#3 - Chris Leone: 4-Day Workweek, ChatGPT, AI for Creatives & Education

Is the traditional five-day workweek on the chopping block? Can we unlock higher productivity and employee satisfaction with a four-day model? In this episode, we consider this concept with Chris Leone, CEO of Web Strategies, as he details how he's approaching a four-day workweek pilot in his own company.

Join me as we dissect the implementation process, challenges, rewards, and the absolutely essential role of data-driven metrics. We go behind the scenes of Chris's pilot program, how it's challenging traditional work culture, and how he's managing potential pitfalls. Let's reimagine the balance between work and life as we continue our dive into the future of technology, the rise of AI tools like Chat GPT, and their implications on the work week.

Episode Transcript

Sam Gerdt (00:07):
Welcome everybody to Roadwork Ahead, a podcast that
explores the unmapped future ofbusiness and technology.
My name is Sam Gerdt and I amyour host.
The last few years have shownus that big changes in the way
we think about work can happenincredibly fast when you have
the right catalyst.
Covid pushed us all to thinkabout remote work, gen Z is

(00:28):
pushing us to think more aboutculture, and AI is forcing us to
think about the humanness ofwork.
At the heart of it all is thestruggle to balance work and
life.
Today, I'm sharing aconversation with Chris Leone,
the CEO of Web Strategies, whois taking this opportunity to
try something in his companythat most people are still very

(00:50):
skeptical about.
It was an amazing discussion.
Chris has a sharp mind forbusiness and people, and I can't
wait for you all to hear whathe has to say.
Chris, you came to my attentionbecause of something very
special, very unusual, thatyou're doing in your company.

(01:11):
You are piloting a four-daywork week, not four ten-hour
days, but four eight-hour days.
I'm curious how did that comeabout?

Chris Leone (01:24):
First of all, an important distinction, because I
get asked this question a lotare you doing four ten-hour days
?
I'm like, no, we're doing foureight-hour days.
The model is called 180-100,which means 100% of the
productivity and 80% of the timefor 100% of the pay.
That's the model.
Is there a question on how tocome about?

(01:46):
It was first presented to me byan employee a couple of years
ago.
It was the first time I'd everheard of it.
I had probably the reactionthat most people running a
business would have, which iswhat are you out of your mind?
Right, we couldn't work in fourdays.

(02:08):
What are you trying to do?
Are you trying to kill thecompany?
Well, I brushed it off, butthat was the first time I heard
about it.
It resurfaced.
We're a company that we'realways asking our employees how
can we be better, how can wemake the employee experience
better?
We do a lot of workplacesurveys and things like that.

(02:31):
It crept back up.
It happened earlier this year.
We heard more about it from ourpeople.
At the same time, there was somedata starting to come out in
some big publications aboutfour-day workweek, the result of
four-day workweek pilots.
I was seeing these in myregular news feed.

(02:54):
I'm like, okay, yeah, let's seewhat this found.
The data was overwhelminglypositive enough so that I wasn't
just going to dismiss it.
I'm like, okay, I'm a believerin data, I trust data.
It opened my mind up to thepossibility.

(03:21):
Now I started to noodle on it abit.
About a year ago I hired adirector of people operations.
Now I had somebody to talkdirectly and collaborate with on
this.
I think the big switch in mymind that got me to really
seriously consider it is to justsuspend my skepticism and say,

(03:47):
well, what if all of thesebenefits that these pilot
companies supposedly get out offour-day workweek is real?
These are benefits like reducedturnover, higher recruiting,
higher employee satisfaction,better employee wellness,

(04:09):
increased productivity, which isvery counterintuitive.
I was like what if that is true?
What if you can actuallyachieve that?
I started to think about allthe upside.
In fact, the main thing thatwas always hanging around my
head is what about productivity?
What about productivity?

(04:29):
What about productivity?
The data was saying companiesmaintain, sometimes even
increased productivity.
That was the first thing.
I was like I'm really curiousabout that.
I want to know more.
We reached out to these firmsthat had organized these global
pilots that are producing thereports and studies that you're

(04:51):
reading about in the news.
I became friendly with one guyin particular and we got into
some deep conversations on it.
He's like Chris.
The thing is, this is really anexperiment in efficiency.
I heard things like there arefour-day workweeks already there

(05:14):
, but they're kind of masked inthis five-day workweek model
that we're so accustomed to.
Over the last at least 80 years.
I think a five-day workweekcame about in the 40s and before
that we were working more thanthat.
I just got fascinated by theidea of can this actually
improve how efficient we are?

(05:35):
Because now we're challengingour long-held beliefs about how
much time does it take.
I was exposed to things likeParkinson's Law, which says it
takes as much time as you haveto do something.
Time expands to the time thatyou have to do something.
I was like there are so manyinteresting psychological

(05:56):
experiments nested within this.
Then you think about all thebenefits on the other side of it
.
What if you could actually chopout a bunch of useless stuff?
You don't do meetings that arenot worth it.
Are we taking an hour to dothis?
Because that's how long wethink it takes, but we can
actually do it in 15 minutes, onand on and on.

(06:16):
If we can actually be reallycritical of how we do things
today and chop a lot of stuffoff, then we get a day back in
our week and then our employeesare happier and more people want
to come work for us.
There's too strong of anargument for it to just not at
least test it.
That was the journey I tellpeople.

(06:41):
A lot of times the switch thatflipped in my head was like well
, what if you could maintainproductivity?
Then look at those benefits.
It's worth a shot.
That's what brought us to wherewe are now.

Sam Gerdt (06:56):
I've got about 30 rapid fire questions for you now
.
I'll rattle them off as quicklyas I can.
I just want to get someclarification on several things
that you said, because there'sso much to unpack there.
First of all, the data that youwere seeing these pilot
programs.
Were you seeing long term dataor short term data?

(07:17):
This is a good question.

Chris Leone (07:21):
Depending on how we define it.
I'll just tell you the timeframes I was familiar with.
Companies would create abaseline, so it would be six to
12 months before, and then thedata from running a six month or
three month or 12 month pilot.
That's what they were comparing.
What I haven't seen yet, whichis what I'm really interested in
, is what is the two, three,four, five year outlook look

(07:43):
like?
Because now you're out of thehoneymoon phase and you can't
really go and recommend marriageto somebody based off of your
honeymoon trip.
It's like that ain't marriage.
I haven't seen the long termdata yet, but comparing the
actual pilot period, which isanywhere from three to 12 months
, to the prior period is howpeople are measuring it.
Obviously, you're comparingCOVID times too.

(08:06):
There's a lot of funky stuff inthere.

Sam Gerdt (08:08):
Yeah, well, that's the other point of clarification
.
This sounds like this is rightin the middle of COVID, maybe
even going into it.
This is also pre-AI tools,pre-a lot of the talk that we
have about increasedefficiencies with GPT or
whatever.
This is the idea that withoutthese tools, you could find

(08:30):
those increases in efficiency.

Chris Leone (08:31):
Yeah, I think the movement yeah, because these
large language models like chat,GBT and Bard, those hit
November, December, January of22 and 23.
These pilots were happening inthe early 20s.
Prior to that, they're two veryseparate things, although now
they work very well together.

Sam Gerdt (08:52):
Are you running this pilot through an organization?

Chris Leone (08:56):
We're not.
We chose not to do that.
A lot of companies do wherethey're part of this cohort and
they get, they pay a little bitof money and then they have a
community that they could talkto.
They have an advisor they couldtalk to.
But we felt good enough toexperiment with it on our by
ourselves.

Sam Gerdt (09:12):
How long are you guys running this pilot?

