Episode 10 / Demir and Carey Bentley
How to Take The Emotion Out of Priorities: Demir and Carey Bentley’s Tips to Winning the Week
What You'll Learn in This Episode:
How to take the emotion out of your priorities for a more effective system on balancing time and joy
What it means to monitor the supply and demand of time management
The test you can give yourself to determine if you’ve won the week
Techniques to mitigate risks in entrepreneurship and the value of resilience in a volatile business environment.
How to determine what success looks like in your life and business
Demir and Carey Bentley, the power couple behind Lifehack Method and authors of "Winning the Week: How to Plan a Successful Week Every Week,” dive into their strategies to gain radical clarity in your life and business. From the moment they first faced the opportunity to redefine their lifestyle in light of Demir's health crisis to their rise as productivity gurus advocating for work-life harmony, the Bentleys share candidly about their transition from traditional corporate America to a life of intentional design and freedom. Listen in as they discuss their unique approach to productivity, blending lifestyle design with actionable strategies for optimizing time.
ABOUT Demir and Carey Bentley
Demir and Carey Bentley are the husband and wife team behind Lifehack Method, the productivity and lifestyle design company for high performing individuals who want to bring sanity back in their lives.
They’re WSJ Bestselling authors of Winning The Week: How To Plan A Successful Week, Every Week. Their work has been featured in ABC News, Forbes, Inc, Entrepreneur, Bloomberg, WSJ, HuffPo, and on podcasts like Entrepreneurs on Fire, Forbes 30 Under 30, Amy Porterfield's Online Marketing Made Easy, and The ONE Thing.
Carey and Demir live internationally with their two daughters. Their primary home base is Medellin, Colombia.
“We put this huge premium on resilience in our life, and I think that fear, the uncertainty of entrepreneurialism, sort of gave birth to a love of resilience.”
Demir Bentley
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Lindsey Epperly [00:00:12]:
Welcome to who made you the boss. A podcast for recovering workaholics. I'm your host, Lindsey Epperly, and I invite you to embark on a transformative journey. Our mission on who made you the boss is clear. We're here to tackle the unique, unique challenges that today's professionals face. We're bringing you insightful conversations with a diverse range of entrepreneurs, executives and creatives all who have forged their own paths. And I'm sharing some of the stories of my decades long career as a leader of my company, Jetset World Travel. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting out on your journey, join us each week as we unravel the mysteries of leadership, self discovery and the pursuit of fulfillment.
Lindsey Epperly [00:00:50]:
It is time to redefine what it means to be the boss of your own life. Let's dive in and together we'll discover who made you the Boss. Welcome back, friends and listeners, to another exciting episode of Who Made You the Boss? A podcast for recovering workaholics. And today we have the privilege of a couple of remarkable recovering workaholics demir and Carrie Bentley. These two are a true power couple. I am fortunate to know them personally, so I can tell you they walk the talk behind their transformational approach to productivity and lifestyle design. They are the founders of Lifehack Method and they are authors of the Wall Street Journal bestselling book, winning the Week how to Plan a Successful Week every week. Their journey from careers on Wall Street and then corporate America to now being the international travelers and productivity gurus that they are today, is an inspiration to anyone seeking a better work life balance.
Lindsey Epperly [00:01:51]:
Demir's early success as the youngest senior analyst on Wall Street and Carrie's corporate journey, managing billion dollar CPG brands, really set the stage for this remarkable transformation that they went through, because the pursuit of success actually took a sharp turn when Demir's helped suffer due to stress related issues. At that point, doctors prescribed a radical solution, reducing his work hours. And that pivotal moment, which we really dive into today, led them to question the conventional definition of success and that then sparked their quest for a healthier, more fulfilling way of life. Demir and Carrie's journey from burnout to balance culminated in the birth of the Life Hack Method, and that has got tangible steps to it, which we will actually talk about today innovative productivity strategies. Through this, they not only reclaimed their time, but they've also helped thousands of others do the same. And listeners, you guys will fall into that category when you hear this conversation. Their story offers valuable insights into achieving peak productivity without sacrificing one's well being, which is definitely something we can get behind. Damir and Kiri are dedicated to showing others that the path to success does not have to be paved with burnout and we could not agree more.
Lindsey Epperly [00:02:58]:
So let's get on to another great episode of Who Made You the Boss? Hey everyone. Welcome back. We are so excited to have Demir and Carrie Bentley on today. Two incredible individuals, powerhouse couple and friends of mine.
Demir Bentley [00:03:21]:
Hello.
Lindsey Epperly [00:03:23]:
Thank you guys for being on.
Carey Bentley [00:03:25]:
We are super excited to be here, really excited to hear about the launch of this podcast. And, yeah, we were very excited to be invited to be on one of the first episodes.
Lindsey Epperly [00:03:35]:
Absolutely. Well, I feel like my family and your family have had so many wonderful things in common since we very first met in Serenby a couple of months ago when you guys were visiting. And we both have two girls at the exact same age group and are couples that work together. I mean, how do you find.
Demir Bentley [00:03:53]:
Before we met, everybody was like, oh, well, you need to meet Lindsey and her husband.
Lindsey Epperly [00:03:57]:
You guys sound exactly, basically and now you know what? Now Jeremy has almost the same length hair as so, like, you guys are basically becoming each other full man bun.
Carey Bentley [00:04:08]:
Like the man bun. Dad bun. I don't know.
Lindsey Epperly [00:04:10]:
Dad bun. Exactly. It's lovely. I'm encouraging it. I like it.
Demir Bentley [00:04:14]:
We went out to a dinner and I looked around at all the dads post COVID had, like, absurdly long hair, and I was like, oh, God, I'm so typical.
Lindsey Epperly [00:04:22]:
But you know what I think? Embrace it, right?
Demir Bentley [00:04:25]:
I clearly am.
Lindsey Epperly [00:04:26]:
This shows that you are able to work for yourself and create the life you want to create, which is all that we're talking about today. So I think I'll dive right in. Honestly, I've told the listeners a little bit more about your backstory and essentially that catalyst moment that you had Demir with your health that really led you from these demanding jobs in both Wall Street and corporate America. Then Demir faces this health crisis, and it seems like maybe that was the moment that you said, hey, something's got to give. I need to take control of my own life, of our own life. Can you share a little bit about that moment, what that looked like, what you changed, and kind of how that allowed you to essentially become the boss of your own life at that point.
