Welcome to Bigger Than The Hustle—Why We’re Here

Success isn’t just about grinding harder—it’s about building a business and a life that actually feels good. In this first episode of Bigger Than The Hustle, hosts Heather Rose Boehme (business coach + process architect) and Chris Benedict (entrepreneur + freedom-focused business owner) break down why hustle alone isn’t the answer.

We’re diving into:
✅ Why hard work isn’t the end goal—freedom is.
✅ How Chris built a business that lets him enjoy his life, while Heather’s still deep in the trenches.
✅ The biggest myths about success that keep entrepreneurs stuck in the grind.
✅ What to expect in future episodes: real conversations about scaling, systems, and stepping back (without your business falling apart).

👉 If you’re tired of the hustle culture trap and want a business that works for you—not the other way around—hit subscribe and follow along!

Transcript

Heather Boehme (00:01.515)
Welcome to Bigger Than the Hustle, the podcast where we challenge the idea that success is just about grinding harder. We're here to talk about what it really takes to build a thriving business and a life that actually feels good. I'm your host, Heather Rose Boehme a process architect and business coach who's still in the trenches, helping business owners break free from the chaos of running their company so they can scale sustainably.

Chris Benedict (00:23.948)
And I'm your host Chris Benedict. I've built financial freedom and I'm now living the life most entrepreneurs are chasing. I know firsthand that the real goal isn't just making more money, it's making more money without being stuck in the daily grind.

Heather Boehme (00:36.641)
love it. Well, Chris, I figured we'd start today out just by telling people how we met and why we're doing this podcast.

Chris Benedict (00:44.438)
I think that's a great way to start it. I love these moments. I love these stories that are authentic. They happen organically. I was kind of in a rut in 2024. Wasn't really feeling I had some direction now that I reached some certain goals. And a friend of mine reached out and invited me to an entrepreneur summit out in Austin, Texas. And I have a, you know, the saying like, say yes to life. So I said, yes, I jumped on it.

I'm a participant when I do these events and I found Heather. What was it? Was it a morning walk? What was the first the first time we started talking?

Heather Boehme (01:22.091)
The first time we actually met was Lucy had scheduled these like 6 a.m. morning walks and my attitude when going to conferences is always like I'm gonna be as uncomfortable as possible and I'm gonna do everything because why did I spend the money otherwise? So we met at the morning walk originally.

Chris Benedict (01:38.734)
It's, yeah, and that's so true. really is, you know, one of the things I had learned from a group that I had joined was to be aggressively inclusive. And that means go find the people. Cause everybody is, you know, when you go to these events, everybody is alone in a sense. Like maybe there's some clusters of people that when you come to an event where you know nobody and a lot of people don't know anybody, everyone's kind of trying to figure out how do I jockey position to get to know people. So our friend Lucy had organized this 6 a.m. walk and

Heather Boehme (02:01.471)
high school again.

Chris Benedict (02:05.986)
Just like Heather said, was like, you know what the heck with it. I didn't come here to sit in a hotel room and wait till nine o'clock for the event to start. So we walked together, I think, correct?

Heather Boehme (02:16.033)
We did, but I think the real point where we actually connected was the very last speaker of the event was someone that I don't think either of us knew who he was. So he was a big deal to like a niche audience, which is honestly what I aspire to be a big deal to a niche audience. And we were both like, hey, they're giving us pictures with this guy. I guess we're gonna get in line.

Chris Benedict (02:40.568)
Sure.

Heather Boehme (02:42.795)
He had a good speech. was all about resilience and sticking to your goals. But we ended up being in line and we were both like, yeah, I don't really know who this is. You were like me neither, but hey, I wrote a book too. And that's how we started talking.

