On the employee side, you said, what if you've got kids who are young and they're growing up and you'd like to spend more time with them? Do you have to say the same thing that your father and grandfather said, which was I have to go and spend my 40 hours or more at work to pay the bills, you know, to bring home the bacon and I can't get away? Well, it's not as true now as it was 50 years ago. And even though it's psychologically hard for people to come to grips with that, if you say, look, are you going to let your kids grow up and never see them except when you come home at night from work, are you going to miss all their athletic and the dance and performing arts activities or whatever else it might be? The debates? You know, this is this is a choice and you can make this choice. I welcome everybody, I am really excited to have you here, this guest today, this is somebody who knows so much about what's going on. The 4-Day Work Week, the trends from a global standpoint, from a bigger picture standpoint sometimes is solopreneur. As entrepreneurs, we get focused on the smaller view. And he's got a really great perspective on the bigger view. He is the professor and director for Latin America for the Thunderbird School of Global Management, author of the book The 4-Day Work Week. Please join me in greeting. Professor Robert Grosse, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Wade. I'm happy to be here. Awesome. So I got to listen to your audio book on the 4-Day Work Week. And as somebody who's been doing this for a while, it felt so no one comforting to hear certain things. And also there was so much I learned. Of reasons why certain things that I had thought of, theories either worked or didn't work, so I would try something, say, well, that seemed like good work and it didn't work or did work. And a lot of the information behind it was right in your book that was like, oh, gosh, if I read that or known that, I would have seen that. So what? I'd first ask, if you don't mind sharing, can you share just a brief history of the standard work week in the US and or even globally and how that has been shifting and why that's becoming an issue today? I think that I should probably comment that there is clearly a big difference between somebody and entrepreneurial or small firm and the Fortune 500 sized companies that tend to be the ones that I focus on because I get more bang for the buck. When you say we can get, as Henry Ford did one hundred years ago, get one giant car company to adopt the 4-Day Work Week and all of a sudden you have one hundred thousand people who are doing it. So it's not that I prefer that. It's just that that's the sort of the impact that I it seems to me like it's going to potentially pervade the rest of the economy quicker than even if we get 500 entrepreneurs who are in companies with 10 employees each. You know, anyway, in response to your question, the work week in the United States, I guess happily I'll get a big smile here, has gone down or has become less over the years. I mean, none of us can go back to the eighteen hundreds. But if you did when most people in the United States were in the farming sector, believe it or not, you know, the workday started when it got late and ended when it got dark. And so that could be 12 hours or 14 hours a day or or six or whatever it is, depending on how far north you are in the wintertime. But anyhow, it was not really a structured week and it really took the industrial revolution. That's still going pretty far back there when people started working in factories and offices to have a work week that was a little bit more structured. You know, you'd hit a time clock or you'd punch a time clock and it would be, you know, start, I don't know, at the beginning of the morning at eight o'clock and finish at whatever time. It would be 6:00 at night. And you have your ten hour work week and this is in the eighteen hundreds. So this was very common even in the early eighteen hundreds in the industrial side of the economy, in other words, not in farming. So if you think of that, you know, you got a 10 hour workday and people were working six to eight weeks. I mean, it was not Saturday was not a holiday. Sunday was. So you had what is that, six time? 10. That's 60 hour weeks. And it's hard to even imagine that. But that's the reality that people faced as the century went along and really after the civil war, the eighteen sixties after that, people in offices and factories, I don't know, unions started to become more important and they pushed for better conditions for the workers and better conditions would be, you know, safer conditions and maybe less onerous work, including fewer hours. So there was a push that really didn't succeed, although there were strikes and there were efforts in the eighteen hundreds to get a more favorable workweek and more favorable treatment of the workers. It really took till the beginning of the 20th century until we got down to a six day, eight hour a day workweek. So it wasn't that the number of days was reduced, but companies and government agencies went down pretty much across the board by, I don't know, nineteen, ten or so right before World War One, up to about a six day, eight hour a day week. And then almost immediately. But after the war, there was again unions pressuring big employers to reduce the burden on their workers and of course, raise wages and other aspects of the business of the of the work. And so Henry Ford just unilaterally in nineteen twenty six, said, I'm going to get my workers, give my workers a five day week, still eight hours a day, but 40 hour a Monday through Friday workweek. Well you know, today we think what that's not very special. Yeah but that was one hundred years ago. It's really quite striking. And Ford was not a dummy. He was facing strikes not every day. But I mean, there was worker unrest and he had the idea that maybe if I reduced the work hours, people might be more motivated and more efficient at the work. You know, maybe they can produce the same number of models and model Ts in five days that they were doing in six days if they're happier and if they work more efficiently. So, I mean, he didn't budget that out. Exactly, but that was sort of the spirit of it, along with reducing the kind of labor strife. And, you know, by God it actually works. They did produce as many Fords in nineteen twenty seven and twenty eight as they had in the years before that. This. White working one day less per week and getting through the 40 hour week, so rather than prolong my story further, because we haven't reduced the workweek in a in a legalistic sense, since actually the government made that the law in nineteen forty eight. So our 30 days are nineteen thirty eight. So it took 12 years after Ford initiated in the private sector this business model, if you will, that the government made it policy for US government workers and it pretty much pervaded the whole economy. So since then there hasn't been any legal change or any company, big company jumping in and saying I want to have I don't know, the next logical thing, I guess, would be a four day week. This is what Wade believes in. And, you know, I actually do, too, for various reasons, some of which are the same as this and some of which are different. But in any event, we're now looking at if you look at the trajectory over time, we're looking at an average amount of hours, number of hours that people work in the United States today on the average of less than thirty eight hours per week, not 40. So it isn't a whole day less, but it is less than that kind of ironclad five, eight hour days that we like to talk about so that I'll end my story there. Yeah, and I think and thank you so much, so much that I had learned I had heard in different areas, different pieces of it. And one of the things that you mentioned, I think that's so relevant is, first of all, there was a natural progression of this. And sometimes people get really concerned with the Soul Work Wade is is the government going to force this or can it can be are we going to say people can't work? Nobody that I talked to is saying, oh, no, where this is going to be an all or nothing or it can't be. It's about saying what would be the default. And the way I try to look at it from as. If you have a person who is the traditional average worker. If you look at all the gains that have been made financially, just even if you look at the wealth around us and you talk about years ago