Demir Bentley [00:05:08]:
Yeah, I think in life you get so few of these moments that are undeniable, where it's not like, should I? Shouldn't I? It's just like, I have to I can't go on like this. And it was enough to sort of strip away from me all of the ego driven reasons that I'd gone to New York, and New York has this it's like an abusive relationship. It makes you feel like you won't be able to get together with anybody else if you leave know, new York makes you feel like you'll be nothing without me. But I felt like, really, carrie and I had some crazy discussions in that moment of, like, we would rather be living in a tiny home on my parents property in Northern California rather than be living like this. So it really got us to a point where we were willing to consider some things that we never would have considered before.
Carey Bentley [00:05:59]:
I think that's the crucial thing that a lot of people miss about lifestyle design is that you need to be able to put your cards on the table and really decide powerfully, what is it that you truly want? Rather than sort of the fear based response that I feel like a lot of people have. Which is it feels so much better to stay in your current place because it's what you know and what you feel comfortable with. Taking any sort of risk feels like wildly inappropriate for most people or people.
Demir Bentley [00:06:31]:
Are trying to take too small of a risk. They're trying to inch their way to a different life, which, God bless it if you can, but all too often, when we really want to make a powerful change in our life, we do need to take a hammer. To some pretty big fundamental elements of our life and sort of say, hey, I'm willing to start with a tabula rasa and design something from the ground up. That works for me. And so people laugh at us all the time. But we made a list and we still have it. It's a digital list. We made this list of what are we willing to compromise on and what are we not willing to compromise on? And that list was so funny.
Demir Bentley [00:07:09]:
Number one for me on that list was I want a nap every day at 01:00 P.m..
Carey Bentley [00:07:15]:
He didn't want anyone to tell him that he could not take a nap.
Demir Bentley [00:07:18]:
Because I was finance. In finance, you had to push through. If you got that late day tiredness, you couldn't just lay down even for 20 minutes, you got to push through. And I just said, Carrie, this is number one for me. Naps every day. 01:00 p.m. And to this day, every day.
Lindsey Epperly [00:07:38]:
I love it because your platform is productivity. And so to the average person they would think, well, that sounds a little not productive, but really it helps fuel you.
Carey Bentley [00:07:48]:
Yeah, that and also Demir just loves them. But when I first I'm a big nap fan, it was crazy. The number of places I would find him asleep. It was like comfortable. I'd look over on the subway and I'd be like, how is he doing? It's like he's out.
Lindsey Epperly [00:08:01]:
Okay, so draw us the line between when this moment happened and you're like, I got to change my lifestyle to then being able to nap every day. Did both of you stay in your jobs? Did you both quit on the same day in some sort of major movie moment? What did that look like? And it also sounds like in between then and that point, you were working more on how to become more productive with your time.
Demir Bentley [00:08:23]:
Yeah, so in this moment, I basically quit and I started a startup. And there was a journey in the middle where I did a tech startup and it didn't go anywhere, but we got a lot of recognition for how productive our team was. Our team was producing really the same amount that one of our investors said our team is producing. The same amount that a team six times as big was producing. And so that was the first sort of dawning realization that I not only had my own productivity transformation that's part of my story, but also then really started to love showing other people. It sort of became like my John the Baptist moment of like, oh my God, I got to tell the world. I really became an evangelist for like, you know, there's a better way to do this, right? By the way, just so everybody knows with absolute clarity, I am that person know will be a smoker. But then when I quit goes and tells all the other smokers, you shouldn't smoke, right? I'm that person who's totally extreme and I'll be on one side, and then when I go on the other side, I become a complete evangelist.
Demir Bentley [00:09:26]:
So I just sort of became this person in the lives of my friends and my coworkers and my employees of just like I just realized I had this passion. And when that business didn't go know, I was thinking about re situating. And Carrie and I sat together and she said, this is what you're talking about all the time. You're teaching it to your friends, you're teaching it to your family. Like people are getting mentorship with like, can you do just this? Can you bring this into the world? And we were both like, probably not. But let's was I think we both in the beginning were like, this probably isn't going to work.
Carey Bentley [00:09:59]:
And that was our idea. We were like, let's do a passive income project. So in vogue right now. Our friend, we had met Lewis Hales recently and he was telling us all about these webinars. We were like, well, let's do a webinar. We'll do a course and we'll just make money.
Demir Bentley [00:10:16]:
Passively money will just come in every month. We won't even have to do a thing. It'll just be like, never happened.
Carey Bentley [00:10:24]:
Never, ever happened. Not even one day. But what did happen was we discovered a niche where we could help people. People were getting great results from Demir's coaching and we were like, maybe we could just do this. Meanwhile, I'm still in my corporate job. And so the key part of that was I didn't necessarily come in with the same productivity issues that Demir has. Sort of naturally I'm relatively productive. But honestly, Demir pushes the envelope so far, he was still teaching me things.
Carey Bentley [00:10:56]:
He was like, well, what if he did it this other crazy way? And I'm like, oh, that would be crazy. Are you sure I could do that? I would try it and it would work. It would work so well. So even I was like, this guy is good. He knows stuff. So then I was, you know, I'm not going to quit my job until I know we have a business that's making money. And so we set certain financial targets for ourselves based on our cost of living at the time, because we were actually in La. At that point.
Carey Bentley [00:11:22]:
And sure enough, we hit it. And then six months later, I was able to quit my job as well.
Demir Bentley [00:11:28]:
The whole time I was like, I need to get knew. I was plotting from the very first day. I was like, when I knew I was going to do it, I was like, I got to have Carrie. She's so talented. We tend to say we're like Captain Planet. Like, when we combine our powers, we form, like, one superhero, right? So I was plotting from the very beginning, and then there's a bad week with her boss, and I saw my opportunity. I was like, I'm striking while the iron is hot.
Carey Bentley [00:11:55]:
Smart.
Lindsey Epperly [00:11:55]:
How did you feel about that carrier? Were you immediately like, yes, of course I want to work with my husband. What could go wrong? Or did you have a few?
