Business Builders Podcast

The 4-Day Workweek Revolution with Sim Penzo

• Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian • Season 3 • Episode 48

Share episode

Text us your comments

In this enlightening episode, we sit down with Sim Penzo, Co-Founder of Codefish Studio, who took the bold step of transitioning his business to a 4-day workweek in 2022. Join us as Sim shares insights about how this change has improved work-life balance, boosted productivity, and given them a competitive edge in hiring.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Work-Life Balance: Discover how a 4-day workweek can enhance work-life balance, especially for employees with young families.

  2. Competitive Hiring Advantage: Learn how offering a shorter workweek can make your company more attractive to potential hires.

  3. Increased Productivity: Sim shares how focusing on outcomes and minimizing waste has led to a more productive team, despite working fewer days.

  4. Client Concerns: Explore how to manage and address initial client concerns regarding support and deadlines.

  5. Success Tips: Gain practical tips on ensuring you have a reliable team, automating processes, and anticipating client concerns before making the switch to a 4-day workweek.

Quotable Moments:

  • "AI doesn't necessarily need to replace us. But AI can augment our abilities, augment what we're doing so that we can get our staff doing jobs that are of more value to them and our clients.”

  • “Everyone was keen to have more time at home and just work less. I don't think why someone would think is a bad idea.”

  • “If they don't finish everything that I said they would have by Thursday, they, everyone brings their MacBook at home. And if they have a time in between family and other stuff on Friday, they'd just be working from home and finish off what they had to do.”

Conclusion:

Whether you're considering a shift to a 4-day workweek or just curious about different work models, this episode is packed with valuable insights from a business leader who's been there. Tune in to learn how a 4-day workweek could revolutionise your business.
 

Adapt_CO
Helping businesses find their new shape.

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

>> Follow us for more Business Builders goodness

>> Connect with our hosts on Linkedin


Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Business Builders Podcast. Until next time, KEEP ON BUILDING !!

Brenton Gowland:

Hey there Business Builders. Have you ever considered a four day workweek? Well, in this episode, we're talking with Sim Penzo, who successfully transitioned his business to a four day workweek. He'll be sharing his journey, the challenges, the benefits, and how its transformed their productivity. So stay tuned to discover how a shortened workweek could revolutionise your business. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Business Builders podcast. It's just me this week, Brenton Gowland, as Ron is off and he's recharging his batteries on another well deserved holiday. If you've been listening to the Business Builders podcast for any length of time, you'll know that my co host Ron has got his work life balance sorted out. That man make takes more holidays than just about anyone I've ever met and well done to him. I think I'm going to try and follow in his footsteps in the next year or so because I think I think he's got it right. Anyway, we will have run back in a couple of weeks. So we will look forward to that, or rather a couple of episodes. But if you joined us on our last episode, you'll know that we had a discussion with the futurist, Craig Rispin, and he was in Adelaide last week. And I was able to get along to the seminar that he delivered. And it was great. And I just wanted to share one of my key takeaways because there was a lot of questions in that seminar like Craig asked if people had questions. And someone invariably put their hand up and said, Craig, I feel like AI is going to take my job. And everyone kind of resonated with that. And I know that that's something that's flooding around for a lot of people at the moment. But Craig kept saying this thing over and over again, which I took a bit of took a bit of encouragement out of and it was the fact that Craig was talking about that one of the big things that people are trying to do with AI is to eliminate the mundane tasks, which of course, we can see why we're getting rid of mundane tasks in our businesses might remove people but Craig stressed that it wasn't meant to replace our employees, but rather empower them to take on more fulfilling responsibilities. For example, Craig shared about one company that reassigned about 70 staff from a tedious task really, and that was from document analysis, to doing other things, it was thanks to AI. And it was it was really interesting, because he said that this particular group of people were costing the business, you know, roughly a million dollars a year and the AI that replaced their mundane tasks was costing $100 a month. So that's pretty interesting in that so you can see how it would take away jobs. But it just so happens that we are in the middle of an employee shortage, it's very difficult to find employees at the moment. And the 70 staff in this particular business, were reassigned to much more interesting roles and fulfilling roles, that were going to, again, benefit the business because they couldn't find staff to fill roles. So there is some real possibility there in actually progressing people in your businesses through the use of AI. And I thought that was a really, really good. The other thing, an interesting concept that Craig touched on, was an emerging trend in businesses moving towards a four day workweek, which again, was partly made possible by AI. And so we thought, as we mentioned last week that we would get in sim pen Zhu, who's from a company called Code fish studio. And seem was pretty much one of the first businesses in Adelaide, who moved his whole company about a year ago to a four day workweek. And there's been a lot of people interested in it and have done case studies and so forth, and what seems doing, but we're really thrilled to have seen here today to do a deep dive into the how and why he actually got his business to move or transition to a four day workweek. And we think it'd be really good. If you're out there and you're contemplating a four day workweek for your business, we really want to highlight how sim went about making this happen. Anyway, a little bit about Sim, Sim hails from Venice, a rather rather well known spot around the world. And after he earned his degree in Industrial Design in Venice, he decided to move to Australia and I gotta really ask him why he did that, because Venice just seems like such an amazing place. But he's moved to Adelaide on an AI that seem loves Adelaide, in Australia in particular. So that's amazing. Anyway, when he moved to Australia, he founded a website development company with his brother. And they eventually evolved into an IoT company and seems a bit of a serial entrepreneur at heart. So he's also started a four wheel drive company that create aftermarket parts, rugged parts for four wheel drives. And I've had the privilege of hearing Sim's really inspiring journey to be honest, at a networking event just a little while ago, so I'm really excited for him to share it with all of us today. So without further ado, let's welcome Sim. Sim we're delighted to have you on our show.

