Three Productivity Secrets For Winning The Week with Demir Bentley: An EOFire Classic from 2022

0:01Light that spark fire nation JLD here and welcome to entrepreneurs on fire brought to you by high level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. On today's classic episode, we'll be breaking down three productivity secrets for winning the week. To drop these value bombs, I brought Demir Bentley into EO Fire Studios. Demir is a productivity expert and co-founder of Lifehack Method. He teaches efficiency techniques and accountability strategies that have helped clients generate millions while saving thousands of hours. And today we talk about how you need to plan your week to win your week, how to start to focus your limited energy on something that makes your life easier and build a healthy and happy lifestyle first, then build a business or career around that and oh so much more.

0:43And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Demir and our sponsors. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner, High Level, and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, it's time to stop guessing and start winning with a proven playbook. Inside the Freedom Circle, you'll have access to my step-by-step systems for creating offers, building processes, and driving traffic, all in just 90 days.

1:25Ready for freedom? Visit freedom-circle.com to learn more. Demir, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What is up, Fire Nation? So glad to be here. Thank you, John. My wife and I have a philosophy that we call lifestyle first. And what that means is we believe that you need to build a core of a healthy, happy lifestyle first and then build a business or career around that. And you'll find a lot of people who disagree with that, buying into hustle culture, thinking you need to work like a maniac and, you know, sacrifice your health and happiness today so you can get that payoff later.

2:12I'll share more about my story later, a little bit later, but my wife and Carrie and I, we both burned out and had to walk away from our career. So we know that a sustainable lifestyle is key because if you can't sustain your lifestyle, you're not going to be able to keep it up for the long haul. And you know what? We have the proof that this works. Even though we made a lot of money in our old careers, we have quadrupled that money with our new career, even though we've dropped our hours to a quarter of the hours. So when I start working with my clients, I have them create a vision for their life that they can honestly say, I could do this forever.

2:46Well, this is actually where I want to move into next. I mean, you've kind of been teasing this a little bit. We had a little pre interview chat around the eternal spring that you now live in for the most part, because you did leave that lucrative Wall Street career to start this productivity business, you know, in Medellin, Colombia. So do tell, tell us that story. 10 years ago, I almost worked myself to death, working 80 hours a week in finance for over a decade, got rushed to the hospital, mystery illness, couldn't figure out what it was, finally got diagnosed with salaryman sudden death syndrome, which basically means, hey, you're working yourself to death.

3:26And that brush with death forced me to step back and just take a totally new approach to my work. And by the way, I'm not alone in this. I think COVID has pushed us all to that brink, right? We desperately need to change our relationship to work today. Anyway, to save my own life, I created a system to plan my week ahead of time, cut my working hours in half. And within two months, I went to work from working 80 hours a week to two hours a week. So I pretty much call this system the winning the week method. I teach it to tens of thousands of people. And I love seeing people get huge productivity gains and slash their work hours and just get their life back.

4:02Well, we're going to really be doing a deep dive into winning the week and specific strategies that you're going to be sharing later on this interview. But I do want to start by just kind of getting into you squeezing 80 hours of work into a two-hour work week. I mean, this is before, of course, you knew your method that you've taught now to many, many clients. So talk to us about that process of how you even started going down that road. Yeah. I mean, of course, this is a question I get all the time. How on earth did you reduce your workload by 40X? So here's how I managed that feed. I'll break it down into four stages to make it easy to follow.

4:36You know, first, I had to get massive clarity on what to be prioritizing because I was all over the place, John. I mean, I was trying to do everything and finishing nothing. So I actually had to slow down to speed up because being efficient doesn't always mean you're being effective. And I couldn't just try doing everything anymore. You know, my doctors made sure that wasn't an option. They told me, you have to work less than 40 hours a week. And that was when I was working 80 hours a week. So I finally had a reason to make the hard choices and cut deep. So that was number one. Number two, I had to go back to basics with my productivity.

5:11You know, chief among that was planning my week. You know, we surveyed over 5 ,000 people. Less than 1 % of people are consistently planning their week every week. So this is something we all know we should be doing, but we're not doing it. And it's so simple to do. Just planning your week every week gets you an extreme ownership of the 168 hours you have every week. and it helps you set boundaries so work doesn't take over your whole life and it gets you on offense and off of defense. So many things. And if you're doing it right, planning is how you win your week consistently. So I will say, hands down, that is the most important tool I have.

