Imagine if four day work weeks didn't occur only when a holiday weekend rolls around, beyond more free time, do shorter work weeks also create financial gain. Today's case study explores that question with Erin Diehl, founder of B to B, professional development company, improve it and best selling, author of ICU, a leader's guide to energize your team through radical empathy. After a life altering concussion last year, Erin knew she needed to prioritize her physical and mental health, which prompted her to research the logistics of working only four days per week in october 2023 her company piloted this new structure for all internal staff for 90 days, creating benchmarks to help them determine if this trial had been a success. Now, nearly a year later, they're still going strong, with four day work weeks and have hit their end of quarter revenue goals for three straight quarters, seeing as large as a 77% growth in a single quarter. Here's the process Erin and her team used to successfully implement this.
Welcome to cubicle, to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders and CEOs the business questions you can't google. I'm your host. Ellen Yin. Every Monday, go behind the business in a case study style interview with a leading entrepreneur who shares one specific growth strategy they've tested in their own business, exactly how they implemented it and what the results and revenue were. You'll also hear financially transparent insights from my own journey bootstrapping our media company from a $300 freelance project into millions in revenue.
Hey, friends, welcome back to the show. I have a big deal here with us today. We were just joking about this in the green room. Her toy poodle is named Big and the last name is diehl, but spelled diehl, so anyways, Erin deal, welcome to the show.
Ellen. I am so excited to be here. I love your energy. And I was telling you in the grain room how much I love your show, and as a podcast host myself, just respect the crap out of you, because you you really get into the nitty gritty, and there's no fluff. And I'm here for it. I'm ready for the nitty gritty of the big deal. Let's do it.
Thank you so much. Well, for our listeners, we have a really exciting case study for you today. I'll give you the details in just a moment. But first off, we have to ask you, of course, Erin, what is your cubicle to CEO story? How did you make the leap into entrepreneurship?
Yeah, so such a good question. Never, in a million years like growing up. Never, ever would I ever have dreamed this would be my path actually growing up. I wanted to be a talk show host, specifically Oprah Winfrey. What? Look at us now. Ellen, look at us now. You know what's funny, I have a vision board in my little podcast studio, and she's right behind, like, right behind the camera. So she is with us. She is guiding us today. I love that. So, yeah, so I, you know, went to school for communications, went to Clemson University, graduated with a communications degree. Was like, Don't worry, Mom and Dad, it's gonna be like, a year, and then I'm gonna get the talk show.
Well, I ended up not having a clue what to do. I graduated college in 2005 back then, there weren't a ton of courses. There wasn't a lot of information on becoming a host. And so I decided I'm gonna move to Chicago, the improv capital of the world, also where Oprah lives. At the time, The Oprah Winfrey Show was still on, and so I thought, through osmosis, she will, I will find her. We will, I will gather all of her Oprah vibes, things will happen.
Didn't work out that way. However, I fell into improv comedy, and I fell in love with it, and it led me through a series in my 20s, I did a series of contract jobs using my voice and my improv skills, but it wasn't until my late 20s, when I was sick of traveling, that I got a job at a recruiting firm and I was able to do a nine to five, not travel all the time and do improv comedy at night. And so I was working that nine to five cubicle life, truly a cubicle. And then six to 10 I would do improv shows, classes, rehearsals, all the things, what I noticed in that time was how much what I was doing on stage and in my classes was just spilling over into my day to day.
I was becoming a better listener. I was more empathetic, I thought more quickly on my feet. I just had more presence in my day to day life, and so I knew there was a connection with improv comedy and corporate America. And at the time, I had a really amazing boss who I said, Hey, I have an idea for a workshop to bring improv into a corporate setting. Could I? Could I pitch it here? And she goes, Sure. And we pitched our CEO. He was like, No, I'm not really into this, however, my leader at the time, Jen, was amazing, and she said, Why don't you pitch it to one of our clients, which happened to be United Airlines.
So I pitched my very Yeah, no big deal. No big deal. I pitched my first workshop to United Airlines, and they piloted pun intended my very first workshop, and then they hired me for several more. And then the idea for improve, it grew and grew and grew in my mind. And so I eventually left the full time job the recruiting company, my cubicle, and went part time. And then I ripped the full band aid off quickly after that, because just even going part time gave me more energy and more momentum behind the business.
And then in 2015 I went fully cubicle to CEO, and have grown the business ever since, and lots of peaks and valleys and many learnings along the way, but it is, it's my life's calling, and I love the work and the people we get to work with and the impact that it creates. And I'm just excited for what's to come.
Well, I can feel it in your voice and in your energy, and who knows, maybe improve it will be an Oprah style talk show one day. You never know. And I just must say, as a aficionado for you know, words and puns and all those things, I just love how that kind of follows you throughout your entire branding process. What I'm referring to, for those of you listening is go to Aaron's website. You'll see what I mean improve. It is obviously a play on the word improv, and the E on improve is a different color than all the other letters. So anyways, love that and so so cool that your corporate job really gave you that stepping stone into discovering this path for yourself, and landing United Airlines as your first client is, I mean, wow, that is a story for the ages.
