440 | Beyond Flexible Working Arrangements- The Power of a 32-hour Work Week with Natalie Nagele

Flexible working arrangements are the new craze. Employees want to work from home or coffee shops on their time. Employers want to embrace flexibility and yet get the work done too. Beyond flexible working, arrangements are the notion of working less than 40 hours in a week. I found Natalie Nagele, co-founder of Wildbit. They are a digital agency that has embraced the idea of a standard 32 hours work week. We talk about flexible working arrangements and how they came to fit the work into four days of work. Discover the keys to flexible working arrangements in this interview with Natalie.

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Target Audience: Natalie Nagele the Co-founder and CEO at Wildbit. She leads the direction, culture, and team happiness alongside her husband and business partner Chris with 28 team members across 5 countries (15 cities).

 

Natalie Nagele: The Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

This is leaders in the trenches and your host today is Gene Hammett.

Gene Hammett: [00:04]
Hi, my name is Gene Hammett. I’m the host of leaders in the trenches. And my big question for you today is how could you get all of your work done in 32 hours. That means not just you but everyone on your team. The whole company had a 32-hour work rule. You’re probably thinking to yourself, that’s impossible. We are barely hanging on and we’re working more than 40 we’re probably working 50 and 60 and you’re probably working the weekends. Well, I know what it’s like because I run businesses too and I work with a lot of companies that could never get it done in 32 hours. So they think, but I wanted to think about how this could really be done. So I went up there and found someone who is doing it and I saw this come over my email and I was like, that’s an interesting story because we think that we need to work longer to get the work done.

Gene Hammett: [00:57]
We think we need 40 hours. We think we need a, you know, to work on weekends. And the reality is when you really get focused, you can get a lot more done in a shorter amount of time and the work will expand to fit the time at which you have available. So if you only had 32 hours, you would imagine you have to work really focused and the ability to do that may seem impossible. So I went out there and find someone who was doing it. And so we have the co-founder of Wildbit, we have Natalie Nagele. Natalie just is impressive because they’re willing to try new things or willing to push the boundaries of all kinds of stuff in the company to figure out what works for them. And the 32 hour work week is one of the biggest things that they’ve done in these tests to really align the company and align the work and really create something amazing.

Gene Hammett: [01:49]
So I’m going to share that interview with you today. Before we get there, I have a big announcement. You may not know this, but leaders in the trenches are no more. This is the last episode. It doesn’t pain me because we’re actually re-imagining the show and we’re really coming up with a series of interviews with fast-growth companies that will help you grow as a leader. So I’m only interviewing people from the Inc 500 if you don’t know what that is, that’s the fastest growing, growing privately held companies in the United States and they really aren’t growing really fast levels. It’s insane how fast some of them are growing. I’ve had dozens and dozens of interviews already, and that’s not an exaggeration because I’m so excited about this. I’ve had days stacked up with these meetings with the Inc 500 level leaders, many of them in the top 50 and so we’re going to be looking at the leadership strategies, the culture strategies and specific elements that allow them to grow that fast.

Gene Hammett: [02:49]
So you’ll tune in not to leaders in the trenches, but you’ll be tuning into Growth Think Tank. That is something that I’ve been excited to tell you about. And here we are. We’ve reached the day. So the next episode will be a growth think tank. It may still say leaders in the trenches on the bottom of your URL if you even look at that. But you’ll, if you’re subscribed to this, you’ll continue to get this. We’re going to change the name, we’re going to change the artwork. We’re going to change the show format. What’s really going to stay the same as I’m still your host and we’re still going to be interviewing some amazing people. It’s just specifically targeted at the leaders, founders, CEOs of the INC 500. So stay tuned for that reinvention of the show and it’s called GROWTH THINK TANK. So you’re not at the wrong place when you see that next week. But now here’s the interview with Natalie.

Gene Hammett: [03:45]
Hi Natalie, how are you?