5:46That alone reduced my hours in half from 80 hours a week to 40 hours. So that's number two. Number three, you gotta create systems, right? I mean, you know this. I know this from experiencing the behind the scenes of the entrepreneur on fire process. You have great systems working for you, and those magnify your output massively. So what I did, John, was I hired three virtual assistants, created 30 SOPs that anybody could follow. By the way, SOP stands for Standard Operating Procedure, so anyone can follow and do a task on your behalf. And I ended up outsourcing all of the work to these three guys that wasn't my busy work, meaning the only thing I had left over was the deep work that only I could do.

6:29And then finally, and this is sort of a little bit abstract, but I think you'll appreciate this, John. I had to let go of conventional wisdom because I was looking around for a model of how to succeed and actually enjoy my life and not kill myself. And I looked at my boss, my mentors, they didn't have it. So I actually had to search outside of the box to find a lifestyle that I thought would work for me. And I'll be really honest. I had to take some calculated risks and do some things that from the outside looked a little bit crazy as I experimented with lifestyle automation and minimalism and geo arbitrage.

7:02But you got to do something different if you want to have a different life. So those are the four steps, you know, on a high level, we can dive deep, but just on a high level, that's what that got me going from 80 hours a week to two hours a week. Yeah, we will be diving in some and there's a few things Fire Nation, I really want to go back through and that is, you know, slowing down to speed up. I mean, that sounds counterintuitive. But the reality is so many people are going a million miles an hour in the wrong direction. And guess what, that will get you a million miles in the wrong direction.

7:33And so it's not about how fast you're moving. It's not about, you know, how many things you're checking off your list. Maybe you're checking the wrong things off a list. Like I love to give a definition to being productive. And I say, that's when you're producing the right content. And so I have people that kind of mean like, John, I'm so productive. I did all these different things. I'm like, that's not productive at all. Cause productive is producing the right content. And you're not, you didn't do anything today that was producing the right content. You didn't spend any time today producing the right content.

8:05So you are actually failing in my definition of being productive. And so where I've got my productivity down to where I'm working now six days per month, running a seven day a week business podcast, seven days a week interview show, I'm working six days per month is because of these systems that Demir is seeing right now. Like I have eight interviews just today. I'll have eight interviews the same day next week. That's part of my system. It's part of my process. So there's four of my days there. And then I have people that are coming in on my team that are doing all the other things. I'm not going to lie.

8:41When I jumped on the line with Demir, I knew very little about him. I could read the bio and then I could say, okay, my team decided this person was the right fit for Entrepreneurs on Fire for various reasons. I've even got his name pronounced correctly because I have people phonetically type out their name so I don't have to go through this whole process a million times about, how do you pronounce your name again? because I do my intros before the actual episode. So everything's set up and we can just now dive into the interview. These are just small little things that can add up Fire Nation to big time savers.

9:12And you were actually able to average 28 hours a week, which 28 hours is not much. I mean, not, because I will say the days that I work six days a week, six days per month, sorry, I'm putting in like 12 to 14 hours in those six days. So I'm working really hard those six days in order to get the other 24, 25 days a month essentially work free. So you're able to average 28 hours a week running a seven-figure business. Talk a little bit about that. I'll rewind a little bit and say, as I traveled that journey of breaking free from New York and hustle culture, fast forward eight years later, my wife, Carrie, and I created what we started to call the four freedoms, right?

9:55So we've got financial freedom, meaning at this point, my wife and I hit a number where we can retire at any time we choose. So that alone radically changed our relationship to work. We've got time freedom. So we work less than 28 hours a week religiously. So we've got time for naps and taking walks with our daughter and all the good stuff, right? We've got career freedom. So once you have time and financial freedom, you can take bigger risks. So weirdly, the less important work was to us, the more successful we became because we didn't need it anymore. We could take a little bit more chances.

10:29And of course, we've got spiritual freedom, meaning that we have time now to be present to what's really important in life and work isn't stealing up all the oxygen from the other important parts of our life. I say that, John, to say that to remind people that, hey, now that I don't have to work, I work because I choose to, that changes everything about me choosing to work 28 hours a week. My perfect day includes four hours of work, seven days a week. Meaning if I won the lottery tomorrow and became a billionaire and didn't have to work again for the rest of my life, I would still work simply because I am happiest working three to four hours a day.

11:06So now, having said that, I am a coach. I have a service business with over 1 ,500 clients. So to manage all of that in 28 hours a week, you do have to be incredibly masterful about how you allocate your time to keep business from taking over your life. So frankly, I run the same process that I teach my clients, the winning the week method. Every week on Friday with the rest of my community, I plan my week together with often 100, 200 other people. We're on the phone together planning our week. And here's the steps we take. We reflect on the past week and learn a lesson because you need to create a learning loop to allow for exponential improvement.