Chris Leone (09:15):
The first window is three months.
We're week seven right now.
We started 1st of July.
We're recording this mid-August, so that's how long we've been
at it.
We want to go three months,provided that there's or
assuming that, there's nothingdisastrous that comes about.
Then we'll just continue toextend it.

(09:37):
I don't expect that I'm goingto say lock it in and say this
is what we are now indefinitely.
I think we'll.
If it works after three we'llgo to six, if six works, we'll
do it a year and then we'll takeit from there.

Sam Gerdt (09:52):
What kind of response , then, are you getting from
employees at every level, whoobviously are going to be
motivated to keep this model?
What kind of response do youget when the idea of stopping
the pilot and going back to afive-day work week, when that?

Chris Leone (10:07):
comes up.
I really don't want to have tohave that conversation.
As the CEO, I think very highlyof who works in my space and
has built a really, reallyimpressive company.
We were talking a couple ofweeks ago and he's like.

Sam Gerdt (10:24):
You know, chris, it's really hard to take something
back once you've yeah, Well, andwe should also probably hear it
go ahead and clarify yourcompany is fully remote.

Chris Leone (10:33):
Yeah.

Sam Gerdt (10:35):
Yeah, so that plays a big part in it too Fully remote
four-day.

Chris Leone (10:38):
I mean we are going against the grain compared to
what's happening out there rightnow.

Sam Gerdt (10:45):
Yeah.

Chris Leone (10:46):
Which, I'll be honest, makes me a little
uncomfortable On the surface ofit.
But then I kind of go back tojust don't, it doesn't matter
what other people do, it doesn'tmatter what other people think.
Just execute the best you canin your world with what you can
control.
And that's what we've had to do.
But we've had a really you know, if we've had blinders on in

(11:08):
the past, we've really had tokind of pull our hood up over
our blinders so there's nooutside noise, because
everything else that's going onout in the world is saying no,
it doesn't work.
You got to go back to theoffice and all the blah and then
stuff going on in the economy.
But yeah, we are fully remote.
We've been fully remote for along time.
We've gotten really good at it.
So we're layering both fullyremote and four-day on top of

(11:28):
each other right now.

Sam Gerdt (11:30):
And you are fully remote, not because of what
happened with COVID.
You're fully remote from wellbefore that.

Chris Leone (11:36):
Yeah, from the get-go.
So we started in 2004.
I came on in 2008.
We've always been remote.
We've had an office for a fewyears in there, just because we
acquired another company.
They had a lease.
We kept it and then we werelike, oh, this is kind of nice,
we'll get a bigger one.

(11:57):
But we never required people tocome in.
It was more of like a crashingspace and hey, let's meet here,
or some people just wanted tochange a scenery, whatever, but
never required people to come in.
Some people we never saw.
We had people spread out acrossthe country not as many as we
have now, but we still had somethen.
But then it was 2021 and thelease was coming up and I'm like

(12:19):
this makes no sense and so Ijust I say we're not renewing.
I actually took a picture ofthe empty office space and I
posted it on LinkedIn and saidwe're letting our lease go,
we're going to continue to befully remote.
Yada, yada.
And it went viral because Ithink that was kind of the big
conversation that was juststarting to happen at that time

(12:39):
and it was 21.
Yeah, it was months after thestart of COVID, but if you kind
of think back, there were thesekind of ebbs and flows of how
comfortable people were goingout being in the office,
whatever.
And 21 was kind of the firstpushback.
But I mean it went viral onLinkedIn.
It kind of became the hub ofconversation around remote work

(13:00):
versus in-person.
So that was a reallyinteresting experience.
But, all said and done, it'ssomething that we've always been
remote.
First, we have a co-working.
We have co-working membershipsnow so people can pop into.
We're in Richmond, virginia,and we have co-working
memberships at a place that haslike four or five buildings in

(13:22):
the area.
So people live all over thetown.
They can go into that.
And then if you're out ofmarket, if you want, we'll pay
up to a certain amount for aco-working membership for you if
you like that change of scenery.
But I mean I don't know thatwe've gotten any requests on
that.
Meanwhile I've got somebodywho's local who can go into a
co-working space here.
She's been working from Europethe last couple months with her

(13:45):
family, so she's just she'staken full advantage of it and
we think it's awesome.

Sam Gerdt (13:49):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's the flexibilitythat you get.
What I'll be curious now ismaybe we catch up in a couple of
years.
What happens, I guess, withthat four-day pilot combined
with working remote?
But I'm also curious whathappens?
You talked a little bit abouttrimming fat, hacking things off

(14:11):
that aren't absolutelynecessary.
What happens if six months, 12months down the road, you
recognize a drop in quality, Notjust a drop in efficiency with
time, but a drop in quality?
How do you measure that?

Chris Leone (14:26):
Yeah.
So there's, we kind of have acombination of leading and
lagging metrics on this, andthen, of course, the kind of
subjective ones, anecdotal ones,that we could look at to along
the way.
The quality one I think that'sone that's going to take a
little bit longer to see andit's going to show up in a

(14:47):
couple of different ways, Ithink.
So we survey our clients everyquarter and we ask the net
promoter score question, whichis how likely are you to
recommend us?
I created a metric called netvalue score, which is still a
one out of 10 question, but itasks how valuable do you
consider the work we do?
And I've got years and yearsand probably thousands of data

(15:10):
points on that over time, so Ican see how that's trended over
the years, both for clients thatare still with us and clients
that have left us.
So I have good baselines forall that stuff.
I think we're going to look atthat, but of course that's
coming from the clientperspective.
We're also going to track howlong it takes people to complete

(15:33):
tasks.
We've seen a drop in that sofar, which is good.
It's not big, it's like a 9%drop in time to complete tasks,
but that's just the billablework.
The non-billable work couldalso see reductions in time.
But that doesn't speak toquality.
It says how long did it take todo something.
So I think we're going to see itshow up also in client

(15:56):
retention, in the net value, netpromoter scores, and then just
being able to go in and look atthe work and say what are we
doing for this, what results arewe getting?
We use a tool called Gong thatrecords every conversation
between an account manager and aclient and it transcribes all
of that and we can search it sowe can look for certain trigger

(16:18):
words like concerned or resultsor whatever, and then go back,
look at those transcripts andsay is the client raising more
concerns around this than theyused to?
And then, of course, seniorlevel people can go in and
objectively look at it and sayis this good work?
Are we getting results?
Pull up analytics, pull uplooker studio, look at the
reports and say are weconsistently getting good wins

(16:45):
compared to before?
But of course marketing isalways this moving target, so
you know that there are the ebbsand flows of your success rate.
But yeah, I guess, long storyshort, there's kind of this
potpourri of things that we haveto consider and look at.
That paints the broader picture.

Sam Gerdt (17:01):
Yeah, and I'm going to go ahead and guess here that
most business owners, mostagencies in your case, don't
have the data that you have.
You seem to be somebody who issomething of a data geek.
You're constantly looking forways to record and collect and
measure data.
I know a lot of agencies don'tdo that, so would embarking on a

(17:26):
pilot program like this be lessmaybe easy to undertake, more
difficult, simply because theydon't really have anything to
measure against?
How valuable do you feel thatdata is in a program like this?

Chris Leone (17:41):
Yeah, it's a good question.
So there's like a couple ofways to approach that.
All right, thank you.
Thank you.
First of all, I have a lot ofempathy for smaller firms that
are just trying to like get thejob done.
I mean, I've right, I joinedwhen we were like five or six
people.
I know what an agency of thatsize feels like.
We're 45 now, so it's it's gota different feel.