when the patent offices were saying we were going to close the patent offices because there's going be no more patents and all these ideas or eventually people will, you know, just work five hours a week because there'll be nothing to do. And of course, if we were going to have the same exact lifestyle as 100 plus years ago, that probably would be doable. But of course, our needs for humans and our needs evolve. But one of the things that I just look at is, well, what if it was the default? And to your point, once you start hitting thirty eight hours, I think a lot of the people I work with will say, well, Wade my people work, you know, eight, 30 to five an hour for lunch. So 10 minutes at thirty seven and a half hour work week. Well, you're getting so close. And I just approached it more anecdotally. And this is why I love talking with you and looking at research, because I just knew, first of all, as somebody who's worked with employees, both as an employee and as somebody who supervised employees, No. One, my fifth day of the week, so to speak, was never stellar. It was never awesome. Maybe halfway through a frighted kind of get a little, you know, already thinking about what's going on the weekend or that sort of stuff. And there's also so much research around how many hours and a day a person puts in a really good, solid work. And I've seen anything from four hours to six hours. I've never seen more than about six hours after you get back to that same conversation of, OK, well, if we're looking to create a result. And if we can measure, because obviously the business owner has to make it work, whether it's a large business or a small business, the math has to work. And I always remind people, look, to me, I'm still the math trumps everything, because if the math doesn't work, it's not sustainable. And then now we're actually creating a not so good situation. But overall, this almost expectations say, OK, well, now we're going to shift a little if we want this, even if it's Fridays off. So even if you said a half a day or a full day, well, then there needs to be a different approach to what work is that. You come in and you focus and you get stuff done and you're not on social media and you're not, you know, messing around. You're coming and getting results. But I because I've never met a person that would say to me, yes, Wade, I give one hundred percent for 40 hours. I've never met a person that's been not bold to tell me that most people would say, yeah, Wade I'm probably how many hours a week you productive. I don't know. Thirty, twenty five. Thirty five. And if it's an entrepreneur they're usually more honest because they're not working. Somebody Wade about twenty, twenty five. OK, well let's look at that. And when you look at what's going on now, why is it that you'd say though that this is coming up? Because as you said, it's been almost a hundred years since it was made the law, and yet to your point, some sort of leader could make this push and it might get to widespread adoption. But why is it ripe now? Why is it feel so close now? Boy, I don't know. I mean, you could easily say the same thing in, I don't know, nineteen sixty or nineteen ninety. You know what's so special about now? I mean, there's one issue which will come through at some point I'm sure, which is the covid-19 pandemic. And I mean that's real. And people have lost their jobs or temporarily. I think they've lost, I think they're on temporary, you know, whatever you call it, not working, but expecting to come back. And they're not all going to come back for sure. And, of course, people working from home. So that's a different that's a different kind of adjustment. It's not necessarily fewer hours, but if you're not commuting and that takes some of the burden of the workday away from you and even that, you know, is beneficial in the sense of number of hours. But what is special about today, other than covid-19? I'd say nothing really. However, you've got people working in the gig economy. You find as you work either at your choice, but you of number of hours and timing of hours, or at least it's much more subject to reconfiguration. According to the individual, the work week is more subject to your choice, of which hours and typically how many hours as well. So if you work for Uber or if you work for any company that allows you to choose your own work time and even workplace in many instances. But Uber is a nice example, since it's so clear to everybody, you know, the average person does not work 40 hours in that company, in that company. But then you say, yeah, but that's because they'd like to. But there isn't enough business available for them to do it or whatever else might be the challenge. But nevertheless, the reality is the number of hours that we are working, meaning people in America is going down. And, you know, that's interesting Wade because women are working more than they did 20 or 30 years ago, went, well, I don't know, 50 years ago before before people who are listening to this were in the workforce. You know, our mothers and grandmothers typically worked in the home. So they they didn't have remunerated earnings, remunerative jobs in the workplace other than maybe secretarial in the old and in the bad old days. But, you know, women over these past years and, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 years have been working more hours in the in the compensated workplace outside of the home. So how can this be? You know, they're working more yet an average number of hours work during the week of employees, not just males, is going down. And the point really is, I guess the women are kind of going up, but they're not getting up to 40 hours per week on average. And the guys are going down from 40 or whatever it is to start with to a lower number. And the average is somewhere between thirty five and forty, but getting closer every year to thirty five. So this is where we are de facto. Now, if you say, OK, I work for whatever it is, Citibank or McDonald's or I don't know, some mining company or some some factory. Ford Motor, you got a 40 hour time clock based week and by God that's what you're working now. You may, as you said a minute ago, be working with 30 hour lunch break or an hour lunch break in the eight hours. You know, so it's really only less than that that you're working, but you're at work the whole time. OK, but but you've got those people who are in the structured week and then you've got many people who have less structure. To their weekend, I'm thinking, professors and high school teachers and lawyers and doctors and many people who are, I don't know what you call them, professional services types, including Wade Galt, who are running a service business themselves at the time that they choose to work. So now maybe somebody not you, evidently wants to work 60 or 70 hours a week, not because you like it necessarily, but because you've got to pay the bills. And you mentioned something about the financial issue that will come back to Enron. But, you know, even as an entrepreneur, it's kind of hard to get your hours down if you have to make payroll or if you have to pay the bills. So I don't know. The reality is the number of hours work is going down for sure. It's not going down like in a big chunk of reduced time this year or last year except covid-19 impact. Yeah, this is a good time to talk about it, because more and more people, let's call it, have the opportunity to take your point of view of why not work fewer hours? Why not work one day less and have a more enjoyable life? I mean, I do subscribe to that. But my different view from my view, different from yours, is I'm trying to bring along the people who don't have that choice and say, you may believe it or not believe it, but it's good for you to do that. And let's see if we can convince companies to come along. Exactly, and that's one of the things that. I've been looking at is. It seems to me that getting people to change if they don't want to is difficult. And yet, to your point. If there's leadership, if people can see things, then it's perhaps more doable and I actually am approaching it from a few different angles educationally. I'm trying to help. People who are employees understand, look, this is a math equation and the same thing goes for entrepreneurs or anybody. First, you have to, at least in my experience, first you have to be able to say I can afford to work four days. If you can't do that to your point, then no law is