Chris Benedict (02:54.362)
Hey, what the heck? I wrote a book. He's an ultra marathoner. I'm here. And you know what? Just like anything else. In fact, I was very, just a sidebar was really nice because when we had, when he came to speak on stage, he was asked, no cameras. This is a, and he did, and he shared some of his struggles. And I've, and I'm a big believer in finding out people's struggles because everyone focuses on the success and look at all the glory and they forget all the blood, sweat and tears that are 98 % of success.

So yes, I remember and I'm just naturally a talker as is Heather. And so we just started talking while waiting in line for a signature on a book that we really didn't, you know, really didn't aspire. It's now in my bathroom. I'm reading it slowly but surely. But from there we started talking and then Heather had reached out to me over the summer. And from there we just started talking and then we realized that we were very symbiotic with our...

Heather Boehme (03:33.549)
I still haven't read it. great.

Chris Benedict (03:50.274)
growth goals, me having sort of achieved that my kids are now heading into college. And then Heather, I think you have a younger less less ninjas.

Heather Boehme (03:57.773)
Yeah, I've got.

Two young kids. So I'm not just in the trenches building my business.

Chris Benedict (04:16.622)
Ha

Heather Boehme (04:29.761)
like chasing big goals and it just feels like I'm running at a million miles an hour at all times and it's kind of exhausting.

Chris Benedict (04:37.998)
It is exhausting and this is, you know...

The whole purpose of life is to learn from those ahead of you and to be sure to turn around and reach back and share this wealth of knowledge with those behind you. And nothing is perfect. No one's life is going to be perfect. If anything, I've often said, I'm failing my way to the top because we make mistakes. And the sooner you can accept the fact that you make those mistakes, the sooner you can get on with your life and realize, hey, it's part of the growth cycle. Nothing is a straight line. It's a constant course correction through life. So that brings us

to why are we doing this, right? You why are we doing this? And it's because, you know, especially as a business owner with over a decade of owning businesses successfully having gone through the situation where my wife is not only my wife, but my business partner and seeing sort of like the challenges that face both men and women in this idea that we glorify the grind. And I am not saying

Heather Boehme (05:12.909)
Okay.

Heather Boehme (05:38.687)
Absolutely.

Chris Benedict (05:40.74)
saying there isn't a time and a place to grind, but it's really, are you at that point where are you sacrificing for success and losing out on the big picture of what you're doing this all for?

Heather Boehme (05:53.095)
And I know when we started talking, especially you telling me you were just like, yeah, you know, I built this business in Pennsylvania, but I live in Florida, you know, sometimes I work less than 10 hours a week. And for my whole life, my answer to every problem has been put my head down, work harder. And even when I accomplished my goals,

It just didn't seem like enough and I would beat myself up and feel guilty and shame like I never quite got to where I wanted to be. And so you saying that I was like, wait, it is possible. Success isn't just about making all the money because if we look at the billionaires of the world, do they necessarily have the lives we want? And my answer has always been no. Like their divorce rates are high. They don't seem like it's ever enough. They never seem to stop working. And I'm like, I do want a lot of money.

but I also want to have the time to pour into my family and enjoy it.

Chris Benedict (06:50.37)
let's talk about that, right? One of the things that we're going to be teaching here, and you're going to hear me reiterate this episode after episode, is that money is nothing but energy. Money isn't real. It's just a form of energy. I use my energy to create this thing called Wampum, or money, or Bitcoin, or cash, or whatever these tokens are that we say have value. And they have value because we put value on them. And then you can leverage a certain amount of this energy to do other things. And I think people have forgotten the miracle of what money

does that you can swipe, let's just call it when it was cash, when you can hand over a bill and someone handed you say a dozen eggs in a carton. Like no one really thinks about how much work would involve in that. The cleaning the eggs, the prepping, the feeding the chickens, the raising, right? Then it's got to get on a truck and it's got to get the, there's a whole process of people that are involved in it. All that is, is leveraged energy versus the energy that you have to do for yourself. So really the purpose of why I wanted to do this with Heather is to have real conversations.

about building a business with clarity, systems, freedom, without sacrificing yourself in the process. And I would say to this, if this is the type of podcast that grabs you, is that what we're gonna do is we're gonna challenge what it is that you really want, that you define as success, because nobody...

gets to define what success is to you. And most people think that success is, I have to be a billionaire. And the reality is success is so much closer if you start to focus on what it is. If it's possession of materials, I can't help you. Because that's an empty chase. But if it's about time freedom, yes, Heather.