Sim Penzo:

Thanks for having me.

Brenton Gowland:

That's okay. I just gave you a bit of a wrap there about your background and so forth and starting different businesses. So it'd be really good sim, if you could just tell us a bit about yourself and your background and your history, because it's a really, really good story.

Sim Penzo:

And that's good to hear everything started back in the days in Italy were my dream since I was a kid was starting and become an industrial designer. And I never change that perspective in my life always wanted to become one of those designers that play with clay and design cars. And this is something that is important for when we go back talking about the current situation. But since the Italian School of Design in Venice, that I finished in 2010, I already started working as a freelancer and doing some work on the side for my professors a uni. And they saw that I really wanted to start doing some work and getting some money because I was living by myself a really since I was 17 years old. So I never considered in my life working for someone else has always been, I'm going to be a freelancer, and I'm going to manage my own time. So she's then us open up an industry design company like a firm, and I was working as a solo freelancer and working for different businesses was one week I was designing brand for babies. And other week I was designing watches. And other week I was designing Kaurna for stores and shops. So a lot of different types of projects. Until the day when I decided all of a sudden that I want to change lifestyle. Nothing was wrong in Italy, everything was going pretty good. It's just just a normal life. Nothing extraordinary. And I was like if I want to move and change my life, it is the right time to do it. I'm 21 Let's do something about it.

Brenton Gowland:

At the time I take it.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah. So at 21 I started looking into California, like everyone looked at the American dream, first of all.

Brenton Gowland:

Sure.

Sim Penzo:

And was simply just too hard to find a visa to get on the other side of the planet, and actually doing some work because in America, you can only go there as a tourist and get a tourist visa, so you can't work otherwise, he's going to be pretty tough. And I did not speak any English. So there wasn't any chance to even find an opportunity in three months time we do do tourist visa to actually get to work for someone. So someone else came back from Australia and is like same if you want to go away from Italy, Australia is a really good chance you can get a visa for a year or you can actually work without doing any cash job. So I found myself just changing my blind completely forgot my bags, shut down my apartment. Like if I'm never gonna go back anymore. And people were taking like crazy like you surely you're going to come back into a year time. And since then, I just closed the door. I remember rather than a video of me shutting the door like typical vloggers which I'm not one of them.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, okay.

Sim Penzo:

And who my phone which is still give me goosebumps these days, because I knew in my head that I would have never gone back by the same time. I didn't know what it would have been out there for me what my future will look like and if I knew that I would have made it somehow.

Brenton Gowland:

Are you going to post that one day online.

Sim Penzo:

Maybe yes, maybe when I have a good anniversary one day of I don't know.

Brenton Gowland:

From here to here.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah. 20 years in Australia to Australia with no English whatsoever? Move in Australia. We're not English because it's the last the only thing that I did not study at as this study at school, but I was really bad at as a typical Italian. I was thinking in my head I don't need English, Italy is the best place to be. I'm going to work my life in Italy. So what's the point?

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, sure.

Sim Penzo:

And then all of a sudden I found myself sitting at Southern Cross Station in Melbourne without planes without black really bare bone English. And I was sitting next to a homeless guy. And this homeless guy just came to me start speaking Australian which was a completely different story definitely no nothing like English the listeners cool. And he basically asked me to help him out with a SIM card because was trying to recharge his iPad and I was like wow, Australia, homeless people have iPads with us and I must be a great country.

Brenton Gowland:

That's good.

Sim Penzo:

So I had a chat with him he told me what to go I did not have a location where to stay accommodation and anything.

Brenton Gowland:

So you moved to Australia no English no accommodation, no plan?

Sim Penzo:

No plan nothing.

Brenton Gowland:

That's adventure. Yeah.

Sim Penzo:

I don't remember was 38 kilos of bag with everything I could take with me.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, okay.

Sim Penzo:

Like my portfolio a lot. A lot of ways was like paper drawings and all that stuff. That wouldn't be handy to go for interviews. That was the idea. And four days later, I met a guy from Adelaide. There is a businessman and he's been travelling a lot back and forth from Adelaide, Melbourne, hello, Mo and II somehow picked on my accent. He understood where I was coming from where his parents are from in Italy. Wow. And we may disconnect straight away out of the blue in a nightclub on a Thursday night. Fantastic. And he says, I just want to hang out we do when I come over to Melbourne and since then we started going out for dinners. And he started learning about me and what I want to do in life. And somehow, we clicked and he convinced me a few weeks that the place to be in Australia was Adelaide to start a business.

Brenton Gowland:

If you're listening internationally, you can hear right from Sim that Adelaide is the place to be.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, so Melbourne has been great for the first year. I just had a lot of parties, you know, one year 21 years old that's what you think.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah I lived on and off in Melbourne for one year. It was great.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah. So I did a year there knowing that I wouldn't move to LA. So I was like, let's have fun this year. And then we'll see later, and we get serious later down the track. Yep, 30 a year in Melbourne, then I was forced to do the farm work. So I had to pick oranges for four months to get my second year of visa. That's how it works here. So I found myself going towards Adelaide. So I went to Aruba land, and I stopped picking oranges in berry at four months of picking oranges living out of a tent with another three guys in the farm in the middle of the orange trees. And I was working still for as a freelancer for my Italian customers. I was designing products in a tent with the power that we had thanks to the farmer.

Brenton Gowland:

So when you're 21, so we won't say how many years ago, but we'll say that's more than 10. Yeah, you were doing international work from a tent in berry while picking oranges for industrial design clients. Yes. Isn't that fantastic?