going to help you because then you got to get a second job. So part of this just goes back to whether you want to call it budgeting, materialism, minimalism, all those different forces of can you simply live on what you make? And there's not necessarily judgment there. Sometimes you simply have a lot of extra expenses or whatever it might be. You look at all the decisions of how many kids people choose to have, where they choose to live, the car they choose to drive. Then you go to things such as everything from health care to eating habits that perhaps lead to greater health care expenses, to sleeping habits that perhaps lead to a need for psychological services that might not be needed. Other words for depression. There's all these mixed things that are there's so many opinions and so many other things going on. But to me, I like to come back to simple things when I can and say math. If you can afford to, then at least it's a possibility. Because right now, to your point, with covid, there are so many employers that are saying, look, we get that employee turnover is a beast. We don't know when we're going to go back to normal production levels, but we know we can't now. We don't want to lose our our team that we've spent all these years building and all this money building. But hey, everybody, right now, and I'll just make it oversimple. Let's say we can only work at 80 percent capacity. We want to keep everybody we're literally for two reasons. One, because we believe in people, but also just because, again, math, even if we're selfish, we want to keep things as stable as possible. And yet there almost needs to be some sort of understanding of, OK, math is a greater force at least, or truth is or the market than personal preference and some sort of deference to, OK, well, you know, I'm going to have to adjust here. And that's what I try to tell people. If you're an employee first, you first approach it from talking to your employer about what results would you need. And if I got those results, what would those results be, that it would be at least worth it for you to consider other benefits? Some people might want bonuses in cash. Some people might want paid vacation. There can be different ways. What are the concerns you find that are most common among employers? Because you mentioned somebody leading the charge. And, of course, to your point, having somebody of a you know, we've seen people, Microsoft, other large companies do experiments and then either take some of it or pull back or maybe this one unit gets to and maybe it doesn't apply to everybody. What are some of the common concerns employers have that you find? Well, I mean, concern number one for a big company, I'm sure this is true for a small company as well, but speaking away from your entrepreneurs in that context of the Fortune 500, where they've got two or three thousand people working at the company, if you're the employer, you can't take 20 percent of the work week away. And in other words, one day and expect to produce the same number of widgets or like in a restaurant or a hotel or a bank, serve the same number of clients the way you did before. I mean, no matter how efficient people are in a hotel, they can't do it. They can't do the same. They can't serve the 20 percent more people and keep things going at the same rate as before. So excuse me, a company, if you have to lay if you say you're going to have people work 80 percent of their normal week, this is your math. If they're going to work four days instead of five, somebody's got to work the fifth day to fill in. So you've got to have another turns out numerically to be twenty five percent additional workers to fill in that time because they're also going to only work four days a week. So instead of 20 percent more people, you need twenty five percent more. I don't want to get carried away with numbers. The point is you're going to need more employees and that's going to be expensive. So if you pay the same people the same and they only work four days instead of five, you're going to have to hire some number of additional people, even if the others in the bank or the hotel or the restaurant or whatever it is, do get a little bit more efficient. They can't imaginably be so much more efficient in dealing with the people who come to the restaurant or the hotel, et cetera, that they're going to make up the difference in terms of productivity. So the bank is going to be out of luck. They're going to have a loss. They're going to have less income than they would otherwise and the shareholders will be unhappy. And so now what do you do? OK, this is a real challenge. OK, so you said. The other side of the coin might be, well, if I'm a worker and I am willing to take a 20 percent pay cut, then, you know, more power to me. That's great. And that will accomplish what Wade wants to get to. I want to blame you rather than me. So that's what you want to achieve. OK, well, it's OK. But think of the whatever percent of total employees in the United States it may be. I don't really know. Let's say 20 percent of people are earning between twenty thousand and forty thousand dollars a year. They can't afford they can't pay the rent and the food and the and the clothing to to live on 80 percent of their previous salary or wage. So there's people who are really stuck. And as much as they'd like to do this, if the company says we're going to have a five 4-Day Work Week and you're going to take a 20 percent pay cut, I think you mentioned this earlier. But I mean, the logical answer is anybody who wants to continue working five days may do that and and have their same salary. So as long as you have that out, as long as that's a rule that says a normal week is four days, you may work five if you need the income or I don't know if it's possible. It depends on the way it's structured. But if it is a hotel, a restaurant or something, you could work more hours in the day. You could work 10 hour days instead of eight. So in principle, you could you could structure it so that you get your 40 hours in in various ways. But if you're at the lower end of the income scale and you haven't been talking about those people, and they probably aren't most of your entrepreneurs, but this is a lot this is a few million people in the United States. So let's not ignore them. And I think it's going to be a challenge. But the good news is they could still work 40 hours a week, whether it's in five days or for 10 hour days or whatever other structure it might be. They could do that. They can do that. The structure can't permit it, especially in the services business businesses that I keep mentioning. I mean, if so, let me leave that aside for a second. If you talk about making cars. I think they're you know, if you've got an assembly line, if you've got a factory, it definitely is conceivable that if you work fewer days, you could be more productive and you could actually, you know, magically raise your productivity by 20 percent and not produce any fewer cars Monday through Thursday than you did Monday through Friday. And this is not talking about people slacking off and being jerks or whatever negative thing you can say. It's simply more motivation, more productivity in in four days because, you know, you have that extra relief over the week, the long weekend. So, I mean, I could see that working in some businesses and I don't mean to to make that less of our story either. But I think the real challenge when you talk about numbers is two things. One is the company employers who are going to have less widgets that they produce or less amount of service they provide the customers and they got to hire more people to cover that. That's real. And the second is the people who can't afford any reduction in salary or wages, they need to work there 40 hours or, you know, maybe they're working. Forty five or more hours. I bet many I know many Uber drivers are working Uber and they're also working part time somewhere else. And you add up their hours per week and it could be 50 or 60. So there is not a 40 hour limit. And people at the low end of the scale for sure are likely to be looking for more hours, not fewer. OK, that's I guess that's enough for this. Oh, no, that's and that's great, because there's so much to it. There's a few things. And so to your point, I'm all about just expanding people to possibly the choice of, you know, hey, this is something that could be done the same way. It's it's possible to earn one hundred