Heather Boehme (08:25.453)
And I.

Heather Boehme (08:30.333)
no, yeah, you keep going and finish it out.

Chris Benedict (08:31.758)
If it's about time freedom, then that's what we're talking about. Because again, what's the purpose if tomorrow you won the lottery, Heather? Now all of your money problems are solved. Now what do you do? What do you do? Well, you're just going to sit around and spend your money the rest of your life. We know that's not going to happen.

Heather Boehme (08:50.093)
That's the thing I feel like for someone in my position, it's like so many of my issues would be solved by money right now and you are kind of coming at it from the been there done that and have gotten the money and realize that there are still problems to be had. And I think keeping up with the Joneses, it's so funny because even when you actively are trying not to, it creeps up on you. You don't even realize it, but all of sudden you're like fighting to afford to go on trips that you didn't even necessarily

plan because your family wants you to go on them or you're getting that car because all your friends have the bigger car and you really feel like you need that and it's not even something that really aligns with your core values but you you've got kids you you're running and I feel like so much of our lives are

happening without conscious decisions being made about it. It's like the flow of life will take you somewhere. Are you consciously aware of how your emotions, how your energy, how your decisions are affecting the flow, the way you're going with the current? And that's something that I would really like to put out there and talk about, because I feel like especially with emotions, it's like how...

Freshwater will flow into the ocean, right? They're two very different types of water, but they merge together and they're very hard to separate. And I feel like that's emotions and logic. If we all just made logical decisions, well, then we would all be successful because logic tells us do this, this, and this.

and you'll get what you want. But the thing is emotion mixes in with that logic and we don't even realize it consciously and it affects the way we approach everything and it stops us from doing the things that we know we should be doing. And so I read and consume so much content about the psychology of success and happiness and I try to practice it all because I think it's so hard to separate. But when you start consciously realizing that they're two different types of water, to follow my analogy,

Heather Boehme (10:54.671)
you start to realize that you can figure out which one's which and decide. Because emotion's good, it drives us, but it doesn't necessarily make the most logical decisions.

Chris Benedict (11:05.792)
No, and the emotions can certainly put you on a path that you think is the right one for you. How many people have achieved what they thought was their goal in like a career only to reach that level and realize how unsatisfied they were? And what you start to realize, and as you get older, you realize is that it is the pursuit. It really is the pursuit that is the happiness. Getting what you want is often far less satisfying as the chase to get to what you

want.

Heather Boehme (11:36.919)
So I think.

That's a great lead in to your story though, because we keep saying, you've done it, you've made it, but you, I wanna hear a little bit about like what it means to have made it, what you accomplished. And then also you're coming out of a couple of hard years because you quote unquote made it, but the expectations of the world around us, especially entrepreneurs, we're all ambitious, we're all go-getters. And so you've expressed that you felt some like guilt and some type of way about having a lifestyle.

Chris Benedict (11:43.192)
sure.

Heather Boehme (12:07.779)
where you don't work all the time.

Chris Benedict (12:09.14)
It's true. So I'll give my brief background. I started off.

in real estate shortly after the tower spell was at 2001. So that had a deeply profound effect on me psychologically. I was 26, 27 years old. I didn't like the job that I was in. I really wasn't living the life that I'd always envisioned. I was like working in radio, advertising, sales, and wearing this suit and having to deal with a boss. Like this is never like, I never, I never envisioned this when I was reading Contiki.

and know, dove books about people sailing around the world and living these lives of freedom. And so the towers fell and I was with like 25 other salespeople and every one of them just complained how much they hated the job. They hated the business, they hated their life, they hated what they were doing. But nobody was like making any moves and I was like, well...

if you all hate your lives so much, we're all between 25 and 35 years old, like if everyone hates this job so much, then why are we here? And I made a decision that I was not going to wait for the group to make a decision for me. So Stephanie, my wife asked me to make it through the Christmas party. And then I quit on Christmas, yeah, Christmas Eve, 2021 I think it was, right after the towers fell. That was it, I quit and I've been unemployed ever since. And so I got into real estate.