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, that was good fun. Back in the days, it was no responsibility whatsoever. It was a really good time of my life. I would probably not do that again. Yeah, it was great. And then after that, I just found myself in Adelaide, try to put a life together. So everything started from doing any job that was available there. And I found myself in East terrace making coffee as a barista. Yep. And that was the first opportunity for me to talk to people and see people multiple times a week grabbing a coffee. And while I was making coffee.

Brenton Gowland:

How was your English at that point?

Sim Penzo:

I was it was a year of English kind of hard learning fast learning English was getting better. But people were really open. And they were intrigued probably by my story. So they actually went through my heart accent and my bad English and they wanted to know me more about me. That's when they were really supportive. I always had people outside. They told me how are they so conservative is hard to get break into the network and stuff like that. But I don't believe it was an issue for me. But just being there being like, a nice person doing the right things, it will open the doors for you, I would support you. So that was Adelaide and the network that I've built in this town is one of the main reason why I'm still in Australia.

Brenton Gowland:

So how did you go from being you've come from Venice, you've ended up in Melbourne, you spent a year getting to know the culture a bit in Melbourne having a bit of fun. You came to Adelaide? How did you go from doing any job to running a web business?

Sim Penzo:

Well, I knew there was a short period in my life that I needed to go through to establish myself to a new country. So there had to be done. While I was thinking ways to open up a new business, which opened up a new business not as the immigrant and now having any sort of proper visa is really hard in Australia, which is a great thing, Australia believe. And so while I was making coffee, I was always looking for opportunities and started talking to people and I understood there were a lot of websites that needed to be made in Australia and and I didn't do any website. By then I was still an industrial designer and I wanted to be an industrial designer never learned to be a coder. never learned to be a coder still don't know anything about coding. And I just call my brother and I said, Just tell your mom that you're coming in Hollywood see your brother and see if we can work together my brother back in Italy. He started called Fish studio. And he was running code fish to win another four or five guys. Yeah, okay. And we now work together. He's four years younger than me. So you get to that phase when you're 18 that you're the big brother and younger brother is still too young to even spend time together.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Sim Penzo:

Because he's not adult enough.

Brenton Gowland:

My my brother's 13 years older than me. So I get that.

Sim Penzo:

So, so at 22 That was I was 22 Yeah, he was 18. So I was like, Cool. Now you pass the test. We can be friends now. And we can maybe work together. So he came over for holiday. And we didn't that holiday was three months, the maximum amount of time it can be the visa. We just put together a business together with another ugly guy. So we started could the studio in Australia and we are really hard first year because you have to prove a lot to Australia government need to prove the profitable that you can pay for your visa. You need to hire Australians before you hire yourself which is another tough thing to go through. And since then, we've just started I was designing the website, I became an a UI UX designer out of the blue. And it was building them. Certainly what I studied at uni, as an industrial designer helped a lot like the process of how you design a product and terrible product is exactly the same all over software interface. So there was nothing different. So yeah, we just grow from that.

Brenton Gowland:

And I gotta ask, how did you know that? Your brother could come out here and do this? I think when you were talking about networking event, you said you ended up getting a website for 10 grand before your brother came?

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, that was the click to get him on board. And how'd you pick up the web? Go on. Yeah, sorry. Yeah. Now there was being a barista, and just talking to your customers, and now found out and it's nice that there was a website to be made. And I was like, oh, maybe we can do it. I have a company sort of, and I'll give it back to my brother, and we can just make it work. That's fantastic. It was$10,000, which sounded a lot of money, because in Italy back then was 1000 euros. Everything you could have got for a website really is a mega difference. Yeah,

Brenton Gowland:

Really? That's interesting. I thought it would have been Europe kind of leading the way there cuz Australia, you know, sometimes we, we think that Australia's always following.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah. 100% Australia, we have probably three times as the salaries are three times bigger than the italion ones.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. Okay, interesting. So you brought your brother out here, you started code fish Studio, you had to jump through a whole heap of hoops with the Australian Government to get it up and running, which you obviously did. And then what happened.

Sim Penzo:

And then we've just been growing project by project. And we just getting involved into more complex systems and software that was needed by different companies and from web. So we quickly switched into more web dashboards. And mobile applications, which was what Jake was doing back in Italy was fully focused on mobile applications. Were just more complex projects harder to get in Australia, especially when you can't sell yourself because you don't speak English, and all that sort of stuff. So it was hard, then people were giving me a lot of trust, even not, knowing that I wasn't selling our company, in a really nice way, was lacking a lot in terms and how you sell a business. Our business work in Australia is completely different.

Brenton Gowland:

How long ago was that? It was 10 years ago. So you've learned a lot since in

Sim Penzo:

Since then has been Yeah, a challenge or a year, we had like different challenges to go through. And understanding how businesses run in Australia, but is substantially easier, because there's less bureaucracy, there's less tax to pay, there's less tax to pay here are much less, I will say awful. He needs to you pay double the tax. And you get probably a third of what you get here as a services.

Brenton Gowland:

Well you've heard it here. First, everyone, if you did not, there was an article in the advertiser today about people being shocked about their tax returns not getting what they used to get, and so forth.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, if you don't travel around the world, you don't understand what you have at home. Yeah, that's why I'm really a big advocate of Adelaide, Australia in general, because as I know what happens out there. I experienced that as a freelancer, I had to pay my tax, which was much higher than running a business here in Australia. People in Italy, they they say often as they work, is there to pay for the taxes not to leave their life. Yeah, interesting. is almost 60% of your money goes into tax.

