153 Productivity Boost: Entrepreneur Carey Bentley of Lifehack Bootcamp on Building a Business Around Your Life

Carey Bentley is on a mission to help entrepreneurs design lifestyles of personal freedom by helping them boost their productivity and effectiveness. CEO and co-founder of online productivity company Lifehack Bootcamp, Carey shares how to get more done, make more money, and have time for all your personal passions … by working only 30 hours a week.

Melinda Wittstock:         Welcome to Wings, Carey.

Carey Bentley:                  Thanks so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s awesome to have you on. And I’m really interested to hear, what was the a-ha moment in your life that made you want to solve this problem of productivity and providing a real sense of freedom for people in their lives.

Carey Bentley:                  Absolutely. And what’s funny is, my husband and I, who co-own this company, Lifehack Bootcamp, we were not on top of our game back in the day. About 10 years ago. We were not productive whatsoever, and we were that couple who was just working way, way, way too hard. We were working 80 hours a week, and we were still feeling like we weren’t making enough money. We weren’t seeing success. And we were actually seeing our health decline in a massive way.

So we like to think about life as a Rubik’s Cube. That six-sided puzzle. And we kept finding that we could only solve the career side of that equation by just sacrificing all of the other sides. Sacrificing our health, not spending any time with family or friends, not spending any time quality time together and improving our relationship. And that is something I think a lot of people can relate to. Just this conventional wisdom of push through it, grin and bear it, and just achieve that career success no matter what the cost.

And honestly, we probably would have just done that, because it’s the go-to conventional path. But we both ended up developing chronic stress-related illnesses. That’s actually a lot more common than you might think. About a third of people right now in the US have a stress-related illness, and most of them are actually undiagnosed. But we were definitely diagnosed. We both had these moments where … Within two weeks of each other, we were both hospitalized for different stress-related illnesses. And we were told by our doctor that unless we made a big lifestyle change, we weren’t going to be able to … We would either face a big surgery or we would have years shaved off our lives.

And so that was really the a-ha moment. That hitting rock bottom moment, as it were. And that’s when we just made a vow that we were going to start over completely. We were just going to start with a blank slate, and we were going to re-design our lives in a way that optimized for us. That optimized all sides of the Rubik’s Cube at the same time.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s so interesting, how we end up solving a problem for other people because the universe conspires to make us go through it ourselves first.

Carey Bentley:                  Absolutely, yeah, 100%. They say that in the coaching space, you can only go as deep with your clients as you’ve gone yourself. And I think that’s really true. And so part of that very painful journey has been that now, we can show other people how to do the same thing and to fast forward a couple of years later, we’re making more money than we ever did before, we’re actually working on a business that makes a difference in the world, we work 30 hours a week, which was a huge, lifelong goal of ours, to just be able to work 30 hours a week. And we have complete time freedom. We live in different, exotic countries every other month. Right now we’re here in Colombia. And the last two years, we’ve been building our business from the road, which has just been a huge dream of ours that we honestly, a couple of years ago, we never would have even dreamed would be possible for us.

And possibly the most rewarding part, as you mentioned, is being able to train other people in how to get things done so that they can have whatever journey they’re destined to take as well. Because we get to live our mission and our passion, which is just teaching people what we think is the number one superpower today, which is getting things down.

Melinda Wittstock:         So I want to break down these hours and how you get to 30 hours. This is fascinating to me, because more and more people are sharing, and I’m having this experience in my life as well. The less I work, the more I get done. But it’s to do with prioritizing my work. The work that I do is the leveragable work. Is the work that only I can do.

Carey Bentley:                  Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:         And nobody else can do. And once you get clarity around that, all the pieces of the puzzle seem to fit. But for someone just starting out with this, it seems like an impossible thing. There’s people working 60, 80 hours. And we’ve been acculturated to think that we only deserve success when we work hard. Or that success can only happen if we work hard.

And so how did you … Take me through the practical steps of how you took it down to just 30 hours.

