November 5, 2024 • 42 mins
What if you could build in more space to your business? An extra day off? More time to strategize? Less urgency and more rest?
We're continuing in our mini-series on my calmer framework for a calmer business. This week, we're diving into margins -- financial margins, capacity margins, and energetic margins -- to decrease urgency and burnout and create calmer, more sustainable businesses.
We're joined by Nathalie Lussier, an award-winning entrepreneur who has been making websites since she was 12 years old. She graduated with a degree in Software Engineering. She was the founder and recently exited AccessAlly, the digital course and membership solution for industry leaders. Nathalie has been featured in Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Success Magazine, Entrepreneur, Venture Beat, and Mashable.
On this episode, we learn how we can rethink our work so that we build in margins, and dive deep into one founder's journey to transitioning to a 4-day work week for their entire company -- with exceptional results.
Listen to the Full Episode to Hear:
- How to build in margins, beyond profit margins, to your business
- What the transition to a 4-day work week can look like in practice
- How to experiment with and build comfortable margins for your business
Learn more about Nathalie Lussier
Learn more about me, Susan Boles:
We value your thoughts and feedback. Feel free to share them with Susan here. Your input is not just valuable, it's crucial in shaping future episodes.
- (00:00) - E106 - Nathalie Lussier - FINAL EDIT
- (00:52) - Understanding Margins in Business
- (02:03) - The Importance of Building Margins
- (03:21) - Challenges of Traditional Work Culture
- (04:59) - Introducing Natalie Lucier and the Four-Day Work Week
- (06:32) - Experimenting with Flexible Work Schedules
- (08:11) - Transitioning to a Four-Day Work Week
- (12:20) - Implementing the Four-Day Work Week
- (17:36) - Addressing Concerns and Feedback
- (19:31) - Cultural Impact and Future of Work
- (21:15) - The Impact of Overworking
- (22:22) - Improved Team Cohesion and Communication
- (23:03) - Efficient Work Processes
- (27:52) - Prioritizing Feature Requests
- (29:38) - Embracing a Slower Pace
- (31:50) - The Influence of Environment on Work Pace
- (35:25) - Selling the Business and Maintaining Values
- (39:02) - Global Work Culture Comparisons
- (40:35) - Building Comfortable Margins
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Susan Boles (00:05):
What if I could give you a whole extra day in
your week? What would you dowith that time? Hey there. I'm
Susan Bowles, and this is BeyondMargins, the show where we
deconstruct how to engineer acalmer business. We're in the
middle of a miniseries wherewe're exploring the common
elements of calm businesses.
So what makes a calm businessactually calm, and how do you
(00:27):
intentionally design and buildfor that? There are 8 elements
that all calm companies have incommon, clarity, autonomy, a
lens of care, margins, efficientsystems, rest, and reduced
urgency. Now we've talked aboutclarity, autonomy, and a lens of
care in previous episodes in theseries. So if you haven't
(00:49):
listened to those, I highlyrecommend you go check them out.
Today, we're tackling margins,and this is a topic that is near
and dear to me.
It's so important that I put itin the name of my business. When
we think about margins, mostfrequently we think about profit
margins and then we kind of stopthinking about it. But we need
(01:10):
to think beyond that. See what Idid there? So you absolutely
need profit margins to build asustainable business.
Let's be real. I'm a CFO. I'mnot gonna say otherwise. But
that is a pretty limitedperspective. The word margin
just means space and you needmargins everywhere in your
(01:30):
business, not just in yourfinances.
You need to broaden how you'rethinking about margin. So profit
margins build financial spaceand longevity. Capacity margins
allow you to have time to think,to lead, to breathe. Energetic
margins mean that you can workconsistently and sustainably
(01:52):
without burning out. Emotionalmargins, they allow you to be
there for yourself and for thecommunity around you.
And you need all of these andmore. There's no area of your
business where you couldn'tbuild in just a little bit more
space because that's a big partof engineering something calmer.
(02:12):
So think about it this way, ifyou operate at a 100% or more
all the time, you don't have anysurge capacity. You can't handle
anything unexpected and theunexpected is inevitable. When
you have spacious margins builtinto various aspects of your
business, you are betterequipped to absorb those
surprises.
(02:33):
So for example, if your scheduleis jam packed and you have to
deal with, you know, a sick kid,it can throw you off for weeks.
But, maybe you have a buffer daywith no tasks or calls. If
that's built into your schedule,you have a much easier time
rescheduling or shifting thingsaround and that's because you
built in some margin, some spacefor things to go unexpectedly.
(02:56):
Likewise, if you're running yourbusiness right at your break
even point and you don't haveany cash reserves set aside and
then your biggest client decidesto leave, you're really up a
creek. You don't have anyfinancial margins to absorb
that.
Building that margining givesyou more breathing room to
absorb losses like this. Butmargins aren't the default. The
(03:19):
default is max capacity. So whenyou think about traditional work
culture or business culture, thegoal is to work harder, last
longer, be more productive. It'sall about cramming in as much
work as we can.
Everything is focused on beingmore efficient so that we can do
more work. And that leads toworkers that are exhausted, that
(03:40):
are burnt out and unhappy.Nobody does their best work
under those circumstances. Butso many of the companies that
we're told we're supposed tolook up to have these kinds of
cultures where you're expectedto work 80 to a 100 hours a
week. Sure they provide food andnap pods which on the surface
seems like it's to take care oftheir team but in reality it's
(04:03):
just so that they can get folksto stay there and work more
hours.
The default business cultureignores that people are in fact
people. Instead it treats themlike machines. So the only thing
that matters is growth andproductivity. And everything
else is pretty much disregardedand ignored even profit. So
think about Silicon Valleyculture where the goal is move
(04:27):
fast and break things.
And the mentality is that youhave to invest so that you can
grow and grow and grow and grow.And the assumption is that
profit or sustainability willjust happen eventually. But we
don't have time to worry aboutthat now. So the default here is
basically the opposite ofbuilding margins and the default
margins don't matter. But whenyou focus on building space,
(04:50):
building margin into all thosedifferent areas of your
business, It allows for a calmerenvironment for better work for
a happier team.
My guest today saw thatfirsthand when she transitioned
her team to a 4 day work week.Natalie Lussier is an
entrepreneur who has been makingwebsites since she was 12. She
was the founder and recentlyexited AccessAlly which is a
(05:14):
digital course and membershipplatform. Before she exited the
company, they went through theprocess of transitioning to a 4
day work week. Now on the whole,western cultures are pretty much
stuck on a 5 day, 40 hour a weekwork week.
That is the default and it's soingrained that it's actually
really tough to imagine otherways of working. But the data on
(05:35):
4 day work weeks is pretty good.The companies that have tried it
see an increase in productivityand also employee happiness. And
if you think about it, ittotally makes sense because you
are literally building moremargin into your life. By going
down to a 4 day work week,you're essentially creating an
entire day to take care ofyourself or anything that you
need.
(05:56):
Now we're gonna take a quickbreak to hear from our sponsors
but when we come back, Natalieand I are gonna get into how she
actually transitioned thecompany to the 4 day work week.
So we're talking those nittygritty logistical details. So
what went well? What didn't gowell? And we'll talk about how
that move to the 4 day work weekimpacted Natalie's ability to
exit her company.
(06:17):
So tell me a little bit aboutwhat was happening at AccessAlly
when you were thinking orconsidering making this
transition to a 4 day workweek.What was happening and kinda
what was the impetus behind theshift?
Nathalie Lussier (06:32):
Yeah. So a few years ago, we had decided that
we wanted to just ever giveeveryone a Friday off or, like,
usually 4 Fridays off in thesummer just to as an experiment,
just to see what would happen.You know, it's summer. We moved
back to Canada, and it's a shortseason, so you wanna take
advantage and really get outsideand enjoy the nice weather and
(06:52):
all of that. Go berry picking,all of those seasonal things.
And so we said, okay. Well, wethink it'd be great just to see
if people like it, what happensto the business, what happens to
everyone's productivity, and,obviously, everyone loved it.
They all booked, you know,slightly different Fridays, and
it worked. So we decided, okay.Well, let's kind of keep
experimenting.
So what we ended up doing isthat we decided to just go.
(07:15):
Everyone gets every other Fridayoff, and everyone works a tiny
bit more during the rest of theweek. And so that wasn't a full
4 day work week. It was more of,like, another kind of schedule
where, like, you still work 40hours, but you get at least a
Friday off. Right?
So every 2 weeks. So that alsoworked pretty good. Some people
didn't want to do that. Somepeople prefer to just work every
(07:36):
Friday and not work extra andjust have a shorter day. So some
people have that schedule, andsome people have the regular 5
day work week schedule.
And so we did that for a while,and then a lot of research
started coming up about 4 daywork weeks. And it was actually
the team that came to me andthey were like, you know, let's
try this. We've already beenkinda circling around doing
(07:57):
something like this. So what doyou think? And I was like, yeah.
Let's just do it. That'sbasically, it came from the team
asking for it and us havingexperimented with something
similar, but that wasn't quite afull 4 day work week before.
Susan Boles (08:11):
It makes sense that the evolution to the 4 day work
week came from the team andtrying it out. But why try it
out at all? Like, why startexperimenting with it?
Nathalie Lussier (08:25):
Yeah. So, obviously, we're all human, and
I think that we all have limitsand capacities and things for
doing work and also have, youknow, personal lives, families,
pets, you know, all kinds ofthings that we wanna take care
of outside of our regularworkdays. We just kinda
realized, you know, definitelyaround COVID times, people are
burned out and we didn't wannakeep pushing people. We wanted
(08:48):
people to recover, to feel good,to be able to come into work
with energy and includingourselves because, you know, as
as founders sometimes, we justpush push push and we never take
time off. And what we found alsofor ourselves when we were
experimenting with the differentFridays is that my husband and I
would always work, basically.