Heather Boehme (13:25.185)
I that bonus.

Chris Benedict (13:38.362)
And I was a regular agent, a young buck with no leads, no connections. So everything was just grind, grind, grind. I was working my ass off to not have to work for someone else. And it came at a price. But I had a partner who believed in me and believed in the idea of what we were doing. And shortly after our second and third children were born, had twins that were our second and third children.

We both now had real estate licenses. We're both working as independent contractors. We have no government backstop. We have no corporation providing us healthcare. We are literally two people in a rowboat with three other kids hoping to weather the storm. And the storm happened.

It was called October of 2008 and the market crash came. I lost several deals in the pipeline. It was going to be the biggest month I ever had in real estate. Well over 60 some thousand dollars in commissions and in one week it evaporated through no fault of my own. It was purely market driven and I looked at Stephanie and I said, this is a stupid industry. This is a

Heather Boehme (14:44.343)
You

Chris Benedict (14:45.976)
dumb way of doing business. We are running around like independent contractors. We act like we're our own bosses and we are completely beholden on a transaction that we have absolutely no guarantee or say will or will not consummate. And if it does it, have a nice day.

Heather Boehme (15:02.315)
And I feel like people think realtors have so much control over their deals, but really you're just the middle man communicating between the actual people doing it. The buyer or seller, the lender, the title company, they're the ones actually doing everything. You're just basically facilitating everything, which is important, but it means you have absolutely no control over almost anything.

Chris Benedict (15:23.638)
No control, none. And I sat through three different brokers over a period of seven different years. And every one of them would do like, okay, what's your business plan for the year, Christopher? And I'm like, business plan? Listen, I can do all these things that you're talking about. That is not a guarantee because the outside market has shown me what happened. So in 08, the market crashed.

I lost real estate, I lost money, the money wheel stopped, I was in over my head and within the year I was bankrupt. And this was very, very distressing to me at the time. I'm no longer ashamed of it because out of those ashes I've built something beautiful, but at the time, know, having three kids, a wife, having to move back into the house with my parents and start all over again, this was rough. I mean, this was rough, but...

Stephanie and I looked at each other and we knew like there's gotta be a better way. And at the time, we just so happened to be managing a couple of properties for friends and family. And the joke was it paid for the one car payment. And we had two cars at the time, two payments. And I said to Stephanie like, what if we could take on a little bit more property management and that would cover the other car payment.

And once Stephanie got a taste of that subscription model income, she started hitting Craigslist back when Craigslist was a good source of leads. And within three or four months, we picked up our first HOA and we were making three, four, five grand a month. Within a year, we were making about the same as what we had in sales. Within two years, we were making more in management than we were in sales. Now, every Christmas party, we'd get together with the other realtors and it would always be like, how's your...

Heather Boehme (16:48.769)
Yeah.

Chris Benedict (17:10.786)
How's your year been? And we would just sit in the corner and just chuckle, because we're like, we're having the best years ever. So that's where it started. That was where I got the idea that single sales is a fool's game.

and it will make a daily hunter out of you. That means you're a substance hunter. So whether you're a fisherman or you're a hunter, if you're a realtor, if you're a car salesman, anything you do where you are selling for a transaction, you only get paid on that transaction, that is no different than the person who shows up to the pond every day to fish, to feed themselves. They must fish every day. If they don't, they don't eat, they starve. And I thought this is...