thousand a year or five hundred thousand a year. You might not want to work that hard. There might be all these reasons or variables. A lot of what I find is for the employer, the company, the main issue is turnover costs and productivity. So to your point, in my experience with smaller businesses, you can find five percent of inefficiency, maybe even 10 percent. Like if you really look at the numbers and get out the all the books and you know, this contract here are these ads. You can find a five to even even as much as 10 percent, 10 might be high and larger companies and smaller companies. It's easier, but you so you can make up five percent to your point of that difference and you can do it over time. You could possibly become much more productive for sure. To your point, to do it in the short run is very difficult. And this is why for me, the the one sided solution is unrealistic and why I loved what you explored so much in your work of the summer meeting in the middle there somewhere, some sort of us getting there and whoever us is, because, again, some people say Wade, I'm not interested. I want to work my sixty hours. I'm happy, I'm doing work. So again, for me it's not about a one size fits all, but it is something that and this is where to some people this is. To some people, this is Woo Woo, but to me, it's very simple when people say, well, you know, if you work less hours, you can get lost productivity. Well, if you look at if you change the conversation to athletics and you say, OK, I'm the coach of a football or basketball team and the championship game is coming up in a week, do I do two a day practices the week before? No, I rest my team so they can perform. Now, that's an extreme because the big game is worth so much more than the other games in the season. But somewhere in there, as a concept, again, of of optimum rest and sleep and whatnot. And when you look at even athletes in the NBA that are now focusing more on their rest than their sleep were 15 years ago, that was your source where you need more sleep. And now they realize, no, we're still humans. And so I think there's areas there. But overall, math is always at the center, just smiling, just said one and one is still two, no matter what we decide. And to your point, a lot of this is, you know, what could it look like? And I, I look for the inefficiencies, too, as far as motivation. So if someone comes to me as an individual and is in that lower income group you're talking about, my conversation with them. Is something around OK, like anything else, if you were saving for a house, might you go to Happy Hour less because you have this vision that's important to you. And again, I'm not looking to give you a vision if that's your vision, you know, and different things such as that, might you eat better if you thought it could reduce your health care costs? You know, so there's different things and there's a lot of but again, so many different loose ends and pieces. But ultimately, I see it as something that can be simple, that the same way that years ago I made five bucks an hour and I now make more than five bucks an hour. At some point I worked 40 hours or 50 hours a week. Could I perhaps worth less. But again, it requires, in my understanding, a more mature employee, in addition to a more mature employer, to be able to say, I see what your concern is. You want results. So let's talk results. And then to your point, definitely you have your service group and I'm using that as a generic term, the live service tech support that needs to be there a certain number of hours, because that's what's been promised to the client versus the person that says, I produce widgets, I cut hair, I cut lawns. I do something that if I'm quicker and more focused, that I can perhaps get a better result. And those are slightly different. And yet that is the part that I don't think will ever change. And I don't think it's bad. Some people do want to make more money and focus and some people are less concerned with that. But definitely I think the idea of waiting for government to fix it and this is not in any way a knock on government, I don't even think is necessarily wise, much less am I on either side then to say, OK, yes, at times when union involvement happens more, maybe it's needed. But if if people can figure things out without union involvement, that's probably more effective. The same way when you don't have to get an attorney involved in a divorce case, it's probably more effective if the market can figure out without having to have this sense of conflict of argument or consternation. What do you find are the concerns for the workers and are they similar to the employees or how are they parallel or how are they different? OK, come employees, very employees and or Anderegg workers, for that matter, because that's a that's a bigger a growing segment now as contrasted with the companies. OK, so I think the main issue that I run into when I talk and you must see this, too, when I talk with people about working for days instead of five, they're saying, oh, you're you're an academic, you're head's up in the clouds. Nobody does that. And it's it's the it's the classic human nature issue. This is the way it's always been. You know, my my father worked 40 hours a week. That's why I do it. Well, that's like saying, you know, my father worked in the coal mine in West Virginia and I do it, too. And then the coal mine closes. Well, by God, it's the government's fault that the coal mine closed. Give me a break. I mean, the world changes and you have to be somewhat flexible and say I might do things differently, but it is very difficult to get people to accept that. So somebody, again, has to make the break. And if you're and start off with the 40 day, 40 hour week switching to a thirty two hour week, on other words, 4-Day Work Week week instead of five a week, and, you know, it can be an employer that's an individual. You know, if you're a gig worker and you can say, OK, I want to not only work for days instead of five. Well, you know, good luck because you're going to have less income. So that's not such a smart thing unless you can charge a high enough fee for your service that you can live on it and that typically the gig workers are not high income people, although I guess you could call doctors and lawyers gig workers, unless they're in big firms. If they're individual sole practitioners, then they work at their leisure, at their pleasure. And if they want to work for days, you know, they can do that. Most of them don't, though. Most of them still do put in a five day week, even though, as you and I have been saying all along, it's quite feasible to to work four days and eight hour days, not 20 hour days or some outrageous things, squish more work hours into those four days anyway. What what do people think? I think it's a I mean, one of the employees people think it's this is the way it's always been. Therefore, this is the way it is. God must have told us that this is how the world works. And, you know, we know the people used to work longer hours. We not we may not have been around in nineteen twenty six when Henry Ford made the change or in the eighteen hundreds, you know, but you know that this was the reality that I read a book, look at it on the Internet and find out this was the reality. So don't tell me we always work 40 hours a week or five day weeks. It is not true. Now how can we get it down to four days? The person who's the individual that you ask me about a moment ago has got to figure a way to survive on either less money or convincing the company to pay them the same for working for days instead of five thinking as an employee of a company. So if you can demonstrate in your business that it is possible to have a 20 percent increase in your productivity, meaning how much you produce per hour. So in 40 hours you produce, you know, one hundred. And if you work thirty two hours, if you can still produce one hundred, whatever the product is, then why should the employer care and presumably the employer would not define. The problem is if you produce one hundred with forty hours and you only produce 90 with thirty two hours, is the company going to eat that 10 percent less. What were you going to take, a 10 percent salary reduction or wage reduction? That's that's very tricky and we will continue to come back to it somehow. You have to figure out how to pay for that. That's the numbers that you've been talking about. And as a person who's