So even though we had, you know,people were off, you know, half
(09:10):
the team was off on one Friday,we would still be on just to
cover or if people hadquestions, we'd be there, and
the same for the next Friday. Sowhen we decided to do a 4 day
work week, we were like, thiswill be a day where everyone's
off. So we ourselves could alsotake that time off and recover
and not be always on. You know,as humans, we have to remember
our limits and also think about,like, the holistic view. Right?
(09:32):
What are we really doing thisfor? And I think sometimes, even
as business owners, we getcaught up into this whole thing
of, like, this is my identity,this is my career, this is this
thing that I've built and it'samazing and at the same time,
you know, it's there's more tolife than just work. So I think
that all of those thingstogether kind of helped us to
realize, like, yeah, like, let'sjust try it. And, you know, the
(09:53):
results have been reallyamazing.
Susan Boles (09:54):
I think you bring up an interesting point because
I have had this challenge as abusiness owner and a team leader
as well in that I am really goodat giving my team members
flexibility or letting them takethe time off. And it seems a lot
harder, I think, to do that formyself. As you mentioned, having
(10:17):
some team members on, some teammembers off, and somebody has to
always be around. Can you talk alittle bit about how that felt
for you and your husband who is,for listeners, was also in the
business?
Nathalie Lussier (10:31):
I've taken, like, tons of training about,
you know, entrepreneurial timeand management and productivity
and all of that stuff. And a lotof times, you know, they say
founders need to take time off.They need to take weekend. They
need to take free time wherethey're not thinking about their
business. And I've done that,and it was great.
But, also, sometimes, it feelslike you should be working. It
feels like there's justdeadlines or there's, you know,
(10:54):
team stuff or it could becustomer stuff that you need to
step in for. And so there'salways this kind of pressure to
to be there, to be on, to answerjust one more thing. And I think
that when you create theseboundaries for yourself where
it's like, no. Actually, thebusiness is closed right now,
then you can't just, you know,dive in for one more thing and
I'll answer one more ticket.
(11:15):
That is kind of the line thatyou can set for yourself, and I
think that's what we kinda hadto do because we just found
ourselves, like, constantlyhaving this push to work more.
You know, you think, like, oh,well, I'm responsible for
payroll and for everyone'swell-being in the company. So if
I don't show up and I don'twork, then, you know, things
could go off the rails. Right?So there's there's these little
niggly thoughts in the back ofyour mind that that's going to
(11:37):
happen.
If you say, no. Actually, thebusiness will be fine. The team
will be fine. Customers will befine. You're able to rest and
recover.
And then when you do show backup on Monday, then you are
refreshed. You have the energy,and you're a lot more motivated
to actually do the mostimportant things and get those
done and take care of businessand all of that stuff that you
need to do.
Susan Boles (11:56):
Yeah. I've definitely found the same. It's
the hardest to, like, put thatboundary in place, but really,
really powerful in terms ofbuilding up energetic margin,
having, like, the capacity toactually show up and do good
work is so dependent on makingsure you're building on in
enough rest into your overallwork design, I guess. As you all
(12:23):
were thinking about we'veexperimented with 4 days in the
summer and that's gone well, butnow we wanna try and implement
this every Friday throughout thewhole company. What were some of
your biggest hesitations, yourconcerns as you were kind of
thinking, hesitations, yourconcerns as you were kind of
thinking, considering, planningfor making the switch?
Nathalie Lussier (12:41):
Yeah. So some of the big considerations was
the support angle. So becausewe're a software company and we
have people sending in supporttickets 5 days a week, We were
going to be closing on Fridays,and so that would leave, like, a
3 day period where if somebodyhad an issue, you know, they'd
be waiting for us to to actuallyresolve it. And we also looked
at our stats. So we looked atour data, and we have much lower
(13:03):
tickets that come in on Fridays.
So we knew that people arealready maybe taking their
Fridays off or not tinkeringwith tech maybe on Fridays as
much. So we knew logically itwould probably be fine. And we
did definitely have a little bitof stumbling blocks where we had
holidays on Mondays, so therewas like a 4 day gap. So we had
to figure out some of thosethings of maybe on certain
(13:24):
longer weekends. We wouldcheck-in again one more time
just to make sure there'snothing urgent, kind of put some
systems like that in place.
But, yeah, overall, the biggesthurdles were the actual, support
side of things. And then alsojust making sure that we weren't
overloading everyone with, like,the same amount of work that
would have fit in 5 days. Forus, that was just really
(13:44):
prioritizing, making sure thatwe're really focusing on the
most important projects or themost important types of things.
We're working on a, like, awhole website redesign and
things like that for our membersarea. We're gonna do these
workshops and all of this stuff,and we realized the amount of
time to coordinate and inviteguests and send reminders and
all of that just didn't makesense with the amount of time
that everyone had on the team togive to that project.
(14:06):
So we decided to just scrap itand just keep going with office
hours, which is what we hadalready been doing. So it kinda
just helped us focus on the mostimportant stuff and not spread
ourselves too thin and try tojam pack, you know, so much work
into just 4 days. And then,yeah, I think some people on the
team had some hesitation. Sojust talking about that with
each person and just seeing, youknow, what were their
(14:27):
hesitations. For some people, itwas just, I wanna make sure
that, you know, I can stilldeliver the same quality of
work.
Kinda each person had a slightlydifferent reaction to it.
Susan Boles (14:36):
Interesting. So let's talk about the actual
transition. As you wereapproaching kind of your
transition date, how how did youplan for how did you prepare,
communicate, actually making theswitch?
Nathalie Lussier (14:50):
Yeah. So we gave ourselves, I wanna say,
like, 3 weeks before weactually, like, implemented it.
So I told everyone on the team,okay. We're gonna do this.
Here's the date that we're goingto start.
And then we looked at, like, ourwebsite, our communication, our
auto responders, all the stuffthat people would get in touch
with us through, like ourcontact page and all of that.
Updated all of that to make itsuper clear our business hours
are from, you know, Monday toThursday. And we also extended
(15:13):
our business hours slightlyduring those 4 days. So we were
able to do that because we havepeople in different time zones.
We also wrote an email to ourcustomers and, obviously, social
media post to make sure everyonesaw it because it did take a
little while after we sent thatpost in those emails.
Not everyone reads every email.Right? So we also included it in
our release emails after thatjust to make sure that if anyone
(15:34):
missed it, they would still bein the loop. I think we kinda
covered all of our bases on interms of that communication side
of things. Some of the people onour team had scheduling days
that they could take calls on,so they just obviously removed
those openings on on theircalendars and things like that.
So just kind
Susan Boles (15:49):
of making sure that all of our bases were covered.
And what was your strategy orapproach for the actual 4 days?
So for some companies, when theymove to a 4 day work week, it's
4 longer days, but only 4 days.And some just take the approach
that we're working our samehours, we're just doing it 4
days, and we're just cutting outa day of essentially unnecessary
(16:12):
work?
Nathalie Lussier (16:13):
Yeah. So our approach was basically everyone
was working 32 hours. So we'rebasically cutting off one day,
keeping the same regularbusiness hours that we had
before. And the idea was this islike a raise, essentially.
Right?
Because you're getting paid moreper hour if you kind of break it
down that way. So they'regetting a day off, but they're
still keeping their same salary.So we think it worked out really
well that way. We were nottrying to overload them because
(16:34):
we had tested that with ourevery other Friday off method
where we had increased the dailyhours. There's just a limit to
how much you can really work ina day.
So I feel like if you're gonnaincrease the length of the day
to get a Friday off, it's great.It's like a trade off, but at
the same time, you might not getthat much more productivity out
of it. So it's like, we're justgonna go for it by just cutting
out that full day.
Susan Boles (16:55):
Yeah. I mean, especially with the things like
knowledge work and I can do 4hours, and that's about as much,
like, legit real work that,like, I need my brain Yes. On
that I can do in a day. Anythingmore than that is just
diminishing returns.
Nathalie Lussier (17:11):
That's exactly what we found too. Like, there's
some stuff you could do whenyou're, like, at half capacity,
but in terms of, you know,really good quality work, like,
there's no point forcing subparwork for an extra hour a day or
something like that.
Susan Boles (17:27):
So looking back on the transition now, talk to me
about, you know, what you thinkwent well, what didn't go so
well, what would you change, ifanything, if you were gonna do
it again?
Nathalie Lussier (17:36):
Yeah. So our worry about support was
interesting because, like Imentioned, there were a few
cases where something came in ona Friday, but it was a long
weekend. So we had a couple ofthose kind of kerfuffle type
type situations, but we reallylearned from the 1 or 2 that we
had and we figured out, okay.Well, we also have to
communicate to people, like,hey. If it's a Thursday before a
(17:56):
really long weekend, we'll tellpeople we'll be back on Tuesday.
And if it's not super urgent,then we we know, like, that'll
be the first one we tacklecoming in on Tuesday. And if it
is urgent, then, yeah, maybe wewill kind of check-in on the
weekend or see if we have aresolution for them. We also had
people push back a little bit onus when we sent our
communication out, so we hadsome of our customers respond to
(18:18):
our email announcing the 4 daywork week and saying, you know,
hey. That sounds great for you,but I think you should actually
be going to 20 47 support asopposed to 4 days a week
support, and other businessesare moving in that direction,
and you should be too. I feellike that was almost like a
cultural push where it was moreof, like, this is what you
should do as opposed to this isgood for your team.
(18:42):
At the same time, when they weretelling us that, they were like,
I'll be fine. Like, I don't needsupport all the time, so it's
fine for me, but I really thinkyou should be doing this. So I
thought that was
Susan Boles (18:51):
really bad. Interesting that it wasn't a
need for them. It was just theiropinion about what you should do
with your business. So did yourespond to them?