(18:02):
We've got more redundancy andthings like that.
Look just, if you go, you know,just so the signs 101 like if
you, if you design experimentspoorly, you're not going to be
able to trust the results right.

Sam Gerdt (18:18):
Yeah.

Chris Leone (18:20):
So I think the better you can set up the
experiment, the more reliablethe results are.
We yes, I am a data nerd.
I love connecting spreadsheetsand and to our project
management systems and pushingthem into a report.
It's like literally one of myfavorite things to do, as sick
as that sounds, but I just I IFeel good knowing things and

(18:44):
like if, if something isambiguous, it creates anxiety
for me because I'm like I don'tknow, I can't feel like I can
manage this.
Well, I don't know if this isthe right decision to make,
because I don't know if this isreally happening, because we
don't have good data on it.
This is, but it comes back to.
One of the things I just loveabout this four-day work week
experiment is that it creates aforced constraint, and Any

(19:08):
creative person will tell you ifthey've got two weeks to do
something, they do their bestwork with two hours left Before
that deadline, because there'ssomething about that kind of
pressure that that justactivates the creativity in your
head.
And While we were very datafocused as an organization prior
to this, the experimentaldesign of setting up the pilot

(19:33):
forced us to come up with Evenbetter metrics, metrics we never
had before.
So, for example, I'm not crazyabout build time, okay.
And so what?
When we're saying, when we'relooking at, well, how would we
measure whether or not it'sPeople are as productive, you
say, well, is there build time,the same.
But at the same time, we'realso trying to incentivize

(19:56):
people to Try to incentivizepeople to Figure out how to do
things in less time.
Yeah so if we're saying successmeans you're still logging your
30 or 35 hours a week, but youneed to figure out how to do
things in less time, like thosetwo things Contradict each other
in a way, right, or at leastkind of pull against each other.
So I said, you know, whatreally matters is that we're

(20:18):
still doing the same number oftasks per week.
Okay, yeah, so I'm like, okay,that's something we should
measure.
I Want people to take less timedoing those, but we should
still be able to do the sameamount.
If you figure out how to dothings in a lot less time and
you got more time back in yourday, what that's that you've
earned that right.
My opinion.

(20:38):
So we created number of taskscompleted and Then, as I was,
I've got this really Brilliantperson helping with me Helping
operations.
She's my like manager of opsand she's really into our, our
tool that manages, like ourproject management tool, and so

(20:59):
we're collaborating on that andwe're looking at it.
You're, like you know, turnaround times another one, right,
because if, if a four-day workweek and if people are doing
less work in those four days,turn around times are gonna
increase, because now work thatyou would have done on the
Friday gets kicked to the nextweek, and then there's just
things continue to get pushedout.

(21:20):
So I said that's another metricthat should stay the same.
Turn around time needs to bewithin the acceptable window,
whether it's seven, fourteendays, whatever you've defined
for like that type of task.
So then we went through and westarted to create new ways that
people send tasks throughout theorganization and priority
levels, and Then we got a reallygreat, brilliant developer.

(21:43):
We have to find ways to pushthat data into a spreadsheet.
Now I'm manipulating it,putting on a scoreboard.
So now we're looking at Averageturnaround time of tasks.
We're looking at the percentageof tasks that are marked as
urgent, which create a lot ofchaos because that's like stop
what you're doing, you got towork on this now.
And then the percentage oftasks that are considered that

(22:05):
are like long-term planningtasks, which we want to see more
of.
That means an account manageris looking two to three months
out and getting work on theproject sheet now, which helps
everybody, you know, versus, hey, this needs to get done quickly
.
So now I've put that onto ourmain company scoreboard and and

(22:26):
we'll see, is our more urgenttasks coming in, our Account
managers starting to planfurther out, and then what's the
turnaround time?
And then I can break all thisout by department too, because
that's going to vary quite a bit.
The point is, is that even forus, who are very kind of data
minded with our operationsbefore, because we were

(22:47):
challenged to prove theeffectiveness or the success or
the failure of four-day workweek, we had to come up with new
metrics, and so we did, and nowwe're even better for it, right
?
So I just I love the effect of aforced constraint on these
things and I and that's what Ione of the reasons I think this
experiment so powerful.
But I, just circling back toyour question, I, when I talked

(23:09):
to a lot of, I talked to a lotof CEOs who had done four days,
or piloting it or whatever, andI had these very specific
questions how do you measurethis track, this, this, this,
this?
And like I was never reallysatisfied with the answers, like
I'd get vague answers, and Italked to somebody who's just
like, yeah, we don't measure it.
I'm like, eh, it's not goodenough for me, you know.

(23:30):
So there are people out therewho are just like, hey, if
clients are happy and they'restill paying and we think we're
doing good work.
Great, all right that I'm notthat loosey goosey someone else
maybe and I think they've madeit work, but I need something
more conclusive than that.

Sam Gerdt (23:47):
So the goal of the work week, the four-day work
week is, is a definite goal.
You're not satisfied to justgive this to your employees and
have revenue remain sustainable,have work remain adequate.
There's there's a definite goal.
What and how is how?
Is the pilot affecting thingslike your growth goals and your,

(24:09):
you know, percentage, year overyear increases in revenue,
things like that?

Chris Leone (24:13):
Yeah, I mean the, the top level metrics that need
to be protected, and I was veryclear about this when I said we
were even considering four days.
We have to continue to hit ourrevenue goals.
We have to continue to continueto hit our gross margin goals
and we share those percentagesand numbers with people so they
know what they are.
We have to continue to hit ourretention goals, our upsell

(24:39):
goals, our client satisfactionand survey goals.
Those are untouchable.
Okay, yeah, and again in mymind, if you can hit all those
and people say that they likefour days yeah what else is
there to talk about?

Sam Gerdt (24:56):
You know, yeah, that that does simplify it.

Chris Leone (24:59):
Yeah, but we just I , I don't want to just lean on
those metrics because those arelagging metrics, so I need
leading metrics I can look at ona week by week basis to say all
right, we still executing theway that we expected to, and and
have it be somewhat predictiveof the outcomes that we, that we
want to get.

Sam Gerdt (25:18):
Right and so, end of the day, I'm picturing the
average business owner hittinghis growth goals, hitting his
revenue goals, hitting hismargins.
He's he's for whatever reason,because the average business
owner's not going to do this,but he's done a pilot program
like this and it's working andpeople are happy.
Most people are still going tosay, okay, well, if I had five

(25:39):
days, I could crush those goalsand we could grow revenue even
faster and we could have bettermargins and we could have, you
know, all this other stuff.
So there's still aphilosophical, people oriented
motivation behind all of this.
Regardless of how the numberspan out, you're still you're
still boiling it down to thequality of employment.

(26:01):
Is that that's accurate?
You?

Chris Leone (26:03):
know that's a good way to put.
Yeah, that's making me thinkfor a second here.
Yeah, I mean because you say,well, let's get the benefit of
the four-day work week, whichmeans we're more efficient,
we're more protective of ourtime, but then let's expand it
back out to five.
Now, first of all, practicalterms, that would be hard to

(26:26):
execute, because you're going togive something to people,
You're going to get all thebenefit and then you're going to
take it away.
Go back up to five.
Also, I think once you go backup to five, you can lose, like
you can't retain some of thosethings you could take.
You could retain the lessonsand the new systems and
automations and whatever you setup, but from an employee
wellness perspective, I thinkyou're going to lose that, the

(26:48):
retention, the recruitment, justemployee satisfaction, all that
kind of stuff.
And keep in mind, too, the, the.
It's not compression of time,right, Because we're not.
We're not doing four, 10 days.
Sometimes that's called likethe compression model.
I think we're doing four, eightdays.
Those eight hours are moreintense, Right?