Natalie Nagele: [03:46]
I’m well. How are you?

Gene Hammett: [03:48]
I’m great. Glad to have you here at leaders in the trenches.

Natalie Nagele: [03:51]
Thank you. I’m excited to be here.

Gene Hammett: [03:53]
Well, I have been talking to you about, you know, the business. I’ve been doing some research on this. I’ve already shared with the audience a little bit about you, so I would love for you to share us about who you are and who you serve with at Wildbit.

Natalie Nagele: [04:06]
Yeah, absolutely. So I am co-founder and CEO of Wildbit. We are an 18-year-old bootstrapped, profitable growing company. We build our own products that, uh, support other software development teams and we’d kind of just try to solve problems that make the life of a software developer better and more enjoyable. We have a product called postmark, which sends all your transactional emails, password resets, welcome emails, common notifications, that kind of thing. And we actually have a new product that just launched last week called conveyor conveyor.com, and it’s a new way, a new workflow for development teams that we’re super excited about getting lots of really great feedback. So that’s us.

Gene Hammett: [04:46]
Well, how many employees do you have?

Natalie Nagele: [04:48]
We’re 30.

Gene Hammett: [04:49]
So you said 18 years.

Natalie Nagele: [04:53]
Yeah.

Gene Hammett: [04:54]
That’s a lot. Did it start out just you and…

Natalie Nagele: [04:58]
It actually started out? it started, I run the business of my husband Chris. Uh, and so it’s like a, I call it a mom and pop shop. Um, and we, Chris started it when he was 20 years old and we’ve been together 15 of those 18 years. So he started in, it was consulting early on and the totally different business now, but that’s Kinda how it got its legs.

Gene Hammett: [05:16]
Well, I can appreciate that. And my wife, um, also works with me. She’s the CEO of the company. I don’t know, many people don’t know that, but uh, we are a women-owned business for some strategic reasons, but also she filled out the paperwork and now she’s the CEO of, of our enterprise. Um, Natalie, you know, I get a lot of pitches and I don’t say this to Brag, but I get probably 150 a month and I rarely ever take any, you stood out to me and I think it came through someone on your team or whoever it came through as some of the unique things you’re doing inside of your, and so that uniqueness is the reason why you’re here.

Natalie Nagele: [06:01]
Cool.

Gene Hammett: [06:01]
That’s there to say, well, most of the pitches and the, you know, I understand everyone wants to get their message out there, but they’re not doing anything that’s very different than others. Right. So, you know, one of the things I think that I picked up on you as you’re willing to test how you work together with your team to better, produce productivity, efficiency and excellence and all of these things. So where did this whole concept of of testing come?

Natalie Nagele: [06:32]
I think we’ve been, we’ve been focused for a really long time on figuring out what works for us and not necessarily following in the footsteps or the shadows of other companies that come before us. We absolutely, you know, love to check out how people are doing things and use other exists or their experiences as a framework.

Natalie Nagele: [06:52]
But for Chris and I had, has always been kind of a push to say what works for Wildbit. And that’s, you know, in our development process and not really following some specific methodology and sitting down and saying, every year on retreat, you know, okay, how’s this working? How’s that working? You know, where are we today? What does the company look like today? Not, you know, in the next year it looks different and we’ll adjust. So I think we’ve been constantly testing it because ultimately what we care about is how everything works together with the current team, with the current product, you know, in its state, right? We’ve been around for 18 years. Things look a lot different last year than I did three years ago and five years ago, you know, and all these things. So I just think it’s just a natural part of being an entrepreneur that’s like, what’s next?

Natalie Nagele: [07:33]
How can we, how can we continue to evolve and not out of the necessity of just playing for playing sake, but really to try to understand what is really impact, what are the changes that are impactful to make a difference, to make us work better together? Does that make sense?

Gene Hammett: [07:49]
I want to ask you specifically, and I’m trying not to lead this because there are so many things I was interested about, but what has been your favorite test about the way you work over the last year or two?