Nathalie Lussier (19:02):
Yes. We definitely responded to every
person who sent back anycomments or any feedback or
anything like that for sure.We're a very small company, and
doing 247 support would be kindof ridiculous. Or even 7 days a
week support would be reallyhard for our team because all of
our team members, they havefamilies. They have all these
things going on.
So I feel like it didn't quitemake sense for for us to do
(19:22):
that, but we explained all ofthose things too. And we
definitely had people also whowere excited and they were like,
hey. You know, that's awesome. Ihope more companies do this.
Susan Boles (19:31):
The cultural feelings about the 5 day, 40
hour work week is so fascinatingwhen you start pushing up
against the, does this actuallymake sense? What's actually good
for the team, the employees, thecompany, and honestly, even, you
know, the clients and customers.You did this and didn't really,
(19:54):
it seems like, notice anynegative impacts from the client
side. It's so interesting howpassionate people are about 5
day work weeks.
Nathalie Lussier (20:05):
It's very true. And the 5 day work week is
still relatively recent. It'sreally up to us how we wanna
structure our time, andbusinesses have changed and
evolved over the years. So Ifeel like at this moment, it's
kind of the 5 day work week isset in stone, but I don't think
it it's going to be like thatforever. As the trailblazers, we
have to be the ones who decidewhat makes sense for our teams,
(20:27):
for ourselves, and for ourcustomers.
I really feel like also thesupport and the focus that we
brought to our customers wasbetter because we weren't so
burnt out. I have the energy. Ihave the capacity. I have the
fuel and the passion to do that.And, and I think that came
because people were excited tohave those long weekends and be
able to come back refreshed.
Susan Boles (20:46):
That is so powerful and yet so underestimated when
we're talking about allowing forrest and building in margin to
everybody's kind of capacityareas. It's so underrated how
impactful just increasing therest a little bit can recharge
(21:06):
people and bring them back intodoing some really good, really
impactful work. And I thinkthat's the part that frequently
is missed in that 5 day workweek. Most of us can do about 4
hours of thoughtful work a day,and we're doing so much more
than that. It's just constantlycreating that burnout, and the
(21:27):
impact to that is lower qualitywork, but it's taking a long
time to do it.
Exactly. If you feel
Nathalie Lussier (21:35):
stretched time wise, like, you don't have time
to schedule, like, personalappointments or, like, things
for your health and things likethat, We definitely had a lot of
team members who use thoseFridays to catch up on going to
the dentist and the doctor and,like, all these things that they
hadn't done for a while justbecause life gets busy and you
feel, like, kind of how we feelas entrepreneurs of, like, you
have to be at work. Right? Buteven though they have days off,
(21:56):
they wanna use those to travelor to visit family or to do
certain things, and then theykinda neglect their own personal
well-being or upkeeping. We sawa lot of our team members
scheduling those personal typethings on those Fridays a lot
afterwards, and I was like, oh,wow. Like, that makes such a big
difference, and everyone cantake care of themselves the way
Susan Boles (22:13):
that they should be. That's amazing. Do you think
the switch to the 4 day didactually create more space for
you, for the team.
Nathalie Lussier (22:22):
Yeah. I definitely think it created more
space and more creativity andbetter discussions as well. I
feel like people would have, youknow, more creative ideas and
show up with, you know, hey. Weshould try this or maybe we
should change this. I feel likethat kind of thing was possible
because we came back refreshed.
Also, I feel like,interpersonally, everyone on the
(22:42):
team was really more cohesive,the communication kind of
improved. You know, if you'reyou can always get in touch with
people. It doesn't really matterwhen you do it, then, like,
okay. Make it happen when itwhen it needs to happen. But we
kinda got a little bit moreefficient with our communication
where it would be like, okay.
So we have a random Slackchannel. We had our general and,
like, some other specificchannels. But also, if if we had
(23:04):
to to have a call or dosomething we knew, like, okay,
there's only 4 days to work, soI don't wanna disturb that and
have a huge meeting witheveryone if I don't meet
everyone. Like, we kind of honedin on our communication a little
bit more. So we consolidatedsome of those calls and, you
know, what we need to to do tocommunicate better.
So I feel like that also helpeda lot where it's, like, maybe we
were wasting some of thatcommunication time before, but
(23:27):
now we had to be a little bittighter with some of that and
just be more efficientessentially.
Susan Boles (23:32):
For a lot of us, I think we let things expand to
fill the time that we have. Ifyou have an extra day,
essentially, that you don'treally have the work to
necessarily fill or you'retrying to fill time when you are
too tired to do real work, thatcommunication does kind of tend
to get lazy. And I thinkfrequently we use meetings as a
(23:58):
way to communicate lazily, wherewhen we're communicating
asynchronously or we areproactively communicating, we
save a whole bunch of time thatwe don't have to be in meetings.
But I I do think you're right.At least that's what I found in
my work as well thatcommunicating asynchronously can
actually be a better form ofcommunication in a lot of
(24:21):
instances versus meetings, whichare just easy to be like, oh, we
have to talk about something.
Let's have a meeting.
Nathalie Lussier (24:28):
Exactly. There's different personalities
on the team too. Some peoplelove having meetings and are
more extroverted and wanna chat.And other people are like, you
know, I have really to focus,like, the developers on the
team. Like, they need theirsuper focused time to code.
And so for them, having a lot ofmeetings can be kinda trickier.
We can have obviously, we haveour general meetings for the
whole team, and then we have submeetings for specific topics.
(24:50):
And so that really helped us tomake sure that we're only having
the right people in themeetings. It seems
Susan Boles (24:56):
like you maybe eliminated some meetings or
unnecessary live communication.Was there anything else that you
found that you kind of juststopped doing because you didn't
really have the time or itwasn't worth the time to use
during those 4 days?
Nathalie Lussier (25:16):
Well, we definitely got more efficient
with things like editingpodcasts and having
transcriptions done and thingslike that. So we found tools and
other ways to kind of improveour processes, and we were
hiring a lot of paid interns. Sothere's a lot of work around
hiring paid interns that has tohappen on a regular basis. So
for the time being, we'll take abreak on hiring new interns and
(25:38):
just focus on what we have onour plate. So we kind of made
some changes like that.
It doesn't mean that we weren'tgonna go back to hiring interns
and things like that. But justrealizing, like, for the season
that we were in that transitionespecially, we didn't wanna add
big projects. For example,hiring an intern would have to
look at, like, hundreds ofresumes and then do interviews.
That can take up, like, severalweeks of time. And so we
(25:58):
realized, like, okay.
No. We need to pair that back alittle bit. So, yeah, there was
things like that where it madesense to do it this way. And we
did have paid insurance againafter, but just really getting
really clear on on what ourpriorities were for that
transition period was important.
Susan Boles (26:12):
And was there anything that you noticed help
you become more efficient thatmade the transition to 4 days?
Because essentially, you'rereally trying to eliminate a
whole day's worth of worksomehow, whether that's because
it's not useful time spent. Butessentially, if you're gonna
(26:34):
keep doing it, you have toeliminate a day's worth of work.
What tools or resources orprojects did you do that helped
you actually do that?
Nathalie Lussier (26:43):
We always were big fans of quarterly planning.
So we were doing our quarterlyplans and, you know, how you
might have boulders and rocksand stones and the smaller
pebbles. So we kinda realized,like, realistically, we can't
fit as many things on on ourquarterly plan as what we would
have done in the past. And to behonest, I feel like we always
(27:04):
overstuff our quarterly plansanyways. But I feel like that
that really helped us, like,looking at how big is each
project and how big is eachpebble and realizing, like,
realistically, how many dayswould this take?
And so that kinda helped usprioritize and cut the fluff a
little bit of what we wereplanning to do or things that
sounded good. And so just kindof honing in on, like, what are
(27:25):
the actual things that we needto focus on.
Susan Boles (27:28):
As you were eliminating things from your
quarterly plan, did you noticethat you ended up having to
either reposition, reprioritizeprojects that really were real
projects that you really didwanna do that you had to slow
the timeline down on orreprioritize? And how did you
(27:50):
approach that?
Nathalie Lussier (27:52):
Yeah. So I think on the software
development side, thatdefinitely happened because
there's a limit to how much timeour developers have. Obviously,
they're still gonna need tocommunicate with the team, so
we're not reducing too too muchon that side of things. There's
always tons of feature requests.I think we had 200 or 300
feature requests at all times.
There's always things that wecould be working on or could be
(28:13):
developing on the software side.So for us, we decided to just
really prioritize the thingsthat really matter. And so we
had a couple of different wayscategorizing feature requests.
So we would look at is thissomething that impacts people's
ability to make money? Sobecause AccessAlly helps people
sell their courses, theirmemberships, and coaching, and
things like that.
If it was, say, part of theshopping cart and it could
(28:36):
improve sales for them, thenthat's something that we would
prioritize a little bit higher,or something like that that
would be sort of a show stopperfor people in running their
businesses. Those tend to be thethings that we prioritize the
most. And then from there, otherfeatures that people are asking
for a lot. So, like, the morepeople ask for it, the higher up
it goes on our priority list.And we have, like, a little
(28:57):
click up system that basically,like, calculates 10 people have
asked for this, 5 people haveasked for that.
This one's easier to do, andthat one's hard to do. So we can
kind of, like, get a number atthe end of the day that says, if
you do this one, it'll help xnumber of people plus you can do
it faster. So just get that onedone first. At the end of the
day, we were probably releasinga little bit slower than we
would have if we were working 5days a week. But at the same
(29:19):
time, it's more sustainable, soour team can actually keep
showing up every every week,right, and not be like, I burnt
out.
So tortoise versus the hare.Right? We can just slow and
steady do it and get the workdone, do it great, or try to
rush and then feel stressed andburnt out and kind of flame out.