(27:11):
So to then do that over fivedays, I think it starts to
become counterproductive, right?
So just from a practicalstandpoint, I'm not sure.
Good luck.
If you want to try it, maybeit'll work Right.
But so but your broader point.
But your broader point like whystill do it and is it employee
focused?
Yeah I would say.
I would say it is, because Ithink it's.

(27:32):
It's really interesting.
I was doing this.
I was on this panel earliertoday and there was a historian
on there who was taught this waslike for the four day work week
and AI.
And there was a historian onthere who was talking about
number of hours worked per dayover the last century plus and
he had a really interestinggraph and it was showing that

(27:55):
the number of hours workeddecreased.
It was a steady slope downwardfrom the late 19th century, so
late 1800s, all the way into theearly 20th century, around the
30s and 40s.
It kind of moved up and down.
But the point is that downwardcurve stopped and then went flat

(28:17):
at eight hours a day, 40 hoursa week or I think it was
measured days per week work.
So, yeah, it stopped on fivedays and then it was flat and I
was fascinated by that.
I was like why, if you look atthe first part of the chart
where it's moving downwards kindof steadily, you look at that
and conclude that's the resultof several variables market

(28:41):
forces, innovation, technology,laws and regulations, all these
things working together.
That is showing gradualimprovement in the worker
experience.
Over time Things are graduallygetting better and the employee
gets rewarded for that becausethey don't have to work as much
every day.

(29:02):
But then around the 40s and the50s it stops and it goes flat
and I think, well, that lookslike it's a result of something
maybe more singular that'scontrolling the situation,
because it doesn't look like itdoesn't even flow at all, it's

(29:22):
just flat five days.
And so if you look back inhistory you think, okay, what's
going on here?
I mean, there's a lot ofcultural things that could
explain it.
This person suggested it was aswitch from prioritizing leisure
to prioritizing luxury.
Consumerism started to take off, madison Avenue took off and

(29:43):
now people wanted more and theywanted to work All these things
really interesting.
Also, is it more of likecorporate culture or this
certain work ethic that was kindof drilled down.
But point is, it seemedartificial that all of a sudden
this chart stopped going downand flattened it five days.
So it's really challenged me andmy employees to think what are

(30:05):
we ultimately trying to do?
Get back to first principleshere.
There's nothing that says thoumust work five days a week in
order to provide for your family, like this is not a law that
came about when earth wascreated.
Right, this is all made up, butit doesn't seem like for the
last 80 years that we areworking based off of what is

(30:30):
actually required, based on whatwe're trying to do.
It seems like there's somethingelse at play, that's kind of an
invisible hand on it, whereasprior to the 40s, technology was
getting better, regulationswere getting better, everything
was getting better and, as aresult, we didn't have to work
seven days, then we didn't haveto work six days because we were
benefiting from that.
So, yeah, I think there'ssomething philosophical about

(30:52):
this which is like let's justthrow out this notion that you
have to work five days in orderto do really good, interesting
things and build really good,successful businesses.

Sam Gerdt (31:03):
Right.
Well, what's interesting whenyou talk about that point in
history, that's, that'sindustrial revolution, right,
there, right, huge upheaval,huge disruption.
And it seems to me like whatwas happening is there are
increases in efficiency and youget to pick which of these
variables are going to beconstant and which are going to

(31:25):
be variable.
So in this case you had anunsustainable you know, 80, 90,
100, 120, 130 hour work week forthe average person, and
industrialization allowed thatto decrease steadily till you
got to 40.
And at that point I don't havea chart in front of me, but my

(31:45):
knowledge of history tells mewages and average wealth of the
middle class greatly increasedwhen when number of hours work
flatline.
So it seems to me like you havebusiness owners and just
generally, we get to pick whichrates are going to be constant

(32:06):
so that other rates can bevariable.
And in this case, what you haveis let's, let's make the amount
of time that we work constantand increase the value that we
generate in the wages that weearn in that amount of time.
And this is interesting to mebecause now we have AI tools
coming on and they're startingthis new discussion, similar to
probably the discussions thatpeople were having during the

(32:28):
industrial revolution.
And you get to, you get toalmost take a step back and you
get to say, okay, well, let'ssay that the average workers
output increases dramatically asa result of artificial
intelligence.
That's going to generate morerevenue, more wealth, that's
going to increase efficiencies.
It's going to decrease theamount of time it takes to

(32:50):
complete tasks.
So in that case, what do wewant to do?
I almost feel like there are alot of business owners out there
who are recognizing this andsaying what do we want to keep
constant and what do we want tomake variable?
And what you've done, it seems,is you've said I want to make
total hours per week workedvariable.
And what a lot of other peopleare saying is let's make revenue

(33:12):
variable, let's make more money, or let's make overhead
variable, let's reduce our costs.
And there's there's all thesepeople kind of playing tug of
war with these ideas.
So I guess what?
What leads you to want toemphasize and prioritize amount

(33:32):
of time worked per week, when,when you could have feasibly,
when you could have even morerevenue, or when you could
reduce overheads?

Chris Leone (33:39):
Well, you know it's .
You can get prettyphilosophical on this too, which
is like what, what is this allfor?
What are you trying to do?
What's your goal?
Right, I know someone running abusiness.
I have our short and long termgoals.
I know how big I want us to bethis decade.
I know where I want us to bethis year, next year, and then

(34:00):
I'll set up my next three yearplan.
We'll come, we'll finish ourcurrent three year plan next
year and then we'll createanother one and I mean, look,
it's like, if I can, if we cancontinue to grow the business
the way I want to, because Iwant us to continue to grow.
I want us to be bigger, becauseyour other, I have a vision for
what I want this company to beable to do, and it requires more
folks, more expertise, thingslike that.

(34:20):
But also, you know, if I canhit those revenue goals and I
can have happy people, that andI say this to everybody who
comes in when I hire them,because I meet with everybody we
hire on the first day I said,look, I realize you're not going
to be here forever, but my goalis that you always look back on
your time here as being a forcefor good in your career and in

(34:42):
your life, right?
So if we can create a greatemployee experience where they
grow, where they're learning,where they look back and say I
enjoyed that time in my life,I'm glad I did that and I can do
and I can give them someopportunities that most places
don't, which is that extra dayin the week to go be with your

(35:03):
spouse, go out for like a youknow a lunch date because you
got little kids, or take care ofthat.
You know you have the baby thatday while your partner goes out,
or you're able to pick up thathobby.
Are you able to go shopping soyou can be more present with
your kids on the weekend, or doyour hobbies on the weekend.
I mean fast forward to the.
You know when you're done withall this and you're retiring, or

(35:25):
you know you're on yourdeathbed and you're like, did I
do good things in this world?
Did I do good things for people?
And I'm like, yeah, that I feellike I would be able to say
that if this model works, if Ican continue to achieve the
goals that I have for thiscompany, I just don't think
those two outcomes are mutuallyexclusive.
Right, we got to get better.

(35:45):
We have to challenge ourselvesto accomplish both, but I think
it can be done right and that'sthat's kind of a big motivator
for me.

Sam Gerdt (35:54):
Yeah.
What do your clients think ofit?

Chris Leone (35:57):
So not many of them know about it.
I post.
I post quite a bit on LinkedInand I have said that we're doing
this and a couple clients havebrought it up because they
follow me on LinkedIn.
But we make the consciousdecision not to tell them and
the reason for that is kind ofthe knee jerk reaction as well.