receiving the income, you have to make kind of a decision. And I've looked at some of your posts on the Internet, on your website, and you you cajole people to think about their lives and what they're doing with their time. So if they are flexible enough, meaning they have enough income to be flexible, then of course they can potentially reduce hours and income and have a potentially more enjoyable life, a more satisfying life. But, you know, that's you've got to be in a position where that is a choice. And there's this huge societal pressure that says even if you could make the choice, society is going to view you as a as a slacker unless you keep going for the five days. And that's tricky. I mean, it's it's it's possible to overcome that. But there's the two barriers. One's your income and the other is society's pressure and. Yeah, absolutely. I think. A lot of people see this as something that is outside of them, and if you go back to sort of some of more basic, either whether you want to call it psychology, personal development, life coaching, whatever. Some of this addresses something that I don't think will be necessary change, and for those who are listening, I have a master's degree in psychology. I believe people can change. I believe many people don't choose to do so. I believe in the possibility and reality are not always the same thing. And you look at, you know, that concept of locus of control, who has control is control out there, which a lot of people believe that control is out there. And there is certainly forces out there, that's for sure. And then there's control in here, head brain. So whatever you subscribe to and somewhere in there, to your point, what I look to do is say, OK, what is there? Is there something that's more inspiring to you and to some people? Some people are very past based and they believe the best of what's happened happened years ago, either in their life, they'll talk about high school and whatever, and that's OK. But so to them, it feels scarier to do something new. But to your point, the same conversation went on 100 hundred plus years ago. People said, oh, my God, we can never work five days a week. We always worked six. You know, the same you know, the same thing happened. Yeah. And we're so demanding of our technology, like, darn it, I want ten G on my phone yesterday. So I want change, but I don't want, you know, so it's kind of interesting the way our brain works. I still love this on the God is great because good people are crazy because I think that answers a lot of questions. But so for me, it has to be something that's inspiring to you enough because it's going to be change. There will be a fear or an the possibility of loss. I don't discount the fact that I was raised in a family where income was steady. Dad provided really well. Mom was able to stay at home because of what Dad provided. So I do my best to say, OK, Wade, you don't have the view of what everybody else has. Some people have different views. Some people have more financially or less or whatnot. So I try to bring it back to. Again, things things that we used to be able to agree on math, but things such as math to say, OK, well, this is this is a puzzle. This is or can be I definitely find the clients I work with that are even entrepreneurs. There's a sweet spot of those who really want to make this happen. Usually it's the parents of young children, let's say anywhere from zero to at least 10, even 15, where in their mind they understand or they believe, understand would assume it's true. But they believe that, OK, I'm missing out on something. My kids are here. They're only going to be here for a while because I've always told people, look, I've watched in my father's business, his friends, I've watched a few that they made so much money when their kids were about 15 and 16 and they were working so hard and I'm ready to play it. It's just like the you know, the the cat's in the cradle and the kids were gone. And it's like, OK, they're already out of the house. So there's that. But some people don't subscribe to that. Now, for me, that's why I said, well, that's a choice. That's life. That is I do believe in. Yes, you choose. I don't I do not want a government mandating it, but I do like the idea. And I spoke spoken something about this that gave me some of the verbals and said, OK, but if we can measure more deeply, perhaps perhaps we can see where when a person is and on a large like, OK, let's use the government as an example because they can decide their hours to a certain degree. And assuming they get on the same page on something which they do sometimes, sometimes they don't, if you could demonstrate, well, hey, because of the last four hours, here's how many less absences we've had. Here's how much less it's cost us in health insurance. And so there are variables. It's kind of like the radio waves or the Wi-Fi waves passing by us. They're there, but we don't see them. And I think part of this is the challenge, and I try to do it from an anecdotal standpoint is to say, was it worth more for you to be able to get to go to the beach or play golf than to spend a fifth day at your office? Or as I like to joke with entrepreneurs, if you make horrible cakes four days a week, are you going to turn into a magic chef on on Fridays? Now, take your four days worth of cakes and take your money, you know, but definitely there's there's there can be a lot of seriousness around this. And I think that's one of actually one of the toughest things is when it becomes very serious, it doesn't have to be very serious. Some people make more money. An NBA athlete makes more than I do, literally multiples in the hundreds of times. Plus, I'm OK with that. I'm not I mean, and some people aren't OK with that. But that's what the market says. The market says people will pay for that. So part of it, I think, is for those who want to to be able to reach up. And I'll also just books over the Internet. You mentioned the Internet. I'll still go with books over Internet user because there's a lot of stuff on the Internet. Most books are. I'll go when a person's taking the time to write a book. I'll take the book over the over the Internet, at least as far as possibly being a source of truth. But definitely what do you find are the situations that. Are going to be more likely to succeed and we kind of always addressed on some of these as far as jobs. And then also implementing knows what's what's going to be more likely for the employer to be willing to take a risk versus what's a dangerous situation or situation which is be less likely to succeed. OK, well, let me, I don't know, give you two or three different parts of a response, No. One on the employee side, you said, what if you've got kids who are young and they're growing up and you'd like to spend more time with them, do you have to say the same thing that your father and grandfather said, which was I have to go and spend my 40 hours or more at work to pay the bills, you know, to bring home the bacon and I can't get away. Well, it's not as true now as it was 50 years ago. And even though it's psychologically hard for people to come to grips with that, if you say, look, are you going to let your kids grow up and never see them except when you come home at night from work, are you going to miss all their athletic and the dance and performing arts activities or whatever else it might be? The debates? You know, this is this is a choice. And you can make this choice now. It's even easier for some people than others to say that, especially when you're working on a time clock, you may say, OK, fine, I will take fewer hours in order to go watch my kids in whatever the activity is. And so that is feasible in that context. If you're a high income person, you may feel like you want to compete with somebody else and have an even higher income. But like you said, you're never going to catch up to the NBA players. So at some point, I don't think everybody competes with the Joneses next door. I don't think everybody feels like I have to have just as good of a car or house as they do. We say that a bit, but I don't run into too many people who actually subscribe to that view. So if you say I'm going to have a little less income and I'm going to go watch my kids do things or be there with them to support them, I think that's very viable for a lot of people, excepting the ones who were at the low end of the income scale where really that isn't possible and I don't definitely