Carey Bentley [00:12:02]:
We actually one of our best friends took us aside, and she was like, you cannot work together.
Demir Bentley [00:12:07]:
Do not do this.
Carey Bentley [00:12:08]:
You will get divorced. This is what happened to me, all this stuff. And so I was, like, properly foreign, very scared. And that was part of the six month process, was I was able to work with him and he with me. We were able to test it out and decide it was for us. I mean, part of our backstory is as well. When we met, it was in a work context where we were working together when we very first met, and we weren't romantically involved at all. And so we already sort of knew each other's strengths and weaknesses in the work department, and so it wasn't like a totally new experience.
Demir Bentley [00:12:43]:
Yeah, I mean, it really helps that I had zero desire to be the principal, CEO, president, whatever you want to call it. I had done that. I had not been particularly great at it. I don't want to take the wind out of myself, but I really came to appreciate the qualities that a person needs to have to be in a leadership role in a company and recognize that those were not innate qualities to me. I had other qualities that were really good. And so it wasn't like there was a power grab of who's in control. It was like, Carrie, you're in control. You're the boss, I'm the talent.
Demir Bentley [00:13:16]:
You will run this. Right? So this isn't a democracy. We're not coming to each other, asking each other for approvals, like, ever. We've basically mapped out very carefully what our roles are in my areas. I consult her, but get to make the final call in her areas. She may or may not consult me, gets to make the final call. We respect each other clearly, but there have been tons of time where she said, what do you think? I think something different than her. We want to get to agreement, but there's been times where I've been like, babe, I don't know if we're going to get to agreement here, but you're in charge, so I support you just doing what you trust.
Demir Bentley [00:13:51]:
And I cannot remember one example of thinking, oh, God, she really screwed the pooch on that.
Lindsey Epperly [00:14:00]:
It's so interesting to hear your story because it's so rare. You worked together and then you were together romantically and then you worked together again. Jeremy and I had the situation where he quit the week that we got married, and we decided while we are young and dumb and don't know any better, we will do this marriage and working together thing. And everything you just said that you guys were able to go into with clarity in terms of knowing what your lanes and your roles are, as well as knowing how you show up professionally. That was such a huge revelation to us. Is that work Lindsey? Kind of different than home Lindsey. So just realizing that we almost were these different personas in our professional and our personal lives. But I do think one of the things we talk about on this podcast is how to kind of create a path to fulfillment without sacrificing your whole self.
Lindsey Epperly [00:14:50]:
And I think one of the ways to do that is to live a more integrated life between who we are at home and who we are at work. So there's got to be a level of kind of accountability that you guys have. And knowing each other in and out.
Demir Bentley [00:15:01]:
Like that say that we really embrace the differences in Work Carrie and Work Demir. And my basic outlook on life is that we all have multiple personality syndrome. It's just not so bad that we can't conduct our life right. Everybody has voices in their life where, well, one part of me says this, but the other part of me feels the other way. Right. We all have different parts and we tend to just really lean into it and embrace it. And we are lucky enough that home. Carrie loves Demir.
Demir Bentley [00:15:31]:
Carrie and work. Demir loves work. Carrie Right. Our two different personalities work well on both levels. It's also why I would never stand up in a room and say, oh, there's something wrong with you if you can't work with your spouse. No, that's very common. I would say more common. I don't think that we're doing anything we have tips for people, but I don't think we're doing anything particularly right.
Demir Bentley [00:15:58]:
I think we also got really lucky that those two different types of personalities meshed on both of those playing fields.
Lindsey Epperly [00:16:04]:
Yeah, I could completely see that well, and I could spend all day talking to you guys about this because it is a particular set of circumstances that we share. But I really want to dive into what you wound up creating a business about that wound up not just being a webinar. Sounds like it's a pretty successful company at this point. Lifestyle design and designing your productivity and your work week. I mean, you've got a best selling book, Winning the Week, that is about this. Can you just kind of take us a little bit deeper into what that looks like in your lives and then what it looks like in your clients and your readers lives too?
Carey Bentley [00:16:40]:
Yeah, so our whole angle is that productivity is super boring and nobody really wants to learn about productivity, but productivity is really great in that it can serve as a vehicle for you to design the life that you want to create for yourself. So we're really not the kind of experts that are going to be reading the latest keyboard shortcuts and telling our clients about that because that's a little bit on the nerdy side of productivity. And we're really only interested in productivity as far as it's getting somebody the result they want in their life. And if they reach that point, then we've done our work. That's why we tell people, hey, if you're doing something already and it's working for you, just keep doing it. We're not going to ever tell somebody, don't do that, that's wrong. So, yeah, what we wanted to design and what Demir was talking about earlier is like, we want certain things in our life. We want the nap time.
Carey Bentley [00:17:32]:
A couple other things were we want to just have complete control over our time, to be able to take as many vacation days as we want every year, no matter what. We want geographic freedom. We want to be able to work from anywhere we want in the world, and a couple of other things. So we didn't necessarily set out to be entrepreneurs, but there was not a job opportunity that awaited us where we could have all of those freedoms that we desired. And so that's what sort of propelled us into entrepreneurship originally. And those freedoms are what I think our clients like about us and our coaching is because we're so focused on, okay, what freedoms is it that you want, how do we go after those for you?
Demir Bentley [00:18:16]:
And that's sort of now become maybe the flavor of our brand that's different than anything else. You'll find that in the productivity space, it's a lot of really geeky dudes. It's a lot of people who really love to geek out in all the keyboard shortcuts and all that stuff. And our flavor is more of a we call it productivity for freedom seekers. So we're really here primarily to show people how to get organized and get their stuff together. So that and that's the important part, so that they can go out and live the life that they want to live. Because productivity without lifestyle design is an abomination. If you really think about it, just getting more and more and more productive, but not having that productivity lead you to the life that you want to live is actually an abomination.