(36:18):
It's not your business, but thereal answer is we.
We don't want to bias ourclients in one way or another
because they know we're doingfour days instead of five,
because you know you're going tohave someone out there who's
like this is anti-American,totally work four days, right,

(36:39):
or something.
I don't want a partner who onlyworks four days a week.
That's lazy.
And so then when they startanswering our surveys, they're
biased against us.
So we didn't announce itbecause I want their feedback to
be honest and pure, to the workright and nothing else.

(36:59):
And you know they're accountmanager in the relationship with
the company and the number ofdays we work per week should
have nothing to do with it,because we don't sell them on
that.
We don't say we're going towork this many hours for you.
We say this is work we're goingto do in the results that we
want to get for you.

Sam Gerdt (37:16):
So the clients that you have heard from, are they
okay?

Chris Leone (37:20):
Yeah, actually we've heard a couple things.
They're like how's it going?
I think it's really cool you'redoing it, and then can Chris
come and talk to our CEO so wecan do it too.

Sam Gerdt (37:31):
Yeah, I bet.
So then let's say we do havemajor efficiencies.
Ai helps us, whatever helps usAt some point.
We went from a six-day workweek to a five-day work week.
Do you envision, at some pointin the future, going from a
five-day work week to a four-daywork week, having this be just

(37:54):
a normal thing that everybodydoes?

Chris Leone (37:59):
It's interesting.
I heard a lot of people say,even people who are opposed to
it oh, I think we'll get thereeventually.
I think that's interesting.
I don't think everybody wantsto work four days.
Some people like to go to workand get out of the house and
that's where they get theirsense of purpose and meaning.
That's why people still work onweekends or whatever.
But overall I think there'sbeen some legislation put

(38:26):
together to try and do thisnationally.
It doesn't get anywhere, but Idon't know.
It's hard to say.
I think more companies aregoing to try it.
What I get concerned about isthose who don't take a strategic

(38:49):
approach to it and don't reallyrespect that this is about
trying to do things better andmore efficiently and instead
they just cut time out.
I think that can be dangerousto the longevity of any business
.
So unfortunately, I think themiddle of the bell curve on this
will be people who simply cutoff time, aren't measuring it

(39:10):
well.
As it becomes more ubiquitous,it's not as much of a selling
point.
So you can't get better peoplejust because you have that.
We used to be able to recruitgreat people because we were
remote.
That was a competitiveadvantage and everyone's remote,
and we don't have thatadvantage anymore.
I've thought about it.
I just don't know if you applyto everyone, if it will

(39:32):
necessarily work.
Honestly, I think it would begreat.
One person on my shoulder saysthis would be great for people.
People will be happier, they'llhave more leisure time, they'll
be able to live more fullerlives or live fuller lives.
I think that's all great, butthe other shoulder makes me a

(39:53):
little worried that we areindulging too much in luxury and
free time.
Which.
Ray Dalio wrote a reallyinteresting book about the rise
and fall of nations and globalsuperpowers and he said he
studied all these countries thatused to be global superpowers
who are no longer, and one ofthe things you see on the back
end of that curve of their poweris that there's an excess
indulgence in these countriesand a lot of extra leisure time

(40:17):
and that could lead to themfalling back in terms of their
status in the world.
So those two things kind ofbattle in my brain sometimes.
I do think with AI coming about, I don't see any reason why we
can't become hyper-efficient inwhat we do in so many different

(40:38):
ways that I do think a lot about.
Will there be enough jobs outthere for all the people?
Or are we going to reallyconsolidate the number of humans
needed and then you have to getinto, like UBI and all these
other ideas to try and keeppeople float if things start to

(40:59):
become really concentrated.
So I can't really speculate,but not very well on that.

Sam Gerdt (41:04):
Well, on the one hand , if Ray Dalio said it, I'm
inclined to listen, I find Ifind him incredibly wise,
Probably one of my favoritebusiness authors.
I'm glad that you brought himup.
But on the other hand I do feellike that.
You know, if you were tocompare it to the Industrial
Revolution, there are far morejobs now than there were before

(41:27):
the Industrial Revolution, andthere are far more jobs now than
there were before the Internet.
So it seems like majorinnovation doesn't necessarily
have a good track record ofrobbing us of jobs.
It just creates new anddifferent jobs.
But it is certainly true that wedo have a significant increase

(41:52):
in leisure time, and it doesring a little true for me.
I think that the idea of afour-day work week where now
you're all of a sudden almostyou know, 50% of your time is
working, 50% of your time isleisure, it does seem we're
skewing in a direction whereit's getting to the point where

(42:13):
work almost takes a backseat, inthe sense that the urgency to
work, to live, to provide,doesn't seem quite so urgent.
So I'll be curious to see youknow what happens with that.

Chris Leone (42:29):
Well, and I think, especially the younger
generations, millennials,generation Z they're
prioritizing experiences andover material goods and a lot of
especially when I'minterviewing younger folks,
those are the things that theyprioritize more.

(42:50):
And you think about oldergenerations and you say, well,
who were they raised by?
Well, they're raised by peoplewho grew up during the Great
Depression, right, they've got,you know, a very different
perspective and they take a lotfewer things for granted.
I'm not blaming the youngergeneration.
I never blame the youngergenerations, because they're
just working with what they gotthey were working with based on

(43:11):
how they were parented in theworld that they, you know, grew
up in.

Sam Gerdt (43:15):
Right, it's not yeah they're different, but they're
not.
One's not necessarily.

Chris Leone (43:19):
Yeah, they're not genetically inferior because
they prioritize this over theother thing.
It's like, well, yeah, theother generations worked hard so
that they could have, you know,live in this really safe, you
know, well off country.
All you know, all thingsconsidered, that's not their
fault, but yeah, it's.
It's a bit of a paradigm shiftand I think we just have to
acknowledge that we're lucky tobe able to prioritize those

(43:42):
things.
It's, you know, hard work wasvalued, because hard work is
what actually put got the hungerout of your belly, like it was
a real legitimate survival,existential thing you were
dealing with.
So they prioritize that.
But now it's like, well, wedon't have to work, like we have
means, we know where that nextwe're much more likely.

(44:04):
I don't want to speak foreverybody.
There are a lot of people whohave.
We're going through reallytough times in this country, but
on average, the accessibilityof calories today is much
different than it was, you know,100 years ago and, as a result,
the kids who were raised bythose generations have different
perspectives on life.

Sam Gerdt (44:22):
Yeah, and that's where the technology discussion
really shifts when we lookforward to the future and all of
these conversations that I'mhaving are really focused on
this is we're looking ahead to asignificant leap, and you've
admitted I think in some of yourposts too that you probably
wouldn't be doing a pilot of afour-day work week if it weren't

(44:46):
for tools like chat, gpt.
So, howard, what is it aboutthose tools that you see that
has you excited to try somethinglike this?

Chris Leone (44:56):
Yeah, I mean just to correct.
I wouldn't say that we wouldn'tbe considering it, but it's a
real help, you know it's a realforeign asset while we do it.

Sam Gerdt (45:07):
But going back to your question, though, you were
asking Well, what is it aboutthese AI tools that you're
seeing?
That is most motivating for youto try to do this to reduce
efficiency so dramatically.

Chris Leone (45:23):
It will improve, efficient, reduce time.

Sam Gerdt (45:25):
Improve efficient, yeah, yeah.