Brenton Gowland:

That's that's really high. You know, that there's other countries I have heard of, I won't go into details at the moment have hit other countries tax again is a lot higher, and they equalise people who are lower income and higher income tax schemes and so forth, and that Australia's a lot lower than that yet. I know where we live here, because we've got one perspective, we think it's pretty tough.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, then, in the last 10 years, both things have changed. And I don't think for the better for Italians. So anyway, I live here. Now I'm fully focused on the economy here and how things work here. But

Brenton Gowland:

I think from knowing you seem for a while, we're very lucky to have you here in Adelaide. And I know the word code fish does. And I think code Fisher, one of the best studios that I've come across in the IoT space from the work that I've seen you guys do really, really impressive work. But it kind of highlights to me. You've got a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit, you see an opportunity, and you go and grab it. So what we want to talk about today, you have taken code for studios, so your brother's fully here with you now all the time as well. You convinced him to your parents come over here yet?

Sim Penzo:

Nah, no. Yeah, they came back for a month, few weeks through the time just to visit you got other brothers and sisters. Just myself and Jay, You know that.

Brenton Gowland:

You brought your brother all the way across the world away from your parents.

Sim Penzo:

Yes.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, boy.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

Not popular at the Christmas table, you.

Sim Penzo:

No.

Brenton Gowland:

but anyway, moving on to the four day where Quick. So that's what we want to talk about. So what motivated you you got a great team doing great work, you're working five days a week? What's the story behind you switching to a four day workweek? What happened? What was the thinking process? And why did you do it?

Sim Penzo:

Well, there was COVID time. So since 2020, obviously, everyone, we had to leave and experience the lock down. And during that lockdown, we quickly understood that as employers and our team, we did not enjoy working remotely every day that forced remote work was an a thing for our culture, we we work a lot as a team. And we know that we get stuff done much faster when we are sharing the same desk. So with that in mind, I started tinkering around, how do we are we going to run the business in the future, if this is something that's gonna go for a long term, we need to figure it out, because running the business for me is having fun. Otherwise, I don't have fun wants to point out just gonna work for someone else

Brenton Gowland:

You just move to another country.

Sim Penzo:

Or move to another country? Yes. So we started thinking about different options and opportunities. And of course, I also am back in the back of my mind, I was, What 3132 And start thinking about family. And as a business owner, I'll always feel that my decision impact a lot, our team. And if I want something as a human out of my businesses, I asked myself, what my employee would think about it, how they're going to react to it. So for me thinking about myself, in a few years time being becoming a father, I was certainly thinking, I would like to be able to work a bit less and have more time at home to look after my family.

Brenton Gowland:

So you're thinking about your future work life balance?

Sim Penzo:

Yeah. So because the studios has to give me the ability to shape my life the way I want. And by start thinking about more work more lifetime, of course, I start considering the idea of pulling out in front of my guides and say, what if we were to work and be less from the office? So is a bit of given and take? What if you start working a bit less? Are you more time for your lies? And because I would like to do that, too, when I become a father, and we just start working?

Brenton Gowland:

Because you'll boss to worry, you have to do that. Because if you're the boss, you can I've seen bosses do it all? Yeah, I'll take four days a week, but they won't give it to their staff.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah. Maybe

Brenton Gowland:

What made you think about them.

Sim Penzo:

Many other people, business owners, they probably think I should have done that. But that's the way I believe I should run the business. So always, yeah, action that you perform as a business leaders, they're gonna definitely create consequences on the other side. So I was really concerned about my team. Yes, the action about any decision, I've taken the businesses, what my team is gonna think about it. So we sat down all together, we take a lot of decision, business decision all together. As a team, everyone is in the meeting with us. When we take a decision. When we hire new people, we freak out new candidates when they come in the office, and they found shelving for five or six people. And they're like what's going on here? And is never My decision is our team decision. So as we do that, for new candidates, we did that for the four days a week. So we sat down, it was the beginning of 2022. And we said to them, would you mind? Should we go to a bit of a salary increase? And we're talking about 10 15%? At least? Yep. Or would you guys like to have more time at home? Were we actually not working from home are we actually leaving life at home, we tried to do some tasks and dealing with the kids, a lot of them had new newborn babies, or young kids. So they definitely want to spend time with their kids interesting. And again, to remove any sort of concern for me as a business owner that everyone would have been productive, which probably they would, I just wanted the energy in the room. So I wanted people to bring the energy at work and work together. For the same reason I said before, just enjoy working together. And without a doubt, everyone was keen to have more time at home, and just work less alone think why someone will think is a better idea. So from 37, half hours, we went to 32 hours, which is monitored Thursday, eight hours a day,

Brenton Gowland:

that's what you lost five and a half hours

Sim Penzo:

and a half hours less per person, and everyone was still getting paid the same salary.

Brenton Gowland:

Right? So if I'm hearing you correctly, the reason you decided to do this was you were projecting forward and thinking when I have a family, I need to have a work life balance. But you're also looking at the staff at work going they're having kids and I'm watching their lives. And I see myself in them. And what I'm kind of hearing is you thought well, I want this kind of lifestyle when I've got a child. What about my staff? Wouldn't they want that kind of lifestyle as well, which made you put the question to them, so you weren't just going to offer them a day off you were going to offer them a raise. Why were you going to offer them a raise? Was that just time for everyone to Have a raise or you wanted to keep people you were afraid of losing people? What's the story?

