In one of my latest podcast episodes, I got a chance to talk to Travis Chambers, Founder and Chief Media Hacker at Chamber Media. It was a pleasure to be able to pull back the curtain on his business’s implementation of the 4-day workweek so that we can see how he and his team do it and whether it’s effective.
Before we get into the conversation, though, I wanted to tell you guys a little bit about Chamber Media. They specialize in creating an assortment of social videos that drive scalable conversion. In just the last year and a half, they’ve successfully tripled the revenue for multimillion-dollar companies.
So you may be wondering, how could they pull all that off without working five days a week (or more) like the rest of us? Let’s find out.
Run Time: 29:39
Remembering the Hustle
“When I was in the corporate world, I had two weeks off a year. I was chained to a desk. […] My whole livelihood was dependent on the rest of the office physically seeing me in a chair every day. If I’m not in the chair, I’m done. Fired, laid off, downsized.”
Before he ran Chamber Media, Travis was doing what many of us consider commonplace. He recalled, “No one really knows your value, your worth. So they want you to come in and they want you to just be a workhorse. All they want is the hustle. And they want to see you earn. They want to see you do things that are beyond what you’re expected to do.”
And from this experience, Travis learned that “only the people who really go deep into the fast-paced hustle” are able to get ahead. He recalled that when he was at 20th Century Fox, he was working 70 hours a week, both weekdays and weekends, and he was “getting requests at midnight that were expected to be delivered by 10 am.” Then, Travis became a father, and that made him realize that something had to give. Yes, the money was good, but what good was all the money in the world if he didn’t have any time?
He said, “The more I looked, […] I couldn’t find a place where I could do really good work and really make amazing things, but also not be miserable.” That’s when Travis decided that if he couldn’t find a job that really worked for him and his family, he’d just have to create it.
And that’s how Chamber Media was born.
Travis Chambers’ Solution to Work Fatigue: The 4-Day Workweek
After founding Chamber Media, Travis found himself thinking back on his agency days, where he was one of the countless people who were “just run ragged” trying to keep up. And the more he contemplated it, the more curious he became about how a 4-day workweek would affect his business, his employees, and the morale at Chamber Media.
Travis said, “it’s been the most measurable, productive, effective thing that we’ve done.” Surprisingly, he has learned that implementing this concept provides his employees with the “perfect middle ground” because they “work their butts off for four days a week,” but they are able to shut off their work brains from Thursday evening until work rolls around again on Monday morning.
Boosting Creativity
The team at Chamber Media, due to the 4-day workweek, has seen a measurable increase in energy, leading to a boost in creativity. Travis noted, “It’s very difficult to be creative for eight hours a day for five days a week. When you go home, you’ve got a few hours at home to do other things and you got two days on the weekend. There’s not a lot of time for you to explore or to go have creative experiences.”
But at Chamber Media, employees get three days a week to completely disconnect, and “what happens is people come back on Monday […] completely refreshed. […] We’ve seen huge benefits from that.”
Is It Better for Business?
Of course, Chamber Media’s boost in creativity and team morale is a huge benefit, but what about PTO? Do employees feel that they can’t take time off because they’ve already got a three-day weekend each week? According to Travis, not at all. He finds that his employees will take an occasional Monday off too (giving them four days off), which allows them enough time to escape town for a few days and get the break they need. Travis even encourages them to do so once a month, and it doesn’t infringe on their two or three weeks off per year to take that big family vacation that we all dream of.
But let’s look at this from a cold, calculated capitalist point-of-view. The 4-day workweek allows for weekly “rest time,” which is long enough for the employee to recharge but short enough that the business doesn’t experience a disruption. According to Travis, “when someone takes four days off, they don’t really miss a beat. It doesn’t hurt the business in any way.”
But when employees work somewhere that boasts unlimited PTO, and they actually take a huge chunk of time away, the business suffers. The 4-day workweek seems to solve both of these issues: employee fatigue AND business disruption.
It Might Not Work for Everyone
Travis admitted, “there are a couple of people on our team that the 4-day workweek doesn’t work for.” For example, since most other companies operate off of a traditional 5-day workweek, as do schools, single parents may have trouble working out the scheduling issues that a 4-day workweek poses. These are the types of things you need to work out in the interview process.
Travis also did personality tests with everyone in our company. He admitted, “I think I had an incorrect assumption where I look at my personality and I assert that on everyone else.” This caused Travis to be more selective about who he hires. He’s tried to find people who would thrive in the 4-day workweek environment so that both parties, employer and employee, are happy with the job and all that comes with it.
From an Operations Standpoint
This discussion of the downsides of a 4-day workweek got me thinking. From a business operational standpoint, how does it affect relationships and projects with clients? I asked, “Let’s say a client has a deadline or people do need to finish a project over the weekend, how do you handle that?” Travis’s answer surprised me.
He planned to try out the 4-day workweek for one month, expecting that they would encounter issues just like the one that I had posed to him. But, surprisingly, he said, “We have had literally zero problems. Everyone is completely out Friday through Sunday. For the most part. We don’t even respond to clients or vendors on Fridays. […] It has been absolutely shocking how little problems we’ve had with deadlines, with client communication, with any of that, and the reason is just that we found that a lot of people don’t really get much done on Fridays anyway. They’re already checked out.”
Since the Chambers Media team is able to get that recharge that they need each week, Travis is finding that their productivity and relationship with big clients is on the rise. He mentioned, “We’re working with Potbelly. They’re a 400-location, casual fast food restaurant, kind of like Chipotle. They were on a crazy tight deadline with them because of this structure. We were able to come back within three business days. They were pretty surprised. They’re not used to that.” So, it seems that Chamber Media is surprising everyone with their ability to deliver for big clients without that extra day in the workweek.
Travis remarked, “It’s interesting. You know our revenue went up about 40% in the last year. We announced the 4-day work week eight months ago. I can’t help but think there’s a correlation there.”
To Learn More
Are you as shocked as I am? If you’re interested in hearing more about the 4-day workweek and Chamber Media, visit their website at www.chamber.media, or follow Travis Chambers on LinkedIn. And, as always, if you want to listen to the entire podcast, click here. Give it a listen and a review. See you next time!