Carey Bentley:                  Absolutely. And here’s the thing, is you have to start out with something that I call your rock bottom moment. Hopefully, unlike me, you don’t have to be hospitalized for an illness or something like that. But you have to have this moment where you close your back doors and you decide that you want to change your lifestyle in a big way. Because if someone’s working 60 hours right now, they have a ton of habits built up around that. That is the way that they work. It’s probably very closely tied to their identity. And so what you need to get to is that moment where you realize that your current workflow is unsustainable. So you as a single unit of labor just cannot possibly continue the way that you’ve been, if you just straight-line it without facing the burnout or breakdown.

And I think people intuitively understand that but it’s really something you should sit in and almost meditate on. Because if you’re feeling frustrated by your current situation, that’s the energy that you need. You need to be able to use that energy to decide, you know what, enough is enough. I’m going to build something completely new. And that’s the commitment that’s going to get you to 30 hours a week.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. Yes. And so take me back. So you’re there in the hospital. And you think, my god, something has to change. What was the first step, I guess, that you made?

Carey Bentley:                  Once we had committed to just doing a whole lifestyle re-haul, we realized that we were actually surrounded by naysayers. People who really loved us, but they didn’t understand why we would want to make a change.

Carey Bentley:                  [inaudible 00:19:00] but they didn’t understand why we would want to make a change. And I think that’s really common. When you’re trying to do something different from everybody else you’re going to be surrounded by people who are not going to be supporting you in that journey. So the first step we took was actually finding others who were on the same journey as us. You know people who wanted to genuinely work less but still have enormous success. You know professionals who were out there who wanted to have it all; the success, the freedom and be really good providers for their family. And this became our new tribe. You know they became indispensable to us because they were the support system when we were second guessing ourselves or when we didn’t know what to do next or when we were stuck or when we were overcome with anxiety. And really looking back this community of people is what made the difference. You know it wasn’t really listening to books or reading books rather, it wasn’t our friends or our family. It was having a real support system that was pushing us to succeed.

So I would say that the first step that anyone who wants to make a big change in any area of your life, just get out there. You need to find and surround yourself with likeminded individuals.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is the single most important thing I think for women to hear about mentoring, masterminds, and networks, whatever. First of all have people who get you around, you got to surround yourself with people that really unconditionally support this personal growth on this journey and actually understand it and are there with you and will help you with the kind of stuck moments or the blind spots. Like encouraging you but also giving you kind of you know constructive, I don’t like to use the word criticism so much, but constructive kind of input I guess in to what you could do better. And having those people around you rather than either toxic people or people who are just yeah like they mean well but they just don’t get it. And by you growing it’s almost like you’re threatening them if they’re not willing to take that path themselves and so they try and hold you back. Often unconsciously, like I don’t think anyone consciously, well maybe some people do but I think a lot of people it’s just an unconscious thing. They mean well.

Carey Bentley:                  Absolutely and I would say leveraging that community for true accountability because these are the people who will hold you to your highest standard even when you’re trying to convince them that you aren’t good enough or that there’s no way that you’re going to reach your goal. And these people will stand for you and be like yep, mm-hmm (affirmative), I’m still going to be holding the bar nice and high. It’s up here. You just jump when you’re ready.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. Yes. Now that is an absolute game changer and every entrepreneur that I’ve ever talked to including myself that’s been the game changer; that has been the singular thing. Like making sure that you have those networks and those masterminds or accountability partners or whatever and I think women we often tend to try and do it all or work in isolation. It’s fear. It’s the perfectionism I think in a way kind of is fear dressed up pretty. And so we think oh we can’t show this to the world until we’re ready, there’s some dates, some thing that we have to do first.

Carey Bentley:                  Yes. You have to be perfect, right.

Melinda Wittstock:         You have to be perfect. And so therefore we don’t share our vulnerability or those difficult moments in entrepreneurship with other people. And so then it makes it very hard to go do the mastermind. Like I’m going to do the mastermind when I’m ready. Well wait a minute. You need the mastermind to be ready.

