A CEO gave his employees Fridays off. Three years later, revenue is up about 160%

In late 2022, Jake Kurtz, founder and CEO of Tampa-based social media agency Brick Media, wanted a better work-life balance. He had a wild idea: What if everyone worked just four days a week?

After seeing European companies experiment with shorter workweeks on social media, he launched a 90-day pilot in January 2023, giving employees Fridays off without cutting their salaries. By April, he had made the schedule permanent.

Nearly four years later, Brick’s revenue has grown dramatically. According to figures the company provided, revenue jumped 73% in 2023, another 39% in 2024, and 8% in 2025. Compounded, that’s roughly 160% growth in three years.

Kurtz believes some of that success traces back to the four-day workweek, though he doesn’t claim the schedule alone explains it. He bets that giving employees a reason to stay makes the company more efficient and more competitive, even as workplace researchers say the four-day week has faded from the hybrid-work conversation and some leaders who tried it have dialed it back.

At Brick, employees work four nine-hour days, Monday through Thursday. That’s a 36-hour week, four hours short of the traditional 40, with paid lunch breaks included. Employees are still considered full-time and eligible for benefits.

That puts Brick between a compressed 40-hour week and the 32-hour model some researchers advocate. At Fortune‘s Workplace Innovation Summit in May, University of Georgia psychology professor Malissa Clark argued that the point of a four-day week is to cut eight hours, not cram 40 hours into four days.

Brick’s schedule also contrasts with the long hours common in the related public relations field. Muck Rack’s State of PR 2026 report found that 55% of PR professionals surveyed had worked more than 40 hours the previous week.

Social media doesn’t exactly take weekends off, but Kurtz said clients have been surprisingly understanding of the arrangement, and most content shoots, meetings and other work can be planned ahead of time.

Employees still occasionally handle small tasks on Fridays or weekends, which he described as taking “five minutes here and there.” He estimated that more serious emergencies requiring several hours of work happen roughly once or twice a quarter. In those cases, nonexempt employees are eligible for overtime if they work more than 40 hours in a week, and the company brings in freelance contractors when needed.

Brick served 56 clients in all of 2022, compared with 85 in just the first half of 2026, according to Kurtz. A social media manager typically handles six or seven clients, with seven the upper limit.

Once employees approach that threshold, Brick hires more people instead of piling more work on existing staff. That’s one reason revenue has grown so quickly. It’s also why profit margins have stayed roughly unchanged since 2022, Kurtz said, as payroll has risen alongside revenue.

Employees also work from home most of the time. Only one of the four working days requires a trip to the office.