11:42I find my most leveraged priority, meaning I'm looking for the smallest thing, John, I can do to have the biggest impact. Third, I interrogate my calendar. I have to scan those 28 hours, those precious 28 hours, looking for landmines and just making sure I'm using it in the best way. I triage my task list to make sure that I'm only considering the highest yielding bids of my time. And then finally, I calendarize it, meaning every single half hour slot in my calendar up to the full 168 hours gets allocated to a use. It's that simple. It's that hard, right? But I never give myself the option of working over my hours.

12:18That's religion for me. So all of those things were pure gold, Fire Nation. One thing that I did write down because I just loved the phraseology of it is I find my most leveraged activities. Like if you can really be focusing on the ones that are going to move the lever the most, then you know you're doing the right things. And Fire Nation, we're going to be talking about the top things that everybody gets wrong about being more productive when we get back from thanking our sponsors. energy focus and recovery are critical for high performers like us and finding the right supplements can make all the difference quicksilver scientific makes advanced liposomal supplements your body can use fast quicksilver scientific is a u.s based company that manufactures advanced liposomal supplements in everyday terms this means nutrients are easier for your body to absorb and put to work quickly i've been using quicksilver's the one which helps restore mitochondrial function for lasting energy and clarity.

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14:58So visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial and see why thousands of businesses are switching. That's highlevelfire.com, where marketing, sales, and automation finally come together. High Level, join the revolution. Demir, we're back, and I teased this a little bit before the break, and I'd love for you to break down for us those top things that everybody gets wrong about being more productive. Yeah, I mean, you said it yourself, right? operating with leverage. Most people look at their list and ask themselves the exact wrong question. What should I be doing right now? That feels so right, but it couldn't be more wrong.

15:38So let me give you an example. My client, Rhonda, working mom with three kids doing home learning in a cramped small apartment in San Francisco. A lot of people living this reality right now. She was just drowning, right? And the problem is that life is an unfair fight, right? Life can come at you from all directions, but you have to fight on one front. So life is just too big. And the way to escape this kind of trap is to focus your limited energy on something that makes your life easier. So Rhonda found one of those leverage points in a really unexpected place. You know, she was spending 20 hours a week, John, on food prep.

16:14Wow. Between choosing recipes, shopping, cooking, cleaning, the whole process of getting food on the table was 20 hours a week. She bought one of those meal box services that get delivered to your door. She reduced that to five hours a week. So now she's saving 15 hours a week for the rest of time. That's leverage. I tell people, just do one thing every week to make your life permanently easier. One thing that lightens the load. I promise you will feel the difference within a month. You'll be a different person within a year. Fire Nation, I hope this is the kind of stuff that really excites you because you can be like, I'm that person with x with y or with z what's another top thing that everybody gets wrong about being more productive Yeah, I mean one of the best things you could do and if you're not doing it you're definitely hurting yourself is Match your best energy to your best work, you know Energy expends from monday to friday morning to evening.

17:12It's just common sense, right? You're gonna get more tired as the day goes on and more tired as the week goes on But you know what people are doing on Monday? Monday morning, their freshest energy, they're wasting time processing emails and sitting in meetings. So we're squandering our best energy early in the week, doing low value work, and then trying to do important work later in the week. And then it takes us five times as long to get that work done because we're tired and we're avoiding it. So that's a key tip. Match your most important work to when you have the best energy and see yourself work faster and get tons more time back.

17:45So a lot of people are actually pretty good at planning their day when it comes down to it, because they heard, oh, I got to plan my day. But at actually executing this plan, they are terrible. Why is this? It's so funny because executing is something that everybody has a problem with. I'll raise my hand and say, I used to have a problem with it. So I'll break down a couple of problems. Problem number one, people aren't adding flex time into their schedule, right? There's always going to be things drawn that pop up without warning. If you're smart, you set aside time to deal with those, right?

18:18And we're talking about last minute emergencies that you could not conceivably predict, right? But you still have to get them done because they're highly urgent. Now we call this type of work UUW, which means unplanned, unwanted work. And it's going to happen to you next week, whether you like it or not. So the right move, the smart move, block off chunks of time in your calendar to deal with those issues that are going to come up. and basically build some flex time into your week. If you're not doing this, that is a number one rookie move. You cannot plan yourself to the hilt. You need lubrication to keep the gears of your life from just grinding you to bits.