So congratulations on on a strong start. And that kind of brings us into, you know, your willingness to experiment, both obviously in improv and also in your business. And beginning October 2023, last year. So as of this recording, we are in mid September. So almost one year ago, you switched your company to a four day work week and developed a manifesto, a contingency plan, and measured both qualitative and quantitative data before and after implementation to see what this experiment would do within your business and the results, spoiler alert for our listeners, has been astounding. Erin and her team have hit end of quarter revenue goals for three quarters straight since implementation.
So quarter 420, 23 quarter one quarter two of this year, 2024, and we'll get into all of the nitty gritty, like you said, Aaron, of the data later in our conversation. But what I want to know first from you is what sparked this 90 day experiment to begin with, and who on your team, or was it yourself, who initiated this idea.
Okay? You ready? Ellen, I feel this is what I'm gonna manifest for you, and I, you will be my co host for Oprah style show, because I'll bring the, like, fluff. And my, I have tangibles. I've got tangibles, right? But you're gonna come in with, like, the hard hitting data. I'm gonna energize the room with you. You're a great Energizer too. But we're gonna, we're gonna be a good, you know, coupling in this talk show. We're manifesting. So, okay, all of that to say. I had to, I had to get that out there, because when you were talking about it, I was like, I see this, Ellen, I see this.
This all started, literally, from a hit on the head from the universe. And I say that literally and figuratively, in 2022 I went through a massive self healing journey. I was a pivoting, pivoting, pivoting human being, a pivoting CEO, because obviously the pandemic did numbers on our business. I was a perpetual people pleaser, and I was in perceived pain. I was literally in chronic pain for two and a half years, and no doctor could diagnose it. In that time, I healed myself, and I got a nudge from the universe to write a book, which honestly was a very guided experience. It was almost like I did it, write it. It was almost as if I needed to write it. Write it right now for the greater collective to help busy, overworked, overstressed, over committed leaders.
And when I say leader, it doesn't have to be a CEO. It could be a leader of a family, a leader of a community. It. So I wrote the book in 2023 took me five months, and when I turned in the manuscript, I happened to be going on a 40th birthday celebration for one of my best friends to Costa Rica, and one of the things that we did on this trip was a cliff diving experience. Now, when I tell you that the nudge and the hit in the head from the from the universe was real, it was real. I was the only female to climb a 40 foot cliff and jump into a body of water out of the entire group of people there.
And what happened, Ellen is not my finest hour. I hit my head on the water, and I had a concussion. And I had a concussion for what was called post concussion syndrome. I It lasted for about four months, honestly, and it was really the most excruciating time of my life, because I my vision was impaired. I had severe headaches. I was almost, well, I won't say almost. I was depressed. I was writing this book about burnout, but feeling completely burned out. I was still going back into these old patterns of people pleasing and over committing, and a new type of pain set in, which was this sort of vision loss, if you will, and headache. So the remedy for concussions are time and not staring at screens, which I don't have a lot of time. I'm a mom and I'm a business owner, I have to stare at screens for my job.
So I started to really think about our processes at work and how much time we were spending in meetings and how much time on a Friday, were we really working? And am I choosing to live a life of priorities and being present to them, or am I racing through them on the day to day? And is that ultimately, what was the purpose behind this concussion, and so when I started to really connect the dots of what this lesson was for me, it was to slow down, it was to reprioritize. It was to know my purpose, and it was to have inner peace those four there. I like peas. I like alliteration. Those are some more peas, same. So thank you.
See, we'll make great talk show hosts together. Exactly. It is just a cumulation of my own sort of necessity to slow down and to recalibrate that this came about, and it just so happens, if you're listening to this show, you probably listen to other podcasts for CEOs. I love Jenna Kutcher. I love Amy Porterfield, and they had been doing a four day work week with their team, and so they suggested a book called shorter, and it is an amazing book filled with case studies and tangible how to steps in a protocol for putting a four day work week into a place for your team.
So I read the book, and was very inspired, and I had my team. My internal team is small but mighty. We're a team of six. I have a facilitation team of 22 and they only work when we have workshops. But I said to my internal team, we're going to read this book together and collectively, if we can change the course of our days, and therefore the course of our mindset, as we show up in these days, we will give ourselves the gift of time. And I have to tell you, when we implemented it, it was a case study for 90 days. We were gonna we had, we can, I know we'll get into that in a minute. It was almost as if we were working so hard to never go back. It has changed everything for me, Ellen, everything, and my team, and it's not only an amazing mindset and shift in our day to day lives and weeks, it's a strategy for retention. I know my team loves this concept.
Not a lot of companies have four day work weeks. It's a strategy for attraction. It's a strategy for a better collective way of living and and it is a light to the world that you matter and your time matters, so that all all being said is how we got here and what led to, ultimately, this massive shift in our culture.
That's beautiful. I love that you presented it from day one as this is a team effort if we're going to make this our reality, and how you even phrase like we're going to give ourselves back the gift of time, I just think the way that you present. That as a leader was so powerful and incentivizing. And I'm assuming the answer is yes, but I have to ask, was the reception unanimous among the team about trying this thing? Were they all very excited for it, or was there anyone that perhaps actually had a slight hesitation to wanting to shorten the work week.
