Ep 17: 4-Day Workweek For All with Fearless CEO Founder Mariah Coz

EPISODE 17:

4-Day Workweek For All with Fearless CEO Founder Mariah Coz

 
 
 

I’m thrilled to introduce you to one of my mentors, Mariah Coz. I began working with her back in 2020 as I created my first online course and really learned how to run a profitable online business. Mariah’s built an incredible 7-figure business — and done it in a way that is uniquely her style, values, and vision.

Mariah Coz is the founder of Fearless CEO, where she has spent the last 7 years working with entrepreneurs to build their online courses, group programs, webinars, evergreen funnels, and more.

Over the years, she has worked with thousands of clients and has been lucky enough to mentor many of the “household names” you know today! As the seasons change, as the industry shifts, as algorithms go rogue, as circumstances continue to fluctuate day to day -- there are principles that remain timeless and evergreen. The heart of Mariah’s teachings comes down to her signature approach of creating “Empowering Enrollment Experiences” that both you and your customers will love!

>>> New workshop for nonprofits and social entrepreneurs on 3/14/23: Get NOTICED. Get FUNDED - sign up here for free. <<< 

Resources mentioned:

 

Episode transcript:

 Welcome Mariah Coz to the Purpose and Profit Club podcast. I'm so excited to have you here and join us today. Thank you so much for having me, Christina. So good to see you. I'm very excited for our conversation today and see where it goes. Awesome. So the first thing I wanna say is the way that you talk about money, purpose, and profit is why you're here.

It's, it's something my entire audience needs to hear. It's something that coaches and consultants and nonprofits. Need to kind of flip it on their head. And that's, that's what I'm so excited for you to, to bring in because I think you have this like, pioneering way of like, just because we've always done it this way isn't doesn't really mean we need to continue doing it this way.

So I just wanna give you that fix what's not broken, you know, , I love to get in there and be like, Hmm, just because we've always done it this way, maybe there's a better way and just That's right. Go ahead and break everything that ever existed. Exactly, exactly. That's the name of the game. And I just wanna walk you through like me as a case study in working with you.

So I looked this up this morning and I first learned about you back in, I think. Oh, now I'm gonna get it wrong. April or May of 2020. Okay. I believe it was a Facebook ad for one of your online summits and I was like, boom, I'm in. And I had no idea about the Mariah cause anything, and I was like, this looks cool.

I'm in. I think it was a very low ticket. I don't know, under $20. And this is my, yeah, that would've been like our first virtual conference. And the only reason we had to do it was because of the pandemic . That's right. We like had to do a virtual conference. Um, but I think that was when a lot of people found out about us.

Cause I was like, well, I guess we're running ads now. . Yep. So. Yep. And here's what I love is I paid you. You know, low ticket, $20 or less. Mm-hmm. attended the conference and then I checked four weeks later, I made a five figure investment, an investment. I had never made that amount, uh, not even close in my business.

And I love that because I think there's a huge lesson there. One, I'm not a unicorn, I'm pretty probably typical, a normal as a client in your world of like low ticket to high ticket and two, For so many of my nonprofits and so many of my service providers, we sort of decide what we think people can and cannot afford.

So, for example, mm-hmm. , if an org, if a donor gives a hundred dollars per an organization, very, very often thinks that's their giving capacity. Right. If I, yeah, yeah. If I pay $50 for a workshop, I would be very easy to think, well, maybe I can get 'em up to a hundred dollars for something else. And I love the idea.

No, that's not true. Like one, like, like we, our job is not to decide what people can and cannot afford. So I love that. Right? Just give people options and meet them where they're at. Give people multiple options. That's what I love about like, especially when we are talking about charging like a higher ticket price point, offering higher touch, higher ticket type of program.

Um, if that's something that you do in your business, a lot of people will say to me, Well, you know, I wanna have a big impact in my business. I wanna help a lot of people, and I feel like if I charge this higher ticket price point, then I'm turning away people who aren't ready for that yet or who can't swing that financially.

I completely understand that, and that is very real, but, That doesn't have to be your only offer. And so for us, it's really helpful to have like, yes, is there a higher ticket program? If you're ready for that and if you're the right fit for that, and if it's financially feasible for you at the time, perfect, that's for you.