Demir Bentley [00:19:01]:
And that's how we get to people like me, 80 hours a week, exploding their stomach, having chronic health issues that they can't recover from. Right? And so for us it's really about like what's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow? And can we be that vehicle, that service that helps people interface with productivity in a way that it actually pays off for them, not just becomes this infinite rat race. Because the problem, and you've probably experienced this, if you get really productive in today's world, you sort of become a magnet for more work. So the most productive person in the office doesn't get the boss coming up to them saying hey, you know what, take a week off, you've been so productive. No, it's like oh, you've got capacity here's. Everybody else's backlog of work. So there really is a finesse to getting more productive and making sure that you actually benefit from it.
Carey Bentley [00:19:52]:
This is actually why we work very badly with corporate clients. And we only be the female because companies don't want us necessarily coming in and giving their employees tricks. Like here's how to get all your work done early, but then not give it to your boss because then your boss is just going to give you more work. But you got to get it done early so that you do have time and to do with some other stuff and create the space for real deep work. As you can see, this is not necessarily popular with all the bosses, but it's so rewarding to work with clients that are in that place of overwhelm burnout, with so many people from the corporate world who are like, that. Or they're entrepreneurs that just want to be able to design a life that is sustainable and doesn't lead to burnout eventually and show them how to do some of these things that are a little bit different but really work.
Lindsey Epperly [00:20:43]:
I love that. I think that's so smart. Well, and to be honest, yeah, the corporate world, I can see where there's a total conflict of interest. But I feel like the modern businesses in today's world recognize that their employees want to feel fulfilled and want to feel purposeful. And they want this mythical work life balance, which we can put a pen in and talk about in a little bit, but without the approval of, hey, take these days off, or make sure that you're living in this way. You're right. They will just take on everyone else's workload. And I have personally experienced that.
Lindsey Epperly [00:21:17]:
I don't know if I share this with you guys. There was a point in my career where I was actually teaching on getting out of burnout, working smarter, not harder. So that was why when I first heard about you guys, I was like, oh, there's so much alignment here. It says it's a passionate topic for me, but what I did was exactly what you described, Amir. I just kind of like a squirrel saving for winter, right? Like, I found more space, and I just shoved more nuts in there. And so it's like, what am I doing? I'm just burning myself out even greater with my extra productivity hacks.
Demir Bentley [00:21:44]:
Yeah, I mean, productivity is a double edged sword. Yeah. You can use it to cut your way to the life that you want to live. You could also cut yourself with it. And I have a lot of clients. In fact, when I do my more intensive coaching with my clients, I warn them, if you don't do this right, then you could actually end up with more work on your plate because you got more productive and then more capacity sort of flowed in. And now you're doing 80 hours of work in a 60 hours work week because you got more productive. So that's the flavor of ice cream, I suppose, for us is our clients are really attracted to us because they know we're living that next level lifestyle design.
Demir Bentley [00:22:18]:
They know we make a commitment. We work less than 35 hours a week. We take two months a year for mini vacations or mini retirements, as we call them. And we're really focused on living our life today and having it be excellent and amazing today. And so we tend to attract the kind of person for whom that's the kind of productivity they're looking for.
Lindsey Epperly [00:22:40]:
Absolutely. So I was reading your book the other day because I think this is a great introduction to who you guys are. And you have this wonderful framework and methodology around actually winning your week. Or as you call it in the intro, the foyer test, right, where you have this moment at the end of the work week where you stop and see yourself in the mirror and you can decide, was that a win or was that a fail of a week? How did this one go? And you kind of come in with the argument of you can, if you are intentional, win every single week. And I'd love to spend a little bit of time talking about that framework. Can you tell us more?
Carey Bentley [00:23:13]:
Yeah, I think this is such a great point, because oftentimes, especially high performers, they'll end the week. And even if they actually did a lot of stuff, really important stuff, even they might end the week feeling like, oh, I didn't do good enough somehow. Usually because they haven't managed their energy correctly during the week, and they've just burned themselves out and they have nothing left in the gas tank. And so they just sort of collapse. Yeah, they didn't have any naps, so that was the problem, and they just collapse, and they have to use the entire weekend just to recharge for the upcoming week. What we show our clients is sort of how to shift that mindset from, hey, you're probably not going to have all good days this week. Your life is hectic. You have a lot of responsibilities, but no matter how crazy your life gets, there is a path to winning your week every week.
Carey Bentley [00:24:01]:
You just have to be smart about planning your week ahead of time and then replanning each day so that you can still win.
Demir Bentley [00:24:08]:
Yeah, with so many things in life, it's about like in pool, they say you got to pick your pocket. Like, you can't just shoot the pool balls, and then all the balls go in and you say, oh, I meant that. It's like, no, you need to say eight ball, corner pocket. Right. You need to call your pitch. And to the extent that you can pre plan your week and say, this is what success will look like for me, then you can actually get there and call your win. You can say, I said that I would have been winning if I did this thing, and now I'm here and I did it, and I have to allow myself to feel that win. And you can feel that win.
Demir Bentley [00:24:41]:
I've seen clients who've gotten superhuman amounts of work done, but because they never declared what success even looked like, there was no amount of success that ever would have felt like it was enough. I mean, we're all in on the joke today. Like, your to do list will never get done. I've never in my life had a client who was like, oh, Demir, you know that giant to do list that was the size of my arm. I finished it and I just have nothing to do this weekend. Said, no one ever. Right. We have to acknowledge that we live in a world where every single Friday, you will have finished the week not having done everything to Lewis and maybe not even having done things you really, truly wanted and intended to do.
Demir Bentley [00:25:19]:
And so we cannot let that be the standard of giving ourselves the win. It all got done. We need to have a different standard. And the better standard is to say, I did the important stuff that I said I truly needed to get done. And looking back on my week, I cannot imagine allocating my time and energy in a different way. I claimed the win. I'll get to the rest of it next week. And the very nature is like, there's going to be this rollover from week to week.
Demir Bentley [00:25:46]:
That is the nature of our work. And we have to, in order to be sane in this world that we're living in, with a never ending amount of knowledge work, we've got to give ourselves a line that isn't a god, all done. Otherwise, we're destined. For the loony bin.