Heather Boehme (17:50.657)
and you've basically become a farmer with like perennial plants that just keep coming back every year.

Chris Benedict (17:57.71)
As I explained it to my Phil my friend Phil Capron one time and this was like six or seven years ago I said you're a hunter and you need to go out every day and find something to kill and then you've only got so much time to eat it because it will spoil

I said, me, I've developed a farm, I got a pen of goats over here, when I'm hungry, I walk over and I shoot one. That's the difference between how I live and someone who lives on that cycle. And by the way, you don't have to be an independent contractor to live that. If you are collecting a W-2 paycheck right now and you think you have security, just remember this, you're less than 24 hours away from finding out this is your last paycheck.

Heather Boehme (18:36.141)
Oh yeah, see I experienced 2008, 2009 from the, like I was barely headed off to college. That was senior year of high school for me. So I watched it affect my parents. I watched my dad lose his job. I watched our mortgage go skyrocket. I watched them get divorced. I watched them.

foreclose on the house. It was hideous and I'm watching it from like a slightly removed standpoint and just seeing that like the 90s and early 2000s were an absolute

Wild West show of credit cards, mortgage, debt, just and looking back, you know, I'm sure 20-20 hindsight is a true bitch for my parents because they were making so much money in the 90s and if they had put it into like stable investments, then they would have probably been fine. But they did what everybody did because they didn't know better and their entire lives blew up and it really sucked to watch.

But that very quickly taught me that like there's no such thing as security when you're not driving the car.

Chris Benedict (19:47.884)
And not only that, but you hit a good point, Heather, and I'm always fascinated how these things affect us as young adults, children, and then it changes how we become. When you saw this, right, when you saw that, like, it didn't really matter how much money they right? People keep thinking, if I just made more money, but if you're...

Parents were having successful years as were mine by the way. I mean my parents went through the very same thing with my father working as the executive for CBS. He was just rolling in the money until he wasn't. And that's when you realize like man you know what this is like working for the man. The man meaning like the house. Like the house always wins. And so tell me about how that affected you and what you created out of that chaos.

Heather Boehme (20:35.127)
Well, the-

Funny thing is, cause you know, you would think that right then and there I'd be like, yeah, no, I'm never gonna work for anybody. But that didn't really happen. I feel like there's a moment when people come online, right? You're just kind of floating through life. You're going where it takes you until something happens or you just wake up one day and you're like, I can control this, right? So that wasn't my coming online moment. I watched it and my reaction was kind of like, wow, that really sucks.

Hard stop, keep going, right? So I kind of kept going through college, but my wake up moment ended up coming because I followed the exact same pattern. I actually got a job at the same company my dad ended up working at afterward. Like, you know, I got out of college, got a job at his place and ended up being like project management track because I'm naturally pretty organized. And that's where things started to shift. Because when my husband got into grad school in Nashville, I was like, coming with you. Because one thing I

Chris Benedict (21:08.108)
You

Heather Boehme (21:36.179)
am very naturally good at his relationships. I was like, we're gonna get married. You might not know it yet, but I do. Luckily he knew it too. So I followed him there and I ended up getting a job at a small family owned business. And that was my big changing point. Because I was a project manager. I was making 55K a year and I was rich.

Chris Benedict (21:40.76)
Ha ha ha!

Heather Boehme (21:54.701)
I was rich! $55,000 a year! Oh my gosh! My rent was like $1,300. I was living the life.

Chris Benedict (21:59.886)
That's some good money.