But having multiple offers at different price points to meet people where they're at. And for us, the big part of like that question of, well, how. Serve, uh, thousands of people at a really wide level while also serving a handful of people at a deeper level in the high ticket program for us, that was the virtual conferences and continues to be our virtual conferences.

Mm-hmm. , where we can serve thousands of people for a $19 ticket and we over-deliver. We can. Yes. We just like go all out for those and that's like our social impact sort of arm where it's like, oh. Because we're, because we do have a profitable, more premium program, we're able to really pour into and over-deliver something for $20, just like we would for $20,000.

And that's where we're able to like give back in that way. So, For anyone who wants to have that. You know, I really like, I love the idea of serving people in a deeper, more high touch way. With a high ticket program, you can do both and the numbers and the data say that like, like we have so much data that just shows the magic that happens when you do both and just like, mm-hmm.

you're an example. Christina. Like that's where a ton of our clients come from, is they find out about us from a $20 workshop and. Maybe a few weeks later, maybe a few months later, they do eventually work with us in a higher ticket, more premium capacity. Um, and yeah, we just like to over-deliver the whole time.

Yes. And I'm like nodding along, just profusely thinking like you get to have both. Like it doesn't have to be one or the other. It doesn't have to be. Just low ticket, just high ticket. Just one-on-one. Just one to many is like, to think of it holistically, right? As as why not use all the tools and strateg, this is what I've been saying, especially the last few weeks I've been, you know, a lot of people have been coming to me being like, what's working right now?

Like what? Like my, my thing that was selling last year, it's not selling right now. Like, what should I do? And I'm just, Why wouldn't, why would you be so strict in what you sell and how you sell it in the one price point? And like you get stuck in this like dogmatic, you know, little box. But why wouldn't you allow yourself to use all the tools and strategies at your disposal?

Why wouldn't you be like, yeah, I can't, I have something that's $200 and I have something that's $20,000. I have something for you here. I have something for you there. , why wouldn't you wanna meet people where they're at and just use all those strategies in schools, I think to be successful, I think that we have, like something I've been thinking a lot about is this idea of like rear view mirror thinking.

Hmm. Which is like, we're just like, but that thing worked last year and so I'm supposed to replicate it and repeat it and I'm supposed to just do that and that resistance to like, it's okay. Change it. It's okay to do something new. It's okay to try something new. I don't know. And I feel like there's a lot of people who have some resistance around that.

I've gotten really stuck there too, like I definitely, I think I talked about this maybe in a recent podcast episode on my podcast where, mm-hmm. . Because things for us worked so well in a very specific structure, in a very specific way through 20 20, 20 21, the beginning of 2022, everything was like, this is how we do it.

This is the price point that we rely on. This is the structure of everything. This is what has worked so well for two and a half years. Like we. It felt like as the c e o and as our team grew and our company grew, and I felt really like responsible for, you know, not messing things up because now you have a lot more people relying on you and your company to provide for them.

And I obviously take that very seriously. And so I definitely got stuck in that for a while where I was like, I can't change it. I can't. Experiment really, which is hard for me cause I love to experiment and do new things. So I felt really stuck. I felt like I had to keep doing things this way, the way we had done them for the last few years.

This is how it works. And so, in the middle of 2022, I've talked about this before, when we did our sort of typical virtual conference and it didn't go as planned. I know most people would experience that and be like, freaked out, be like, oh crap. Like what are we gonna do? I felt free. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm free because like, yes, I love that strategy.

I'll continue to do it. Like we're gonna do one, a whole new themed one this year that I'm excited about, but. There was a part of me that felt like I've been so stuck in this cycle of like, this is what we do, this is how we do it. Rinse and repeat. Don't change anything. This is what works. These are the ads that work.

And it wasn't as creative as I like to be very creative and very experimental. So when it stopped working in that instance, I was like, Woohoo, we get to do whatever. I get to like make up new stuff now. and I was really excited about that. But I've definitely gotten stuck in that trap of the rear view mirror of like, yep, well that's what's worked before.

You've really gotta be, I mean, that's literally, that's entrepreneurship's. Like you have to be willing to just kinda like throw it out the window and be like, what if I, what have I got to lose? And sometimes you have a lot to lose . But little nudge though. Negative, that little nudge that you felt that was just.