want to forget them. And what kind of companies can can do this more easily than others? And I guess the short answer would be any company where you could actually see people's productivity defined as amount of output per hour, if you could get that to go up in a way that's meaningful, like 10 or 20 percent per hour, then you can definitely have the company foot the bill and pay the people the same amount of money for four days as they get for five days because they would presumably in the Henry Ford case, be producing just as many cars in one less day per week. So whatever the the businesses where it's possible to ramp up productivity, not be careful because you said productivity in one way. And I'm saying and I think in a different one, productivity means in the way I'm using it anyhow. The amount of output that you create in a period of time, like an hour or even a week. So if you produce you work with a banker, you work with, I don't know, 50 clients and you provide them the service that they need in five days. Can you still work with 50 clients in four days? The same 50 clients say in four days and schedule them in tighter and spend a little bit less time with each one and get reasonably similar service provided to them? Can you do it? I mean, you certainly can't with the hamburger at McDonald's, you know, produce 20 percent more customers when you're already moving at full speed. And they're not all going to bunch their visit to McDonald's and to your particular thirty two hours instead of the other eight hours when you're not there. So there's a lot of difficulty in getting to where we want to go for the employers who can't push or pull more productivity, more output per hour from their people. And I'm not talking about slave labor here where you have a weapon. You tell people, do this or I'm going to kill you or fire you or or hit you with a whip. It's just in some contexts you can do more. And you mentioned earlier on, I don't know if I responded to this, that everybody has some amount of the day where you're not really very productive, say, five percent. You said maybe you as much as 10 percent. OK, absolutely true. But if you work thirty two hours, you work four days a week, you're still going to have the same problem. It may not be the same, maybe four and a half percent instead of five or eight instead of ten or whatever, but they're still going to be some part of the day when you're not that productive. That's the human body. If you work for days, you should have more what you call it, like vitality or capability to do, be more motivated, more productive during those thirty two hours. You know, there's got to be something to that. And even though we're not all in manufacturing jobs any longer, less than 10 percent of Americans are in manufacturing jobs these days. Almost 90 percent are in service. So, I mean, that's that's where the action is. So, you know, if you're not in a business where it's easily reconfigured to get more productive, this is going to be a problem. And the company could certainly take some loss. And I don't want to get into numbers. Just, you know, there's going to be somewhat less output, somewhat fewer clients that you can serve in four days than five and seven. So you can eek a little bit more out in the four days. The company can take a little bit of a loss. But at the end of the day, expenses are going to be higher for the companies for some period of time until your productivity over the years gets better because of learning, because the more machinery, et cetera. So I think there's that's going to be the challenge the way you've posted. Well, so that's the end of my answer on that new answer. What about covid-19? There's there are God, I don't know what the number is today, but let's say seven percent of Americans are unemployed right now. And before covid-19 it was three and a half percent. And that's a lot more people. That's twice as many people who are unemployed. And it was over 10 percent at the beginning of this problem back in March and April. So, I mean, this is real. How can you help those people who have lost jobs? One way is to tell everybody else or many other people you can only work 80 percent of your normal hours and we're going to share those other 20 percent of the hours with these people who got laid off. Now, that is a real partial partial solution to the downturn in employment. Now, it may be temporary. I mean, hopefully it is. If we've got the two vaccines from Moderne and Johnson and Johnson and probably some others, too, that are going to Pfizer that are going to be available soon, then that may get rid of the problem in the hotels and restaurants and other personal service businesses so that they can ramp up again and the job loss will diminish, if not go away completely. So maybe it's only temporary, but if we get started by sharing the work like this, you know, Wade, you were commenting about psychology a minute ago. If people get used to working the 80 percent of their time, even though their incomes lower, a lot of them are going to say, hey, this isn't bad. You know, this is actually something I should have done myself earlier when I wasn't pressed into this kind of service. So, you know, there is a real opportunity here due to the very severe challenge of this covid-19 pandemic. Yeah, and I just think when I was younger and this was before I had kids and I hold that, I want to be able to provide for my wife or stay at home when I was making 40000 and then eventually making 50000 as a single guy, I could have just in fact, I asked, can I go back to the company I worked for? Can I just work for days and take and great company? At that time it was, well, if you do what everybody else is going to want to do it. And, you know, they weren't really that wasn't really what was set up at the time. And one of the things that, you know, I try to remind people say, look, after leaving college, it took me twenty two years to figure out how to do this. So I definitely don't think this is an entitlement. I don't think it's a right. I it's something you earn. I think it's something that in some way you figure out and that's not in any way diminishing those that are at lower income levels. Hopefully you evolve in in your income and you grow in what you're doing. And when I talk to small business owners, I've had quite a few small business owners ask me because I'm one of the businesses, I have a software business and the software helps compensate employees. And the primary focus of reward is financial if you do or in sales and more in retaining clients with some of its service oriented. You can make more money and I do have clients, then they will also offer paid time off incentives. But I always say, look, I don't necessarily believe in guaranteeing a 4-Day Work Week at the same previous levels of income at one hundred percent of income. I say keep the hourly income the same. And what my suggestion is, you tell people, look, if they hit certain productivity targets, then they earn that. So it's a possibility and it's in the conversation. And I will coach you. I'll get the best help because to speak at least again, this is my experience. Some employees really take the training and development and want to learn and some just kind of look in like, well, I don't care that you spend that money. And so there is a part of it that's very much like anything else in our economy. Some people want to. Some people don't. And so for me, a lot of what I look at with an employer when I talk them to say, look, the main reason why any employer will ever even listen to me of a larger corporation is employee turnover costs. If you can keep people happier and they stay with you longer and you look at what employee turnover costs can be, because if you hire a bad employee, I know you know this, but you know just any person out there, if you hire an employee that doesn't work out and it takes you three months or six months to train training, it didn't work out well. You just wasted at least three to six months worth of income, plus another twenty five to 50 percent or more because somebody else had to train them. There's other expenses, so it gets very costly. So that alone is not the only answer, but it's another one of those contributing forces that might take another two to three to four percent of that 20, that magical 20 we're talking about of could we reduce that? And it's a but it's a long term solution. It's not an immediate you don't see that right away. You