I think when I first mentioned the idea they went to, am I going to get paid the same? And guess what, we kept our pay the exact same. Love that Yes. So once that was established, everyone was like, Heck, yeah, so, but I work they I did make sure to I checked collectively, we had a group call, and then I individually checked in with every individual to make sure that they were okay.
Again, I have a smaller team, so it's not, this isn't as big of a lift as it would be for a larger organization, but I I wanted to check in on any trepidations and see if there were any shortcomings. And collectively, we had all decided Friday was the best day for us to take that day off. Fridays were kind of a no meeting Friday anyway, at improve it. We weren't going to take external meetings. We didn't plan internal meetings. It was almost it was your admin day, and now it's our admin Life Day. So, and I'll get into that too, we're not completely disconnected from the office.
The Office comes with us, but it is not, and I can get into that. We've created some stipulations and sort of processes that, when we first initially announced it weren't established, but were alluded to, like we're going to create a process where everyone feels comfortable. We're not dropping balls. And once that was established, it was a unanimous, let's go.
Yes, and I'm super excited to get into the details of that, like you said. So actually, let's start there. Let's start with the execution piece of this case study first, and then we'll get into the results and data that we've been alluding to. So actually, where I want to start with the execution side is with the actual, the vision, or the manifesto, if you will. So you mentioned that this was an important part of the implementation.
And for brevity sake, are you able to sum up this manifesto in, let's say, 30 seconds, and then also on the tail end of that, explain why, specifically, a manifesto like, how would this compare differently to, let's say, using a mission statement or doing a vision casting of sorts. Tell us about that.
Yes, okay, I'm going to read it because I just, I can't even say it better than here, and you can time me. Here we go.
Okay, you decided to trial a four day work week with an eight and a half hour workday. Studies have shown how shortening working hours greatly benefits employees and organization. As an organization, we want our team to be physically and mentally healthy, happy at work and in their personal lives and become expert time managers. This team of recovering perfectionists wants to live out our values, to explore more play and have fun and drive results in the same creative and out of the box approach we take with all of our work. We want to retain our dream team, build sustainable careers, hit our revenue goals, enjoy our families, friends and hobbies outside of work, invest in our health and take more time to just be I skipped one part in there because you said 30 seconds. I probably was at 40,but there's-
That's perfection coming out in you.
Oh, my God, Ellen, it's real. It's another P. It's another P. That is a problem. There's another P in my life, but yeah, it is taking a step back when I talk about the core values and their play, learn and have fun. One of the things I'm most proud of as an organization is very early on, we established a set of five core values as a team, that set of core values has been a part of every hiring process, whether it be internal or on our facilitator side, it is also the metric that we use for our biannual reviews, and we measure everything against those five core values, knowing that play, learn and have fun, explore more are two of our biggest core values. It was almost like the most easy shift in our mental capacity to say, this makes sense. This makes sense.
So we decided the manifesto would be the way to go, not only just for us to have pen to paper and put our thoughts down in one specific place, but it's also where we guide clients on Friday, if you go to our if you email me on a Friday or Jenna my VP, you will get an out of office that takes you to the manifesto. And nine times out of 10, if somebody doesn't know that we do it, they respond back with, wow, this is really cool. Well, thanks for sharing, and we do respond twice a day on Fridays, so most of the time, they will get a response. But the manifesto was our binding contract to each other and to ourselves.
That's beautiful. And I hearing it, I think it was so well summed up. I love that you you brought into the manifesto the bigger vision of how this impacts how they live the rest of their lives, like outside of their offices, outside of their careers. So we'll make sure, if it's on your web page anywhere and you want to send that to me, we'll make sure to link the manifesto below in the show notes. In case any of you want to go back and kind of refer to it, maybe use it as inspiration for how you would create a guiding manifesto for yourself or your team if you want to implement something similar.
After listening to this case study, thank you for sharing that and for sharing that so concisely, I wanted to ask next. And you mentioned this actually, that the four day work week consists of four, eight and a half hour days. So to clarify, prior to implementing this four day work week, did you previously work on that normal eight hour a day, 40 hour a week schedule, and if so, why the addition of the extra 30 minutes to each work day? Why not just keep it for eight hour days?
Such a good question. So a couple of things we definitely did, the eight hour days, and I will say what I'm very proud of, too. As a small business, we have strong boundaries, like, if we rarely, we have events sometimes that are in the evenings, that we might be on our, you know, on call for but there's rarely an after hours text, or we use Slack as our primary communication channel.
So our boundaries were pretty tight. At eight hours a day, the extra half hour came in as Okay, well, we're now shortening it, and this is just pure honesty. We were going from a 40 hour work week, five days a week. And so we knew, Okay, now we're going down to 32 hours, and at some point in there, you gotta eat lunch, you gotta take breaks. So we accounted the extra half hour for like, okay, you're gonna take and I will say some, I'm just gonna be honest, some days I'm working nine hours, some but I am off my computer by 530 I do start at about 7:45am now, because my son goes to school at an ungodly hour, and then, and then I start around 745 eight, and then I'm definitely off my computer by 530 like that is and and that is For sure, my team is also in a different time zone than me, so I start before them. They're Central, so they're later, but the extra half hour was just sort of a built in for life.
