I’m a CEO – my team works just three days a week and we’ve doubled our revenue

Seamus Begley founded The Studio of Possible six years ago in Manchester after an 18-year career at a well-known London marketing agency. He was determined to move away from the widespread agency culture of working all hours at all costs. “I just got to that point where I was like, ‘I need a reset’. I knew exactly what I didn’t want this to be when I set up the studio. I was deliberate about what I wanted to carry forward, but also about the things I wanted to leave behind,” says Begley, 49, who now lives in Waterford, on the south coast of his native Ireland. “I wanted to create the antidote for what I’d personally experienced from my previous life – that micromanagement and everything being dictated to you.” Begley oversees a remote team of 10, based across the UK, Ireland, US and Asia. They are all permanent staff contracted to work only three days a week. What they do on their “off days” varies, but they all have an entrepreneurial streak. One team member runs their own glamping business, plus a venue they hire out for corporate events. Another runs a photography studio, while another is working on an AI image generation tool. Many of them have children, which means they are also able to save thousands on childcare costs. Shorts A reduced working week has been debated for some time. In 2022, a UK pilot of a four-day work week took place, involving 61 companies and 2,900 workers, with no reduction in pay. At the end of the pilot, 92 per cent of the companies said they would continue with it, as 71 per cent of employees said they had reduced burnout as a result, while 54 per cent also said it was easier to balance work with other commitments. A three-day work week is certainly less common, but the concept is gaining traction. Amy Grilli set up Five Hour Club in 2024, a jobs board promoting “five-hour work days”: roles that can be done in that many hours per day, or the equivalent of around three full days per week. The idea came to her after she had children and discovered there was a lack of part-time roles that offered seniority and career progression. “The parents within our talent pool include a significant number of former C-suite executives and senior leaders across a wide range of industries,” says Grilli. “We’ve seen a notable shift as more companies recognise both the calibre of our candidates and the value of flexible work within school hours, so there’s been a clear increase in senior-level roles being shaped for this model.” Over at The Studio of Possible, some of Begley’s team spread their contracted three days over the week, working around five hours a day for five days to accommodate school runs. Others prefer a more defined three full days. There are two team meetings each week that everyone is expected to join, and a daily 10-minute catch-up for whoever is working that day, but for the most part, Begley says people take responsibility for keeping each other informed. ‘The flexibility that keeps working parents in a role becomes the very thing that prevents them from progressing within it,’ says Amy Grilli, founder of the Five Hour Club Yet when Five Hour Club released its Five Hour Workday Impact Report this year, surveying 275 parents who work the three day pattern, the results called out a key issue – a lack of career progression due to working fewer hours. “It’s the number one reason working parents say they would leave [a five-hour workday job]. A striking number named being part-time as the barrier – the flexibility that keeps them in a role becomes the very thing that prevents them from progressing within it,” says Grilli. Bart van Ark, senior fellow at The Productivity Institute, agrees. “If people are part-time, they’re obviously missing part of the game, and therefore sometimes it’s more difficult for them to progress their career very quickly. If you get into more higher-level management positions, it becomes harder and harder to do this on a part-time basis,” says van Ark. Begley doesn’t believe that part-time work should inhibit career progress. “Across our team, people are taking on new responsibilities, developing skills and working in areas they haven’t explored before,” he says. “From what I see, reduced hours haven’t stopped that development. People should be able to grow their careers without having to give more and more of their lives to work.” “I’ve experienced what a demanding culture can do to your health – the unwritten expectation to always be available, working late becoming a badge of honour. Personally, I was paying for it through stress, anxiety and my health,” he says. “What I question now is why working to that point was ever something to be proud of. It has fundamentally shaped how I think about running a business now. I don’t want anyone to have to reach breaking point before their workload is taken seriously.” ‘One way to make sure that we get more people back into the workforce is to actually create more opportunities for part-time work,’ says Bart van Ark Begley’s happy place is on his bike, and it’s where he can be found for several hours a day at least three days a week. “I want to have a few hours a day where I go and do my thing, and clear my head. Having to do a focused nine-to-five always really got to me, because my best thinking doesn’t come when it’s forced. It comes when I’m out for a walk, or up in the hills on my bike,” he says. He likes to rise early for some quiet thinking and planning time, taking a break to exercise, before working again, taking another break, then picking up work again in the late afternoon or early evening. Begley says he can work this way as his team tends to make experienced, more mature hires who have the skills and mindset to work independently and take the initiative to lead on specific projects. While Begley’s team’s standard contract is for three days a week, there is the option for people to take on more work if they wish. They’ll be paid for those extra hours, another significant move away from agency culture where unpaid overtime is often expected. Begley is hoping his unique working model will help him attract his next recruits, as he hopes to hire another eight people this year. Revenue more than doubled in 2025. “We’re scaling because more people want what we do,” says Begley. “I’ve worked in environments where everyone was flat out and under constant pressure. But what was all that activity actually achieving? I believe we’re more effective. Clients consistently comment on the quality and efficiency of our work. That tells me far more than who’s still at their desk at eight o’clock.”