Chris Leone (45:28):
It's.
I continued, I started usingchat GPT like I think, the week
it came out late November of 22.
And I was immediately wowed byit.
And I was wowed by it yesterdaytrying to do something else and
what I'm finding is that thereare so many different layers to

(45:48):
how it can help you and it'spretty multi-dimensional on how
it can help you.
And a lot of people most peoplehave at least tried it and like
, oh, it's great, it can write aparagraph explaining the movie
Dumb and Dumber in the Tone ofShakespeare.
That's funny, that's cool.
And then they kind of move on,or at least that's their idea of
what it can do.
And yes, it can create content,but it can do so much more than

(46:10):
that.
And the things that I'mfascinated with right now are
like, for example, I can have itwrite more complex Excel
formulas and Google scripts thanI could ever write.
I was pretty good at Excelformulas, but I had it write
something for me yesterday thatwas like several different lines

(46:32):
, and that's when I discoveredyou can actually widen or deepen
the formula bar.
If you've got a really bigformula, I'm like, oh man, this
looks like a legitimate formulanow.
And I don't write script.
I'm not a developer, yet itcreated this whole script for me
.
So earlier in the podcast wewere talking about these metrics
that I have around turnaroundtimes and number of tasks and

(46:53):
urgency and everything like that.
I was working within it and Iwas basically dictating the chat
GBT.
Here's what I'm trying to doI'm trying to take data from
this spreadsheet in these cells,put it here so I can run it
into a report.
How do I do that?
Because I'm having trouble withthe formula and it's like well,
instead of a formula, youactually need a script, and
here's what that script willlook like oh, how do I install

(47:14):
the script?
Oh, click here, go here andinstall it and then run it, and
it should do this.
And so it wasn't just saving metime in writing that script or
in writing that formula.
It was doing that.
But now what I'm able to do islook at a report that shows in
real time these KPIs, so I canthen identify something's going

(47:36):
on.
So what does that do?
It allows me to focus on thething that matters and not go
down a two or three month rabbithole chasing some idea of what
needs to get better, only tofind out that it wasn't broken
in the first place, because wehave to guess a lot, based off
of the information that we have,of what needs to be worked on
or improved or whatever.

(47:57):
So that's something I'm goingto benefit from every day, and
that was from something I didyesterday.
So now my organization issmarter, it's faster, it's more
focused than it was 24 hours ago, and that's just one thing.
So I think another great analogyI heard is people say this is

(48:21):
like an iPhone moment.
So if you look at what happenedwith the iPhone when it came
out in 2009, I think, yeah, itchanged how we communicate right
, it changed how we access media, how we can communicate with
each other.
So it was revolutionary in andof itself, just for those
reasons.
But then take an app like Uber.

(48:44):
Well, what did Uber do?
It totally disrupted an entireindustry, the taxi cab industry.
When they invented the iPhone,they didn't say look at this
cool phone and wait until yousee what it does for the taxi
industry.
No one was thinking about that.
But it was that secondary ortertiary effect of that type of

(49:06):
technology being available topeople and it just wiped out a
whole industry and created a newone, so I think this technology
is going to do things like that.
The other thing that I'm sointerested in and excited about
it's not here yet, but I thinkall the technologies there it
just has to be packaged this wayis when we can have these

(49:27):
company oracles and companyco-pilots, where we can take
these models, these largelanguage models, license them
and run them in an enclosedenvironment on our own company
data, and it will knoweverything that we're willing to
give it.
It will train on all of ourcompany data so it will know all

(49:49):
the history of our customers.
It'll read through all of ourSlack messages over time that we
want to give it access to allof our project management stuff,
all of our employee handbookand process documents and all
these things, and so you justcould go up to and say who was
our point of contact at thisclient three years ago, and it
spits out the history around it.

(50:10):
Oh, what were the campaignsdoing then?
Or how do I sign up for my 401k, and it would have all that
information for you.
Right like that.
But then to the next step, theco-pilot one.
That's where, if these apps canbe manipulated or managed by

(50:31):
ChatGBT on your behalf.
So you say, oh, I wanted to getback with Sam and we haven't
connected in six months.
Can you look on our calendarsfor two weeks from now and send
an email and book a meeting withSam and create the Zoom link?
And it's one simple command andit's done.
That would normally be.
I have to send you an email,get a response, I have to set up

(50:52):
the counter, and this isminutes and maybe even hour
spread out over days to kind oflike dial this in on an hour but
several minutes.
And it's one command and it'sall done.
So I think companies that havetheir tech stack in line,
meaning that they're using goodtools or using good technology,

(51:12):
that have APIs and are probablydeveloping this for themselves,
will be able to integrate thisstuff as soon as it's available
at the individual license leveland then just be off to the
races.
And I'm really, really, reallyexcited about that and I think
the technology's there.
It's just not packaged this wayyet, so it's kind of like that

(51:34):
last mile problem of getting it,but I think it'll happen in a
matter of the next year or two.

Sam Gerdt (51:42):
It's really good to hear you say that.
There's two pieces of advicethat I give out in my capacity
as an advisor to businesses whoare using technology, and number
one is make sure that you'recollecting data good data, clean
data, organized data.
And number two is make surethat your tech stack has active

(52:05):
development and good APIs,because this is you're right, it
is coming, it is getting tothat point and it's not going to
be a perfectly packaged productthat fits your business.
There's going to be the need toplug in to it, and so if you're
using spreadsheets instead ofCRM, like HubSpot or one of

(52:29):
these other ones, you're goingto find it harder to plug in,
whereas if you've got you knowyou have good Dev support, you
know you have good API supportyou're going to find it much
easier to get that Oracle.
And you're going to find it mucheasier to put all of this
together.
How are you encouraging, then,your other employees to use

(52:51):
tools like ChatGPT?

Chris Leone (52:53):
Yeah, so this is one of the lessons I've had,
because I was seeing the praisesof this tool, like in December,
and trying to get people tostart incorporating it.
Everyone was wowed by it atfirst, but the adoption of it
was not automatic.
So what we've had to do overseveral months is continue to

(53:16):
promote it to, you know, createlearning environments and events
for people, because some peopleare kind of off to the races
with it me, there's a coupleother people in the company
where we really nerd out on itand we're sharing the latest and
, you know, thinking what we'redoing and then others are just

(53:37):
more set in their ways or justnot intuitively thinking oh,
maybe ChatGPT can do this for me, right?
So one of the things we've doneseveral things, one, you know,
especially in the early days wewere having these regular like
lunch and learns.
So it's a voluntary thing, butjust come in with your lunch on
Zoom and if you have a coolChatGPT example, put up your

(54:00):
hand and you'll get five minutesto share it.
Yeah, so people were startingto spread ideas around that way.
So that was pretty cool.
We have a dedicated Slackchannel where people post news,
links, ideas, lessons, thingslike that.
What I found as a leader is that, like I need to, in the
beginning, I had to force myselfto use it and, as interesting

(54:20):
as it was to me, you know, somedays you move on to the next
thing, right, but I knew quicklythat this thing had so much
potential for us that I justforced myself to turn to it
first for things, and I'veGoogled.
I've gotten to Google search somuch less since then.
But what I found is that when aforced habit becomes just a

(54:43):
real habit, then you start touse it in ways that you couldn't
have envisioned originally andyou have it start to do some
really interesting, innovativethings for you, and then you can
, of course, pick up thoselessons and show others.
So we get out of this mindsetof it can write the next subject
line for my email yes, it can,but it can do.