Natalie Nagele: [08:00]
Yeah, I mean, so we were on a 32 hour work week or a four day work week and that’s absolutely been my most exciting and proud experiment. A so wild. But we started this almost, it’ll be two years in May and it’s what kind of kicked off as a four day work week and we, the whole team works 32 hours and we just had been running it for these almost two years and seeing some really positive effects, you know, adjusting and playing with the concept and experimenting with it. Uh, but it’s just been a joy and a real adventure to try to see what we can do with less time. Can we work better? Can we work smarter? What is the impact on the quality of work when you have more rest in between, you know, work and stuff like that. So it’s just been a huge, a huge success, I would say, and a real, real adventure for us. And kind of as our small little team gets to experiment and play.

Gene Hammett: [08:52]
I want to get to the heart of this. And this came up, it probably was kicked around for a little while before you actually instituted, right?

Natalie Nagele: [09:00]
Yeah, for sure.

Gene Hammett: [09:02]
And you have these retreats, you said, was it, is it nearly a 2,

Natalie Nagele: [09:05]
We do an annual retreat. Yep.

Gene Hammett: [09:07]
And it probably came up for a while. How long did it come up for before you actually instituted?

Natalie Nagele: [09:13]
So I think, you know, we started off with, funny enough, a 40 hour work week, which was, you know, I think kind of crazy that you have to state that, but it was basically like, hey guys, we’re working 40 hours a week. Not more than that. And then we had flexible hours, which was basically the idea that you know, life happens between nine and five and so you want to make sure that you have opportunities to do other things. And so you kind of work when works for you and your team. And so I think there’s been like these pieces that have been slowly building onto it. The final Straw was after I read a book called deep work by Cal Newport and in cow’s book, he talks a lot about the brain’s capacity for actual deep, meaningful work, right? And the Max capacity they say is about four hours a day.

Natalie Nagele: [09:58]
So, you know, that was a big Aha moment that I brought to the team and said, well, hold on a second. If we can only do four, four times five is 20, what the hell are we doing for the other 20 hours? And so you know, that really started a dialogue and I don’t know if I can say specifically when, when that hit and when we actually executed on it, but we started really internally talking about, well what, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Right. And that’s how I, that’s how I run the business person. I always like, what’s the worst case, right? Cause some reason my mind works better when I’m like show me the bad stuff. And it’s like when the bad stuff doesn’t look so bad then we can play around with it.

Gene Hammett: [10:33]
So what was one of the worst things that you thought could happen?

Natalie Nagele: [10:37]
Genuinely that it wouldn’t work and the reverting of it would have a negative impact on the team and the culture. That’s my biggest fear for sure. Like you know you implement it for a while and then all of a sudden you’re like all right we’re back to five days and people are like, oh my God, you’re hurting.

Gene Hammett: [10:52]
How dare you.

Natalie Nagele: [10:53]
I know but my team’s not like that. So like it was, it’s a, it’s a fear I guess theoretically it’s probably more fear as we add new people on then the people who are been with us since we started the whole project cause I think, you know it’s like this is weird. Are we really gonna do this?

Gene Hammett: [11:08]
I was looking for my book and I don’t have a copy of it here. I’ve got a chapter in there about test the essential and it really is about looking at everything as a test. And then I have another chapter on fears where being able to distinguish between rational fear and irrational fear and what you had was a little bit irrational, right? It’s not founded. The example is swimming with a great white shark is a real fear. Like I’m definitely afraid of these beautiful animals that are, that will eat you in shreds, but you had to overcome these fears. So is your way of doing that and naturally to think about what’s the worst case that happened and maybe do some risk mitigation around that.