Carey Bentley:                  That’s actually so perfect because the sort of next step that I always recommend my clients take if they’re looking to work less hours, say 30 hours a week, is to take what I call massive imperfect action. And so you can see why the word imperfect is in there is because a lot of women in particular tend to want to make things perfect before they take a step. So they want to have listened to all of the audio books and gone to all of the seminars and really have everything dialed in before they even bring a product to market. But taking massive imperfect action is all about orienting yourself towards action and away from over analysis. Because the truth is the only way you’re going to find out if something is going to make your life better is just to try it and if it doesn’t work who cares. You know try something different and just repeat this process until all of the puzzle pieces just fit together.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah well I mean at the root of that not bringing a product or service to market early enough like before it’s fully baked is a fear of like oh what if people won’t like me, like it has to be amazing you know before I can bring it to market. The awkward part of that is it’s actually your customers that make it better, not you. A really good friend of mine said something really quite profound. “Fall in love with the problem and not the solution.”

Carey Bentley:                  That’s one of my favorite quotes. I can’t believe you brought that up. That’s amazing.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s so important because your solution like you get attached to your solution but your solution may be part of the puzzle, like it’s a good step, it’s a hypothesis. You know it’s great. It’s awesome. Go for it. But kind of polish it up with your customers. Because unless you have customers, unless they love it, you don’t really have a business.

Carey Bentley:                  Exactly. I was actually coaching somebody the other day and she was just overcome by fear because she had been very successful but she was launching a new business in a completely different area and she was just so scared that she wasn’t going to get it right. And so she was doing all of this personal development work around herself and around overcoming that fear and she thought that if she could make herself perfect then the fear wouldn’t exist. And I was like “No, actually you want to try to fail.” Because the first iteration of anything is not going to be the final one and the faster you can fail, the faster you can just fix it. And so you’re going to end up creating a lot more success and forward momentum if you can almost fail quickly and then just keep iterating and say “Sorry guys, okay I’m going to fix this now” and the next version is going to be 10 times better.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well that’s the Google fail fast. And it’s so, so, important because that’s the way you overcome your fear because what happens is you fail and nothing happens, you’re still alive, you still have friends, people still like, you know you’re still eating, you still have a house, like right. But these failing in sort of increments is it’s feedback. Failure is feedback. And it’s so important to get in that mindset. I like Reid Hoffman who founded LinkedIn and PayPal before and he said “If you’re not really embarrassed by your product when you launch it, you’ve launched too late.”

Carey Bentley:                  That is so true. I’m laughing right now because of how true that is. Yes, absolutely and I mean other another sort of sub step inside of this concept of taking massive imperfect action is taking full ownership of your time. You know if you’re somebody who’s constantly saying I don’t have enough time, there’s just not enough hours in the day or oh my gosh I wish x y and z. You know my kids, my husband, my family, my career wouldn’t take up so much of my time then really what I have to say about that is you need to take full ownership of your time. You know like I was saying before, let’s get out of this victim mentality of this is happening to me and step into a place of OK how can I become the leader of my time, how can I step into full ownership of this resource. And when I ask people hey do you know where your time is going right now. Like down to the 30 minute increment.

Do you know where you’re spending your[inaudible 00:27:07] feeling this time overwhelm and yet they are not taking full ownership of their time and figuring out exactly where their time is going down to the 30 minute increment. And so one step that I have every single client do is actually track their time for two weeks, two full weeks, all 24 hours a day. All 168 hours a week and really figure out what we’re working with here. We get to be honest and figure out who and what we’re spending our time on because I guarantee you even just doing this exercise and not doing anything else differently you’ll usually find 10 to 15 hours in your week that you’re currently wasting.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is really interesting too. When you look at your calendar, this is an exercise I did and I was putting all kinds of stuff in my calendar like were actually not … I’m just going to start again. Sorry. That’s the beauty of tape. Time and how we spend our time is so interesting because either it’s indicative of what we love to do, right, what we really love to do we tend to do. Or it can be indicative of fear and procrastination like avoiding doing the sales calls. You know anything but the sales calls or talking to customers or whatever it is and so when you do that exercise with people how do you differentiate between the two. I mean with those findings, like say when they present their hours back, what they did with those two weeks and time, how do you tend to look at that with them?