Okay? That makes a lot of sense. So basically, using that extra half hour per day to just build in margin for life, right? Life as it happens. And then, like you said, normal breaks and lunches and whatnot.
Another thing that you mentioned, that I thought was really interesting is that on Fridays, you're not completely unplugged, even though technically it's it's that extra day off, so I believe you have yourself and your team check emails twice a day on Friday to account for any potential urgent or emergency situations from clients.
Can you give us more detail as to when you check your inboxes and what you guys would classify as something urgent or an emergency that needs to be responded to that day versus waiting until the next workday on Monday?
Yeah, so I thought about this because we are such a small and mighty team, and I didn't want a situation to come up where, let's say, you know, we get a lead into the website, and we don't necessarily have somebody responding to it until another 48 hours, like I like to and I will tell you what we got into in terms of automations in just a moment, because that was a big part of our process. But for us, it was really just ensuring Okay, nothing is slipping through the cracks. We're not dropping any balls.
So if a client emails on a Friday, they will get her out of office at 11am whatever your respected time zone is and 4pm you're just checking your emails. And when I say checking your emails, you could be at a coffee shop, you could be at the beach, you could be wherever, checking your emails from your phone. And if anything comes up that needs a response or needs an immediate response, that day, you respond, we don't email each other, so there's no internal needs or necessary. You know, anything necessary that we need to communicate to each other that day.
And I will say this has been a great strategy. It doesn't feel overwhelming to be out experiencing life and having to check your email from your. Phone twice a day, and sometimes, you know, there probably are some days when, like, for example, Jenna, our VP, was at our sister's bachelorette party. I don't really expect her to check and respond that day, but she did, and nothing happened. So we were very lucky, but I think for both of us, and for Jenna and I are more client facing, and Nicole helps on the client side with logistics. We just want to make sure people know we will get back to them, or they get her out of office, and know when they can expect communication. So I will say that is a difference from what I know, the Amy porterfields, the Jenna kutchers of the world. Do they, I think, completely shut down.
We are a much smaller team, and so for us, it just sort of gives us that peace of mind that nothing is slipping. We also have events happening sometimes on Fridays, so there might be a couple of virtual events that our team needs to just make sure the Zoom links work for or the client can get in touch with somebody for so those things are caveats. And then obviously, like, sometimes we'll have situations where we have a team event on a Friday, and that we try not to do.
We try to really keep Friday sacred. But for example, like, I'm going to be in Chicago for an event on a Thursday. We're doing a team building event that Friday, and that was planned well in advance. It's really sacred time. You can plan your life to be out of town on a Friday. You can travel on a Friday, but you're just making sure everything's running smoothly.
That makes complete sense. And I really appreciate you adding that extra layer of and I think this is so important for anyone listening to podcast shows or really any other source of information, is context is so key when deciding which aspects of a strategy or approach you like to apply in your own business. And to your point, as a small team, your resources are more limited than than you know, those of a company that have much larger staffs and and whatnot. And so I think that's so important that you recognize that in how you tweaked the four day work week to work for your business. I guess my main question, or I don't even know if question is the right word, just kind of playing devil's advocate here, right is.
And I like to kind of think, what might our listeners be also thinking that they would want to ask you here is, if there is an auto responder going out saying, hey, our team takes Fridays off, here is our manifesto and our reason why you'll hear back from us on Monday. Is there any reason why client or a new lead coming in wouldn't just expect to hear on Monday? Is there truly a need for them to hear on that same day, on Friday, if there's like, a specific situation that comes to mind where you're like, it would have impacted us adversely if we had waited until Monday.
Maybe, if you could just expand on that, that would help them better define again, like, what is? What is truly urgent versus not?
Yeah, and that is such a great question, just jumping a few steps back, just thinking to how this even came about. This started in that 90 day period right where we were, like, we have no clue how this is going to work, and it's sort of been. Now we're at four quarters of doing this. So like you said, almost a year, it's just been the practice we so here's what, let me explain the autoresponder from a lead to because I think this is really cool, and I don't know if you're going to get to this. Tell me if I'm jumping ahead, no-
But I want you to talk about this, because I don't. I don't have that in my purview right now.
Okay, okay, so when we receive a lead into our website. Now we are B to B, so we are receiving leads from people who work five days a week at all hours all across the world. And we decided that we're going to have an autoresponder email journey set up for these types of scenarios. So when you write into our site, you get an automated email sent to you with the list of things that we do how we can best support you, and then a link to set up a time to chat with Jenna, our VP of client experience.
It also lists our costs right in there the range, and that was a huge turning point for us, because we want to make sure, if we're taking a phone call, that there's budget. So that has been a really, really interesting thing that we started with this new process. It is almost like a habit that we've done that, and I think it is something in the future we could eliminate, but it's that recovering people pleaser, recovering perfectionist, to me, if I'm being completely honest, that we have not completely dropped it. And I do think if we continue to grow like we're hoping to grow, we will add staff.