I really wanna do something creative, but I have to keep doing this thing. And it's like, I know, I've felt that in my business and it's, I'm, I'm thinking of like a relationship breaking up and you're like, thank God the person broke up with me. Oh, I didn't know how to like, like, it's almost like, it's like this relief.

You're like, oh, I didn't know how to get out of it. And so it was like a, a relief around, this isn't work anymore. Now I get to go be free and create. An entrepreneur again. I love that. That's a really good analogy. Yeah, it's totally like that. It's kind of like, oh, I was never gonna, like, I was never gonna.

Stop doing something that was working so well, so easily. So I needed something to like disrupt it. It'd be like irresponsible, right? Yeah. I literally, that was what I told people. I was like, it'd be irresponsible for me to like change things right now. Yeah. Because they're going so well and so many people are, You know, be benefiting from it.

And my team is relying like, there's no point. But yeah, then you get the opportunity to really like shine in your innovation and your actual entrepreneurship, which I love. Yes. And that's, that's where people are most attracted to you, and that's where the biggest profit come in, comes in. Um, So I wanna talk about your podcast, which yay, synchronicity.

Yeah, it, it debuted on the same day this podcast debuted. And I was like, no, that's my Tuesday, Thursday. Listen. So goes to the Mariah Cause show, episode 10, I think is today's episode. And that is where you give your behind the scenes your story. So for all my listeners that are like, wait, I need to know more about Mariah.

Go listen to that episode cause you're, thank you for saying that. Dispelling. Yes. Cause in that episode that went live today, I literally said at the beginning of it, I was like, look, I go on tons of other podcasts and every single podcast asks me to recount my entire life story every time. And I'm just like, I don't wanna just say it over and over again on every other podcast.

So I was like, I'm recording this. Yes. The go-to version. Version, all about it. , I found myself on other podcasts. I'll whittle it down to a sentence, which just isn't that interesting either to be like, but you're just like, I can't keep saying this over and over again, . Exactly, exactly. But I did love, I think it was one of your earlier podcasts you were talking about.

The idea of wanting to do the podcast, which is really like wanting to do any kind of content or any new strategy. And then getting stuck in the idea of like, well, this is the same thing. I got stuck in. I should have it on YouTube, so now I need to be ready and have everything fi. And then finally I was like, Christina, fucking minimum viable Christina.

Like, just get it out there. And I felt like that is something I learned from you for sure. Which is the version. That's three years down the road is not the version of today. Yes. But you've gotta fucking go . Like you've gotta do, you've gotta into it buffet. And that's, that's literally something I said in the podcast that goes live today.

I was like, I was like, there's, you can't compare like my. You know, eight years in version, super optimized. Like everything has, like, I've been doing this for so long, you can't compare that to like your first version and be like, why doesn't mine look like that? Or like, why didn't I get those results? Or like, why didn't I, it's like, it's literally so different.

And if you saw how. Messy. My first drafts of everything when I went live with them, they're so messy, so rough, such minimum viable. Like if you only knew then, like I hope that that would, you wouldn't be inspired to like be like, okay, it all is gonna start kind of messy and scrappy and it can get better later.

And it's frustrating if you. if when you have, I do think that when you have the vision for what it can become, it can be really frustrating to be in those initial scrappy stages. But just go through it, live through it. And what's funny is once you get to the most polished version of your thing, whatever it is, program, product, you know, podcast con, whatever it is, you'll look back and like fondly be nostalgic about the scrappy beginner date.

Yep. Um, which I actually feel. I got an email from Eventbrite and it was like on this, whatever, four years ago today, and it was like a cute workshop that I created on Eventbrite and that was like my ticketing platform or something. Like, I didn't know what I didn't know. I'm like, oh, that was my minimum viable.

Like that was my first Exactly. I didn't have, you know, so yeah, it is totally like I just got, got it. I mean, and that's the thing is like we've had, we've had content systems, like in terms of doing the podcast too, like we've had content systems that required like six individual different people to touch the piece of content so that it could get published.

And that's what you're talking about where I was like, I don't wanna do that again. Where it's, okay, well, Well, Mariah records this piece of content, and then it goes off to the video editor, and then it goes off to the podcast editor. Those are two different people. And then it goes to the graphic designer who's gonna add X, Y, and Z.