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah, definitely. I call this understanding your time at a much deeper level because the fact of it is not all work is created equal. And we look at our task list as if every item on that list is equal and especially as women we have a natural drive to get things done I think a lot of the time. And so we love just checking things off the list. In fact for me when I check something off I can feel that hit of dopamine that I’m getting from my body being like yes you did good, you checked something off the list.

But the fact of the matter is there’s some things that we do that drive tremendous value, that drive results, that drive money and then there’s the vast majority of things that we do that just don’t create much value, results and money. And so it’s time to understand what work it is that you’re doing that’s deep work, meaning that it is you know highly valuable, it’s important, it’s not easily replaceable work. And what work is shallow work, meaning work that has to be done by somebody but it’s not going to add up into some kind of huge accomplishment. So if you can understand what is deep work for you and what is shallow work then that’s really the next step in terms of finding how can I increase the deep work and how can I decrease what I’m doing that’s shallow work.

Melinda Wittstock:         Beautifully said. I think if we double down on our strengths and on our unique value or the things that only we can do and in association with that what you call deep work, the things that are really going to advance our business. Leveragable things, right. Things where by taking that action there’s going to be a multiplier effect.

Carey Bentley:                  Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:         And prioritizing the day in a way that those are the first things you do so rather than … I mean how it manifests for me is rather than having a task list now, I in my morning meditation I think about what would be the things that would advance me or my business the most in that particular day. And ask for inspiration for how I would do that. But then I imagine, rather than task lists, I imagine them completed.

Carey Bentley:                  Love it.

Melinda Wittstock:         And I feel gratitude for having completed it. And there’s only usually one or two. Like I used to have these long task lists and I could never make it through and so I’d end up at the end of the day feeling oh God I’ve failed again.

Carey Bentley:                  Right, yes. Because to do lists are never done.

Melinda Wittstock:         They’re never done. And so you feel like you’re always kind of under water or whatever so just flip it. Think about the things that are the most highly leveragable, imagine them done. The universe has a really interesting way of when you’re in alignment, when you’re doing the things that only you can do, the things where you add the greatest value, it sort of helps you somehow. I don’t know.

Carey Bentley:                  I love that and what I love about your process specifically inside the meditation is that you’re identifying that number one or number two most leveraged thing that’s going to create the biggest result for you or make everything about your life easier. And most of the time those things are not on our to do lists because no one else is telling us to do them. And even for ourselves we put all these mundane tasks on our to do list. But most of the time you know writing that next bestselling book or starting that podcast or whatever it is isn’t even on the to do list. And so taking that self-reflection time away from your computer and away from everybody and just thinking what are those one or two things you know intuitively we tend to understand what they are.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s true. Actually intuitively it’s interesting because they’re right brain inspirations rather than kind of left-brain kind of ego. So the task list comes definitely from the left brain.

Carey Bentley:                  Exactly, exactly; and so once you can identify those deep work tasks, those really leveragable tasks, all of a sudden you’re going to be much more motivated to figure out how you can get this other shallow work done for you. And the way I talk about this is how can you create a system where this stuff can be done for you while you’re sleeping. Because you know you as a unit of labor are not sustainable. We talked about that a little bit. So if you were to continue leading your life as it currently stands will you be burned out in a few years. So if you continue putting yourself in the gap and constantly insisting that you should be the one to do everything inside of your business then will you be burned out. And usually the answer is yes. And so this is an opportunity.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah we end up with adrenal fatigue for instance. Because if we’re in that massive constant adrenaline.