Susan Boles (29:37):
With my clients and, honestly, with me
personally, one of the thingsthat I have found to be kind of
one of the hardest things intransitioning to more
sustainable work or to calmerwork tends to be that feeling of
urgency, that feeling thatthings are important and they
must happen now anddeconstructing the fact that
(30:00):
most urgency is made up. How didyou approach that? Because I
know it's been something thatyou focus on as well. And it
seems like this whole 4 day workweek project is an exercise in
training yourself to be okaywith things going a little bit
slower.
Nathalie Lussier (30:18):
You know, as an entrepreneur, I've definitely
had, like, this quick start.Like, things have to move
quickly. I need to see resultsfast. And my husband is sort of
the the opposite where he's moreof the thinking long term,
thinking in the next 10 years,20 years, like, where is it
going. He was really, like, mybalancing person, I would say.
And he's taught me so much aboutslowing down and being
(30:41):
comfortable with the results andthe pace that I'm at right now.
And I think that we can all usea little bit more of that if we
have that kind of go go go.Like, that 4 day work week is an
exercise exactly like you saidto pace ourselves, slow down,
and do the important work, do itwell, and then trust that the
results will come even though itmight not be the next day. We're
(31:01):
all probably relearning andrewiring ourselves to be at that
comfortable pace if you will.And I think part of that also is
just, like, knowing what enoughlooks like.
A lot of times, you know, wewant more faster, bigger, grow
more growth, more, you know,more whatever metrics you're
going after. Right? And I thinkthat knowing what enough looks
(31:21):
like so that, you know, yourbusiness is paying you, paying
your team, maybe it has a niceprofit, but it doesn't have to
constantly be, like, doubling,tripling, and doing all these,
like, crazy growth metrics everyyear or every month or quarter
or whatever it is that you'retracking. And I think that that
is huge right there becausethat's sort of unhooking from
this culture that we have tokeep going faster and bigger and
(31:43):
more growth and all of that. SoI think over time, you kind of
sort of gently learn how to letgo.
Susan Boles (31:50):
You moved to a farm, which is a relatively
different pace of life than acity, and I did something
similar. We moved to the middleof nowhere up in the mountains
in Colorado. Do you think thatphysical kind of reminder about
how nature paces you like, Ihave noticed that here where
(32:13):
there are more seasons and justthe pace of life is slower by
just because it's harder to dothings has helped me unpack a
little bit of that need forurgency. And I'm curious if you
found something similar asyou've transitioned to life on
the farm?
Nathalie Lussier (32:32):
I think you're spot on. Yeah. Because, you
know, I used to live in Toronto,New York City, and then we moved
to Texas, which was a little bitslower paced, and then to the
farm, which is way slower paced.And I think, yeah, there's
definitely something to it. It'snot that you're not doing
anything because I think there'sdaily chores, there's daily
things are always happening inyour business, in your life.
(32:52):
It's not like there's nomovement, but it might not be
the big splashy things that thatyou think should be happening,
but they are slowly happeningover time and the timelines
might not be what you expect. SoI like thinking about trees and
there are timelines that aresuper long, you know. A short
lived tree is, like, 50 years.And, like, most trees live,
(33:14):
like, 100 and 100 years. If youjust planted a tree, yes, you
want fruit next year, but it'sprobably not gonna be ready
then.
So you have to really be patientand think about those
expectations that you set foryourself. That piece of life on
the farm is changes how youthink about things and also the
timelines, I think, are reallydifferent too.
Susan Boles (33:32):
I have started to move more towards just thinking
about my business in terms ofseasons or in terms of much
bigger blocks of time than Ithought about it when I started
my business. You know, when youstart your business, you want
things to happen right now. Thelonger I do this, the more
patient I get, the morecomfortable I get with things
(33:55):
just taking kind of a while.It's a more realistic
expectation, but trying to alignmy expectation with reality,
having that gap was so much moreof a challenge at the beginning.
And the longer you do something,the more you realize things just
take time.
(34:16):
You have to be able to show upsaying and doing the same thing
over a longer period of time andgetting more comfortable with
things kind of being boring. Andthat that's okay and kind of the
goal.
Nathalie Lussier (34:31):
Yes. Absolutely. I totally agree with
that. And there's a book called40 Chances. It's a farming book,
which I actually have not readit, but I've I read a review and
I was like, oh, that's abrilliant idea.
But, basically, this conceptthat most farmers will have
about 40 years of farming intheir lifetimes to try different
things. So each season you getany other another shot.
(34:53):
Basically, you get another yearto try to plant things. And so
you can try a different methodor improve something that worked
last year, but now you wanna tryslightly better. And I feel like
maybe that applies toentrepreneurship too.
Maybe 40 years of workapproximately. Like, you have 40
chances of each year to trysomething different, improve
what you have going. And thattimeline of 40 years changes how
(35:15):
you think about things a lot.
Susan Boles (35:17):
Now I have to go read farming books because that
sounds super interesting. So isthere anything you think we
should touch on or talk aboutthat we haven't yet?
Nathalie Lussier (35:25):
When I was looking to sell AccessAlly, the
business, I wanted people to whoare buying it to keep the 4 day
work week, and there wasdefinitely a lot of pushback
around that too. So I thinkthat's, something to think about
depending on what your exitstrategy might be for your
business or it is nice to havethat long term view for yourself
as spreading the business, butif you ever decide to step out
(35:47):
of the business, what are theplans for either transitioning
back to a 5 day work week ornegotiating that into a deal as
well.
Susan Boles (35:54):
That is so interesting and something I
hadn't even considered. Tell mea little bit more about how you
handled that in terms ofnegotiations or finding a buyer.
Nathalie Lussier (36:05):
Basically, it depends on the market, how
marketable your business is, youknow, who your potential
acquirers are, like, what theircultures are like as well. For
us, we didn't have a whole tonof people that we approached.
The WordPress space is kind of,I wanna say, like, an insular
community. There's not a ton ofpeople who are buying WordPress
businesses. We knew kind ofgoing in, like, we may need to
(36:28):
negotiate that.
We may not be able to negotiatekeeping the 4 day work week. We
ended up going with the buyerthat was most aligned with our
values and had the mostexperience in our space. We
didn't actually get to keep thethe 4 day work week when we
sold. So that's something that Iwant to mention, which
Interesting. Also a toughtransition for the rest of the
team as well, including myhusband who's still working for
the company.
Susan Boles (36:48):
When you were considering selling, was that
something that was kind ofalways on your radar or
something that you had a buyercome in and offer to purchase
and you were like, hadn't reallythought about it, but that
sounds okay.
Nathalie Lussier (37:03):
Yeah. So for many, many years, I've had
people approaching us saying,like, hey. We wanna purchase
your company. Pretty much everysingle person, I was like, no.
No.
No. I don't wanna sell. This isnot a good fit. I don't think
this is gonna work. There were acouple people who were
interesting over the years, andwe definitely explored a little
bit more.
And then for whatever reasons,the deals kind of didn't go
through. But then more recently,when I decided, k. I think I'm
(37:24):
starting to get ready to let goof this. My kids are getting a
little bit older, and I want tospend a little more time with
them and, obviously, the farmand all of things are are kind
of keeping me really busy. And Iwas like, okay.
I had been approached by thebuyer who ended up buying us,
and I was like, okay. Maybe. SoI kind of put them off, and I
basically said, like, okay. In afew months, maybe we'll circle
back. And I really got clear onwhether or not I wanted to sell
(37:48):
and did it make sense to do itnow.
And I had a discussion with myhusband, Robin, and figured
that, yeah, I think maybe weshould consider this. And then I
decided to if we were gonnaactually do it, I should
approach other potential buyerstoo because if we're just gonna
do it, like, let's see what theinterest is. And so I did
approach a couple of othercompanies too and had
discussions with them too andthen ended up going with the
(38:10):
person who had originally gottenin touch with us. And, also, I
wanted to make sure that theykept everyone on the team.
Everything kinda kept going asmuch as possible.
So the 4 day work week was oneof the things that didn't make
it, but most of the the rest ofour systems and things kept
going. And I have a feeling,like, the team may convince them
to go back to a 4 day work weekbecause, it really worked well
(38:31):
for us.
Susan Boles (38:31):
Just the concept of a 4 day work week, I think, is
in such contradiction to whatwe, at least in the western part
of the world, see as thedefault. And sometimes I think
it's really hard to envisionthat anything else could work
outside of what currently works.Like, we assume that what is the
(38:55):
default. There's a reason behindit, and I'm not sure that there
always is.
Nathalie Lussier (39:00):
And, you know, you mentioned kind of this part
of the world. So my husband,Robin, is from China, so we keep
up on what's happening in Chinaa little bit. And over there,
there's a schedule called 996,which basically means you work
from 9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days aweek. So that is sort of like
their corporate schedule. Andwhen you think about that,
you're like, what?
That is ridiculous. Who doesthat? And how how could they
(39:22):
survive that way? And, yeah, alot of people get super burnt
out, and it's it's not good. SoI think we can look at other
cultures and see, like, okay,they're taking it in another
direction, and that's not goingwell.
And so maybe we shouldn't, like,keep going in this direction.
Right? We should go in theopposite direction and do
something that's a little bitbetter for everyone.
Susan Boles (39:40):
Yeah. That's totally in the opposite
direction from where a lot ofcompanies are trying to head
right now. And it's reallyinteresting post the COVID work
revolution, I guess, all of theimpact of so many companies
transitioning to working fromhome and then transitioning some
back to hybrid or back to theoffice. It's been really
(40:01):
interesting to watch just what'shappening around work culturally
and what's working and what'snot really working.
Nathalie Lussier (40:10):
Yeah. And, like, what we're willing to say
yes to and what we think maybeshould change. We have that
power. And especially, asbusiness owners, we have the
flexibility to be like, hey. I'mgonna try an experiment.
And, you know, you can tellpeople, like, how we did in the
beginning. We're just gonna trythis for the summer. We're gonna
just try this and see whathappens and, you know, look at
the results because they thinkthe results speak for themselves
(40:32):
once you start doing that.