And then it goes to the social media manager and they're gonna cut it into these little clips, and then they're gonna create quotes from it and they're gonna blah, blah. And then it's like, and then it goes to the tech admin who's gonna upload it and publish it and write, and then it goes to the copywriter who's gonna write all the descriptions.

I'm not kidding you. It took. The way we did this in the past with the podcast, and I think part of the reason I was like, took me a long time. We took a lot like a three year hiatus and it took me that long to come back was because I was like, I definitely just don't wanna do it that way. Yeah. I don't wanna have to syndicate to every single platform.

I know how to do that. We've done that before. It is technically smart, but it's not necessary. And it was definitely holding me back and I just remembered being like, Just so y'all know, everyone listening, free content is not free like it would cost us. Mm-hmm. , I think we calculated it would cost us around 1500 to $2,000 per podcast episode to publish.

Wow. Because like I said, I'm paying a copywriter to write the descriptions. I'm paying two video editor and a podcast editor. I'm paying a graphic designer and an admin and like a social media manager, and all those people do their little bit of it, and then. Fine. You know, it just, it's crazy . It's like so much bloat and so much extra work.

So now literally it's like I sit down and I record an audio only. I don't even do video. I just record audio only and I upload the raw. There's no editing. I just upload the raw file, the lipson, and that is it. That is beautiful. It takes like 10 minutes, . It's beautiful. I love it. Yes. Minimum viable. It's so good.

There's so many thi This lesson can be applied to like any content. Totally. Any platform like Yes. Yes, yes. So I wanna shift gears and I wanna talk about this idea that you were the first person to really. Talk about in this way, which is the four day work week. Mm-hmm. , and I'd had a few other like maybe coaches or just like folks on the internet.

I knew that mentioned the four day work week. But the positioning was always this. It was I'm c e o and I work three days a week. I'm c e o and I work. This, and it was, it was me. It was just the me mm-hmm. , right? Yeah. And what was very clear is that everybody else in the company was just working their normal 40 hours or whatever it took.

Oh yeah. Um, and you were the first person that was like, so our team is now doing a four day work week, and you brought us along for the ride and gave us some peek behind the scenes. Yep. But the first question I have is why, why shift to the four day work? And why for all. I think there's a lot. There's also a lot of lessons too that, so we introduced this.

I guess it was in, yeah, 2021. It that sounds right. Would've been, yeah, like it was, I think June of 2021 was when we introduced the four day work week and told, you know, all obviously I had to tell all, all of our clients like, we're not available on Fridays anymore and all that. And so we restructured like this client support and just expectations and boundaries and stuff like that.

Um, and I think the. We were definitely getting to the point where it, it's like a year and a half into the pandemic. Everyone's like, I would like to go outside more . I don't wanna be on Zoom all the time. Now. That's gotten to like a very extreme, like now I could, like our new thing is like asynchronous everything.

Like no calls, no Zoom. Yep. Nothing like that. But I think at the time it was just like we can. W as a team, like we can trust that we can work less and create even better results and like, let's just trust. And, um, we just, were all kind of like needing, I think a more balance after, you know, 2020 and the first half of 2021.

So going into that summer, it just felt like mm-hmm , like I know that a lot of people would do like summer Fridays, and so going into that summer I was just like, no, this is just the new thing. And so yeah, we did, um, we definitely did it at first, it was just Friday, like Friday. Off. I do think there's something to be said for giving people the option, like some of our team members would've preferred we had to start somewhere.

Mm-hmm. , we had to start with some parameters. It's like everyone has Fridays off like that is no longer a workday, but. . Um, I know some people would've preferred like a 30, like it ends up being a 32 hour work week. And I think some people would've preferred if it was a 32 hour work week that they could spread across five days.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, but just at the, when we first started it, we were like, we're gonna see how this goes and then we can make it. That's more flexible now. It's now it's more flexible where people can kind of spread it around, but we still. Are a, like Fridays are still a, what we call a quiet day because when we introduce the four day work week, we also introduce something called Quiet Weeks.

Um, and I can talk about those if you want, but Friday is still like quiet Friday, where like there's no communication externally. You people can choose to allocate their hours differently if they want to. Um, I, I feel like it's so interesting because as entrepreneurs, I've been an entrepreneur for since 2007.