Natalie Nagele: [11:52]
Yeah, I think it’s just always been that way. I may be because I feel like I work best with my back against the wall. That’s just like where, where, you know, it’s where I thrive. And so that back against the wall translates into like worst case scenarios, right? Like, and so I think we just think through, and this would kind of when I talked to my team about anything, it’s like, all right, well just walk it through, right? Let’s put all the cards on the table. And usually, none of them are that bad. Once you kind of like lay them out and it’s, it’s when they’re scary or when they’re in your head and they start creating these dialogs and narratives that probably aren’t accurate once you kind of play it out. So I just think that’s just kind of where we play. But again, we’re bootstrapped, profitable, completely independent. We have nobody to answer to. So most of the time our risks are really small because, so we play and then it doesn’t work and then we try something else. And who’s going to tell me that it was wrong?

Gene Hammett: [12:45]
I think a lot of people think about this four day work week would immediately go to, oh we get the 40 hours inside of four days. But you guys took a different approach. You said, nope, we’re going to still stick with a standard 32 hour work week. And you’ve got some because you want to have coverage on Mondays and Fridays. Not Everybody can take off on Fridays. Tell us how you work through those issues.

Natalie Nagele: [13:07]
Yeah, so you know, support. We’re not going to tell our customers we’re not working on Fridays. If something is if they need something. So our support team, our customer success team alternates Mondays and Fridays so they still get three consecutive days and that’s been working really well. And then we have us have on-call schedules. I mean we have infrastructure products, we’re constantly paying attention to making sure that they’re available and reliable. And I think honestly like I think where I’m headed with it is more of that 32 hours unless the four day work week, I’m not convinced yet that like a full day off is the right solution. I’m playing with the idea that you know, shorter days might be a better solution because again, like how much of your mind can you know, use in those eight hours and we have a retreat coming up in May and I think that’s what we’ll spend some time thinking about. But the ultimate goal of less time is really important. And the quality of work on Monday, more like people run to the office on Monday mornings, you know, and it’s like I run to the office, I’m so like can’t wait to get to work. And I think that’s an unusual thing, you know, with, with a lot we do.

Gene Hammett: [14:11]
And I’m looking for my other prop here and I don’t seem to have any, but I have these stickers that say I love Mondays.

Natalie Nagele: [14:17]
Yeah.

Gene Hammett: [14:18]
And a lot of founders I know love Mondays, but the problem is not a lot of employees love Mondays.

Natalie Nagele: [14:24]
Well, you know, one thing we did is we got rid of most of our Monday meetings cause I think one of the big problems and we used to hate Mondays. I’m like, oh my God. Monday’s me like to meet with everybody day and I’m like, that’s a horrible way to start a week. I want to start a week fresh and then on that fresh find I want to do great work and then we can, you know, so our lead calls on Thursdays. I love that. I think that’s great. Our last day, last morning, you know we can kind of clean up the week, but Mondays for most of the team is maybe 30-minute meeting. We try to do it like early, you know, kind of at a time that works for a remote team and that’s it and hopefully, the rest of your day is work and work on a clear head, right? You start, you really start to see the quality of work that comes out and it’s really impressive.

Gene Hammett: [15:05]
Natalie, I used to feel guilty and I’m going to share this with you in the audience. When I would work a full day and it would get to be six o’clock at night and I didn’t feel like I could keep going. I didn’t feel like I had the creative energy from it and I had a lot of stuff still left to do. And a lot of the work I do writing for Inc magazine and working with clients takes a real fresh mind and I finally let go of that guilt. Did you, have you ever have experienced any kind of guilt associated with not working enough hours?

Natalie Nagele: [15:36]
Absolutely. I think the guilt that I have and I know other people have on my team, you know, that we try to work through is that guilt that not even six, it’s three o’clock and you can’t get anything else done. Right. I mean those are real, you know, like there are days when I, I’m solving a child challenging problem in the morning or I have three meetings in a row, you know, and they’re like deep, meaningful conversations. It’s like I’ve got nothing but juice has gone. And I’ve learned over the years that it really has gone. Like there is a fine light. I’m not going to dig it up. I’m not, there’s no hack. You know, there’s nothing I can do. And so, you know, those are realities. I mean, we did the flexible working hours for that purpose. There was a point where I realized that we built like our culture somehow demanded that like it’s four o’clock in, you’re sitting staring at your computer until five to get up and leave.