Susan Boles (40:35):
Comfortable margins are the cornerstone of any calm
business. Without margins in thedifferent areas of your
business, it's unlikely it'llever feel truly calm. And
remember that you need to thinkbeyond just profit margins when
we're thinking about this. Soconsider your capacity and your
time margins. Think about whatgives you energy or takes it
(40:56):
away.
Examine what's taking up youremotional bandwidth. So are you
a caregiver or someone who maybedoesn't handle big emotions
particularly well, or you havesome kind of crisis happening in
your life? You might need tothink about that and focus on
building more emotional marginright now. Margins really just
means space, and more spacemeans less urgency, fewer
(41:21):
emergencies, and a betterability to respond to surges.
And that means that it's calmer.
Thanks to everyone who supportsBeyond Margins. If you're a
listener, a sponsor, or apartner of any kind, I couldn't
do this show without you. Ifyou're interested on learning
more about how to build a calmerbusiness with comfortable
margins, head tobeyondmargins.com. While you're
(41:44):
there, you can send it for myfree newsletter. I send it every
week, and it's all aboutexploring one thing.
How do you engineer a calmerbusiness? Until next time, stay
calm.
What if I could give you a whole extra day in
your week? What would you dowith that time? Hey there. I'm
Susan Bowles, and this is BeyondMargins, the show where we
deconstruct how to engineer acalmer business. We're in the
middle of a miniseries wherewe're exploring the common
elements of calm businesses.
So what makes a calm businessactually calm, and how do you
(00:27):
intentionally design and buildfor that? There are 8 elements
that all calm companies have incommon, clarity, autonomy, a
lens of care, margins, efficientsystems, rest, and reduced
urgency. Now we've talked aboutclarity, autonomy, and a lens of
care in previous episodes in theseries. So if you haven't
(00:49):
listened to those, I highlyrecommend you go check them out.
Today, we're tackling margins,and this is a topic that is near
and dear to me.
It's so important that I put itin the name of my business. When
we think about margins, mostfrequently we think about profit
margins and then we kind of stopthinking about it. But we need
(01:10):
to think beyond that. See what Idid there? So you absolutely
need profit margins to build asustainable business.
Let's be real. I'm a CFO. I'mnot gonna say otherwise. But
that is a pretty limitedperspective. The word margin
just means space and you needmargins everywhere in your
(01:30):
business, not just in yourfinances.
You need to broaden how you'rethinking about margin. So profit
margins build financial spaceand longevity. Capacity margins
allow you to have time to think,to lead, to breathe. Energetic
margins mean that you can workconsistently and sustainably
(01:52):
without burning out. Emotionalmargins, they allow you to be
there for yourself and for thecommunity around you.
And you need all of these andmore. There's no area of your
business where you couldn'tbuild in just a little bit more
space because that's a big partof engineering something calmer.
(02:12):
So think about it this way, ifyou operate at a 100% or more
all the time, you don't have anysurge capacity. You can't handle
anything unexpected and theunexpected is inevitable. When
you have spacious margins builtinto various aspects of your
business, you are betterequipped to absorb those
surprises.
(02:33):
So for example, if your scheduleis jam packed and you have to
deal with, you know, a sick kid,it can throw you off for weeks.
But, maybe you have a buffer daywith no tasks or calls. If
that's built into your schedule,you have a much easier time
rescheduling or shifting thingsaround and that's because you
built in some margin, some spacefor things to go unexpectedly.
(02:56):
Likewise, if you're running yourbusiness right at your break
even point and you don't haveany cash reserves set aside and
then your biggest client decidesto leave, you're really up a
creek. You don't have anyfinancial margins to absorb
that.
Building that margining givesyou more breathing room to
absorb losses like this. Butmargins aren't the default. The
(03:19):
default is max capacity. So whenyou think about traditional work
culture or business culture, thegoal is to work harder, last
longer, be more productive. It'sall about cramming in as much
work as we can.
Everything is focused on beingmore efficient so that we can do
more work. And that leads toworkers that are exhausted, that
(03:40):
are burnt out and unhappy.Nobody does their best work
under those circumstances. Butso many of the companies that
we're told we're supposed tolook up to have these kinds of
cultures where you're expectedto work 80 to a 100 hours a
week. Sure they provide food andnap pods which on the surface
seems like it's to take care oftheir team but in reality it's
(04:03):
just so that they can get folksto stay there and work more
hours.
The default business cultureignores that people are in fact
people. Instead it treats themlike machines. So the only thing
that matters is growth andproductivity. And everything
else is pretty much disregardedand ignored even profit. So
think about Silicon Valleyculture where the goal is move
(04:27):
fast and break things.
And the mentality is that youhave to invest so that you can
grow and grow and grow and grow.And the assumption is that
profit or sustainability willjust happen eventually. But we
don't have time to worry aboutthat now. So the default here is
basically the opposite ofbuilding margins and the default
margins don't matter. But whenyou focus on building space,
(04:50):
building margin into all thosedifferent areas of your
business, It allows for a calmerenvironment for better work for
a happier team.
My guest today saw thatfirsthand when she transitioned
her team to a 4 day work week.Natalie Lussier is an
entrepreneur who has been makingwebsites since she was 12. She
was the founder and recentlyexited AccessAlly which is a
(05:14):
digital course and membershipplatform. Before she exited the
company, they went through theprocess of transitioning to a 4
day work week. Now on the whole,western cultures are pretty much
stuck on a 5 day, 40 hour a weekwork week.
That is the default and it's soingrained that it's actually
really tough to imagine otherways of working. But the data on
(05:35):
4 day work weeks is pretty good.The companies that have tried it
see an increase in productivityand also employee happiness. And
if you think about it, ittotally makes sense because you
are literally building moremargin into your life. By going
down to a 4 day work week,you're essentially creating an
entire day to take care ofyourself or anything that you
need.
(05:56):
Now we're gonna take a quickbreak to hear from our sponsors
but when we come back, Natalieand I are gonna get into how she
actually transitioned thecompany to the 4 day work week.
So we're talking those nittygritty logistical details. So
what went well? What didn't gowell? And we'll talk about how
that move to the 4 day work weekimpacted Natalie's ability to
exit her company.
(06:17):
So tell me a little bit aboutwhat was happening at AccessAlly
when you were thinking orconsidering making this
transition to a 4 day workweek.What was happening and kinda
what was the impetus behind theshift?
Nathalie Lussier (06:32):
Yeah. So a few years ago, we had decided that
we wanted to just ever giveeveryone a Friday off or, like,
usually 4 Fridays off in thesummer just to as an experiment,
just to see what would happen.You know, it's summer. We moved
back to Canada, and it's a shortseason, so you wanna take
advantage and really get outsideand enjoy the nice weather and
(06:52):
all of that. Go berry picking,all of those seasonal things.
And so we said, okay. Well, wethink it'd be great just to see
if people like it, what happensto the business, what happens to
everyone's productivity, and,obviously, everyone loved it.
They all booked, you know,slightly different Fridays, and
it worked. So we decided, okay.Well, let's kind of keep
experimenting.
So what we ended up doing isthat we decided to just go.
(07:15):
Everyone gets every other Fridayoff, and everyone works a tiny
bit more during the rest of theweek. And so that wasn't a full
4 day work week. It was more of,like, another kind of schedule
where, like, you still work 40hours, but you get at least a
Friday off. Right?
So every 2 weeks. So that alsoworked pretty good. Some people
didn't want to do that. Somepeople prefer to just work every
(07:36):
Friday and not work extra andjust have a shorter day. So some
people have that schedule, andsome people have the regular 5
day work week schedule.
And so we did that for a while,and then a lot of research
started coming up about 4 daywork weeks. And it was actually
the team that came to me andthey were like, you know, let's
try this. We've already beenkinda circling around doing
(07:57):
something like this. So what doyou think? And I was like, yeah.
Let's just do it. That'sbasically, it came from the team
asking for it and us havingexperimented with something
similar, but that wasn't quite afull 4 day work week before.
Susan Boles (08:11):
It makes sense that the evolution to the 4 day work
week came from the team andtrying it out. But why try it
out at all? Like, why startexperimenting with it?
Nathalie Lussier (08:25):
Yeah. So, obviously, we're all human, and
I think that we all have limitsand capacities and things for
doing work and also have, youknow, personal lives, families,
pets, you know, all kinds ofthings that we wanna take care
of outside of our regularworkdays. We just kinda
realized, you know, definitelyaround COVID times, people are
burned out and we didn't wannakeep pushing people. We wanted
(08:48):
people to recover, to feel good,to be able to come into work
with energy and includingourselves because, you know, as
as founders sometimes, we justpush push push and we never take
time off. And what we found alsofor ourselves when we were
experimenting with the differentFridays is that my husband and I
would always work, basically.
So even though we had, you know,people were off, you know, half
(09:10):
the team was off on one Friday,we would still be on just to
cover or if people hadquestions, we'd be there, and
the same for the next Friday. Sowhen we decided to do a 4 day
work week, we were like, thiswill be a day where everyone's
off. So we ourselves could alsotake that time off and recover
and not be always on. You know,as humans, we have to remember
our limits and also think about,like, the holistic view. Right?
(09:32):
What are we really doing thisfor? And I think sometimes, even
as business owners, we getcaught up into this whole thing
of, like, this is my identity,this is my career, this is this
thing that I've built and it'samazing and at the same time,
you know, it's there's more tolife than just work. So I think
that all of those thingstogether kind of helped us to
realize, like, yeah, like, let'sjust try it. And, you know, the
(09:53):
results have been reallyamazing.
Susan Boles (09:54):
I think you bring up an interesting point because
I have had this challenge as abusiness owner and a team leader
as well in that I am really goodat giving my team members
flexibility or letting them takethe time off. And it seems a lot
harder, I think, to do that formyself. As you mentioned, having
(10:17):
some team members on, some teammembers off, and somebody has to
always be around. Can you talk alittle bit about how that felt
for you and your husband who is,for listeners, was also in the
business?