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, there was definitely how can I be competitive in this industry where the salaries are going up, like without any limits that were getting really ridiculous, right. As a smaller company, you can compete with startups, they just got some a funding round of$10 million in their money really

Brenton Gowland:

exciting because all the actions happening there

Sim Penzo:

are, they're just all about, oh, we get the best people and we just pay no matter how much money they're asking for it, we just pay them. So you can't compete with them. So you need to provide to your team something is more than just money, which is the way around my business anyway, from day. So there's

Brenton Gowland:

a secondary motivation here than just having work life balance. It's about how do we have a competitive advantage in the hunt for talent?

Sim Penzo:

Yes, which is not necessarily just an economic advantage. Yep. And look,

Brenton Gowland:

with the businesses I've run. We've had a lot of developers and so forth. And I've had developers and we had a chat, obviously, before we started this podcast. I've had developers working from the UK. And we've been doing around the clock kind of stuff. I've had developers working in Bali, who are Australian who are on holiday, just working on a beach. And that all works and there's this flexibility. There are a really a kind of people who like to have flexibility in the way they work. They like to work within certain parameters and so forth. So I can see why you're wanting to offer a four day workweek is appealing to them, because it gives them either time off to be with a family work on a new endeavour or whatever they like, I guess. Yeah, exactly.

Sim Penzo:

In that time prove of these guys been still really keen to be part of the studio as a culture as a team. They are proud to be wearing the cultish hoodies when they go around town, talking about code Fisher, that's super important for me. And obviously, we were growing like we've been growing for the last six years now stop in, in a really comfortable pace. Nothing crazy, nothing crazy at all. But growth requires more developers and other roles in the business. So we've been hiring probably a couple of people per year, so nothing fantastic. But still his nice ongoing and comfy growth and hiring people in this market was getting harder and harder. So again, wasn't about overpay them, and then not being able to justify their salary and fire them two years later, because you can cover their salaries was more about how do I make the culture even stronger? How can I offer them things that are not just the salary. And obviously, four days a week became something really appealing for the new candidate. And that obviously brought his own challenges because sometimes you find yourself that people apply simply for their four days a week, and then they apply in. And there are those people that might be slacking away. And they're like, Oh, that's nice, I can work less they only think about working less than nothing else. And it's also hard to you need to filter them out.

Brenton Gowland:

So it sounds like your team helps you with that. Because if you got the new candidates coming in facing six people.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, so my job there's always there that point during the conversation, maybe after half an hour that we've been tattooing the new candidate someone bring out their card and who's like how do you know about the four days a week gaming, someone comes, someone reacts with all while didn't know about it, whether or not they're faking it or not, is a good is a good feedback from I was like, Cool. The guys was really liking the business or lacking the culture. It was the last gap to play.

Brenton Gowland:

So it really is a competitive advantage. But I was talking about with us having developers on beaches and stuff was we had so much trouble finding developers would almost say yes to anything they wanted. Yeah, in all seriousness,

Sim Penzo:

as an employer, you feel like you have no chances that you say yes to anything

Brenton Gowland:

you want to work in the UK. Absolutely. As long as you're working for us. So I can understand that gives you a really good competitive advantage. So you moved to four day workweek. It sounds like your team pretty proud of that, because they're throwing that out as the card when they really want someone to join the business. Because it's really smart. If you've been able to get your employees on board to help with those kinds of decisions. Sounds to me like a good team environment. But what I want to ask you is what are some of the initial challenges in moving to a four day work week? And how did you overcome those challenges?

Sim Penzo:

Were definitely the first one was, we were worried about our clients reaction. So obviously, we were like, are we gonna go out there to our customers? Should we call them one by one, whoever meeting for me was almost like, almost like going through a breakup or something is like, Okay, this is literally still clients, I need to put this forward in the best way possible. So the client will be happy for us to still be looking after them before this week. Okay. Probably the question that we were expecting was, what are you guys going to do in a day that you're not working? Where's the support that is supposed to happen and all this sort of stuff? So we went through client by client understanding where were the weak points in our relationship? Yep. And what work around those weak points to make sure that everyone was comfortable without decision. And then all of a sudden, we found ourselves in a really good position, because any Klein was about to say happy for our team. And they're like, What was the main reason they gave you for that day? Or sounds like you're really looking after your team, your team is gonna be an epi team. Therefore, the product that comes out of your office should be better because you're looking after your guys.

Brenton Gowland:

So your clients responded really well to it not in at all the way you expect it.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah. And especially those client where I'm dealing with not necessarily the owner of the business, but someone that works for the business. They're like, Oh, I wish it was kind of work for you.

Brenton Gowland:

Did any of the owners ring you up and say, Hey, see him? Yeah.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, hire some jokes around it. But I guess people, obviously, it's not an easy decision is not something for any business, any industry. But business owners are trying to keep that quiet while they can. Yeah, anti Bravo, they're gonna have this pressure from outside that they're gonna have to do something about it. Well, there's probably there wouldn't be a deal scenario because they won't have time to react to it. So I'd rather be ready and prepare before the wave comes.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. Well, in the war for staff, there's a lot of stuff going on. So I think the path you have chosen is if you can make it work for your business. That's great. Were there any other challenges? Or you just thought there would be challenges, but they didn't end up being challenges?

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, the other one was, basically how do we become 100% billable, which was a big point, because when you're on a business full time, there's a lot of ethical ways to time I'm so tired, that you're not billing your customers was

Brenton Gowland:

working seven and a half hours a day, they really only billing out five hours.