Carey Bentley:                  Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. I mean there’s a certain point where we just can’t sustain that. That adrenaline and the cortisol production that comes from that was meant for us. Like if we were hanging around and a lion suddenly chased us.

Carey Bentley:                  Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:         [inaudible 00:34:03] these short bursts, not for sustained periods. And I know so many entrepreneurs and not just entrepreneurs; everybody in Western society is on this like constant stress. There’s this constant, it’s like background radiation that’s always there. So you get to a certain point, you get in your 40s and your 50s and your adrenal glands are shot and you wonder why you feel tired or whatever. It leads to hormone imbalances, all kinds of weird things in our bodies for sure.

Carey Bentley:                  Have you ever noticed that when you’re doing certain things you just hold your breath?

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes.

Carey Bentley:                  So for example when you’re checking your e-mail in the morning you might find that you’re just actually holding your breath because you’re so anxious and nervous about what might be in your e-mail inbox for the day. And that is such an interesting self-awareness practice because those are the areas of your life where there’s just this unnecessary buildup of fear like you’re talking about. Like we’re about to get mauled by a lion or something but because we’re humans and we’re the only animals that are capable of imagination, we’re imagining this future fear that basically never comes to fruition. But it does extensive damage to our physical bodies because our bodies are like ready to run as fast as possible away from that danger.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is so true. So talk to me a little bit about what you do at Life Hack Boot Camp. Take me through the customer journey of Life Hack Boot Camp.

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah definitely. So typically if someone wants to really do the hard work to make a big lifestyle change and learn how to get productive and efficient then they’ll be coming to us because you know something is really not working right now about their life. They’re not getting the results they want to get. They’re working way too long. They’re not seeing their family enough. They’re not feeling like they’re providing well enough for their family. And so those people know that you know what it’s time to just get a really solid productivity system down. So that I know that even if I have a really bad week where you know everything kind of blows up in my face that I can still fall back on this incredible productivity system and I can still have a huge win in that week. And that’s really the beauty of it to me because a lot of productivity systems are built for people who are having really good weeks.

So you know for example the Getting Things Done system is an incredible system but it’s not very flexible when you have bad weeks. It works really well but only when you’re running the process at 100 percent. So what I like to do is show clients how to build systems that are flexible around their current situation and around their life so that they can have a bad week but it doesn’t deter them from their goals. So that’s really the first step.

Then if they want to work with us in some capacity we have a variety of different ways where clients can do that at a more basic level and at a much more advanced level. And typically what people choose to do is work with us in our 60 day Life Hack Bootcamp which is essentially a boot camp where there’s a lot of hard work to be done but at the end of it you have a complete productivity system built, you are on top of your work, you have accomplished something huge in your life. Either to decrease your working hours or to massively increase your revenue. We just had someone go through the program who went from doing 1 million dollars a year to doing 1.8 million dollars just inside that boot camp period. And so you’re coming out of it feeling like you’re back in control. You know you’re in the driver’s seat, you know how to tackle any challenge that life is going to be throwing at you and you have a productivity system that’s going to help you get things done for you.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s wonderful. I love how you do that around the, just the ebb and flow. I’m-

Melinda Wittstock:         -around just the ebb and flow. I mean there are some times where we need to be a little bit more introspective perhaps and a little more quieter. And there are other times when it is time to take kind of massive action.

Carey Bentley:                  Yep.

Melinda Wittstock:         And how do you kind of know those times? Are you sort of intuitive of just about listening to your body or looking for those sort of signs in terms of what is the best thing to be doing?

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah. Absolutely. And I think intuition is such an important thing, especially for female entrepreneurs, but really for everybody because if you are sort of stuck in life, the worst thing you can do is just keep pushing through it and hope that things get better.