(55:03):
It's like it can do so muchmore than that, right?
So those are some of the thingsthat we've tried.
We also we follow traction, thetraction model.
So we have quarterly rocks andwe had this like four day work
week rock thing where it waslike you have to find ways to
cut back time in your week andlike use AI and incorporate AI

(55:26):
into what you're doing.
So there's like this universalcompany Sprint we had, where
people had to find ways toincorporate it, you know.
So we're just we're bigevangelists for it, we talk
about it so much, we shareexamples.
We have other things that are abit more structured, where
people are a bit more forced todo it and then by going to the
four day work week they're kindof forced to think about things

(55:49):
differently and try thingsdifferently.
And then of course they haveall these resources at their
disposal because we talk so muchabout it?

Sam Gerdt (55:56):
Are you encouraging the use of any other tools?

Chris Leone (55:59):
Yeah, like other AI tools.

Sam Gerdt (56:01):
Yeah, other AI tools.

Chris Leone (56:05):
Yeah.
So what I found is so there'ssome pretty cool ones out there.
Chatgbt, to me, is still thegold standard.
For the most part, bard hasupdated information, although I
find Bard can hallucinate more.
Clawed is really good atcontent and sometimes can outdo
ChatGbt on content.
There's a tool, piai, and thattool I think it's running

(56:26):
through the GPT for API, butit's more conversational in
nature, so it will ask youopen-ended questions and then
cause you to just think moreabout something.
So if you're trying to open upthe creative juices a little bit
and you're stuck, it's a greattool to kind of get going there.

(56:50):
Someone described it as like aChatGbt therapist, because
whatever you throw at it, itjust comes back and it says oh
so it sounds like you're sayingthis.
That must be hard.
Well, what about have youthought about this or what do
you do about that?
And it just gets the braingoing.
So, yeah, there are other toolsout there.
I've personally played withmid-journey for Image Creation,

(57:10):
dolly, and those are certainlyfun.
But since we're not a creativeshop and since you are in some
ways a bit limited there, youcan't upload company logos at
this point.
You can't upload company logosand then create banner ads or
whatever using it.
All that stuff's coming.
Photoshop is showing somereally impressive things that

(57:31):
it's coming out with, so I thinkthose will get baked in at a
very vertical level and ourindividual specialists will find
ways to use them.
But those are some of the threeor four that we use.
Chatgbt is certainly the lion'sshare of it.

Sam Gerdt (57:46):
Yeah, yeah, it's funny that you say that about
being a therapist, piai, that'sactually how I really started to
learn.
The most I think about ChatGbtis I knew I needed to force
myself to use it to learn how itworks, how it worked, to learn
what it was and wasn't capableof, because a lot of people
don't take the time tounderstand that it's not going

(58:08):
to be very good at certainthings and then they write it
off.
But what I started doing isanytime I had a task and wasn't
motivated to do that task, Iwould just plug it into GPT and
say hey.
I have this task.
I don't know where to start,I'm not motivated, I don't have
clarity on it, whatever.
And just see what it came backwith Yep and it would come back

(58:30):
with action steps.
And then you take it and yougive it a prompt.
That is an action step.
You say, ok, what's it going todo with this?
And I learned how to reallyhave a craft prompts to get good
outputs.
But also I learned how to thinkabout the LLM generally in
terms of what it is and what itisn't, because we tend to

(58:52):
humanize and anthropomorphize.
We also tend to assume oh, it'sAI, so it's good at math,
certain things like that.
But that's actually how Ilearned a lot about these LLMs
is just by talking to them as ifthey were someone who could
help.

Chris Leone (59:11):
And then I learned how they could actually be
helpful.
And then you were quick on thatpoint.
For education, it's huge, right, I think, first of all, even
kids every kid could have aprivate tutor that walks them
through these things and givesthem feedback for us training
people in a company.
If it had all that information,it could help train people.
But it also makes me think ofthis creativity comment that a

(59:33):
lot of people have, which isgoing to kill creativity.
But I pushed back hard on that.
I have never felt my creativitymore challenged than I do now,
because I'm no longer like ifyou go to a mid-journey and that
thing is just blanking at youand it's like I will create
whatever you can imagine, yeah,you're like I can't think of

(59:55):
anything.

Sam Gerdt (59:56):
I don't know.
Well, meanwhile you have thatconstant feed.
If you're in Discord, playingwith mid-journey you have that
constant feed of other people'sprompts, other people's stuff,
and you're seeing this massivemachine essentially just churn
out Right, right yeah.

Chris Leone (01:00:12):
And it's like the creative process to actually get
to a finished outcome requiresseveral things.
Right, like the initial ideaand then the execution of that
idea are kind of the two macroones right, when you're not
limited by your physical abilityto create.
It's like I have this idea forthis beautiful scene, but I'm

(01:00:32):
not good at oil painting, soit's going to look like crap.
We don't have to worry aboutthat, it's just tell me what
you're envisioning and you'relike oh, I'm envisioning this
very specific scene that hasthis, this, this, as I saw it in
a dream, and it's like I can'tget it out of my head and I want
to materialize it.
So it's really for me, it'sstretched my creativity in a

(01:00:52):
really positive way and I usedto do a lot more creative things
, like you know, art and music,before I was doing this job, and
I feel like that again becauseI'm not limited by the kind of
the technical limitations that Ihave on it.
Those are certainly veryimportant and we don't want to
lose those as these tools comeabout.
Those are still, I think,pretty important to the human

(01:01:14):
experience, but this allowspeople to create anything that
they want and we'll be able todo it with movies and music and
everybody will have the tools,what there's.
I think that's a one.

Sam Gerdt (01:01:27):
Well, and this is the .
So those who say AI makes usbetter, richer, happier as a, as
as a civilization, I think thisis what they have in their
minds.
You have a, you have a tool AIbroadly that is capable of
removing the friction betweenhaving a good idea, having an

(01:01:48):
imagination and executing onthat idea.
And what people are focusing onis, oh, but you know, it used
to be that there were, you know,specific people, specific
skills, specific talentsnecessary to accomplish these
things, and those all representjobs and you're going to take
all that away.
But what they're not seeing iseveryone can go from thinking

(01:02:11):
something to executing on itmuch easier.
So the, the potential togenerate value in the world just
went to the moon.
It went through the roof and youstart giving this to
imaginative, creative people wholack certain skills and they're

(01:02:32):
going to do really incredible,amazing things with it and I
think it's very short-sighted towant to take that away because,
you know, someone who has avery specific skill might have
to adapt.

Chris Leone (01:02:44):
Yeah, yeah, exactly .
I mean, how many Taylor Swift'sare?
Are there out there that thatwe don't know about because they
would never, ever sing, they'dnever let someone hear their
voice, or they've got somephysical disability or they
don't have the ability to playit yet, but they've got the idea
.

Sam Gerdt (01:03:02):
Or they lack self-confidence.

Chris Leone (01:03:04):
Yeah, all these things, yeah, all these things
yeah yeah, it's like we want toknow, let's, just what do you
have in your head?
Like, let's, let's empower youto show that to us and put it
out there.
So, yeah, I think there'sthere's so much good that's
going to come out of it and itmakes me excited for it.

Sam Gerdt (01:03:21):
Yeah, it seems to.
It seems to be driving ustowards a more level playing
field in terms of intelligenceand ability, and the people who
will most thrive with it are theones who can kind of unlock
that creativity.
I forget where it was, but Iheard somebody recently I think
it was on a podcast, talkingabout how you're we're getting
to this point, to where, youknow, someone with a low IQ will

(01:03:46):
have access to an AI assistantthat essentially raises their IQ
, raises, raises their abilityto a more average, a more
average level, and someone withan average IQ has that same
assistant and feels like theyhave something of a peer
intelligence, wise, that theycan throw work to and and and
find assistance in accomplishingthings.

