Cakes Body recently gave all of its workers a full month of PTO around the winter holidays, and they're planning to make it a twice-yearly perk.

The e-commerce retailer, which makes nipple covers, has roughly 30 employees who work remotely across the U.S.

Cofounders and twin sisters Taylor Capuano and Casey Sarai, 32, don't expect the quiet periods will impact the company's growth — in fact, they introduced the idea after the team-wide planning efforts to prepare for their respective maternity leaves in 2024 resulted in the business growing nearly eight-fold from $10 million in annual sales to $75 million in annual sales.

They say their secret is working on what's known as the "12-week year," a concept explored in a book of the same name by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington that encourages reframing your priorities and timelines to reach more goals in less time.

Doing more in less time with the 12-week year

Cakes Body uses the 12-week year by setting one main goal for the year by January, then breaking down the tactical goals they have to hit each quarter to reach their overall milestone, says Sarai, the company's CEO.

Setting a concrete benchmark for each quarter forces the company to be "laser-focused for shorter sprints of time to get more done, versus having a big list of annual goals you're whittling away on," says Capuano, the company's chief creative officer. The strategy "has really been the crux of our progress and why we've been able to scale."

For example, in the company's first year in 2022, the team's main goal was to determine their customer acquisition cost. While they put zero pressure on driving revenue, they spent the year testing different customer acquisition strategies to determine how they could acquire customers with very little marketing budget and how much that would cost.

In their second year in business, Cakes Body focused on diversifying their revenue, and by its third year the team prioritized testing different products based on what their customers wanted. "We put no pressure on driving revenue from new products, however all of the focus was on learning where our product line was going to evolve," Sarai says.

Now in its fourth year, Sarai says the company's 2025 goal is to make it "the year of becoming iconic" and ensuring the internet brand becomes a "legacy brand shaping the future of boob-solutions."

Overall, working with the 12-week year "takes an insane amount of discipline, resource and focus to get only one thing right every year," Sarai says. "Having only one goal per year that we must win at also helps identify how many 'good' ideas are actually a distraction and hinder growth."

"Saying 'no' to 'good' ideas is a core part of our culture and the reason for our rapid growth," she adds.

Giving time back to workers

Beyond the business strategy, "we wouldn't have been able to achieve this level of growth without a team that was very dedicated," Capuano the company's chief creative officer, says. "It feels very natural giving them time off."

Capuano says their first quiet period was well received and that they are considering how to make sure workers are able to come back fully rested.

In order to make it work, the sisters agree that they must be clear in what the quiet period really means (no meetings and minimal check-ins among a core team that oversees daily operations). Leaders must also model the right behavior by disconnecting and supporting their employees doing the same.

Hopefully, they say, they'll get to a point where they're offering extended breaks twice a year.

"To do 12 months of work in 10 months isn't a crazy thought," Capuano says. "You just need to plan for it."

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