[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re on the right path. Even if success isn’t coming as fast as you want it, you’re on the right track. #WINGSofInspiredBusiness #WINGSPodcast @demirandcarey[/tweet_box]

So I get stuck all the time. If something isn’t going well in the business, or I thought the results would come in a certain way, but they just aren’t, the solution is actually just to take a step back. And we have a practice we call radical self-care, and every month, we take a three-day weekend. So it’s just built into our calendar. Every month, we go off line completely for three whole days, and the purpose of that is to constantly reset and to tap into that intuition that you mentioned and really ask ourselves, “Do we feel what we’re doing is the right thing? Do we feel we’re choosing the most leveraged things?” And a lot of the times, the answer will come back as, “Yes. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’re on the right path. Even if success isn’t coming as fast as you want it, you’re on the right track.”

And other times, we’ll come up with these incredibly creative solutions that we would never have come up if we were just continually grinding because our mind is completely relaxed, so we’re able to tap into that creativity and just the ideas and the thoughts that come out of that are just insane.

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

So Carey, I love that when you’re talking about your program, you’re talking about the results that you’re getting for your customers, like you mentioned the company that went from $1 million revenue to $1.8, and there are all these different external metrics, what are some of the internal ones, and do you see correlations between say reduction of hours or changed habits? How do you track that? What are some of the results that you’re getting?

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah. Definitely. That’s such a great point because there’s the external results and then there’s the internal results, which we like to call the mental game. When your mental game is strong, that’s when you’re able to feel fulfilled and happy and in control even as the crazy world around you is constantly shifting. That’s really the pot at the end of the rainbow, in my opinion. Because the external results are validation that you’re doing something right internally, in my opinion.

So a lot of what we coach our clients on is how to develop mental toughness. So some call this resilience. A lot of people call this grit, but if you can develop enough mental toughness, honestly, you can handle anything that life throws at you.

And so what is so interesting about our program is we coach productivity. That’s what we deliver on, but people end up being happier in their marriages. They end up enjoying working on their business again that they hadn’t enjoyed working on for 20 years. They end up taking vacations that they never thought they would have taken. They end up making business decisions that catapult them forward, that before the boot camp, they could have never imagined.

So what’s interesting is when you focus on the mental game, you never really know what’s going to come out of that, but you know that it’s going to dramatically improve that person’s life.

Melinda Wittstock:         Interesting you mentioned the marriage as well and the partner. So you and your husband run this together. Right?

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         You’re in it together, and so you are a “power couple.”

Carey Bentley:                  That’s right. Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         And so what’s that like? I mean because not everybody can pull that off. Sometimes it can put a strain on the relationship, and it sounds like you found a way for that to just to kind of have this kind of work/life integration, I guess I’d call it.

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah. No. That’s a great way to put it. And when we first got married, I mean we were going to start this business together, we had friends take us aside and say, “You guys are making a huge mistake. Do not work with your significant other. That is going to end horribly, horribly for you.” And we just felt like it was aligned, and we felt like our working styles … We worked really, really well together already. And I think it’s different for every person, so I don’t think that it’s a one size fits all sort of thing.

But in terms of who we are as a couple, we’re the type of people we’ve traveled to 25 different countries together. We’ve created a dream life full of travel and adventure together. We’d like to say that we’re mildly obsessed with each other because we do spend so much time together but yet we never get sick of each other. And in fact, we have friends ask us all the time how do we manage just to seem like we’re more and more in love even though we spend so much time together, and it’s been such a long time that we’ve been together.

So in our opinion, there’s this sort of definition of a power couple out there right now that is sort of the wrong definition. There’s the Bill and Hillary Clinton power couple thing. So it’s kind of like not a lot of romance, not a lot of connection. It’s kind of like House of Cards power couple sort of definition. And we really throw that out, and we have more of a modern definition of what we call power coupling.

Because we see this a lot; We’ve actually formed a mastermind called The Power Couple’s Mastermind, now, sort of formed by all of these amazing power couples we’ve met in our travels. And the way we see this sort of new couple is they’re both A players, right? So they’re internally motivated. They are not half of each other. They don’t make up a whole. They are complete individuals on their own-`

Melinda Wittstock:         100% on their own…

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah. 100%. Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely.