(01:04:07):
And then someone who is ofhigher intelligence than has has
an assistant who is is more of,you know, a personal assistant,
less of a peer, more of asubordinate.
But but in all of that, the thethe greatest benefit is to the
one you know with that, the onewith the low IQ who's being

(01:04:28):
brought up a level and and andyou to a lesser degree, the one
who's more average, who's justfinding that there's, you know,
there's another one of me whocan, who can take some of my,
take some of my burdens off ofme.

Chris Leone (01:04:44):
Yeah, and it's, it's, it's.
It reminds me of what I heardwith as it relates to tutoring,
and this was a TED talk by theperson who runs Khan Academy.
It's a great watch where wherethey're talking about how
they're incorporating thesetools into their online tutoring
program, and one of the chartsthat they set the whole

(01:05:04):
discussion up with was that ifyou look at all the data we have
on on the impact of tutoringwith students, you find that,
with a tutor, a below averagestudent becomes an average, I
think like an average student,or even slightly above average,
and then an average becomes anexceptional one, and you'll be

(01:05:26):
able to create these.
Every kid will be able to havea tutor that can work with them,
who can coach them, whounderstands where that child's
challenges are and where theirstrengths are, and we'll be able
to put the material in a formthat the child can connect with.
So that's where what youdescribed is kind of working

(01:05:50):
with the educated population ofadults we have today.
Once every child has this attheir disposal, I think we'll be
a much more educated societyand a better performing one
overall.

Sam Gerdt (01:06:05):
Yeah, I think what I like tying it back to, though,
especially as it relates to you,with the effort that you make
in your own company culture.
The kind of business that you'vebuilt is you have employees,
I'm sure, who have individualchallenges that they probably
don't talk about.
They have roadblocks tounlocking efficiency, roadblocks

(01:06:30):
to unlocking better qualitywork, et cetera, and you give
them an LLM or a tool set, an AItool set that kind of solves
for some of those challenges,maybe even diagnosis them to a
certain degree, but solves forsome of those challenges.
I think there's incentive hereright now for bosses, for

(01:06:55):
employers, to say, okay, let'sget our people recognizing that
this is a reality and thinkingin these terms how can these
tools augment my workflows,augment my own habits in order
to make me a more efficient andhigher quality worker?

(01:07:18):
And this is where I think, interms of project management on
an individual level, timemanagement on an individual
level.
I was wondering if it wasanything that you'd given
thought to, because I know, formy own part, I've leveled up as
a result of tools in the lastsix months.

Chris Leone (01:07:39):
Yeah, I think it's important to note that this
isn't some silver bullet pancia.
There's still gonna bevariability in performance.
I just think overallperformance is gonna go up.
There's still gonna be a bellcurve.
The bell curve may be a littletighter because you could take
somebody on that far left of thebell curve in terms of

(01:08:02):
performance and make themadequate, right.
But to those who are alreadyexceptional, I mean, just
imagine what's gonna do for them, right?
So I think it's kind of arising tide thing, but there's
still gonna be variability to it.
I think it comes down to, firstof all is the company culture

(01:08:26):
really built to support thesetools and encouraging these
tools and investing in thesetools, right?
If they're not, they're notgonna be a benefit to get from
it.
And I still think it's gonnacome down to the individual.
Like, there's still choicesthat are gonna have to be made,
because generally, those whowant it, no matter how good they

(01:08:49):
are, even if they're not thatgood those who want it tend to
outperform those who don't wantit, right?
So there's still gonna be alevel.
It's not gonna solve everything,but I think on average it will
make people better, especiallythose who really lean into,
especially those who have agrowth mindset.
They're gonna continue to findand explore ways to use this to

(01:09:09):
their benefit and I thinkthey're gonna take off.
And I get excited for thosepeople who are kind of average
above average, who now becomeexceptional and they're playing
in this window now where they'reexceeding those who maybe,
naturally, are strongerperformance than they are but
are not using these tools yet.

(01:09:29):
So they'll kind of see theircell put themselves at a status
that they didn't know thatthey'd be able to get to.
I'm excited for them there.
I think if you apply toeverybody, you're gonna start to
see the variability that weknow today.

Sam Gerdt (01:09:44):
Yeah, well, it does seem like what you're saying,
though, is the way for anorganization to improve is to
have its employees, its people,and make the conscious choice to
improve.

Chris Leone (01:09:58):
Yeah, yeah, it's a tool.
Again, at the end of the day,it's a tool.

Sam Gerdt (01:10:03):
Yeah.

Chris Leone (01:10:04):
So, we gotta choose to use it.
We gotta get good at using it.
It's gotta be kind of acultural and operational thing
available to us.
But yeah, it's not, like I said, it's not the silver bullet,
but it's really powerful if wechoose to embrace it.

Sam Gerdt (01:10:21):
Yeah, choose to embrace it and choose to do good
with those increases Right yeah, exactly.

Chris Leone (01:10:28):
We're not just pocketing all the benefit, but
we're saying, well, what kind ofcompanies can we create now
that we have this?
Not every company needs to IPO.
Not every company should betaking on venture or private
equity.
It's okay to grow 10, 15% ayear and that's it.
That's okay.

(01:10:48):
You can still make a lot ofmoney and do really well.
Let's not over glorify thesegiant organizations who are
taking on all this debt in thename of growth, because they're
walking a very tight line.
It's just and I'm not sayingthat every business needs to be
this kind of like leisurebusiness, where you don't care

(01:11:08):
what happens to it.
I'm just saying that you canhave a more manageable growth
rate.
You're focused, you do goodwork, you're intentional about
what you do, you take care ofyour people and it all works out
.
It's like at some point, moreis not better.
More is not always better, and Ithink we're waking up to that.

Sam Gerdt (01:11:33):
Yeah well, you're not the first person I've talked to
who has said that it's going tobe all about the human
connection.
It's not going to be all aboutAI and compute, it's going to be
about the human connection.
Those are the people who aregoing to succeed.

Chris Leone (01:11:47):
Well, I've heard some of the people I was talking
to earlier about this wassaying it's going to really
emphasize the human connectionbecause that'll be the only
thing left to do.
Yeah, all this other, thesetools will analyze the data.
They'll be able to do the tasks.
We're going to spend more timebeing humans to each other, or
humans to the people in ourcircle or whatever, which is

(01:12:07):
good, we could use a dose ofthat.

Sam Gerdt (01:12:11):
I think so.
I think so.
Chris, I really appreciate youtalking to me.
I'm going to let you go.
It's been an amazingconversation.
You said you're seven weeks innow and you're going to evaluate
three months.

Chris Leone (01:12:25):
Yeah, we're evaluating as we go, but I think
we'll have a better data setafter three months to decide
where we're going to go fromhere.

Sam Gerdt (01:12:33):
Well, I will.
I'll keep track of it.
I will connect with you thenand just see how it's going, but
in the meantime, I appreciateyou talking to me.
I think that what you're doingis really good for your company
and for your people and I reallyrespect your willingness to
kind of disclose some of thosebehind the scenes things that

(01:12:56):
you're doing in order to improvethat culture.
Talk about motives, talk aboutmindset.

Chris Leone (01:13:01):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I appreciate you havingme on.
I love talking about this stuffand I'll continue to post it
and kind of tell the story asit's coming together.
Because I know people arereally interested in that and
hopefully we can connect tosometime down the road.

Sam Gerdt (01:13:17):
Yeah, so if anybody out there is interested, just
connect with Chris on LinkedIn.
He seems pretty responsive,happy to talk about it and we'll
see how it goes.
We look forward to seeing it,thank you.