Sim Penzo:

So we've been doing that for a long time. We are one of those businesses that do not charge eight hours a day. We haven't done there for forever. Why is that? Because I always felt like this transparent and clear relationship with our customers. And I was like, if I say, I'll tell you that my guys will work eight hours for you today. Everyone knows there is not going to be eight hours of productive work. It's really hard to do that. Because if you want to do eight hours work, probably you're going to work nine and a half hours because you need a breaks, you need this. And so from them, we say, okay, a business around on five days, you know that you can have probably we 80% of billable hours, you might be happy you covering the cost and you're all happy. And it's probably a sweet spot. Yeah. But we'd have four days a week, you need to be as much billable as possible. So your team needs to be sitting on the desk to work that is paid. Yeah. And so now looking back in a year and a half time, since we started a four days a week, we are definitely billing more hours than what we were three years ago. Yep. And so the output is proportionally much better than what he was on five days ago by removing meetings that were necessary. So we only running fewer meetings when they're unnecessary, right? We run meetings with clients that are mostly paid. Therefore clients, they just go straight to the point. So

Brenton Gowland:

in other words, your client meetings in the past weren't paid. So when a client came in to talk about a project not charged,

Sim Penzo:

it was it was more of a business development, which is part of the relationship with a customer, which not necessarily is that not the right thing. And many companies are really solid that issue for me as a startup, still, no small team, I never had the feeling of charging there was like part of the profit of each project was covering that time spent in meetings. But now we became much more performing team, we know what the value that we provide to customers. So the customer know that you first sit down table with ask they're gonna have only the right people involved in that specific project. And everyone is sitting there because they're bringing value to the table. No one is there just listening to a conversation, but one is there to participate.

Brenton Gowland:

So how close to 100% billable i Then last month,

Sim Penzo:

especially last month, it was a massive step up to close the financial year, and we were close to 95% of billable hours, right, which are almost hit what close fish can charge in a month. So

Brenton Gowland:

you're in a nutshell, what I'm hearing is this is that when you were doing five days a week, there was a whole lot of non billable hours. Right. So in other words, you're working, let's say for argument's eight hours a day. We know that that's actually seven and a half hours, but you got seven half hours you pay your employee for their billing out five hours. So that's like, Is that about right? Was it five or six hours that you were billable a day? Yeah, six was acceptable. Six, yeah. All right. So you got an hour and a half for each employee every day. That's non billable, and you've got a certain amount of staff. Let's add that up. Then you've got meetings with clients that were non billable, which I'm assuming you'd have a couple of meetings where how many meetings did you have internally?

Sim Penzo:

It was almost every day we had like project specific meetings, which now we don't do anymore. We only have master meetings with clients. You it and they're charged and charged, and a part of the project management fees that we charge and we never charged before.

Brenton Gowland:

So what I'm hearing is that you were basically wasting a day on a five day week and 2% billable hours. And now with four days, you're basically billing the same

Sim Penzo:

and billing the same. And I have less to waste of time. So I feel like the team is more productive. Wow, that's exceptional. Now, of course, some business owner, they're like, well, so why don't you go back to five days a week, so you can be even more productive than what you were have before. And this is not how it works, is by giving your guys about lifestyle, less time at work, is the only way to get into perform a bit harder and above the on average. So now everyone is more concerned about the outcome or output at the end of the week. On Thursday afternoon. They need to have everything done. They told me they would have boy Andy,

Brenton Gowland:

I wonder if businesses really cleaned up efficiency. How many days a week they'd be saving. I reckon this businesses that could do a three day work, we can do exactly the same amount. Because there's so much redundancy. How many meetings, staff meetings do you have a week now? That's just the business?

Sim Penzo:

A real honest one on Monday morning? 830? Yeah, which is an hour. Yeah. And we go through team goals and people's goals. So

Brenton Gowland:

okay, so what if people don't achieve their goals in a week, then what happens?

Sim Penzo:

Let's say that, first of all, we don't have unachievable goals, we are pretty smooth running and hitting the marks every week. Yeah. But if they don't finish everything that they said they would have, by Thursday, the everyone brings their MacBook at home. And if they ever time in between family and other stuff on Friday, we just be working from home and finish off.

Brenton Gowland:

So they don't get a four day work week if they don't complete what they've said. They're going to do

Sim Penzo:

it that way. But he does not happen often enough to even think about that way.

Brenton Gowland:

Think about the motivation there. Yeah, if I get my work done, what I say on a Monday by Thursday, I don't have to work on a Friday. Yeah, exactly. That's interesting, because to me, that would motivate people to say, but it also means you're not going to over promise, because over promising in the business can be a real problem, particularly for client deadlines and so forth.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah. And we tackled debt, over promise from early stages in the process when we are estimating a project. So estimation time is really important to us who's going to do the task? Who's going to do the estimate for us? So the numbers on the paper out what they set out to be? Yep,

Brenton Gowland:

it needs to meet it. Well, that the what I'm hearing is the four day workweek is also giving you a framework to keep your people on track. And a leverage point.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, 100%. And they know that the way the policy is written is a temporary policy is still calling the four days a week a trial. Yeah, every six months, there's a review that. So if they want to keep it, they got to perform, they are performed, we need to perform as a team, we need to be profitable as a team, because I tell them all the time that for me be more profitable means being able to give them salary increase, because that's all I want is giving them the lifestyle they want. Yeah, being able to afford mortgages, be able to do whatever they need to do with the kids.