I'm like the it, but what's really interesting is I liked so many entrepreneurs created a business that just mimicked. Corporate hours, corporate everything. And I was like, well, obviously I'm supposed to work nine to six. Right? And it wasn't in until these last few years that I was like, no, I, no, I don't.

And then ultimately I realized that I, I can work less hours and watch Yeah, revenue grow and like start to kind of break those pieces apart. But that takes a lot of un unwinding and unraveling . And we did it too. Like even I, I feel like out, like the four day work week thing is like a, a great thing that we did.

And in terms of like applying it to the whole team, I just personally, I just like literally cannot, Ima, I can't imagine telling people that I'm doing a four day work week and they're not, like, I would never say that out loud, but listen, I just, they're imagine that reality. But I guess if some people are cool.

You know, here, here's how, here's how it comes up, here's how it comes up in my head. And maybe you're just like, no, it just doesn't work that way. In mine is the salary that you're paying people, the full-time salary or whatever. You would, you're still having to reconcile in your brain, well now I'm paying them that same salary.

Obviously they're not getting a pay cut for working less because their output is the same. They're still producing, but I feel like we were brought up to believe like you get paid for time. And so yeah, that's what I feel like you really pioneered with this, is just this idea of like, I believe in my employees enough.

I believe in my team enough. They're gonna get shit done and this is actually going to be better. Like this is going to be better for them. This won't be. Expense of anything. So no unwind that for me, a little bit like, and for anyone else that's listening that's just like, wait, how, what? No, I think there's definite, like, it's just, I just really came down to trust and just being like, I know that, I know that this is gonna be really good for all of us.

I think we all need like more rest. I think we all need, uh, you know, we need to operate the company, but we need a bit of a break. I think we need to like, you know, I was like, if. I was ready to do it and I knew that if I was ready to do it, then everyone else was ready. Cuz I would be, I would've been the last person hanging on and being like, no.

Like we still, we need, we have so much to do and I have so many projects I wanna work on and blah, blah blah. But I was like, if I'm ready for this transition, I'm sure everyone else would be thrilled. But I think we've done, like you said, you get in, you start your own business and then you. because you don't know what the alternatives are.

You just kind of like replicate a lot of things. And Uhhuh, , that definitely happened to us as our team grew and you just don't have any other resource. Like, you know, as your team grows and then you're like, oh, okay, I have to like figure out how to run meetings. Like how to corporate companies run meetings.

Yep. And then you're like, okay, how to, like performance reviews work and then you're like, how, how does manager communication work? Or like what are the, I don't know. There's just so many things that. As, as we grew very rapidly and hired very rapidly, you're kind of scrambling being. What do you do with all these employees?

Like how do you manage them? How, yeah, how do you, and so you default too, like, and we definitely did that. We read, you know, you read all the typical books about management. Yep. And corporate structure. And you're reading these books that are really written for like way bigger. Corporations and companies and you, and we def, but it's like you default to that where you're like, well, this is how, you know, apple runs their meetings, , and then you're like, why are we, what are we doing this?

Yeah. There's no, this is like, like who are we? Who are we trying to be? And so I think it was maybe, I guess, yeah, it was last summer. I remember posting something on Instagram or something and being like, we just, we just eliminated like every single. Structural piece of like management and like corporate structure that was in mm-hmm.

that we had just adopted because like, what else are, you don't really know what else is there. And we just like, we got rid of all manager. Like we had no more managers, no more structure like that. There's no hierarchy. There's no like, Totally overhauled, like performance reviews and like the idea of all that.

Just so many things. Meetings, I mean, we just continue and continue and continue to get more and more and more asynchronous. So we just really, how did that feel when you did that? I mean, it was really scary because I was like, I don't know, you know, if this is gonna work, and I'm sure, you know, and I was like, there is, I can understand why people use those structures.

Like they're helpful for some people. Yep. Mm. My brain , they're not, they're not super helpful for my brain and, yep. It definitely when you have a company like that and you have all those structures in place, I definitely felt like you need a, you essentially need a full-time enforcer and that, yeah, there's a person on your team who's an enforcer and all they do is make sure that people are filling out their reports.

Checking into their things and doing their, you know, performance reviews and filling out their forms and blah, blah. It's like you just have an enforcer who's like doing that stuff all day and doing all these and like prepping and running all the meetings and that's like all I do. Yeah. And I was just like, it's gotta be.