Natalie Nagele: [16:23]
And that just killed me. And I was like, no, no, please go home. Like if you’re spent and you had a great day like ultimately my goal is to, I don’t count hour, I don’t give it, I don’t care if it’s 32 hours. If you can get work done that we’ve, that we think is enough in 20 hours, that’s fantastic. You know, if you can find me, I still think there’s so much productivity gain. Not The productivity is the end goal, but there’s so much productivity gain still to be had. And as we understand our brains better, as we understand ourselves as individuals better where and how we structure that time, you know? And the better we get and as individuals, I have some individuals on my team who are spectacular, that and some who struggle, right? And so the better we get at that as individuals, the more I’m like, do what you gotta do. Like, let’s commit to what we want to accomplish. You set out and you accomplish it and hopefully, it’s in less than 32 hours and that’s a huge win.

Gene Hammett: [17:17]
Natalie, you did another test I want to bring up, I’m gonna Guide you on this one because I think it’s really interesting. We are all overloaded with communication and I have a lot of clients, I use slack within my team and um, it’s, it’s very distracting at times. It’s very difficult that you feel like you need to be there. And I work with a lot of companies that are just completely, tied to the way slack has run their business now. It is a useful tool. It’s better than email. You guys went a full week with, with a very limited use of slack. Explain to us, you know, this test that you started to run.

Natalie Nagele: [17:58]
Yeah. So we shut down slack. You know, we do this periodically. I think that was the one that Chris actually wrote about. But we are constantly maximizing focus time and focus work. So slack is horrendous. And it’s not slack, right? Like, let’s not, it’s just chatting in general, right. There was a chat before slack, there’ll be chats after slack. And it’s just the, it’s that instant. It’s the requirement for instant communication. I think slack has become so ingrained in its perception that it’s PR plays for permanent storage of information and we don’t look at it that way. Right. So one of the first things we did is like, slack can’t be an inbox. So slack is like direct need something now quick like you and I just chatting.

Natalie Nagele: [18:40]
But if we’re making decisions or doing anything, it doesn’t live in a snack. Nobody should feel like they have to go back to the slack to check what they missed. Cause that’s like the worst thing in the world is when you’re like, oh my God, did I miss something? And it’s like, no, no. And you’re, you know, it’s not, it’s not organized for, I mean all, there’s a million things, but we shut it down partially because sometimes you have to like swing pendulums really drastically and the other side to see what’s going to fall apart. And I think that’s kind of, you know, we, you do something for long enough, you almost need to do that again. Right? Just like you should always sign up for your app every couple of times, you know, a year like sign up from scratch cause you forget the things that you built and maybe they’re not relevant anymore.

Natalie Nagele: [19:18]
I think the same in the process. You kind of wants to like break things a little bit to see what, what’s going to hurt. And so we shut it down and we left it enabled for the direct message because we’re still, we’re a fully remote team while we’re remote first. And so, you know, we still need some means of like talking directly to each other, you know, working on projects but no group chats, none of that stuff. And it was so fun because you know, we’ve removed the water cooler and it’s kind of stayed permanently removed because a remote team in different time zones over a slack water cooler is not valuable. You get like this all day long. Hi, be right back, bye. Leave it. You know, it’s like we’re not connecting. You have to have an what I call the intentional water cooler if you actually want to have like that connection with your team.

