Four-day-week = 4x return for business growth specialist
A business community, which helps ambitious entrepreneurs and owners to grow their companies to where they want them to be, is reporting record results of its own, with revenue quadrupling since implementing the four-day week back in 2019.
Birmingham-based Entrepreneurs Circle (EC), which was founded by serial entrepreneur and best-selling business author Nigel Botterill in 2011, has also seen membership grow by 400% in that same period.
Meanwhile, staff are reporting better work/life balance and greater drive and motivation in their roles, which in turn has benefited the thousands of EC members across the UK – and overseas.
Results from the 2023 members’ survey show that 28% of them had more than doubled their revenue in the first year of membership, which has given them the ability to expand their business operations and hire new staff.
Members also reported feeling more focused on their business with more motivation and clarity of direction thanks to the guidance of EC and the peer-support of the wider membership community.
“We offer our members the tools, training, help and support they need to do two very clear things, get and keep more customers,” said Botterill, who left his corporate career to start his first business in 2003.
Since then, he’s started 10 separate £1m-plus businesses from scratch in the UK and discovered the framework to build, grow and scale businesses.
It is that framework, structure and clarity which has seen membership skyrocket in recent years, with membership now approaching 3,000.
Botteril added: “This is a big beast of a business. We run large scale events online and offline that are full-on experiences for our members. Our goal is to inspire and motivate them as they learn to build their businesses and put theory into action but that cannot be done without a team that wants to be a big part of that picture.
“I had looked at the four-day week for a few years pre-Pandemic but there is no doubt that it was the catalyst to actually implementing the move and making it a key part of how we work.
“The results have been nothing short of spectacular for us in terms of attracting and retaining high-calibre people and in turn, growing our membership. Interestingly, we are now seeing many of our members embracing the four-day-week concept after they have seen the impact it has had on EC.
“There are so many opportunities out there for entrepreneurs to truly build the business they actually want. Sadly, there are also many business owners who feel that they are ‘trapped’ or as we like to phrase it ‘stuck in the weeds’.
“I would urge them to carefully consider how they currently spend their working week, especially with regards to how much time they spend in vs on the business. If they can find that clarity, that focus and then carve out time for simply getting and keeping customers, they will discover there is a whole world of possibilities out there, regardless of the prevailing economy or politics. They may even find that four days of focus beats the standard five.’