Yeah and everything about like your tone. Just let people just like talk and do their work. Like Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to be so structured, , everything about like your tone and just your expression right now is like, and this isn't the business I want. Like this isn't it at, I was just like, why are we doing, why are we doing this

Like there's like, you can't, people, and there's too, there's so many interpersonal dynamics where people would be like, You know, it's like you have to go to your manager if you have a question about this. Yeah. And it was creating like silos where I was like, yeah, well, why can't you just go to the person in that other department who does that thing?

And they're like, no, no, I have to go to my manager first, and then my manager will go to her manager, Jesus Christ, they'll talk about it and then the manager will hand it down to that person. And I'm like, you could have just messaged her like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. When it gets to be like that. I was just like, this is, this is.

I under, you know, this is not what I imagined for myself. . Yeah. Yes. So let's talk a bit to about asynchronous work weeks, because I will, or work days, because the first time, and maybe I just lived my whole life without hearing this word, but the first time I had ever heard it was. 2020. My son was like in, I don't know, kindergarten, and they were like, we have asynchronous learning.

And I was like, I don't know what that is. define asynchronous . Which turned out for like a kindergartner meant you just get to teach him this that day. Mom, it's on you. Okay, cool. . Um, so, but what I, I think it means, and I think Well, and you'll, you'll tell us about like how you've adopted it and I think it's a really smart way of, Of entrusting people to do their work.

Also working within people's schedule. People who want downtime, people who want rest, people who have caretaking, people who have just lives. Mm-hmm. , I think there's, like you said earlier, it's like not everybody's ideal thing is a Friday off, right? You gotta cert somewhere, but, so talk about asynchronous.

Yeah, asynchronous it sounds challenging, but once you get used to it, it's totally fine. I do think it makes us better prepared and better communicators because you have to assume that not everyone, not everyone is gonna be communicating. And for us it'd be like in Slack, but you have to assume not everyone is gonna be communicating and in Slack at your becking call, ready to chat with you during set hours.

Work, you know, that are the same for everyone. And part of this is like, asynchronous is because like we've got people on all different time zones. We ha you know, yeah, people might have chronic illness or, um, but people might have disabilities, people might have, uh, just childcare responsibilities like you said.

I mean, just for all different reasons. It doesn't make sense to have, we used to, we used to try to be like, you guys have to like, show up on Eastern time, and it just was really hard. Um, and so we just got, we got better. Planning ahead, communicating ahead, giving people a heads up the day. It can be as simple as like the day before being like, Hey, I know tomorrow you're in.

You know, everyone on our team ha would have like their. Hours, like their prefer, like people would typically choose some sort of hours that they would work and they put them in their slack, um, status. And so you might message someone the day before and be like, Hey, just a heads up tomorrow, I'm gonna need X, Y, and Z.

Uh, I know you're in in the afternoon and I'm in in the morning, so you can just send me that. You know what I mean? You just try to get ahead of it. You try to plan a little better. Um, you try not to leave things to the last minute. And you just find yourself being really accommodating and flexible. And I think part of it too just comes down to this like deep mutual respect for everyone else where you're just like, I respect, like I get to take time to go to an appointment or to leave early.

Yeah. Or to do this, or to do that. And I get to have my ideal schedule and I like that someone else also gets to get, have their ideal schedule. And so that's the trade off and you, you respect that for each other. And that makes you want to be proactive in your communication and really, Going that whatever that extra mile is that everyone needs to go in order to make sure that things do connect and do collaborate.

And of course we would have like, we would have like, um, a weekly, um, team meeting where everyone's in the same place at the same time. Um, but that's like once a week. How do you feel like these changes, so the asynchronous, the four day work week, where wherever it's kind of landed now, this version of it, how has it affected, I wanna say, All of it.

So I wanna say like both people's satisfaction, happiness level, their output, their production, and of course as a business owner, your bottom line like, yeah, like how, what do you, like, what does it look like? How has this experiment, ? What are the results of this experiment? We, yeah, I mean, I think I. We have gotten.

So just for context too, our company like has changed a lot in the last six months, right? We going into 2022, we had 20 full-time people. Today we have like. Two and a half people. Okay. And that is by design . That is, that is definitely like my, my intentional choice to restructure things. And so there's, there's definitely like less, you know, when you have 20 people and you have the four day work week and you have asynchronous and you have management.