And I do think that when that happens, we will have, hopefully, the ability to have maybe one person on email duty a week. Not ever, like not two or three people checking, but just being such a small team right now, it's what we somewhat feel comfortable with, and I might just be talking for my team. It might just be what I feel comfortable with, but it feels great checking from a coffee shop or, you know, a doctor's appointment in a parking lot, then sitting at my computer and it still feels like freedom, which is the ultimate goal.
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Yes, and I appreciate your honesty there. I think it's so important sometimes to recognize the limitations of certain past habits and growth or change can happen in increments. It doesn't need to be all or nothing, and I think you are proving that you can be very successful with incremental changes to policies and procedures.
So thank you for answering that. You also have done something in terms of condensing your work week to a four day schedule that I think is important to note, which is that you didn't necessarily try to just condense the same amount of work into less days. Instead, you were very intentional about eliminating tasks from everyone's plates. So I would love to know, what tasks Did you eliminate on your team's plates or your own that you felt made the biggest difference, and how did you decide what to eliminate two things.
So we definitely went through a process of elimination, and then we also all re batched our days. I'm a huge batching person, so I'll talk first about the elimination and then how we set up the process to be more batch fluent. So first and foremost, I had the entire team create a list of every single thing they do in a typical week, and then we went through that list, and the next step was, okay, I want you to circle things on this list that are things that you, a don't enjoy doing, but b Don't necessarily move the needle. And I hate that sort of that, that cliche tagline there, but things that maybe aren't working. So we each individually had these lists, and then we collectively as a group, did an exercise that I love doing. It's called, What should we what should we start doing?
What should we stop doing, and what should we keep doing? And so we created this list as a team, and essentially what you get from that list is really what is working so, knowing that each individual took their individual parts from that list and said, okay, here is my new list. Here's my focus points from there, after we each had our individual focus points, we decided what meetings are we having that are productive, and are there any that can be eliminated? And I will tell you, we reduced our meetings from about four or five a week to two meetings a week. Wow. Two meetings, incredible.
And that made a huge difference in our productivity. With that we also reduced our Slack communication. So if you have an item that needs to be discussed, put it on the agenda for our 45 minute meeting, and that eliminates the distractions during the workday, because slack is a wonderful communication tool, but it's also a distraction. So from there, we each had our individual lists. We now know here's. The protocol for our meetings, we now know, okay, we're trying to eliminate as much distraction as possible. How do we organize our time? And so as each individual human on the team, we all have different seats and roles, I'll just tell you how my my week is structured. Monday is all of my organizational internal team meetings as well as I organize things for my podcast.
I organize any show prep that I need to do. I organize anything from a budget perspective for the team, and I have all of my internal team meetings on that day. So meeting one with the team is on that day, and if I need to meet with our Director of Talent, it's on that day. Our content team has a meeting. So that day is, I don't talk to clients. On that day, I like to work in sweatpants. On Mondays, Tuesdays, it's all clients. It's all client focused. It's any sales calls, it's any follow ups, it's any outreach Wednesdays, I record content for the show, or I do shows like your awesome show, and I make that strictly a content focused day so my brain can work in that that rhythm.
And then Thursday is any internal projects that I need to work on, so anything for a client, or anything that we have going on internally that needs work. The afternoon is our other meeting. I have one meeting with the internal team, one meeting with our talent team, and then I use that afternoon for anything that I need to catch up on. That structure helps my brain so much. And each individual team member was tasked with creating their own batching of days, and theirs looked different than mine, because we have different roles. And with that batching, I'm able to silo my mindset. I'm able to stay in a creative mindset, I'm able to talk to clients, I'm able to think strategically, and it just really helps me stay in that same lane all day, which makes me more productive.
So super helpful. Yes. So that was a huge, huge piece of prepping. So we had, like, a 90 day prep to do the 90 day trial. And so we really had to systemize and look to see what could be eliminated and what could be restructured. And that it has changed everything truly.
I love that. Thank you for walking us through that week, week in life of you as a CEO, I always love hearing how people structure their schedules. It's fascinating to me, for you specifically, then what is one thing you eliminated that was on that stop doing list that you feel really made an impact on your ability to shorten to four day work weeks, if you can remember,
yeah, I was having a lot of meetings with honestly, and I'm going to say this in the kindest way, I was having a lot of those meetings that people always ask you to pick your brain, or those, Those like, Oh, can I pick your brain? Kite meetings, or those coffee meetings that you think maybe we'll go somewhere, or maybe there's a connection or a partnership or collaboration, but don't really, and I do like to be of service. Don't, don't let me, you know, don't get away thinking I don't like to help people I do.
But what happens in those meetings is I usually take either fits in person, it's an hour, hour and a half of your time. If it's a coffee virtually, it's 30 minutes, and it takes me out of my day to day work. So I eliminated all of those meetings. Anytime anybody asks me for coffee or help, it goes to a Friday, and a Friday meeting is more of like, I can help you that day. I don't think we're going to do a business deal, but we could. There's some type of partnership or, like, connection. I want to get to know you more type conversation.