Brenton Gowland:

It sounds to me like there's a whole heap of other benefits. To me, it's using that four day workweek framework to make sure the business stays focused and productive, that you're giving your people a better lifestyle. But it's also because it started out as in negotiation from what I'm understanding from you. Yeah, definitely was back and forth between the employees. And I know, because I remember talking to you at the time, because we've known each other for a few years now is that when you kick this off, was it a six month trial, initially,

Sim Penzo:

three months and then became a six month trial? So the first was three months, because I was really worried that we couldn't finish off things and projects. And probably that was one of the other challenges that we forgot to mention earlier. Yeah. The fact that ongoing projects when the day that we switch from five days to four days, we had to be really careful with deadlines, because of course, you cannot meet the same deadlines with the same amount of people with less amount of time. Otherwise, it means that you're just overcharging customers. Yes. So that was a tricky time where we had to actually run to finish the projects in time. Yeah, but now that we are designing and planning every project based on the four days a week, so we are basically back and normal would even say normal speed because the business is definitely running faster with a much better pace. But there was something to consider, like a timeline needs to be considered once you be aware start working with less than a week.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, it sounds like the overall response from the team has been really really positive. Have there been any unexpected benefits or drawbacks?

Sim Penzo:

Well as just said the probably an unexpected one was the business pace. The reason that we run the business today is much faster. Really because you start the day you start the day on Monday and then you arrive to the end of Tuesday days already off for the week gone. And people are really start thinking about the weekend. is like what we need To get this stuff done between Wednesday and

Brenton Gowland:

Thursdays. Yeah, that's interesting. Tuesday becomes hump day.

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, exactly. And then Thursday at 4pm becomes drinking time, like B o'clock. Yeah. Okay. So even there, we had to adapt a lot, because B is sometimes the star flowing at 330 in the afternoon Fridays, and as acceptable again, because five days a week. That's why you're one of the things that you're saying. At least me as a business owner. Yep. But now we four days a week, we cannot allow ourselves to have a couple of hours, not billable. Yeah, drinking time, because there's literally is not Thai for it. So we tend to stay longer on Thursday night to get the beers together.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, well, that's good. That's a culture there to be a bit

Sim Penzo:

of rules there as well to make sure. And often I'm the one that pushed out bringing gin and tonics to people's tables. So I just stopped doing a B to Elena to be late as at

Brenton Gowland:

the Italian hospitality thing. Oh, yes. So I've got Italian relatives who are very hospitable people, it's always drink this eat that. I'm probably being a little bit stereotypical here. But it's actually gotten Italian father,

Sim Penzo:

here, wherever, yeah, and how a teen time o'clock when I just bring tea in time to everyone every day. And then drinking on Thursday, and then lunch together on Wednesday. So all that stuff, which is almost like everything now is planned to happen at a certain time to that week, because there's no time to just make a random thing.

Brenton Gowland:

Fantastic. How's the shift in your work schedule impacted your lifestyle and your work life balance?

Sim Penzo:

Probably, as I said before, focusing on clothes, fish, man is Thursday. And having all the responsibilities in that kind of more compressed timeframe during the week is something let me slow down and relax a bit in three days, rather than two days a week. So on Fridays, like today is the great ages just slow down and do other things that you wouldn't do otherwise without that day? Yeah. So it's definitely grey, and is the same for the guys on the team. So that was a, we'd done this because I wanted that for myself. But I want that for them as well.

Brenton Gowland:

So what do you do with your day off sim,

Sim Penzo:

but with our lead off, Jake, and I we decided to start another business? Because of course, like what do you do on Friday?

Brenton Gowland:

I love that, right? Because it's that spirit of an entrepreneur. So I work four days a week. So does that keep you fresh with code fish, because you I know business owners and I've worked with a lot of them, they've realised that being the owner of the business becomes a whole nother job. And they used to be a industrial designer like yourself. So they get no time to do that anymore. Because all of a sudden their life becomes managing and inspiring people selling. doing all the things that are managing director or CEO does

Sim Penzo:

exactly an A something that I absolutely love. But it drains you. At the end of the week, you some periods, you actually thought to keep thinking about everyone what everyone's doing. The projects are going if the clients are happy, or this sort of stuff. So working on another business, which is a startup, which is letting me be creative. At the end of the week, being creative, for me is an important part. And I'm proud to be able to do that. 10 years later, I went back to doing what I was dreaming when I was at uni students, which is being industrial designer design stuff for the sake of designing product, because I love doing that. And again, we just we designed a space for us to be able to be super profitable and productive for coffee studio Monday, Thursday, and then Friday and Saturday sometimes become these other business space. So

Brenton Gowland:

that's really interesting, because often they talk about Google giving their staff a certain amount of time to work on projects that love your four days a week has given you a whole day to work on things you love. And I know when we were talking before you you said that later today, you're going to be underneath the car scanning it's yesI and creating new products. So how cool is that?

Sim Penzo:

Yeah, it's great. So you just is a day when I'm not looking at the phone? And um, no need to dress up nice to go in front of clients and I'm just enjoying whatever we decided we need to do for that business. And so what's your new business called? J KSM? Off Road?

Brenton Gowland:

JK SM off road. So folks, if you're listening check out Jay KSM off road is it How long has it been running now sim I will

Sim Penzo:

say six months or eight months and we're just designing and manufacturing off road rugged accessories, four wheel drives, they're fantastic. And he's everything is here done in Adelaide, which is awesome to be able to work with suppliers and again, the stuff that I was doing back in the days when I was industry designer. Yeah. And he's great to see the little community here in South Australia which is not big like manufacturing, we know that we are lacking a bit of it. So for me being able to provide those sorts of jobs like hiring industrial designer is not an easy thing in South Australia and being able to do that is really nice,

Brenton Gowland:

fantastic. Okay. So, look make sure you check out J consumers. So J K S M offer offer out. And also check out code fish studio because gopher Studio does some great work and they're doing four days a week now and producing the same amount of work. That's fantastic. But as this is the Business Builders podcasts in, we always provide practical advice and actionable insights for the listeners. So, in wrapping up, can you give us your top three tips for businesses that are thinking or considering implementing a four day workweek?