There's a lot of stuff going on that we were contending with. I feel like now with two or three people on the team, plus myself and contractors and stuff. Yep. I feel like. Almost just naturally how people operate and we don't even think about it. Like it's not extra work. It's not something that we have to like try to make it happen.

It feel for, especially for a smaller team, it literally just feels like the most natural thing in the world. Everyone is super productive because they wake up. They're not tired and like they wake up whenever they want, they can come in at 11:00 AM and you know, work whatever hours work for them and people are rested and they're, I don't know, appreciative I guess, that they get to like do that.

And, and I have definitely heard from people who, you know, went on into other companies and stuff and they're just like, wow. Like you don't realize how Yep. Amazing it is to have asynchronous and four day work week when you go to get a different, Where they don't have those things and you're just like, whoa.

I totally didn't realize, like just how important that is and just how different it can be. So now it just feels like. You know, at first it took a little bit of adjusting, but now it just feels like the most natural thing, and we all just kind of show up whenever. Yeah, it's perfect for me because that's, I struggle with the schedule.

I scu, I struggle with the structure and so I, it's just so great. , I, again, that mutual understanding of like, Hey, don't expect me to like respond right away, but also I don't expect you to respond right away. And that works really well for me. that mutual expectation. So yes, it's, it's been great. I feel like people are productive and, um, I would, I mean, there's, there's like no world where you can never like go back from that, you know?

Yeah. You're never gonna like reintroduce like schedules. You know, regular work weeks or whatever, , and I think it was in your, maybe your 20, 22 year in review, that podcast episode where you talked about shifting, having building a company that ended up where you're like, well, I'm just managing. Yes, I'm just managing people.

And I was like nodding along, listening to that because many, many years ago I had an agency, so I had a marketing agency. Yes. Mm-hmm. and I. At some point I was like, this ain't it. Like this is not it. Where I was like, I'm hiring account coordinators and more account coordinators and interns and managers.

And I was like, huh, . And then you're just an HR company all the time? Yes, and I'm, well, I'm an HR company and I'm also was very much like, I gotta make sure everybody's payroll gets paid. So I'm thinking, where are the customers coming from? And so, This model that I'm at now, which you helped me create, which is, you know, this, this model allows me to work less than 30 hours a week, allows me to go, you know, like I, my, my son's starting little league, and that's apparently like a big deal and you have to be available in the afternoons a lot.

And I'm like, that's, that's easy, easy. That's sounds like a dream . It's, yeah, like, it's like I wanna be able to, I mean, listen, we're recording this song Valentine's Day and my. School closes early on Valentine's Day, because apparently it's an observed holiday, and I'm like, that's very cute, . I know. I'm like, okay, I got that covered.

And it's like, I got that covered because, and you don't have to ask someone, you know? That's right. No one's covering for me. Right. Like Right. It's just you're not inconveniencing someone else. I think, yeah, I definitely, definitely, definitely. As we grew and I just realized, And it's, it's great because some people grow a bus, a bigger business with a lot of employees, and in that experience they discover a zone of genius.

They never Yeah. Like they're like, they like unleash their true self. That's, and they're like, that's right. I am such a brilliant man. I mean, I've had managers like that working in my company where they are truly in their zone of genius and they are living in their. Being a manager. Mm-hmm. . And I definitely realized that is not me.

Like I'm a creator, I'm a builder, I'm a maker. I want to make art and create things, and I want to get in there with my hands. And for me, getting to the point where the only thing you do is delegate and tell other people what to do, like felt like it was holding me back from that creative expression. And so I love it.

I love it for the people who get to that place. Find their purpose in that, in that scale, and in that space, that's wonderful for them. Um, but yeah, for me it was like, oh, there's a sweet, like there's a sweet spot. And I feel like we, I overshot it, at least for this season in my life and this uhhuh, this moment Uhhuh.

And I never, I never say never. I never, that's right. Oh, it's like it could change, there could totally be different seasons in my life, but for right now, it was like, oh, there's a sweet spot and I overshot it a little bit. And so then I like re streamlined, re simplified, and brought it back to basics a little bit.

 
 

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PodcastChristina Edwardspurpose and profit, marketing, entrepreneurship, purpose driven, nonprofit, founder, social impactComment