And I lived in Chicago for 15 years, moved to Charleston four years ago, and I'm really starting to create community here. So I do a lot of in person coffees. But what happens is I also use Friday as my life catch up day. So I've got doctor's appointments. I'm running errands. I'm doing things for my son. So sometimes those coffee meetings get pushed out, like a month or two out, right? And I had to be okay with that, as a people pleaser and as a human who wants to help other human beings.
But what God eliminated was time that I was giving to others that wasn't making a direct impact in the business on the day to day, and I allocated it towards a different time when I felt like I could be more of a resource to them, and also where it wasn't interrupting the day to day business flow.
I really respect that approach, and I can relate in a lot of ways, because I also have eliminated a lot of those types of meetings. In fact, pretty much, I think I've only maybe had one this entire year that's kind of in. That realm and in an actual, like, virtual type of meeting. Typically nowadays, when people reach out with those type of requests, I'll always ask them to come to me with, like, a specific idea already in mind that they can share the details with via email first, so I can, kind of, you know, scope it out and see if it fits with anything we've got going on.
Or I always give them the opportunity to, you know, hop on Voxer, or some sort of, like audio voice messaging system where they can, we can still go back and forth, but it's asynchronous, so that we don't have to align with each other's schedules to have that conversation.
So great reminder for all of our listeners, also the, I mean, I referenced this at the beginning of our episode, that doing all of these things right, automating a lot of the communications, and creating stricter boundaries and removing things from your list that you've been able to hit your revenue goals now three quarters in a row, which is absolutely incredible. I'm just curious, as of this recording in late q3 2024, are you on track to also hit your end of quarter revenue goals this quarter?
Yes, yes, yes. And yay, yes. Thank you. It has been, you know, I won't lie like and this is something I'm also really grateful for. My friends who are entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, all the things June this year was a really hard month for us, so we were still recovering from June, pretty much through the end of August. We were still trying to catch up for some of that loss. I don't we.
Our business is so fickle. You can never predict a slow month in 10 years. We've never been able to and because it depends on so many different variables, but we are on track to hit the end of September q3 goal. We are very close, and we've got a lot of things in our pipeline that are going to make it happen. And it's like those things keep us motivated, those those little wins along the way and overcoming the setback that we had in June, we didn't work on Fridays to overcome it, we we changed our process, we changed our mindset, and we implemented a new system into our business too.
That has been awesome, and I would highly recommend to anyone listening. I don't know if you've ever read the book traction by Gina Whitman.
I Well, I've, I've read parts of it, not in its entirety.
Okay, that has been a game changer for us. We just started implementing that in q3 and it's ultimately a book on focus. And I don't know if you can relate to this. I'm assuming you're an innovator. Ellen, are you an innovator?
Yes, I do identify with that joker.
Me too. Every innovator needs an integrator, but as an innovator, what happens to me is I come up with so many ideas, yep, and then I am like, let's do this, and then I'd swing the team to this next idea. So what the 90 day rocks, method of traction helps you do is to establish very clear, tangible revenue and data based goals for the next 90 days in your business, and assign somebody to be in charge of that rock. You are not allowed, over the course of the 90 days to stray from those rocks until the next quarter, and it has been the best lesson for me.
So that is what ultimately brought us back from a very slow June and has kept us extremely focused and on target this quarter, I would attribute to traction, for sure.
Amazing. Well, we'll make sure to link that book below in the show notes for anyone who is interested in in reading more about that approach. And I want to get also into the actual numbers, because I know that's like the juicy stuff. I'm so grateful that you chose to share this with our listeners like I referenced previously, you measure both qualitative and quantitative results to judge the success of a four day work week. So let's talk quantitative results first. Here's a quick summary for our listeners.
So what Erin and her team at improve it have accomplished is a 35% growth from q3 to q4 in 2020, 2023 sorry, yes, when implementing the four day work week, and then there was a slight dip in growth from the end of the year 2023, through q1 2024 but this was mostly attributed to people still figuring and by people, I assume You mean clients figuring out their learning and development budgets. And, of course, an emphasis on your book launch, which I will actually circle back to that later in this conversation. And then a 77% growth though you guys from q1 2024, to q2 2024, all while still working this four day work week. So what I would love to know, obviously, you've seen incredible success quarter over quarter growth.
What I want to know is, how did you actually choose your revenue goals at the outset of this experiment and at the time? Were you simply trying to sustain your revenue, your existing revenue, with a shorter work week? Or were. You actively projecting that you are going to be growing your revenue quarter over quarter. Also, while shorting this work week.
I will tell you, because of the book launch, we expected growth, and I've had many friends who are in the same space who have launched books, who saw explosions in their business. And I will say there was a lot of hype around the book launch, and we had a lot of excitement, and then two or three months following, and like I said, there was a dip in June of this year that we weren't expecting.
However, we did expect growth from 2023 to 2024 just based on the fact that we were executing a ton of events around the book launch, we were putting a lot of money into our marketing budget, and knowing we had a four day work week, we still expected that same growth. Because ultimately, if I'm being honest with you, I'm going to be completely real for your listeners, Friday was never a sales day for me. I was never on the phone doing a sales call, and my team wasn't either. It was already a no meeting day Friday. It was almost like a just keeping the dream alive type day, an administrative day, and so I knew if we could work as efficiently as possible, in four days, we could still achieve our revenue goals and then some, and grow as a business.