Carey Bentley:                  They don’t need each other necessarily, but they must create. They have this insane drive to create, and they love to come together to create something new that impacts the world. And they tend to view income as just a measure of how much they impact people. So it’s really not about the money. It’s about the impact.

And another sort of core tenet is they have this commitment to never-ending growth. And I love meeting people that have this commitment because they know that growth is an endless path, but that every single layer that they can reach is going to be tremendous and fulfilling.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s awesome. You’re describing me and my partner.

Carey Bentley:                  Amazing.

Melinda Wittstock:         Like totally like that. I mean it’s all the same. It is that. It’s like you’re both s           howing up 100%. You are both dedicated to personal growth-

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Each other’s and your own! You both support each other’s growth unconditionally! I love how you really went through that list because that’s exactly right. I think that’s a really evolved way. And what’s interesting is that we get comments all the time. It’s like, “You guys are always together. How can you always be together?”

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         And we think of each other as our best mentors as well. We have different businesses, but there’s so much crossover in terms of helping each other with our respective businesses. I mean we basically are both working each other businesses.

Carey Bentley:                  Uh-huh (affirmative). Yeah. It’s tremendous. And I think that really is the modern power couple that’s come to fruition. And it’s just so fulfilling for us. And, I mean, it’s the person you respect the most in the world. I think I love this person the most, and I respect him the most, and that combination is just so unique and powerful.

Melinda Wittstock:         So what do you say though to people who get married … Oh, sorry. Excuse me. What do you say to people who get married perhaps early in life, early in their personal growth journey? They start to grow, but their partner doesn’t.

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah. I mean that’s a tough situation because not everybody needs to be a power couple the way I define it. I think there’s a million different ways to have a relationship, and there’s a million ways to do it right. So it’s not a one size fits all sort of thing. I think that a lot of people out there, they are personally driven and motivated, and they want to make an impact, and their partner just might not be that person. And that, to me, is totally fine as long as they’re getting what they need from the relationship, both of them feel supported and happy, then, to me, there’s really no issue.

Melinda Wittstock:         Beautiful. And so you travel all over the world. I love this digital nomad lifestyle. I’m assuming, I may be wrong, that you don’t have kids.

Carey Bentley:                  Not yet. Yes. It’s definitely on the very near horizon.

Melinda Wittstock:         Okay. So when you have kids, will you keep traveling like that?

Carey Bentley:                  I think the traveling will slow down, but I think that it will also continue. And we’ve met, actually, a lot of couples who’ve raised their kids on the road, and they travel with their kids. That’s one thing that’s been really, really, eye opening for us is that in traveling, we’ve seen that people can just live so many different types of life. And you can create whatever you want. Do you want to have a situation where you can see your kids for most of the day, but that you also have household help that can take care of sort of the logistics around managing the kids. Absolutely. You can have that if you live in a different country?

Do you want to have a parenting situation where you never see your kids? I mean you can have that too. There’s just so many different types of ways to live that it’s just so eye opening to realize that you can create your customized solution.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, I couldn’t agree more. And I think this is really … I’m going to pick up again there. I couldn’t agree more, and I think it’s so interesting actually even when you look at the schooling system and how it’s so lacking in teaching kids lives of financial freedom for instance.

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         There’s no financial literacy. There’s no discussion of leverage. There’s no preparation for where the economy is going that everybody, in a sense, has to be entrepreneurial in this new gig economy.

Carey Bentley:                  Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Where, honestly, artificial intelligence and a whole bunch of different technology is continuing to replace a lot of jobs. Corporate culture is completely changing.

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Almost half of US workers will be gig workers by 2020. So there’s no real job security. I mean the only way you can really survive is by being entrepreneurial. And not everybody is necessarily suited for that. And on the other hand, I don’t know whether that’s just because that’s the way everybody’s been brought up-

Carey Bentley:                  And taught.