18:53Fire Nation, add flex time. Don't be ground to bits. Now, I know that we talked about your top three strategies so that we can win the week, but let's kind of go back and do a little bit of a deeper dive and talk extensively about winning the week, what that looks like, how you created this program and why it's so darn good. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I get this all the time. You know, people often, it's an occupational hazard as a productivity coach that whenever I meet somebody, they're going to ask me, Demir, what is the number one thing that I can do to win the week? It could be sitting next to somebody on a train or at a party.

19:32So last year, my wife and I were going to Paris on a mini retirement for a month. We do that once a year. So on that flight, I'm sitting next to a tech exec. from one of the top four tech companies. The second he realizes what I did, he instantly says, oh, you're a productivity coach, huh? Well, what's the number one thing I need to do to get more productive? And the answer is always the same for me. You have to plan your week in advance to win your week. You cannot win the week if you're not planning the week. And earlier in this call, I just talked about the five things that I do to plan my week.

20:05So you can go back and listen to that again, right? But in short, it's learn a lesson each week, Find your most leveraged priority. Interrogate your calendar like a witness on the stand. Triage your task list and then calendarize your week. Those five things are the things that you need to be doing to really, really, really win your week. So, Demir, I know we got a lot of people listening that are being like, wow. In this short 18 plus minutes that John and Demir have been talking, so many value bombs have been dropped. So much amazing opportunities for strategies and implementation and all this jazz are right there in front of me.

20:38but I've been running on the beach or I've been lifting. I've been hanging out with some friends. I've caught most of this. Let's talk about your number one takeaway from everything that we talked about here today. Then share how we can connect more with you, your company, what you have going on. I know you have something very special for Fire Nation and then we'll say goodbye. Absolutely. Again, you know, I'd sound like a broken record, but it's the same thing all the time. We surveyed 5 ,000 people, busy professionals managing between five and 50 people. So these are really successful people.

21:11And we asked them, what's the number one skill you need to win your week? They all said, 94 % of them said, you need to plan your week to win your week. And then we followed up, John. And we said, okay, how many times in the last four weeks have you planned your week? And the answer was less than one. So we've got this huge Texas-sized gap between knowing that we need to plan our week in advance. to really have a chance at winning and the fact that we just don't do it. And I chalk that up to the fact that it's actually a pretty counterintuitive process. So that's part of the reason that we like to show people, we've got a really cool training that we give where we show people how to win their week and plan a winning week in 30 minutes or less.

21:53Let's hear it. Gang, I'd love to stay in touch with you. If you're somewhere where you can't go through this process right now, we've got a free gift training showing you how to win your week located at lifehackmethod.com forward slash EO fire. That's lifehackmethod.com forward slash EO fire. You know, in that training, I'm gonna teach you how to plan a winning week in less than 30 minutes. That means you'll not only have an effective planning process, but it's gonna be sustainable, which is something that a lot of people can't say. Again, something that less than 1 % of people are doing on a regular basis.

22:24You're also gonna learn a technique to overcome resistance that keeps you from planning. And the gift training is gonna come with a winning the week workbook that you can print and use to take action. We'll save your spot in line when our book is published on the same topic. And let me tell you, those people are gonna get some insane bonuses. And you know what? If you're gonna sign up right now, just for the EO Fire audience, the first 500 people will be getting our Fast Time Mastery course, a$497 value to teach you how to execute your winning plan like a boss. Anyways, free gift. Sign up now for the free training.

22:57You'll also get the free course. It's really short, just 60 minutes. and we've taught this method to tens of thousands of people. Go ahead and claim it at lifehackmethod.com forward slash EO Fire. Fire Nation, do not disrespect$500. Do not look a gift horse in the mouth. This is a huge, amazing opportunity from a person who is a proven commodity in this space. So I just want to say Fire Nation, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with DB and JLD today. So keep up that heat. Head over to eofire.com, type Demir, D-E-M-I-R, in the search bar, and the show notes page will pop up with everything that we've talked about here today.

23:40Demir, one more time, what's that call to action URL? Lifehackmethod.com forward slash eofire. Lifehackmethod.com slash eofire. Demir, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your fire with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, JLD. Hey, Fire Nation. Today's value bomb content was brought to you by Demir. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk.

24:25The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visit UncommonSuccessBook.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side. Are you ready for the ultimate all-in-one platform for entrepreneurs, marketers, coaches, and agencies? Build funnels, automate follow-ups, manage clients, and even white label your own software. Say hello to our featured partner high level. and visit highlevelfire.com to start your free trial today. Fire Nation, it's time to stop guessing and start winning with a proven playbook. Inside the Freedom Circle, you'll have access to my step-by-step systems for creating offers, building processes, and driving traffic, all in just 90 days.