And as we continue to put growth plans into place for the next year, we're gonna expect year over year, growth again, because we're not only automating reprocessing. We're hoping to grow our internal team slightly, and with that, we are going to hopefully see more revenue and more growth. But I got to tell you, I did some deep searching through this whole process, and I know, you know, there's different types of businesses, and I have ultimately decided that improvement is a lifestyle business for me. And there was, you know, a friend of mine who sold her business, built it to scale, sold. I have many friends, and I'm sure you do too, have done that, and I truly feel like this work is what I'm meant to do here on this planet, and there's so much more to do.
And the team we've created, and the people here all really bond and work so well and collaborate so well together that I would miss not being a part of this. I would miss not seeing it through. So I'm looking at it as a marathon, not a sprint. I'm looking at it as let me sustain myself and my mental health and my because mental health is ultimately wealth. And I had to get really clear on what my what success looks like for me here. And I have to tell you, the mental gains have been just as great as the revenue ones.
That clarity is so beautiful knowing the type of business that you want to build, lifestyle versus acquisition. And for our listeners who are maybe not as familiar with like, what's the difference between a lifestyle business and a business that you build to sell? You know, we've had quite a few episodes on our show where we've interviewed different types of founders, some who have built things to sell.
In fact, recently, we had Suneera Madhani on the show talking about how she built a billion dollar business that she exited. And so if you're interested in kind of hearing both sides of the coin, then maybe go, go listen back into that episode. But I think it's incredible building a lifestyle business that you want to be a part of for the long term. I think that, in and of itself, is such a gift, and I love that you celebrate that Erin, so thank you for bringing that to the forefront of our minds as well. I am curious, as an add on to that, where do you feel the lever is being pulled that is allowing your revenue to consistently grow quarter over quarter, even though you're doing it sustainably, like you mentioned, is it that you're adding in new products? Is it just that you've signed more clients over the last three quarters?
Or is it neither of those, and maybe you're just expanding the scope and the budgets for the existing clients you work with? Like, which of those three things do you feel best describes what is moving that revenue needle, or am I wrong, and it's none of the above.
You are. You are so right. And there's all of the above actually, but the moon that sticks out the most to me is the very last one. So we sell, well, we provide services for businesses B to B. So we're a professional development company that uses improv, infused comedy to train on soft skills. Sometimes people come to us and it's a one and done scenario, and that can makes us continuously go out and chase the business. What we were doing prior to the pandemic in 2019 was building out what we called at that time. Tiers or packages and selling more at once into a learning and development curriculum.
When the pandemic happened, we had to pivot completely. We had to pivot our entire business virtually for two years, and then we were coming back to 2022 which was actually our highest year ever of revenue, to figure out how to do both in a hybrid setting, and what we are now able to do is create amazing curriculum for learning and development programs that they can use over the course of one year or two years, depending on the number of packages or the number of workshops that they want as part of their curriculum. We've gotten smarter. We're working smarter, not harder. So the contracts are much more substantial, versus a one and done.
We still we have three tiers. We call it the culture jumpstart, which is the one off scenario, the culture shift, which is three workshops over the course of a year, or the culture change, which is six workshops over the course of two years, because a lot of times people do this on a biannual or semi annual basis. So we wanted to create longer lasting, more fluid relationships and make a greater impact on organizations. And so what is really working for us from a revenue perspective, is curriculum and selling higher ticket items with to one company versus a lower ticket item to multiple that.
That is our business model. We will always have to chase new business, but we find we have great relationships, and when we just continue to deepen the relationship, build more trust within the clients that we serve and the teams within we serve, they start to see a better impact on their people as well. So it's a win win. We just have to find the right people with the right budgets, and that does take time and a lot of relationship building, right?
I appreciate the clarity there on, like, what is essential for the continued growth of the business, but where the highest impact for your revenue growth actually lies. So that makes total sense. I mean, we've all heard of that 8020 rule, right? Like 80% of your business comes from 20% of your clients, and so I think that's a really great real life testament to that. And moving finally, into, you know, the last piece of this case study, which I am actually really excited about, because I'm glad that you measure these results, because I think not enough entrepreneurs do.
So I think this will be really great for our listeners to be reminded of, is qualitative results. So, you know, you sent me an entire spreadsheet of questions that you surveyed your employees on before and after implementing this. In fact, you the spreadsheet that you sent me specifically, I believe, tracked their responses over a period of three months. So just to give our listeners a little bit of context, these were questions where employees got to rate themselves on a scale of zero to 10, zero being like, No, I do not resonate with this at all. Versus 10 like, I feel extremely like this. This is a very strong yes, right?
And they were questions like, how happy are you in your role? Do you feel like you do meaningful work? Are you sleeping well? Are you burnt out? Are you stressed? Do you feel refreshed on Mondays. So I think lots of great questions, and we will link below in the show notes, a blog post that has their manifesto as well as like the full list of questions being asked. So for brevity sake, we won't audibly list each one, but you can go and reference that if you'd like. And from the spreadsheet that you sent me, Erin, what stood out to me the most were two specific qualifiers.