Carey Bentley [00:26:00]:
And I'll give you a quick example from one of our clients who used so step one of our method is a reflective lesson, which is, hey, just think about your past week. What's one thing you could have done differently if you could redo the past week again, what are you going to do? And so this particular client owns a chain of children's hair salons. And what she was thinking was, wow, I'm really spending all day Monday just answering all of my teammates questions. All my franchisee owners, they're pinging me and I just want to get them a response as fast as possible. But guess what? Then Monday is gone. And then the rest of the week starts to pile up with meetings and other small ball stuff I have to do. And here it is on Friday. And I never got that super important work done that was actually going to move my business forward and enable me to really grow my franchise like I want to.
Carey Bentley [00:26:45]:
And so what she did was just take the first 3 hours on Monday morning, she just goes dark. She doesn't log into anything. She does her super deep work task during that time, like maybe it's a big project or whatever she decides is her deep work for that week and then the floodgates open and the rest of her week and she's just sort of taken with the flow of the week. But that's all it takes for her to get a significant amount of progress done in her business. And fast forward a year later, her franchisee was put on the Ink 5000 list, which I know your business recently was too, Lindsey, so congrats on that. Thank you. She's on the 5000 list. She also got time to take some vacations to Italy with, I think, her daughter's water polo team, I want to say.
Carey Bentley [00:27:29]:
So all these other lifestyle goals that she had at the same time simply by making sure that her week was structured in a slightly different way, along with some other great tips and tricks that she implemented. But it was these small tweaks that really made the biggest difference to her consistently winning every week.
Lindsey Epperly [00:27:47]:
Well, and I think what we get out of that idea of winning is redefining what success is on our own terms. And I would love to hear a little bit more about how you lead people to determine, because I'm sure every goal is individual, right? Success looks very different for the individual who wants to go to Italy with the water polo team as it does with someone who wants to wind up on Ink 5000. And maybe you've got both of those goals. But how do you help people kind of redefine their own version of success instead of just accepting what society gives us?
Demir Bentley [00:28:14]:
Yeah, it's funny because that's sort of the second step that we talk about in our process, which is choosing priorities I mean, this is no simple thing. And it took us years to figure out priorities. There's an emotional experience of priorities. And the emotional experience we have priorities is that every single one needed to be done yesterday. And you really can't look at anyone and say, this is more important. In fact, when I tell people, put your priorities in order, they almost have, like, a mental breakdown on me, where it's like, but Demir, you don't understand. They are all important, and they all needed to happen last week. And the problem is that if everything's a priority, then nothing's a priority, because the word priority literally means that thing that comes before everything else, right? So it really is about or if you're thinking about a traffic analogy, it's right of way.
Demir Bentley [00:29:00]:
Like, who gets the right of way? Who's going first, right? There has to be a rules of the road. And so what we help people do is we help people understand move from this getting it all done mentality to a leverage mentality. And the leveraging question made up by Gary Keller and Jay Pappersan is, what is that one thing that you can do that serves all of the other things that you're trying to do or said another way? What's the one thing you can do that makes everything else in your life easier or unnecessary? So a lot of what we're having people do is try to untangle their brain from this. I need to get it all done yesterday. And such a client of mine recently said, oh, I get it. The only way for me to do this is to rewire my brain and grow new gray matter. And it really does feel that way. To change your paradigm here, you almost have to grow a new section of your brain that can start to say, okay, if I did have to ask myself a completely different question, what's the thing I can do that serves everything else? What's the order I can put everything in in such a way that every incremental thing I do is making it easier to do the next task or project.
Demir Bentley [00:30:04]:
That's a complete paradigm shift in how you think about your productivities and results in what I call radical clarity. Meaning you have this ability in any given moment. You know these people. I know you've met these people, the kind of people that if you ever ask them, here's 100 priorities order them, they could put it from 100 down to one. Like, they could just order it literally in their mind. They have that radical clarity of, this is more important than this, which is more important than this. And here's the exact order. And they can make decisions fast without second guessing themselves.
Demir Bentley [00:30:32]:
They don't go home and like, him and Haw and second guess themselves and go, God, should I have done that? No. They make decisions. They pull triggers. That is radical clarity in action, in our lives. And so that's a big thing that we help people capture, is that confident version of themselves that can pull guns and start what I call running and gunning. Right, we got to shoot while we're running. We're not like snipers. We don't have the luxury of sitting down and aiming at the target.
Demir Bentley [00:30:57]:
A lot of our businesses, we got to shoot on the run. Right. We got to make those decisions. You need to capture that clarity so you can have that confidence.
Lindsey Epperly [00:31:06]:
We both know someone who falls into that category is Dara. I was just talking to her, actually, and she does such a beautiful job of leading people through the values, essentially of deciding what is it that's important to you? Exactly what you're talking about, the leverage priority. So it's really about getting that crystal clear vision on what is important to us and then your following steps after that are kind of turning it outward to the tools that we use. Right. Our calendar and our to do list, like triaging these things is, I think, the way that you put them in the book. And I'm curious kind of like any tangible steps that you have that you would love for people to know about those next steps when it comes to interrogating the calendar, triaging the to do list, et cetera.
Carey Bentley [00:31:46]:
Yeah, I want to highlight the very last step, which is actually bringing your to do list and your calendar together. We didn't cover what to do with your to do list and what to do with your calendar, but people can read that in their books in our book.
Lindsey Epperly [00:31:59]:
Leave a little mystery.
Carey Bentley [00:32:01]:
Yeah, you'll find out about that later. But the very last step is where you actually calendarize your to do list. And so some people get super hardcore with it and they mark out down to the minute how long each task is going to take. And some people, like me, are a little bit more light fingered with it where we just make sure that we have a general plan in place with a lot of buffer time and wiggle room because I have kids and so my whole plan could go out the window at any moment. But yeah, that stuff is super important because I often find that I myself have unrealistic expectations about how much I'm going to be able to get done. I'm sort of a classic overworker and at the beginning of the week, when I have all this energy, I think, yeah, I can totally get all of these 50 tasks done this week should be no problem. Look at all this time I have. I'm sure it'll work out.