Natalie Nagele: [20:02]
But people, one of my favorite things that we identified and there was Ashley on our team was like, I realized how much, I went back to slack as a procrastination tool and she’s like, I just got up, I realized that I was like, oh, I’m going to switch back to slack. We don’t have slack. I was like, what am I going to do? I’ll guess I’ll go take a walk. And I mean, I don’t have to explain how much more valuable it is to take a walk than it is read through every slack channel to see if you miss something. That was very powerful and very impactful on the team because we really, you know, your best work, we say your best work is done away from the screen. And so having an opportunity to walk away, to not feel like you can just switch, I mean it became a crutch, right?

Natalie Nagele: [20:45]
It’s like, oh, I’m in between tasks or this thing gets hard. And that part of your brain is like, I need a quick fix and slacks the best quick fix you can get. So, you know, switching to that. So it was really impactful. Our slack is really quiet now, which I really like, but you know, we all start easing into bad habits again. And I’m sure we’re going to do something on retreat in May where we say, all right, you know, killing something. We’re going to, we’re going to get rid of something for a little bit to just give that jolt to remind ourselves, you know, where things fall apart. What are we missing? It was really great.

Gene Hammett: [21:17]
I like the way you’re willing to, to break some things and remove it and challenge yourself to how would we do this if, if we didn’t have this channel or tool or whatever was in front of us. You work with a lot of developers, you know, not only within your team but also your services a lot of developers. Right? So you, a lot of their best work is not done when they’re sitting there typing and keyboards. It’s the thinking process.

Natalie Nagele: [21:46]
Absolutely. And it’s one of those things, I think it’s such a, a mist or misconception or just an I mean, software development is solving complicated problems. Once you write the code, that’s the easy part. Like our team, like if you talked to the engineering team, it’s like they always say it’s the writing, it’s the drawing, it’s the schematics as to taking a walk. It’s, you know, sometimes it’s like spending the whole weekend letting it ruminate in the back of your mind and you come in. I always laugh, like we have people who watch youtube while they’re coding or listen to like really aggressive music while they’re coding. And I’m always laughing. I’m like, how do you do that? Because my job is writing and thinking. They’re like when I code, I’m not really thinking like I’m just, I solved the problem already.

Natalie Nagele: [22:26]
Now I just have to execute on it. And I think that’s really important for real quality software development. I mean, we’re solving problems, right? We’re taking pieces and architecting them to understand how they fit together to future proof them to some degrees so that they don’t break something else down the line. And, and you know, we all know it’s not like one plus one equals two, right? There are a million ways to get the two. So how do you architect that and build it in a way? And I think I have a team of folks who really understand that and hopefully while, but supports them in that like walk away from your computer, you know, like, that’s not the most important thing.

Gene Hammett: [23:00]
Natalie, I want to give you a chance. I have been asking and guiding, correct. These things, two questions. What have I not asked you about today that you think other company leaders really need to understand if they would love to embrace a little bit more of the testing inside of their culture?

Natalie Nagele: [23:19]
I think the most important thing is trusting your team. I mean, when we implemented the 32 hour work week, we really, I lean a lot on my team and I’m very vulnerable and I’ll say, here are these things that I’m thinking about. What are the risks? What haven’t we thought about, you know, and what, what happens if we fall down? Are we going to be able to pick ourselves back up? And what’s that gonna look like? And that’s been something that we’ve really pushed a lot as, you know, our vulnerabilities as leaders and also our trust in our team to help guide those directions. Because what happens is, you know, when we first implemented the 32 hour work week in the first few weeks, you know, I kept asking the team how are you feeling, how are you feeling? And my team was like, we can’t do this.

Natalie Nagele: [23:59]
We’re not getting enough done. You know, they had such anxiety, you know, and that’s like a powerful thing when people aren’t taking, they care about their work, they care about the company to care about growth and they’re like, Whoa, whoa, we can’t do this. And that’s an incredible trust, right? So now as we’re pushing along and really trying to identify those things, I really rely on that trust with my team to help guide the experiments. So I trust them to protect me in case we have to switch back or change things and they know that we’re vulnerable enough to hear honestly, honesty from them around what’s working, what’s not working and that, you know, that’s hard to build. I’ve talked to teams who have, you know, over this last two years, I’ve tried to meet as many teams. I can run 32 hours weeks so we can kind of share how it’s going.