Nathalie Lussier (10:31):
I've taken, like, tons of training about,
you know, entrepreneurial timeand management and productivity
and all of that stuff. And a lotof times, you know, they say
founders need to take time off.They need to take weekend. They
need to take free time wherethey're not thinking about their
business. And I've done that,and it was great.
But, also, sometimes, it feelslike you should be working. It
feels like there's justdeadlines or there's, you know,
(10:54):
team stuff or it could becustomer stuff that you need to
step in for. And so there'salways this kind of pressure to
to be there, to be on, to answerjust one more thing. And I think
that when you create theseboundaries for yourself where
it's like, no. Actually, thebusiness is closed right now,
then you can't just, you know,dive in for one more thing and
I'll answer one more ticket.
(11:15):
That is kind of the line thatyou can set for yourself, and I
think that's what we kinda hadto do because we just found
ourselves, like, constantlyhaving this push to work more.
You know, you think, like, oh,well, I'm responsible for
payroll and for everyone'swell-being in the company. So if
I don't show up and I don'twork, then, you know, things
could go off the rails. Right?So there's there's these little
niggly thoughts in the back ofyour mind that that's going to
(11:37):
happen.
If you say, no. Actually, thebusiness will be fine. The team
will be fine. Customers will befine. You're able to rest and
recover.
And then when you do show backup on Monday, then you are
refreshed. You have the energy,and you're a lot more motivated
to actually do the mostimportant things and get those
done and take care of businessand all of that stuff that you
need to do.
Susan Boles (11:56):
Yeah. I've definitely found the same. It's
the hardest to, like, put thatboundary in place, but really,
really powerful in terms ofbuilding up energetic margin,
having, like, the capacity toactually show up and do good
work is so dependent on makingsure you're building on in
enough rest into your overallwork design, I guess. As you all
(12:23):
were thinking about we'veexperimented with 4 days in the
summer and that's gone well, butnow we wanna try and implement
this every Friday throughout thewhole company. What were some of
your biggest hesitations, yourconcerns as you were kind of
thinking, hesitations, yourconcerns as you were kind of
thinking, considering, planningfor making the switch?
Nathalie Lussier (12:41):
Yeah. So some of the big considerations was
the support angle. So becausewe're a software company and we
have people sending in supporttickets 5 days a week, We were
going to be closing on Fridays,and so that would leave, like, a
3 day period where if somebodyhad an issue, you know, they'd
be waiting for us to to actuallyresolve it. And we also looked
at our stats. So we looked atour data, and we have much lower
(13:03):
tickets that come in on Fridays.
So we knew that people arealready maybe taking their
Fridays off or not tinkeringwith tech maybe on Fridays as
much. So we knew logically itwould probably be fine. And we
did definitely have a little bitof stumbling blocks where we had
holidays on Mondays, so therewas like a 4 day gap. So we had
to figure out some of thosethings of maybe on certain
(13:24):
longer weekends. We wouldcheck-in again one more time
just to make sure there'snothing urgent, kind of put some
systems like that in place.
But, yeah, overall, the biggesthurdles were the actual, support
side of things. And then alsojust making sure that we weren't
overloading everyone with, like,the same amount of work that
would have fit in 5 days. Forus, that was just really
(13:44):
prioritizing, making sure thatwe're really focusing on the
most important projects or themost important types of things.
We're working on a, like, awhole website redesign and
things like that for our membersarea. We're gonna do these
workshops and all of this stuff,and we realized the amount of
time to coordinate and inviteguests and send reminders and
all of that just didn't makesense with the amount of time
that everyone had on the team togive to that project.
(14:06):
So we decided to just scrap itand just keep going with office
hours, which is what we hadalready been doing. So it kinda
just helped us focus on the mostimportant stuff and not spread
ourselves too thin and try tojam pack, you know, so much work
into just 4 days. And then,yeah, I think some people on the
team had some hesitation. Sojust talking about that with
each person and just seeing, youknow, what were their
(14:27):
hesitations. For some people, itwas just, I wanna make sure
that, you know, I can stilldeliver the same quality of
work.
Kinda each person had a slightlydifferent reaction to it.
Susan Boles (14:36):
Interesting. So let's talk about the actual
transition. As you wereapproaching kind of your
transition date, how how did youplan for how did you prepare,
communicate, actually making theswitch?
Nathalie Lussier (14:50):
Yeah. So we gave ourselves, I wanna say,
like, 3 weeks before weactually, like, implemented it.
So I told everyone on the team,okay. We're gonna do this.
Here's the date that we're goingto start.
And then we looked at, like, ourwebsite, our communication, our
auto responders, all the stuffthat people would get in touch
with us through, like ourcontact page and all of that.
Updated all of that to make itsuper clear our business hours
are from, you know, Monday toThursday. And we also extended
(15:13):
our business hours slightlyduring those 4 days. So we were
able to do that because we havepeople in different time zones.
We also wrote an email to ourcustomers and, obviously, social
media post to make sure everyonesaw it because it did take a
little while after we sent thatpost in those emails.
Not everyone reads every email.Right? So we also included it in
our release emails after thatjust to make sure that if anyone
(15:34):
missed it, they would still bein the loop. I think we kinda
covered all of our bases on interms of that communication side
of things. Some of the people onour team had scheduling days
that they could take calls on,so they just obviously removed
those openings on on theircalendars and things like that.
So just kind
Susan Boles (15:49):
of making sure that all of our bases were covered.
And what was your strategy orapproach for the actual 4 days?
So for some companies, when theymove to a 4 day work week, it's
4 longer days, but only 4 days.And some just take the approach
that we're working our samehours, we're just doing it 4
days, and we're just cutting outa day of essentially unnecessary
(16:12):
work?
Nathalie Lussier (16:13):
Yeah. So our approach was basically everyone
was working 32 hours. So we'rebasically cutting off one day,
keeping the same regularbusiness hours that we had
before. And the idea was this islike a raise, essentially.
Right?
Because you're getting paid moreper hour if you kind of break it
down that way. So they'regetting a day off, but they're
still keeping their same salary.So we think it worked out really
well that way. We were nottrying to overload them because
(16:34):
we had tested that with ourevery other Friday off method
where we had increased the dailyhours. There's just a limit to
how much you can really work ina day.
So I feel like if you're gonnaincrease the length of the day
to get a Friday off, it's great.It's like a trade off, but at
the same time, you might not getthat much more productivity out
of it. So it's like, we're justgonna go for it by just cutting
out that full day.
Susan Boles (16:55):
Yeah. I mean, especially with the things like
knowledge work and I can do 4hours, and that's about as much,
like, legit real work that,like, I need my brain Yes. On
that I can do in a day. Anythingmore than that is just
diminishing returns.
Nathalie Lussier (17:11):
That's exactly what we found too. Like, there's
some stuff you could do whenyou're, like, at half capacity,
but in terms of, you know,really good quality work, like,
there's no point forcing subparwork for an extra hour a day or
something like that.
Susan Boles (17:27):
So looking back on the transition now, talk to me
about, you know, what you thinkwent well, what didn't go so
well, what would you change, ifanything, if you were gonna do
it again?
Nathalie Lussier (17:36):
Yeah. So our worry about support was
interesting because, like Imentioned, there were a few
cases where something came in ona Friday, but it was a long
weekend. So we had a couple ofthose kind of kerfuffle type
type situations, but we reallylearned from the 1 or 2 that we
had and we figured out, okay.Well, we also have to
communicate to people, like,hey. If it's a Thursday before a
(17:56):
really long weekend, we'll tellpeople we'll be back on Tuesday.
And if it's not super urgent,then we we know, like, that'll
be the first one we tacklecoming in on Tuesday. And if it
is urgent, then, yeah, maybe wewill kind of check-in on the
weekend or see if we have aresolution for them. We also had
people push back a little bit onus when we sent our
communication out, so we hadsome of our customers respond to
(18:18):
our email announcing the 4 daywork week and saying, you know,
hey. That sounds great for you,but I think you should actually
be going to 20 47 support asopposed to 4 days a week
support, and other businessesare moving in that direction,
and you should be too. I feellike that was almost like a
cultural push where it was moreof, like, this is what you
should do as opposed to this isgood for your team.
(18:42):
At the same time, when they weretelling us that, they were like,
I'll be fine. Like, I don't needsupport all the time, so it's
fine for me, but I really thinkyou should be doing this. So I
thought that was
Susan Boles (18:51):
really bad. Interesting that it wasn't a
need for them. It was just theiropinion about what you should do
with your business. So did yourespond to them?
Nathalie Lussier (19:02):
Yes. We definitely responded to every
person who sent back anycomments or any feedback or
anything like that for sure.We're a very small company, and
doing 247 support would be kindof ridiculous. Or even 7 days a
week support would be reallyhard for our team because all of
our team members, they havefamilies. They have all these
things going on.
So I feel like it didn't quitemake sense for for us to do
(19:22):
that, but we explained all ofthose things too. And we
definitely had people also whowere excited and they were like,
hey. You know, that's awesome. Ihope more companies do this.
Susan Boles (19:31):
The cultural feelings about the 5 day, 40
hour work week is so fascinatingwhen you start pushing up
against the, does this actuallymake sense? What's actually good
for the team, the employees, thecompany, and honestly, even, you
know, the clients and customers.You did this and didn't really,
(19:54):
it seems like, notice anynegative impacts from the client
side. It's so interesting howpassionate people are about 5
day work weeks.
Nathalie Lussier (20:05):
It's very true. And the 5 day work week is
still relatively recent. It'sreally up to us how we wanna
structure our time, andbusinesses have changed and
evolved over the years. So Ifeel like at this moment, it's
kind of the 5 day work week isset in stone, but I don't think
it it's going to be like thatforever. As the trailblazers, we
have to be the ones who decidewhat makes sense for our teams,
(20:27):
for ourselves, and for ourcustomers.