Carey Bentley [00:32:48]:
But if I don't do this calendarizing step, I won't notice the task that maybe is really big and probably going to take me 4 hours to do. Well, that's basically one whole workday because in between that, I've got other home stuff I'm taking care of so great there's that one workday. Well, then these other five tasks are going to take up each an hour, and they're all really important, so I got to find places for them. And then maybe there's like, a little bucket where there's a lot of tasks that only take a few minutes, and those will get done, but then very easily I can see, well, I still have all these other tasks on my list that just are not going to find a place in my calendar this week. And so it really helps me because even before the week starts, I know better. My expectations are in line with my reality. And so it's not about necessarily the plan happening exactly how I want it to. It's more about just not setting myself up for massive disappointment at the end of the week when I thought that I could do all this stuff and I couldn't.
Demir Bentley [00:33:44]:
It's like they've got these private companies that have been unicorns. They've been injected with all this VC money, and now they say they're worth, like, $6 trillion, right? But then they go public and they get marked down to market. It's like, this is what people will really pay for this company in an open, fair market. And I feel like when your to do list hits your calendar, it's like your wishful thinking gets marked back down to market of reality. Like, okay, you had all these ideas about what you were going to do this week, but when you try to fit that into the 168 hours that you're actually existing on this planet every single week, it's like a markdown to market where you're like, you just get brought back down to reality. And it can be jarring in the beginning when you're not used to it, when you've been living in magical thinking territory for a long time, when you've been telling yourself, I could get felt. Even though, against all evidence, you look at the last 52 weeks, you have not gotten it all done. But there's still that pleasure of every single Monday.
Demir Bentley [00:34:39]:
Hope springs eternal, right? You're still thinking, maybe I could get it all done this week. And there's something about that exercise of marrying your to do list with your calendar. We call it calendarizing that really marks you back down to market and you get back grounded down in base reality, where you're like, oh, yeah, I only have this much time. I need to get a little bit tighter and leaner with my prioritization here.
Lindsey Epperly [00:35:01]:
Yeah.
Carey Bentley [00:35:01]:
And it really helps with execution, because one thing our clients say is if they see a block of time on their calendar to work on that really important project, they're, wow, okay, I have to do it now. This is the only time this week that I have set aside for this task. And the rest of the week, look, I already have it earmarked for other things, and so it helps with that accountability and motivation during the week as well.
Lindsey Epperly [00:35:22]:
I love that. That's the part that I was spending the most time honestly highlighting and kind of camping out on myself because I am notorious for looking at a task and thinking it's going to take way less time than it actually will. And to the point where in my relationship yeah, right. The answer, jeremy, on the opposite, is wonderful at taking his time. And it's gotten to the point where when we have a conversation about something, he'll come in and say, well, how much time were you allotting to this conversation? Because I was allotting 45 minutes. And I'm like, that's entirely too long. I was going to get this knocked out in four. Such disparity in how long we think a task is going to take.
Lindsey Epperly [00:35:56]:
So I'm curious what you would say to those individuals who don't actually even know how to manage supply and demand when it comes to the actual calendarizing process.
Demir Bentley [00:36:07]:
Yeah. What's interesting is it really is a market, right? So when you think about your calendar, that's your time supply, right? Meaning you only have 168 hours in the week, and that's what your calendar models for you. And when you think about your to do list, that's your demand. Right. That's the demands on your time. And so when you marry the two together, what you're really doing is you're creating a little bit of a marketplace where supply is meeting demand, right. And what happens in markets where there's fixed supply and high demand? You have to really preciously allocate that small amount. I liken it to truffles.
Demir Bentley [00:36:42]:
Right? There's only so many white truffles that get produced by Italy every single year and it really goes to the highest bidder. And there's a whole marketplace to make sure that they get allocated in the right way. And your time is like that. Your time is like these precious truffles. And I also like the analogy for truffles because if you don't use it one week, you don't get to roll it over the next week. It just goes bad. Any unused time this week will just go sour and get spoiled. I call that spoilage.
Demir Bentley [00:37:07]:
Right. And so what's great about thinking about it as a market is you can bring so many of those playful dynamics to your time. So in terms of people, your specific question was, if you're not good with estimating, how do you get good at estimating? And an exercise I have all my clients do when they come in and work with me directly is I have them for two weeks, make a prediction on every single task that comes across their to do list. Right. So I think this will take five minutes or I think this will take 5 hours. Just like write it down digitally or on a piece of paper, just write it down. And then when you're done with that task, write down how much it actually took. And then what will happen is across 20, 5100 tasks, you'll be able to average out that ratio, and that'll be what you call your fudge factor.
Demir Bentley [00:37:52]:
Right. So your fudge factor is literally the exact number that is a measurement of your magical thinking. Right. So mine, by the way, is 3.74. So literally, by a factor of 3.74, whatever, I think something will take it usually takes 3.74 times.
Lindsey Epperly [00:38:08]:
Wow.
Demir Bentley [00:38:08]:
Time.
Carey Bentley [00:38:09]:
I think that's really high.
Demir Bentley [00:38:10]:
It's not it's pretty standard. A lot of people will let things bleed into other ways. And this is what we call classic time blindness, right? Time blindness is when we willfully pull the wool over our own eyes to make the world resemble what we want it to look like. And so if we didn't want to acknowledge that we took 10 hours on a project instead of two, we will creatively find it's. Like creative accounting. Right. We will get the accountant to cook the books and convince ourselves that it didn't actually take 10 hours. But when we track our time, when we calendarize, there are certain exercises that can sort of whoosh, like, bring us right back to what I call base reality.
Demir Bentley [00:38:53]:
And base reality, again, when you haven't been living in it, can feel shocking. But when you get comfortable with it, you realize it's always been like this. I've been like this for two years, five years, ten years. I've always been like this. The only difference is, today I've got the courage to see it as it is and not to live in wishful thinking. And when you're willing to do that, when you have the courage to do that, you reclaim so much power, because now the world is not happening to you. Now that the world is not constantly disappointing you, now you can make plans that actually come to fruition the way that you wanted them to. You really get in the driver's seat.
Lindsey Epperly [00:39:34]:
Yeah.
Carey Bentley [00:39:34]:
And you do actually save a lot of time. So I call this like, personal data collection for your productivity, because everyone is going to have different data. And that is it's hard for Sagemir to tell you exactly what to do with your time, because everybody's time is being used differently. And so I love that. One of the things he does is make sure that people collect their own personal data. Where is your time going? What are you doing? What's important to you? Because often what happens is people will save 10 hours of their week just right off the bat, and they'll look at it and say, wow, I had no idea I was spending so much time on media. That's not even that important to me. What am I doing? I can easily reallocate a little bit of this over here.