Sim Penzo:

Yes, first of all, is a reality check. Can you rely on your team, being able to trust your team to wanting to be part of this new policy wants you to be able to work harder to then get this extra day off at home, he's super important that needs to happen. If you don't have a team that you can rely on, it will be really hard to switch to four days. Then the next one is automate as much as you can as like your processes internally. Are you manage your business? Do you have the tools to be able to manage and making sure you're not micromanaging people and going crazy just spending time in meetings to see what everyone is up to, but having the software that tells you what everyone is up to? So that saves your time in meetings?

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so when you're talking about automation, you're talking about every task that is menial and gets in the way? Exactly. So do you use AI for that

Sim Penzo:

developers are playing with AI in some smaller tasks, they love testing, AI testing different AI tools to fry snippets of code, trying to cut corners on those exercises that are not really important for our customers products.

Brenton Gowland:

Because that was a big thing with the futurist that we spoke to last episode was talking about getting rid of those mundane tasks, finding an AI for that,

Sim Penzo:

yeah, under percent, and then we use it a lot for to help us exploring option. When we do scoping workshops with our clients, there's a lot of data entry that we do into our AI like typical GPT, there's a lot that you need to input to get some decent data, Oliver. So like you said previously, you said GPT, or any sort of AI tool is almost like a younger junior employee that you can actually get stuff done by them. But then you need to check what they've done for you, you cannot trust them fully. So for us using AI, we definitely use it to speed up some of the processes by which there's still a lot of work that goes before then to pull the data in. And after to check the bids.

Brenton Gowland:

So no matter how you do it, your second piece of advice is to automate as much as possible. Yep. 100%. Right. And so what's your third piece of advice?

Sim Penzo:

Tawan is probably what we didn't do, which was understand decline expectations about your four days a week before you actually apply that policy?

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, that's awesome. Explain that.

Sim Penzo:

That worked really well. For us. I will say we've been lucky because our clients, they saw that in a really positive way. But for some other businesses or industry, not having enhancers for them, when they're going to ask you how you're going to deal with your day off how you're going to support me because I need your shoe bought on Fridays and all these sort of questions you need to be prepared to answer to those questions. So probably anticipate what the clients are going to ask is it good to anticipate

Brenton Gowland:

wrote about research to go out and talk with some Did you talk with anyone first? Did you bounce it off? Anyone?

Sim Penzo:

was too hard to bounce it off? Because it's something it's something so new that no one would really have worked out? An opinion on was

Brenton Gowland:

interesting. Did you have anyone else who knew who'd done it that you'd spoken to?

Sim Penzo:

No, nothing? No one directly was some of that done some research in north of Europe. They've been trialling that but yeah, around us this no one else that does that. Yep, though, we knew was hard to get feedback.

Brenton Gowland:

What would you say then? What would be the thing you say to businesses? It sounds like you'd say it's worth it in certain circumstances. But it might be something like you and I were talking about factories. Before we did this podcast, we were saying that, you know, might be really difficult in a factory. Rather than closing one day a week, you might have split shifts, where you have a team working Monday to Thursday and a team working Tuesday to Saturday or whatever days it is might include weekends and so forth. So would you say it's worth it on all counts are you think there's some counts where it might not be viable for people,

Sim Penzo:

I think there's always a way to make your work show the company first of all needs to be profitable and you need to believe in it, you need to believe that you need to look after the team without just talking about it, but do something about it. So invest in some of the profit back into the team, which will mean simply just raise their family rates. They okay by giving them 32 hours instead of 37. The same pay Yep, that like you said, if you have staggered shifts during the week, you don't need to close your factory anytime you can have your your normal shift but everyone individually is working a bit less, which is not necessarily even too many hours. That case only five and a half hours less or could be a bit less depend on the policy everyone can really add this time in 2020 Free, you can design a post the way you want the way you think he works for your business. Because there's not rules at the moment. And it can be tricky. Sometimes I went to the lawyer asked him to help me write a policy and the lawyers, I don't know. What should we put together? So we work together to write a policy to sound like he's covering everything.

Brenton Gowland:

But that's interesting, because there's no real case law for it yet.

Sim Penzo:

Exactly. So how do you deal with your word industry awards, interesting four days a week when your industry award says that you need to provide 40 hours a week full time. So while all those questions

Brenton Gowland:

are all I gotta say, as I congratulate you, I know a couple of your staff and I know that they're loving it. So I think that entrepreneurial spirit is willing tact with your Sim. And I think what thank you you're doing is amazing. And I think we should get you back in a year or so and see how it's going after a year. Yeah. And you might be like, Whoa, I'm not so sure about that. Or you might be now this is fantastic. We just keep growing and growing. So that's fantastic. Look, thanks a lot. We've got to wrap it up, then. I hope if you're listening, you got a lot out of this episode. In the next episode, Ron and I actually recorded a pre episode last week. He's away for a couple of weeks that you're going to hear us talking about marketing insights on the next episode, all runs away, but then you'll be back. So a couple of weeks we'll be back with Rod and Brenton sitting at the helm. So I won't be the lone ranger in a podcast next time. But Sam, it's been great having you. Thanks very much.

Sim Penzo:

Thank you, Brenton.

Brenton Gowland:

It was great. And if you're listening, we'll be back in a couple weeks. Bye for now.

Sim Penzo:

Bye.