing the equivalent of "just hitting balls at the range." Lots of activity. No structure. No feedback. No systematic improvement.
Deliberate Work is what happens when you translate the principles of deliberate practice into business operations.
If deliberate practice is how individuals develop expertise, Deliberate Work is how organizations develop consistent excellence—by design, not by accident.
Standing on Shoulders
The Deliberate Work methodology didn't emerge from nowhere. It draws on the science of expertise and the discipline of systems design—and stands on the shoulders of thinkers who shaped how I see work:
Peak
Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool — the science of deliberate practice
The Four Hour Work Week
Tim Ferriss — systems for freedom
The Goal
Eliyahu Goldratt — constraints and flow
The Checklist Manifesto
Atul Gawande — simple tools, reliable outcomes
Unreasonable Hospitality
Will Guidara — systems that enable magic
Inbound Marketing
Brian Halligan & Dharmesh Shah — methodology as product
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