Carey Bentley [00:40:12]:
So that's one of the things I love about more of a data driven approach. I love that.
Lindsey Epperly [00:40:16]:
Well, just even going back to the very first step which is to learn lessons from each week. Do you guys still do that? Do you still, every week look at this and say, here's what I learned this week?
Carey Bentley [00:40:26]:
Yeah, sometimes I have to learn the same lesson multiple times. I'm ashamed to say that that sometimes.
Demir Bentley [00:40:32]:
Happens and new level, new devil, right? As we grow and change, not only is the business changing, but our lifestyle is changing. The roles that we're playing in the business are changing significantly, especially right now. And so it's funny how you get to a new level and all of a sudden you sort of go all the way back to the bottom of the ladder in a good way. Like you have higher class problems now and you're dealing with in so many ways, you've achieved the things you want to achieve, but that's not the end. It's never the end. It's really just you going to the bottom of a higher ladder. So you get to the top of the old ladder and now you're at the bottom of a new ladder. And so I do think a lot of humility is in order because no matter how high you go, that imposter syndrome comes back.
Demir Bentley [00:41:17]:
No matter how high you go, an old habit that you defeated at a different level of the video game comes back at a new level of the video game, and you experience a completely different level of it. Or productivity problems you never knew that you had because you never had a life good enough to experience that problem. Now show up because you're soaring at a different altitude. And now you realize, oh, God. As it turns out, more money, more problems. It's actually true. I didn't believe it, but it actually is true, right?
Lindsey Epperly [00:41:49]:
Totally. We talk about those quite frequently, Jeremy and I do, when it comes to kind of the re up moments where you're deciding, am I in? And if so, what is that going to look like? And how do I kind of break this thing to build it better? And so you're absolutely right. It is just kind of like the cyclical process. I'm curious because we've talked a lot about the tangible benefits of productivity and what you guys do for living in lifestyle design and all of that is so beautiful. But to scale this back to kind of the bigger picture of your story on this podcast, oftentimes we talk about this concept that I have called The Monsters That Save US, and the idea is that you've got this scary fear lurking in your closet that you're always terrified of. It's actually based off of the biblical story, Jonah and the Whale, right? Like the monster that saved Jonah was actually a whale that swallowed him whole and it then delivered him to the shore of where he needed to be. And I feel like that happens to so many of us in our professional careers, regardless of whether we are business owners or executives or whatever and I would love to hear from you guys. You've told us about this beautiful journey that you've had to designing your life.
Lindsey Epperly [00:42:51]:
What is a setback that you have had that you thought, oh my God, this thing's going to level us and it actually brought you to where you were.
Carey Bentley [00:42:58]:
Yeah. There's so many fears as a business person and I think being in business with yourself is such a massive risk. It's interesting. I feel like it's actually sort of an indictment on the modern workplace that so many people want to become entrepreneurs because it should be the obvious choice should be to get like a real joby, job that pays consistently and has health care and benefits and all that stuff. The fact that so many people want to start their own businesses sort of crazy. Obviously we're part of that group, so.
Demir Bentley [00:43:27]:
We must beautiful, but also just it shows how abusive those work cultures toxic workplaces.
Lindsey Epperly [00:43:33]:
Yeah.
Carey Bentley [00:43:34]:
Which is a different topic, obviously, but I would say because we've taken such a big bet on ourselves and the business. One of the big fears we always have around the business is like, well, what if the marketing stops working? Because the one way that we have to bring in clients is with our one or two marketing funnels that we finally, after years of testing and poured so much money into. They're working, they're bringing in great new customers. But it's like just because you're in a good place right now, it never means you could be in a good place the next month. And so I think one of the ways that actually really benefits us because it's a constant fear, right. And we have gotten better at marketing and so I think if that did happen to us, we'd be able to pivot pretty quickly. But one of the things that we've done is basically de risked every other aspect of our life because the risks of the business is so great in that we've for example, in here in Medellin, Columbia, we bought our two apartments in cash. We don't have a mortgage at all here.
Demir Bentley [00:44:36]:
House in cash, debts paid off like full.
Carey Bentley [00:44:42]:
Yeah, we and then of course, our cost of living, we try to keep it really low as and the way we've even structured our team is such that it's more variable costs. We don't have a lot of really big fixed costs in the business, so we're certainly very sensitive to risk. And there have been months where we're like, oh, well, yeah, we didn't really make a lot of money this month. We're going to have to do something really different next month.
Demir Bentley [00:45:09]:
But even Carrie makes sure that we have 24 months of business expenses in Liquid Instruments, which, for a lot of people, it's fine when your business is small and it's just the two of you, but when you've got staff and you've got you start adding up that number, especially in a high inflation environment, and you start thinking, oh, no, that's irresponsible. You should put that to work. But again, that goes to show that we put this huge premium on resilience in our life, and I think that fear, the uncertainty of entrepreneurialism sort of gave birth to a love of resilience. We live in this economy. Let's be honest. We're supposed to have one black swan economic event in one generation. And if you look back on the last 20 years, we've had like, four giant we got to have pandemic. We've had two financial crises.
Demir Bentley [00:45:55]:
It has been an insane 20 year period of volatility. And so for us, what that has really given birth to is a love of resilience, really. We don't just do it because we're afraid. We love it. We admire it. We roll it around in our hands and talk about it. Because it makes us feel like in this big, sloshy world, where you can sometimes feel like you're a very small person in a very small boat in an open ocean with very big waves, it makes you feel like you've got that kind of boat that even if it rolls over, it'll just keep rolling over. Just that feeling of like, we can get crashed on, but we can't get sunk.
Demir Bentley [00:46:37]:
I just love that feeling, and I actually really want that. For so many other entrepreneurs who tend to think, oh, well, I've already chosen a high risk life. Let's just throw costs in the wind and just be risky in all other aspects. And I'm like, no, actually, because the entrepreneurial journey is so risky, you need to compensate aggressively in the other way.