I really feel like also thesupport and the focus that we
brought to our customers wasbetter because we weren't so
burnt out. I have the energy. Ihave the capacity. I have the
fuel and the passion to do that.And, and I think that came
because people were excited tohave those long weekends and be
able to come back refreshed.
Susan Boles (20:46):
That is so powerful and yet so underestimated when
we're talking about allowing forrest and building in margin to
everybody's kind of capacityareas. It's so underrated how
impactful just increasing therest a little bit can recharge
(21:06):
people and bring them back intodoing some really good, really
impactful work. And I thinkthat's the part that frequently
is missed in that 5 day workweek. Most of us can do about 4
hours of thoughtful work a day,and we're doing so much more
than that. It's just constantlycreating that burnout, and the
(21:27):
impact to that is lower qualitywork, but it's taking a long
time to do it.
Exactly. If you feel
Nathalie Lussier (21:35):
stretched time wise, like, you don't have time
to schedule, like, personalappointments or, like, things
for your health and things likethat, We definitely had a lot of
team members who use thoseFridays to catch up on going to
the dentist and the doctor and,like, all these things that they
hadn't done for a while justbecause life gets busy and you
feel, like, kind of how we feelas entrepreneurs of, like, you
have to be at work. Right? Buteven though they have days off,
(21:56):
they wanna use those to travelor to visit family or to do
certain things, and then theykinda neglect their own personal
well-being or upkeeping. We sawa lot of our team members
scheduling those personal typethings on those Fridays a lot
afterwards, and I was like, oh,wow. Like, that makes such a big
difference, and everyone cantake care of themselves the way
Susan Boles (22:13):
that they should be. That's amazing. Do you think
the switch to the 4 day didactually create more space for
you, for the team.
Nathalie Lussier (22:22):
Yeah. I definitely think it created more
space and more creativity andbetter discussions as well. I
feel like people would have, youknow, more creative ideas and
show up with, you know, hey. Weshould try this or maybe we
should change this. I feel likethat kind of thing was possible
because we came back refreshed.
Also, I feel like,interpersonally, everyone on the
(22:42):
team was really more cohesive,the communication kind of
improved. You know, if you'reyou can always get in touch with
people. It doesn't really matterwhen you do it, then, like,
okay. Make it happen when itwhen it needs to happen. But we
kinda got a little bit moreefficient with our communication
where it would be like, okay.
So we have a random Slackchannel. We had our general and,
like, some other specificchannels. But also, if if we had
(23:04):
to to have a call or dosomething we knew, like, okay,
there's only 4 days to work, soI don't wanna disturb that and
have a huge meeting witheveryone if I don't meet
everyone. Like, we kind of honedin on our communication a little
bit more. So we consolidatedsome of those calls and, you
know, what we need to to do tocommunicate better.
So I feel like that also helpeda lot where it's, like, maybe we
were wasting some of thatcommunication time before, but
(23:27):
now we had to be a little bittighter with some of that and
just be more efficientessentially.
Susan Boles (23:32):
For a lot of us, I think we let things expand to
fill the time that we have. Ifyou have an extra day,
essentially, that you don'treally have the work to
necessarily fill or you'retrying to fill time when you are
too tired to do real work, thatcommunication does kind of tend
to get lazy. And I thinkfrequently we use meetings as a
(23:58):
way to communicate lazily, wherewhen we're communicating
asynchronously or we areproactively communicating, we
save a whole bunch of time thatwe don't have to be in meetings.
But I I do think you're right.At least that's what I found in
my work as well thatcommunicating asynchronously can
actually be a better form ofcommunication in a lot of
(24:21):
instances versus meetings, whichare just easy to be like, oh, we
have to talk about something.
Let's have a meeting.
Nathalie Lussier (24:28):
Exactly. There's different personalities
on the team too. Some peoplelove having meetings and are
more extroverted and wanna chat.And other people are like, you
know, I have really to focus,like, the developers on the
team. Like, they need theirsuper focused time to code.
And so for them, having a lot ofmeetings can be kinda trickier.
We can have obviously, we haveour general meetings for the
whole team, and then we have submeetings for specific topics.
(24:50):
And so that really helped us tomake sure that we're only having
the right people in themeetings. It seems
Susan Boles (24:56):
like you maybe eliminated some meetings or
unnecessary live communication.Was there anything else that you
found that you kind of juststopped doing because you didn't
really have the time or itwasn't worth the time to use
during those 4 days?
Nathalie Lussier (25:16):
Well, we definitely got more efficient
with things like editingpodcasts and having
transcriptions done and thingslike that. So we found tools and
other ways to kind of improveour processes, and we were
hiring a lot of paid interns. Sothere's a lot of work around
hiring paid interns that has tohappen on a regular basis. So
for the time being, we'll take abreak on hiring new interns and
(25:38):
just focus on what we have onour plate. So we kind of made
some changes like that.
It doesn't mean that we weren'tgonna go back to hiring interns
and things like that. But justrealizing, like, for the season
that we were in that transitionespecially, we didn't wanna add
big projects. For example,hiring an intern would have to
look at, like, hundreds ofresumes and then do interviews.
That can take up, like, severalweeks of time. And so we
(25:58):
realized, like, okay.
No. We need to pair that back alittle bit. So, yeah, there was
things like that where it madesense to do it this way. And we
did have paid insurance againafter, but just really getting
really clear on on what ourpriorities were for that
transition period was important.
Susan Boles (26:12):
And was there anything that you noticed help
you become more efficient thatmade the transition to 4 days?
Because essentially, you'rereally trying to eliminate a
whole day's worth of worksomehow, whether that's because
it's not useful time spent. Butessentially, if you're gonna
(26:34):
keep doing it, you have toeliminate a day's worth of work.
What tools or resources orprojects did you do that helped
you actually do that?
Nathalie Lussier (26:43):
We always were big fans of quarterly planning.
So we were doing our quarterlyplans and, you know, how you
might have boulders and rocksand stones and the smaller
pebbles. So we kinda realized,like, realistically, we can't
fit as many things on on ourquarterly plan as what we would
have done in the past. And to behonest, I feel like we always
(27:04):
overstuff our quarterly plansanyways. But I feel like that
that really helped us, like,looking at how big is each
project and how big is eachpebble and realizing, like,
realistically, how many dayswould this take?
And so that kinda helped usprioritize and cut the fluff a
little bit of what we wereplanning to do or things that
sounded good. And so just kindof honing in on, like, what are
(27:25):
the actual things that we needto focus on.
Susan Boles (27:28):
As you were eliminating things from your
quarterly plan, did you noticethat you ended up having to
either reposition, reprioritizeprojects that really were real
projects that you really didwanna do that you had to slow
the timeline down on orreprioritize? And how did you
(27:50):
approach that?
Nathalie Lussier (27:52):
Yeah. So I think on the software
development side, thatdefinitely happened because
there's a limit to how much timeour developers have. Obviously,
they're still gonna need tocommunicate with the team, so
we're not reducing too too muchon that side of things. There's
always tons of feature requests.I think we had 200 or 300
feature requests at all times.
There's always things that wecould be working on or could be
(28:13):
developing on the software side.So for us, we decided to just
really prioritize the thingsthat really matter. And so we
had a couple of different wayscategorizing feature requests.
So we would look at is thissomething that impacts people's
ability to make money? Sobecause AccessAlly helps people
sell their courses, theirmemberships, and coaching, and
things like that.
If it was, say, part of theshopping cart and it could
(28:36):
improve sales for them, thenthat's something that we would
prioritize a little bit higher,or something like that that
would be sort of a show stopperfor people in running their
businesses. Those tend to be thethings that we prioritize the
most. And then from there, otherfeatures that people are asking
for a lot. So, like, the morepeople ask for it, the higher up
it goes on our priority list.And we have, like, a little
(28:57):
click up system that basically,like, calculates 10 people have
asked for this, 5 people haveasked for that.
This one's easier to do, andthat one's hard to do. So we can
kind of, like, get a number atthe end of the day that says, if
you do this one, it'll help xnumber of people plus you can do
it faster. So just get that onedone first. At the end of the
day, we were probably releasinga little bit slower than we
would have if we were working 5days a week. But at the same
(29:19):
time, it's more sustainable, soour team can actually keep
showing up every every week,right, and not be like, I burnt
out.
So tortoise versus the hare.Right? We can just slow and
steady do it and get the workdone, do it great, or try to
rush and then feel stressed andburnt out and kind of flame out.
Susan Boles (29:37):
With my clients and, honestly, with me
personally, one of the thingsthat I have found to be kind of
one of the hardest things intransitioning to more
sustainable work or to calmerwork tends to be that feeling of
urgency, that feeling thatthings are important and they
must happen now anddeconstructing the fact that
(30:00):
most urgency is made up. How didyou approach that? Because I
know it's been something thatyou focus on as well. And it
seems like this whole 4 day workweek project is an exercise in
training yourself to be okaywith things going a little bit
slower.
Nathalie Lussier (30:18):
You know, as an entrepreneur, I've definitely
had, like, this quick start.Like, things have to move
quickly. I need to see resultsfast. And my husband is sort of
the the opposite where he's moreof the thinking long term,
thinking in the next 10 years,20 years, like, where is it
going. He was really, like, mybalancing person, I would say.
And he's taught me so much aboutslowing down and being
(30:41):
comfortable with the results andthe pace that I'm at right now.
And I think that we can all usea little bit more of that if we
have that kind of go go go.Like, that 4 day work week is an
exercise exactly like you saidto pace ourselves, slow down,
and do the important work, do itwell, and then trust that the
results will come even though itmight not be the next day. We're
(31:01):
all probably relearning andrewiring ourselves to be at that
comfortable pace if you will.And I think part of that also is
just, like, knowing what enoughlooks like.