Natalie Nagele: [24:42]
And I’ve talked to teams where they’re like, we’re being taken advantage of. Nobody’s getting now are 32 hours turned into 20, you know, and I’ve had those conversations and it’s shocking to me because I just don’t have that culture inside the company like we really have. I’m so lucky to work with great people who really care. And so they look at these things as parts of the same puzzle as to how I look at it. You know, how are we going to get better? How do we execute better? How do we create a better work environment? And so I think that trust is really important.

Gene Hammett: [25:09]
I want to ask one follow-up question to this before we wrap up. You know, I believe that when you are building a good culture, you have good processes for hiring. If you have these great people, what have you learned are tested in the hiring process that you can share with us today?

Natalie Nagele: [25:27]
You know, goodness, I’m not great at it, I promise. I think we don’t, we don’t do it very often. You know, we’re a small team and so I, We’ve had some real, real fantastic successes and we’ve had some failures. I think we try very hard to take our time and really, really set clear expectations and ask a lot of questions. And I try to understand the motives of why people want to come to join the organization. And I’m not, you know, anybody who knows me and who follows wild but knows that I’m equal. I understand that people get a job for a job because they need to support their families in an equal way that they do it for their own motivations and their own kind of fulfillment in their careers. So I find both of those equally as important, but they’re equally as important.

Natalie Nagele: [26:19]
And so I really try to understand people’s motivations and the risk that I found with the more and more culture becomes known, you know, our 32 hour work weeks or flexible schedules that remote first, you know, all these things more. I’m realizing that some folks just want to come work here because of those things and that’s going to be a struggle for them because our team does isn’t here for those things, right? We’re here to do really good and work collaboratively together. And experiment on what it means to build a great business. And some of that comes out as a 32 hour work week, but that might change, you know, and all these things. And so I’ve had, I’ve had to learn how to balance the desire to work for a while, but because of the problems we’re solving and the team and the kind of career development that we’ve hoped to provide and this kind of, I really want to work in sculpture, you know, and that’s the most important thing and that’s been really a struggle for me. And you know, I don’t know that I’ve solved it yet cause I want to hire everybody but I can’t. So it’s like kind of finding that balance.

Gene Hammett: [27:16]
Well, I appreciate you sharing that with us, Natalie. Thanks for being here at leaders in the trenches and sharing your insights on how you test your way to success. So I appreciate it.

Natalie Nagele: [27:26]
Thanks for having me. This was fun.

Gene Hammett: [27:28]
Wow, what a great interview. 32 hours a week. It is possible. It is possible to create that level of focus and energy around 32 hours and get the work done. Natalie has proven it and you could probably do some things that you didn’t think were possible if you really, really sat down to do it. So I mentioned at the very beginning of this, maybe you, maybe you skipped past it or not. But we are taking leaders in the trenches offline. It is over after five and almost a half years, almost 440 episodes. There are no more leaders in the trenches. I have re-imagined the name, re-imagine the format, re-imagine the guest, and so it will be called GROWTH THINK TANK.

Gene Hammett: [28:14]
Going forward, we’re going to be interviewing the fastest growing companies, the founders and CEOs of the INC 500 we’re gonna be talking about the leadership and culture strategies that allow them to grow so fast. It’s a new format. So tune in and you’re not in the wrong place if you get it. If you haven’t listened to this far, then you know, I guess it doesn’t matter. But I’m excited to share this with you and I’m excited to bring you along to this journey because I’ve already done 22 of these interviews and they are amazing. We’re getting very specific. You’re getting just the most powerful elements, and I’m going to share that with you on the show. So tune in next week for a new format, new show, GROWTH THINK TANK, and as always, lead with courage. I’ll see you next time.

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

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