Carey Bentley [00:46:57]:
I think that makes us actually helps our business and ourselves, because rather than making decisions based on money, we're able to make decisions based on our clients results. And we never set, for example, financial targets for the business because we feel that that pulls us away from our true focus, which is to impact people's lives. And so we set results, goals, we set number of clients we want to serve each year sorts of goals. But then the business sort of like, it'll come around, right? If we're doing a good job and we're delivering results, guess what? The business grows anyway. And so we've just sort of seen that become this flywheel where we never even really intended our business to be the size that it is now. It just sort of happened, and we're like, okay, let's just keep doing this then, because it seems to be working, because, again, we don't have that need for money because our life is so derisk.
Demir Bentley [00:47:49]:
There's nothing worse for your decision making than needing money next month.
Lindsey Epperly [00:47:52]:
Yeah. Wow.
Demir Bentley [00:47:53]:
That will absolutely blow your decision making out of the water.
Lindsey Epperly [00:47:56]:
What I am hearing you guys say is the high priority of peace, and it feels like that is something we've often forgotten. In this culture of success and chasing after the dangling carrot that there's actually something beautiful to be said to be proud of for achieving a sense of peace.
Carey Bentley [00:48:13]:
I think that's what we hear from our clients, too. I know amongst the entrepreneur set, it's often about, well, how much money did your business make and what's your top line and what's your bottoms? To us, that's never been that particularly interesting. It's more like, hey, does this person look happy? Are they living the kind of life they want to live? Do they have time to spend with their family if that's a value of theirs? And that's what we've tried to keep our focus on. Like, for example, right now I'm working even less than I ever have because we've got two young kids and that's exactly where we want. Jamir and I are celebrating that. We're like, let's keep that going. That's working so great. And rather than it actually negatively impacting the business, it really helps.
Carey Bentley [00:48:51]:
I don't know if that's an indictment on my work. I don't know what's happening there, but it seems to not matter in terms of our business success.
Demir Bentley [00:48:58]:
Yes, I totally clarity. She's being way too humble. What she's doing is she's really building capacity into the company. Instead of keeping all that capacity in her brain, she's starting to build it into our employees, build it into our system. So she's not giving herself enough credit.
Lindsey Epperly [00:49:12]:
But Carrie and I did recently have a fantastic conversation about how having simply a maternity leave out of office is just one of the best things that's ever happened to our productivity and our teams and the way that people then self select where they're supposed to go. And I was like, I want to leave my maternity up forever. This has been fantastic.
Carey Bentley [00:49:29]:
And it's still up. My baby's ten months old. I conveniently forgotten to change it.
Lindsey Epperly [00:49:35]:
Well, you will appreciate this since we have our sweet families similar age. One of the questions I like to ask my guests is something that my family asks one another every single day. And we've been doing this since the middle of the pandemic, Jeremy and I, when things were just leveled and life just was not there's not a lot of smiling happening. We would ask each other every day, what is one thing that made you smile today? And it reminded us to be grateful. And that has now evolved into our family dinner conversation where Mila says, what is your happy? So I am so curious.
Demir Bentley [00:50:02]:
Last 24 hours, what is your happy?
Lindsey Epperly [00:50:06]:
So what's your happy lately, you guys? What's made you smile today or last 24 hours?
Demir Bentley [00:50:11]:
I'll go first and say, you'll know what I'm talking about here. So I am designing our forever home in Sarenby, and I got to sit down and just go through all of the designs that were coming back from my 3D renderer. And I'm like seeing this new. House that's going to be our forever home in this community that we really want to live in. And so that is definitely in my happy.
Carey Bentley [00:50:34]:
Yeah, for me, I mean, just something that our older daughter Gigi said this morning, we finished reading a book about puppies. Puppies is like her favorite thing right now, makes her happy. Been her favorite thing for three years. And we finished the book and it's about these puppies causing all this trouble and she goes, I wonder if the puppies are going to cause more trouble. I don't know. She says something like that and for some reason the way she says, I.
Demir Bentley [00:51:00]:
Wonder if they're going to get in more puppy trouble.
Carey Bentley [00:51:02]:
Because that's the name of the book's. Name is Puppy Trouble. Anyway, so, yeah, we thought that was hilarious.
Lindsey Epperly [00:51:08]:
That's adorable. Fantastic. And also, what a lovely little thing of kids wondering, is this book going to be any different tomorrow? Right? They're always going to get in puppy trouble.
Carey Bentley [00:51:17]:
Yeah, it's like that's a real world for them. These are real puppies that are in real trouble.
Lindsey Epperly [00:51:22]:
It's just gosh, I love this toddler at the childhood stage. It is so precocious and wonderful. You two are amazing, as always. I love connecting with you. How can everyone listening continue to connect with you? Follow along. How do they need to stay in touch and learn about all things Demir and Carrie?
Carey Bentley [00:51:41]:
Well, likewise. This has been a blast. You can go to our website@lifehackmethod.com, that's where you can sign up for our free Masterclass, where you'll hear all about our method and buy our book wherever books are sold as well. It's called winning the week. And, yeah, if this sort of productivity help is the kind and flavor of productivity help you've been wanting, then you can definitely get some free and paid resources on our website. Love it.
Lindsey Epperly [00:52:07]:
Thank you, too. So nice to talk with you today.
Carey Bentley [00:52:10]:
Thanks.
Demir Bentley [00:52:11]:
Thanks.
Lindsey Epperly [00:52:16]:
And that lovely listeners brings us to the end of today's episode. We truly hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the world of leadership and professional development with Who Made you the Boss? If you've gained some valuable insights today, we would love to hear from you. Please take a moment, go to your favorite podcast platform, search for who made you the Boss and leave us a five star rating and review. That feedback helps us tremendously as we're creating content that resonates and empowers stay connected with us too by visiting LindseyEpperly.com. And there you can subscribe to our newsletter and ensure you never miss an episode or an exciting update. You can connect with me personally as well on Instagram and LinkedIn and let's continue the conversation with ourselves and other like minded individuals who are redefining what it means to be the boss of our own lives. So thank you, listeners, for being a part of this journey. And until next time, remember, you have the power to shape your destiny.
Lindsey Epperly [00:53:09]:
So keep leading, keep learning, and most importantly, keep being the boss of your own incredible story.