One was the question, how burnt out are you feeling? And those average answers before this four day work week was six. That was the average score, if you will, for your team. And it dropped to three after, you know, just a month in. And then also the drastic drop in the responses to how overwhelmed are you feeling, which dropped from an average score of seven to then an average score of three.
So what I would love is your insight on do you feel like these numbers being halved essentially? Do you feel all of this is attributed to simply having an extra day for life, stuff like that three day weekend, or what else have you or your team experienced during this time that you feel has contributed to to such a drastic improvement in these scores?
Yes, thank you again. You know I was telling you this before we hit record. It's so wonderful to go back and just reassess this data, because I haven't looked at it in a while. So it is. It's refreshing. I think what ultimately we've all landed on is I'm only the only parent on my team, so for me, I had. No day to be a mom, or I'm sorry, let me, let me say this again. It was either working mom Erin, and then mom Erin. There was no Erin day.
And so for me, it was like, especially working from home, I'm flipping the switch constantly, and there was no time for me to go to a hair appointment, or go to my own doctor's appointments, or just go run an errand that I need to or do something I actually like, maybe, you know, like having a moment for me, so that, for me personally, was the biggest shift, because I still have childcare. My son is still at school on Fridays. That day is, what does Aaron need today? And some, some Fridays, it's, I gotta run errands. Some Fridays, it's, you know what? I need to sit down and just work head down on the spreadsheet for a few minutes and just get it done.
Some Fridays, it's, I'm going to a spa with my girlfriends. And sometimes, you know, it just depends what that need is and what comes up at that time. But what everyone, consistently on my team, has said is it gives them a day to do their life stuff, to have a life admin day so that Saturday and Sunday, they are actually resting. They're actually enjoying it, versus being like, I have to do my laundry or I have to go run this errand and do XYZ, they're actually enjoying themselves on those two days, and Friday is still an enjoyable day, but they have the day to get whatever they need done from a life perspective.
And if you read the book shorter, which I think would be a great resource for your listeners, there are so many case studies from a variety of industries in this book that show that not only productivity rose for four day work weeks, but also their mental health was affected, and everyone felt this sort of sense of relief. You know, at the end of a work day on a Friday, how you feel? Yeah, like, like, you don't feel we don't feel that anymore. We don't feel that. We don't feel that.
And it makes Sunday feel less scary, because, you know, you just have four days to just be all in, and then Friday, yes, is for me, I'm still getting stuff done, but in a different capacity. And it just allows Saturday and Sunday to be restorative. And I used to think rest was unproductive, if I'm being really honest with you, prior to hitting my head, I did, and now it is. It is a priority. It's a necessity. I like take a nap and I applaud myself. I'm so proud.
I love that for you. You know, crap. I mean that. I mean it wasn't funny obviously what happened to you in terms of the accident, but in a way, it literally knocked some sense into you. And for that, I think there's a lot to be grateful for. So I'm really, really happy to hear that you celebrate rest in that way.
And I totally hearing you kind of share that experience. I I really understand what you're saying, because it's like, if you to your point with the two day weekend, one day always is kind of either Sunday or Saturday, always is a little bit more focused on catching up on life things. And so you're right, we don't get that full restorative two days in the way that we would, if, like you said, there was a life admin day on a Friday.
So I think this entire interview has just been really encouraging, and I hope that that's what our listeners come away with, as well as, like, taking this case study and thinking through what are some of the old habits that we're just living in that we do because we've always done them. And like, how do we kind of break free of that and reassess what's important to us and how we can build that business to better suit those, those core values like you mentioned from the very beginning of this episode.
So Erin, thank you for sharing so transparently, so honestly behind the scenes. We've had so many tech issues with this interview, and Erin has been right there with me persisting through them. So thank you. We made it. We made it to the end. Erin, I'm so proud of us. And where, where can our listeners continue to connect with you and learn more about the work that you guys do at improve it?
Oh, my God. Well, Ellen, first of all, I have to give you kudos, because I'm not sure. I'm pretty sure it was me with the tech fails over here. I'm just gonna say that. So she has been amazing and so patient. But yes, please do reach out. You can go to my website. It's Aaron deal.com it'll take you to our improve it page. It'll take you to the book and all things social media. But I have just really enjoyed getting to know you and your work.
So keep doing this amazing, amazing work and showcasing what you do and really breaking it down for people like us, small business owners, large business owners, mid sized business owners, who really need guidance, you do such a great job of breaking down things in a beautiful, most tangible way. Please give Ellen five stars. She needs it today because she really had a lot of piecing together of this show. But, you are amazing. So thank you for this.
Thank you and an extra deserved shout out to our producer, Sabrina, who, by the time you're listening to this beautifully polished version that was all Sabrina, so you'll have never known unless I had said it that we even shout out to Sabrina.
We love you, Sabrina. Thank you so sorry. Thank you, Sabrina.
Thank you all so much for listening in. Make sure to check out all of Erin's links below in the show notes. Slide into our DM say thank you for her persisting to share this amazing case study with us, and we will catch you all in next week's episode. Bye.
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