A lot of times, you know, wewant more faster, bigger, grow
more growth, more, you know,more whatever metrics you're
going after. Right? And I thinkthat knowing what enough looks
(31:21):
like so that, you know, yourbusiness is paying you, paying
your team, maybe it has a niceprofit, but it doesn't have to
constantly be, like, doubling,tripling, and doing all these,
like, crazy growth metrics everyyear or every month or quarter
or whatever it is that you'retracking. And I think that that
is huge right there becausethat's sort of unhooking from
this culture that we have tokeep going faster and bigger and
(31:43):
more growth and all of that. SoI think over time, you kind of
sort of gently learn how to letgo.
Susan Boles (31:50):
You moved to a farm, which is a relatively
different pace of life than acity, and I did something
similar. We moved to the middleof nowhere up in the mountains
in Colorado. Do you think thatphysical kind of reminder about
how nature paces you like, Ihave noticed that here where
(32:13):
there are more seasons and justthe pace of life is slower by
just because it's harder to dothings has helped me unpack a
little bit of that need forurgency. And I'm curious if you
found something similar asyou've transitioned to life on
the farm?
Nathalie Lussier (32:32):
I think you're spot on. Yeah. Because, you
know, I used to live in Toronto,New York City, and then we moved
to Texas, which was a little bitslower paced, and then to the
farm, which is way slower paced.And I think, yeah, there's
definitely something to it. It'snot that you're not doing
anything because I think there'sdaily chores, there's daily
things are always happening inyour business, in your life.
(32:52):
It's not like there's nomovement, but it might not be
the big splashy things that thatyou think should be happening,
but they are slowly happeningover time and the timelines
might not be what you expect. SoI like thinking about trees and
there are timelines that aresuper long, you know. A short
lived tree is, like, 50 years.And, like, most trees live,
(33:14):
like, 100 and 100 years. If youjust planted a tree, yes, you
want fruit next year, but it'sprobably not gonna be ready
then.
So you have to really be patientand think about those
expectations that you set foryourself. That piece of life on
the farm is changes how youthink about things and also the
timelines, I think, are reallydifferent too.
Susan Boles (33:32):
I have started to move more towards just thinking
about my business in terms ofseasons or in terms of much
bigger blocks of time than Ithought about it when I started
my business. You know, when youstart your business, you want
things to happen right now. Thelonger I do this, the more
patient I get, the morecomfortable I get with things
(33:55):
just taking kind of a while.It's a more realistic
expectation, but trying to alignmy expectation with reality,
having that gap was so much moreof a challenge at the beginning.
And the longer you do something,the more you realize things just
take time.
(34:16):
You have to be able to show upsaying and doing the same thing
over a longer period of time andgetting more comfortable with
things kind of being boring. Andthat that's okay and kind of the
goal.
Nathalie Lussier (34:31):
Yes. Absolutely. I totally agree with
that. And there's a book called40 Chances. It's a farming book,
which I actually have not readit, but I've I read a review and
I was like, oh, that's abrilliant idea.
But, basically, this conceptthat most farmers will have
about 40 years of farming intheir lifetimes to try different
things. So each season you getany other another shot.
(34:53):
Basically, you get another yearto try to plant things. And so
you can try a different methodor improve something that worked
last year, but now you wanna tryslightly better. And I feel like
maybe that applies toentrepreneurship too.
Maybe 40 years of workapproximately. Like, you have 40
chances of each year to trysomething different, improve
what you have going. And thattimeline of 40 years changes how
(35:15):
you think about things a lot.
Susan Boles (35:17):
Now I have to go read farming books because that
sounds super interesting. So isthere anything you think we
should touch on or talk aboutthat we haven't yet?
Nathalie Lussier (35:25):
When I was looking to sell AccessAlly, the
business, I wanted people to whoare buying it to keep the 4 day
work week, and there wasdefinitely a lot of pushback
around that too. So I thinkthat's, something to think about
depending on what your exitstrategy might be for your
business or it is nice to havethat long term view for yourself
as spreading the business, butif you ever decide to step out
(35:47):
of the business, what are theplans for either transitioning
back to a 5 day work week ornegotiating that into a deal as
well.
Susan Boles (35:54):
That is so interesting and something I
hadn't even considered. Tell mea little bit more about how you
handled that in terms ofnegotiations or finding a buyer.
Nathalie Lussier (36:05):
Basically, it depends on the market, how
marketable your business is, youknow, who your potential
acquirers are, like, what theircultures are like as well. For
us, we didn't have a whole tonof people that we approached.
The WordPress space is kind of,I wanna say, like, an insular
community. There's not a ton ofpeople who are buying WordPress
businesses. We knew kind ofgoing in, like, we may need to
(36:28):
negotiate that.
We may not be able to negotiatekeeping the 4 day work week. We
ended up going with the buyerthat was most aligned with our
values and had the mostexperience in our space. We
didn't actually get to keep thethe 4 day work week when we
sold. So that's something that Iwant to mention, which
Interesting. Also a toughtransition for the rest of the
team as well, including myhusband who's still working for
the company.
Susan Boles (36:48):
When you were considering selling, was that
something that was kind ofalways on your radar or
something that you had a buyercome in and offer to purchase
and you were like, hadn't reallythought about it, but that
sounds okay.
Nathalie Lussier (37:03):
Yeah. So for many, many years, I've had
people approaching us saying,like, hey. We wanna purchase
your company. Pretty much everysingle person, I was like, no.
No.
No. I don't wanna sell. This isnot a good fit. I don't think
this is gonna work. There were acouple people who were
interesting over the years, andwe definitely explored a little
bit more.
And then for whatever reasons,the deals kind of didn't go
through. But then more recently,when I decided, k. I think I'm
(37:24):
starting to get ready to let goof this. My kids are getting a
little bit older, and I want tospend a little more time with
them and, obviously, the farmand all of things are are kind
of keeping me really busy. And Iwas like, okay.
I had been approached by thebuyer who ended up buying us,
and I was like, okay. Maybe. SoI kind of put them off, and I
basically said, like, okay. In afew months, maybe we'll circle
back. And I really got clear onwhether or not I wanted to sell
(37:48):
and did it make sense to do itnow.
And I had a discussion with myhusband, Robin, and figured
that, yeah, I think maybe weshould consider this. And then I
decided to if we were gonnaactually do it, I should
approach other potential buyerstoo because if we're just gonna
do it, like, let's see what theinterest is. And so I did
approach a couple of othercompanies too and had
discussions with them too andthen ended up going with the
(38:10):
person who had originally gottenin touch with us. And, also, I
wanted to make sure that theykept everyone on the team.
Everything kinda kept going asmuch as possible.
So the 4 day work week was oneof the things that didn't make
it, but most of the the rest ofour systems and things kept
going. And I have a feeling,like, the team may convince them
to go back to a 4 day work weekbecause, it really worked well
(38:31):
for us.
Susan Boles (38:31):
Just the concept of a 4 day work week, I think, is
in such contradiction to whatwe, at least in the western part
of the world, see as thedefault. And sometimes I think
it's really hard to envisionthat anything else could work
outside of what currently works.Like, we assume that what is the
(38:55):
default. There's a reason behindit, and I'm not sure that there
always is.
Nathalie Lussier (39:00):
And, you know, you mentioned kind of this part
of the world. So my husband,Robin, is from China, so we keep
up on what's happening in Chinaa little bit. And over there,
there's a schedule called 996,which basically means you work
from 9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days aweek. So that is sort of like
their corporate schedule. Andwhen you think about that,
you're like, what?
That is ridiculous. Who doesthat? And how how could they
(39:22):
survive that way? And, yeah, alot of people get super burnt
out, and it's it's not good. SoI think we can look at other
cultures and see, like, okay,they're taking it in another
direction, and that's not goingwell.
And so maybe we shouldn't, like,keep going in this direction.
Right? We should go in theopposite direction and do
something that's a little bitbetter for everyone.
Susan Boles (39:40):
Yeah. That's totally in the opposite
direction from where a lot ofcompanies are trying to head
right now. And it's reallyinteresting post the COVID work
revolution, I guess, all of theimpact of so many companies
transitioning to working fromhome and then transitioning some
back to hybrid or back to theoffice. It's been really
(40:01):
interesting to watch just what'shappening around work culturally
and what's working and what'snot really working.
Nathalie Lussier (40:10):
Yeah. And, like, what we're willing to say
yes to and what we think maybeshould change. We have that
power. And especially, asbusiness owners, we have the
flexibility to be like, hey. I'mgonna try an experiment.
And, you know, you can tellpeople, like, how we did in the
beginning. We're just gonna trythis for the summer. We're gonna
just try this and see whathappens and, you know, look at
the results because they thinkthe results speak for themselves
(40:32):
once you start doing that.
Susan Boles (40:35):
Comfortable margins are the cornerstone of any calm
business. Without margins in thedifferent areas of your
business, it's unlikely it'llever feel truly calm. And
remember that you need to thinkbeyond just profit margins when
we're thinking about this. Soconsider your capacity and your
time margins. Think about whatgives you energy or takes it
(40:56):
away.
Examine what's taking up youremotional bandwidth. So are you
a caregiver or someone who maybedoesn't handle big emotions
particularly well, or you havesome kind of crisis happening in
your life? You might need tothink about that and focus on
building more emotional marginright now. Margins really just
means space, and more spacemeans less urgency, fewer
(41:21):
emergencies, and a betterability to respond to surges.
And that means that it's calmer.
Thanks to everyone who supportsBeyond Margins. If you're a
listener, a sponsor, or apartner of any kind, I couldn't
do this show without you. Ifyou're interested on learning
more about how to build a calmerbusiness with comfortable
margins, head tobeyondmargins.com. While you're
(41:44):
there, you can send it for myfree newsletter. I send it every
week, and it's all aboutexploring one thing.
How do you engineer a calmerbusiness? Until next time, stay
calm.
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