see it over time. But I know from just working with in business in general, some business owners are really good to people. And so those people stay longer and so there's less turnover. And then if you're talking to executives than you say and there's less pain in the butt, if you having to train the same people in the same concept, God, Wade, I want to poke my eyes out. And this is even more small business owners where they're doing some of the translation for that. I'll do that. And so, you know, a lot of it is like anything else. What's what is it that motivates somebody to be open to changing? And it's not magic. And that's one of the things I loved best about your book. There was nothing magical in your book that was like, OK, here's this magical. Here's the 4-Day Work Week fairy is going to come in and everything is going to work out. It's not that. But like anything else, when we talk about what we put people on the moon, we can do what we do with technology, all these different things. Well, again, if it's important enough, how could it be something that people look at? The thing I look to and I point to other friends and sometimes friends like this or don't, as I have friends that live in Norway and they work less hours and their income per capita is higher, they have a more homogenous society there. Five million people as opposed to three hundred and something million people. So you have all these Lifestyle Solopreneur, but we could still learn something from them. But we don't have to just dismiss anything and say, well, you know, we can learn nothing from them. And so I think part of this is looking at how we can make shifts. What do you see as far as because there's as somebody whose parents are from the islands, I've grown up. I've lived in Peru. I'm I'm a I was born outside of the country. I love America. And I find at times like any person where we're so willing to hear what we do, awesome. But sometimes we're a little blind to hearing what maybe we could do better. How is the US different with other countries and maybe what are we doing? Great. And maybe what could we be learning from other countries that might help us move a little quicker? Before I respond to that, let me just comment that I really liked your statement that says an employer needs should take into account the cost of replacing people when they leave, whether they're unhappy or whatever the reason is. But if they leave frequently, then you've got a hiring process that you have to pay for, a training process that you have to go through. And the new people aren't going to be identically productive until they go through a learning curve in addition to being trained. So there's real costs there that can be measured and that would make it more attractive to a company to say, hey, we'll let you do this 4-Day Work Week, because we recognize that maybe you'll only be a little bit more productive. But if you stay with us, then we won't have to pay those other costs that we will if you leave. And the more companies that offer this, the better. I mean, the more it'll be acceptable. So that was one point in the second one before I go international. Is that with the covid-19 challenge? The other thing that's going on is people are working from home and this is, you know, whatever 90 percent of people are doing that, not just the people are getting laid off, but everybody or most everybody is working from home or from not the office anyway. And this is a big change. And if you do that and you say, I'm going to work, I was thinking, if you're talking about you see the other people and they're working in the job that you had before, and if they know you're not there one day a week, they're going to say Wade the bad guy because he's not here now. But they can't do it if everybody's working from home because they won't know. So I'm not trying to hide things. But you know what? If you were if people are working more from a remote location, it won't be as evident whether they're working four days or three days or five days or four and a half because of that remoteness, because of that lack of visibility. So that's actually supportive of the idea of working fewer days because you can do it without having a negative impact from society. OK, now what's going on in other countries? I guess two pieces of a response for you, if you look at where people are most satisfied with their jobs. And in a survey that's done every year by an international organization, where are people happiest? And well over the last decade or two that this has been going on, these surveys have been going on, it's really amazing. The people are happiest that people are most satisfied with their jobs in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Netherlands. So the first four of them are all Scandinavia. And the Netherlands is pretty close. It's unbelievable. These are all the countries, if you look at the number of hours worked per week where the average number of hours work per week is the absolute lowest in the entire world, it's like, where is the beef here? What am I missing? These guys are the happiest and they're working the fewest hours. And if you go like I did and correlate the number of hours worked with happiness across countries and also with motivation of people at work, the correlation is enormous. Like three quarters correlation that the more hours you work, the less happy you are or the other way around, the fewer hours you work, the happier are. The fewer hours you work, the more productive you are as well on productivity and fewer hours you work, the more motivated people say they are at work. Geez, I mean, this is really striking and it's true across countries. But wow, that set of five countries is really, you know, I don't know that I want to move to Norway right away. The weather's weather's not an advertisement for it, but that that I know I live in Holland, you know, isn't that great relative to Arizona and Florida, California, Southern California or whatever, just the United States other than Alaska in general. So there's got to be something to be said for satisfaction, happiness being correlated with less hours at work. That's one part of my answer to you. And this is what we see in those other countries. The other well, so I better continue that. If you look at people who work even longer hours than in the United States, you find that it's a number of less developed countries. And I think Peru, Peru is one of them since you mentioned Peru, but I mean Kazakhstan and a few other places as well. Not to be demeaning of the specific countries, but there's a number of emerging markets where they work an average of forty five or 50 hours a week. And the people, at least in terms of self presentation, say that they're less happy than the people in these other countries, including the US. So, I mean, it goes at both ends of the scale. People are happier when they work fewer hours and they are less happy than in the US when they work more hours, although admittedly it's less developed countries that are the ones that are in that latter category. OK, now what are examples that we have? As you mentioned, one of them, which was Microsoft in Japan a couple of years ago, two years ago, did a they didn't call it an experiment, but they let people work four day weeks for a month and they discovered, well, their productivity was just as good as when they were working five days a week. So, you know, there it is. The lesson is clear, except that what did they do as a result of that? Nothing. They went back to working five to eight weeks and they didn't, you know, internalize it on a continuing basis. So that's a little discouraging. But at least it's an example of a big company taking a shot at it. And I think that you one can see you haven't mentioned them, but you probably do in your discussion with other people that you work with, because there's entrepreneurial companies like that one in New Zealand, the Perpetual Guardian, a company which I think is an insurance company, and they've been working for weeks, for two years or three years now. And everybody loves it and they're sticking with it. And you've got the the government's capital city have gotten him in Sweden, set this program up of working 4-Day Work Week and it worked very well. But people around the city were getting mad when they couldn't get service on the fifth day if the government offices just closed. I mean, that's real. And so you couldn't split your employees to different days