Melinda Wittstock:         -and educated. Right? So it’s an opportunity now for entrepreneurs to really pass so much of this knowledge onto their kids.

Carey Bentley:                  100%. And in my opinion, the number one thing we can teach kids … Because we can’t possibly foresee the future. In fact, I just read a fantastic book called Whiplash that talks about how there’s all of these incredible future technologies that are coming out, but we can’t predict exactly what’s going to happen. And so the best way to prepare yourself is simply to learn how to learn and be a type of person that can implement things quickly and turn knowledge into action and be flexible and just roll with it because if you’re that type of person, you’ll always find a spot for yourself inside the economy. But if you’re rigid and you’re fixed then you’re never going to have that net growth mindset that you need to completely change your life or your career if it’s needed.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is profound advice to remain flexible, intellectually and otherwise. And so what’s next for you? Where do you see yourself and your husband and your business being say 10 years out or 20 years out. It’s very difficult. You just said to predict the future, but what’s your big moon shot?

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah. Our big moon shot … That’s such a great question. We’re really in it to impact as many people as we can. So we have a standing goal to impact one million people with our work. And I think once we hit that, whether that’s in one year or five years, then we’ll just want to expand that goal and try and make it as big as possible.

But really, the way I see it working is we’re going to be expanding and taking our work from the adult space into early childhood development and figuring out a way to take what we know and have that be just knowledge that anyone knows. I mean my ultimate dream would be for the next generation to put us out of job because what they know is just so intuitive. They already know everything that we’re teaching them, and they know how to work. They know how to get things done in the best possible way, and so they would never need a productivity coach like us to train them.

Melinda Wittstock:         How wonderful. I love that. When you create … Sorry. Again, I’m just going to pick up there again. I love this when you build in your own obsolescence in effect, right? Because that’s like real success. It means that you went out as an entrepreneur to solve a problem, and the problem is solved.

Carey Bentley:                  Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:         And because it’s not about your ego, you can let it go at that point. You’ve solved it. You can move on.

Carey Bentley:                  Exactly. And there’s going to be so many other problems to solve. Like you were saying before, we’ve followed up with the problem, not the solution. So whatever form that solution takes place, we want to get this problem solved and then move onto a different problem.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, there is someone that you should know if you don’t already, Natalie Ledwell from Mind Movies. She was on the podcast a couple of weeks ago, and she was talking about her big moon shot which really is applying all of this knowledge we’ve been talking about, the intuitive, the love of attraction, all these things to early childhood education.

Carey Bentley:                  Amazing.

Melinda Wittstock:         And she’s working on that right now. So you guys should meet. Anyway.

Carey Bentley:                  Awesome.

Melinda Wittstock:         Love making connections! I really do believe though that as women, when we do support each other and throw business to each other and invest in each other, we all fly high. And in that spirit, I will introduce you to Natalie if you don’t know her already.

Carey Bentley:                  That would be fantastic. I would love that.

Melinda Wittstock:         Awesome. Well, Carey, as we wrap the interview, there’s a lot of people who are in need of what you provide. So how can people find you and work with you?

Carey Bentley:                  Yeah. Definitely. So you can find me at Lifehackbootcamp.com. My company’s name is Lifehack Bootcamp. So the website is lifehackbootcamp.com. And actually, I’ll send you a little free gift as well if there’s an opportunity to put that in the show notes. That’s going to be the 30-hour work week road map since we spent a fair amount of time talking about that. I think if you want to get the actual step-by-step instructions for how to create a 30-hour work week, then that can be something you have as well.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much for providing that, and I really ask everybody listening to really take advantage of that and go do that. And thank you, that’s really generous, really appreciated, and it will be in the show notes.

Carey Bentley:                  Awesome.

Melinda Wittstock:         Carey, thank you so much for a wonderful interview and putting on your wings and flying today.

Carey Bentley:                  Well, thank you so much for having me. This was a blast

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Review on iTunes and win the chance for a VIP Day with Melinda