and still cover five days, but they didn't. And so that got a lot of flack and they did not continue that program. And then there's other entrepreneurial companies in the US. I think Shake Shack has done that. You know, the restaurant that sells milkshakes and hamburgers and there's three or four others is one in Philadelphia that I forget the name of right now. But they've done this. And as far as I know, none of them still continues to do it. They've done it for six months or a year, a couple of years. But they all seem to fall back on the original model. And I can't say that any of them has been a failure in the sense that in the surveys of people who work in customers, nothing looks. Everything seems to be better with the 4-Day Work Week, but they still haven't continued it, so I can't speak to why. There's one example that's really great, but it isn't a company and its school district, its schools, elementary schools, high schools in several states, but particularly Colorado, which has been doing this since nineteen seventy one. That's a ways back, everybody. It is not last week. So for 50 years, they have been doing a 4-Day Work Week in school districts that choose to do this and they have, I don't know, something on the order of one hundred school districts around the state and close to 70 of them are using the four day week. And what it means is just to give this specific context to a school. You know, the kid goes kids go off in the morning and come back in the afternoon and the parents have to get daycare or something for them between the three o'clock or two thirty when they finish at five o'clock, when the parents finish work, whatever it is, when you do the five day week, that's what it is when you do the four day week. Schools decided in Colorado anyway to keep the school year thirty six weeks. So the summer was the same length. But the school day now, instead of being six hours, is seven and a half. So it's a longer school day. It's good for the parents because they don't have to deal with the issue of what do you do with my kids after school? So that's not positive. But, you know, you may think Professor Gross is making it up to hide that it's really a bad deal. Well, the teachers say that they do like it. The student the kids haven't complained or done well. I don't know if they complain or not, but they get fewer days in school, so they're happy about that. But I mean, their test scores on the standardized tests have been just as good. So there hasn't been a fall off and quote unquote, productivity in that sense. And people in the community, communities in Colorado who have been interviewed, you can find this on the Internet. If you look on Colorado school 4-Day Work Week and there's there's a couple of different articles about it and there's a like a manual that talks about how they do it and experiences over the years. But, wow, it's really working great. And it hasn't been experienced as long in those other three or four states that are doing the same thing. But the Colorado example is beautiful. And so there is one in the United States that is a real 4-Day Work Week the Divine for 50 years. They're not, as far as I know, planning to stop this. And the customers are happy the the workers are happy and the community hasn't been outraged at this unacceptable way of doing things. I think so much of this is about flexibility, so even though when people say, well, what happens if if things go downhill? OK, well then do every other week, do nine out of 10 days, do 19 out of 20 days. There's so many different ways it doesn't have to be so dogmatic. And to your point about, you know, sometimes customers get upset. Well, that's hey, that's one of those risks in any business, any change you make. And so some people might say, no, it's not OK. I think if people can see and experience it, then they change. For example, for my clientele, who are primarily entrepreneurs, when they realize that I'm not reachable on Friday, that's actually more of a badge of honor than it is. Where the heck is Wade now? There's a small percent that don't like that and those usually don't stay clients for long. I get to make that choice. What I simply see is, as with any other change, specifically going back to the employee is if it's something that's really important, there are companies that are looking to do this. Base camp is one of the they used to be called 37 signals. Right. You know, they've done that. And again, they might be small amounts. OK, great. Well, then but then go with those small amounts of companies are because what I find more and more is a lot of companies are afraid to do it because they don't have the numbers to even know how productive are we. Whereas if they can measure and I'll and, you know, I hope we're going to have another conversation. The some of the best wisdom I got on this was from a friend of mine who's owned multiple businesses. And I asked him I said, tell me something, Marty. If your employees could work, you know, could get five days of results done in four days, you give them four days. And he said maybe he says, but Wade, I'm still taking all the risks is what if they could get me five and a half or six days with results? I said, OK, great. So again, it was still this. Well, if it's only about the employees will. No, I mean, in any agreement, why should why should it just be on the employer? But if the employer and employee. So the oversimplified way which isn't always easy to do. But I say look, if you get six days worth of results. I'll pay you for it to work for four days, because now I've gained and you've gained it again, that's an oversimplification. Could be a different number, but something where we acknowledge that this is an adult relationship economically, that you want something, I want something. And and maybe we can work something out. Thank you. I've got to go shared. I'm going to just share with people. If you have not had a chance to check out whether it's the audio book. I'm an audio book guy, so I listen to your audio book or the book, The 4-Day Work Week. What's other than and I got that happen to get that through Audible or on Amazon for those people who want to learn more about what you're doing, where can they contact you? And and what, if anything, are you working on next? Well, anybody's welcome to contact me online at my email, which is Robert Grosse and the easiest way at Asuda NDU since Thunderbird is part of Arizona State University. But you can put Thunderbird as that to you, too. I don't run a separate web. I do have a website, but I don't pay much attention to it. So it's not worth doing other than through the university where I have a web page and I'm happy to communicate any time on the subject, which is very dear to my heart as it is to yours. Wade and. Absolutely. Thank you so much. And for those involved, really, there's so much and the other book, the one called 4-Day Work Week, that's how you referred to it. But across the pond is the one that involves Andrew Barnes from the perpetual garden, actually more than two across the planet. I guess he's in New Zealand. But the thing that really struck me is there were so many things that both of your research to macro pieces and I learned so much. I encourage you know, there's so many people I talk like, well, it wouldn't work. Do the reading I learned. So I've been doing this for five years and I learned so much from listening to you to what you're doing because there were gaps I didn't have. I kind of had this sort of almost like, well, it seems to make sense or I was kind of using more anecdotal knowledge. So I really encourage people. This is something that's important to you. If you work with millennials or know anybody that works with menials, they want more time off. They've already seen this. Many of them have seen their parents not get the good end of the stick of what happened was, you know, layoffs and all these different things. And so there's a different ethos. Not all of them are lazy. Many of them are looking for simply a better life. And they're not believing in that deferred lifestyle that at 65, I'm going to start to live and work again. There's so much out there. Thank you so much for joining us. Like I said, I look forward to having another one of these. And for those, your listeners always look forward to helping you make more money and help more people and less time do what you do best so you can better enjoy your family, your friends in your life. Thanks for listening.