Heather Boehme (22:06.743)
But I always attached so much of my self-worth to the job I did. I grew up in very competitive household. We did high octane sports. I always competed at a national level because my parents would push me to. And so my work became my sport. And the thing is that job became way over my head. I went from being a project manager to basically being the COO of that company. I ran everything from point of sale to fulfillment and I had no training, no coping mechanisms.

no idea what I was doing. So I found myself getting so overwhelmed and burnt out. would work 10 hour days and I still couldn't figure out where all my time was going, how I was not getting things done. And then the nasty little habits started to come up. Like we all have our kind of shitty coping mechanisms that come up when we get in a bad way emotionally. Mine tend to be.

ignore the things that I don't like, bury my head in the sand. So if a project would come up and I just couldn't deal with it right now, I just wouldn't start it. Or if production would be behind on a project they absolutely should have done rather than just like calling the client right away, would avoid the phone call. And it was just so horrible because I knew that this was not the type of person I was and I was starting to get called out on it, right? Clients would be like,

straight up lied or she just never called me and that that was devastating and I'm still like so embarrassed about it but you know it's it's the past

So that culminated and I don't know how I didn't just get axed immediately, but it culminated in a moment when the CEO sat me down and he had promised to give me like a bonus. And I was so excited. It was like $2,500 bonus. I was getting married and he like very flippantly one day was like, Heather, you're working so hard. I'm gonna give you a bonus. I was like, dope. I can put new tires on my car. My car tires were absolutely...

Chris Benedict (24:00.674)
bald. Sure.

Heather Boehme (24:01.057)
bold, right? I'm driving a Fiat, riding around Nashville, like ready to blow at any moment. So was like, thank God I can get new tires. I need this. Like every other penny was going toward the wedding. And then he never gave me the bonus.

And so finally, it was like three weeks later, a bonus was not appearing and I screwed up my courage to like go ask. And I remember going into his office and I was like very timid like, um, you mentioned that bonus you were gonna give me. And he was like, oh yeah, yeah, I decided to just add it to your salary. And I was like, okay. And I left. And then I started doing the math. I was like, okay, $2,500 divided by 12 with taxes. It's like $300 a month.

Chris Benedict (24:40.718)
You were getting paid monthly at the time too. But still. Well yeah, look, $2,500 before taxes divided by 52 paychecks. That's an extra $48 a week before taxes. So here's your extra $35. You can fill half a tank of gas.

Heather Boehme (24:42.554)
well, I was getting paid weekly, but still it was like, and weekly it was barely anything, you know?

Heather Boehme (24:57.261)
Exactly. So I started doing the math and I was like, no, you need those tires girl. Like you are going to blow out on the highway. You need the hire. So I walked back in, I screwed up my courage and I was like, hey, listen, I appreciate it, but you told me it was going to be a bonus and I would really like the bonus now. And he goes, Heather, sit down. And so I sat down in front of him and he looked at me and he goes, so

All of the problems in the company are coming from the operations side of the business. So do you really think you deserve that bonus?

Chris Benedict (25:36.276)
ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho,

Heather Boehme (25:39.829)
That, I still remember the WHOOSH of like...

my god, because no, I didn't think I deserved the bonus. My self-confidence was at an all-time low. I was doing things that absolutely went against my core value personality. Like, I am a very upfront, honest person by nature, and so by putting off work, procrastinating, and just not calling people when I knew I needed to rip off the band-aid, I absolutely felt like shit all the time. I was doing my best at the time.

Chris Benedict (26:08.504)
sure.

Heather Boehme (26:11.757)
But no, so that shattered me. And I don't know what he thought would happen, but my confidence and my work ethic went, pookachoo, it just got dropped.

Chris Benedict (26:14.018)
Yeah.

Chris Benedict (26:22.028)
You can't, yeah, you can't as a business owner promise someone a bonus and then renege on it because if you do, there's, this credibility is lost and that trust is lost, that bond. that's the, most, most people realize when they go to work for a company that there's a good chance that there will not be loyal, reciprocal loyalty. And this was a proof of that.

Heather Boehme (26:39.051)
No. So yeah, I mean, and at that point, you know, I didn't blame him, I blamed myself, so, but...

my productivity just absolutely bottomed out. And I was still likable, but I was a miserable little likable person. So I would just be crying on my breaks and then suck it up and go back. So everybody just felt so bad for me in the company. They were all so like, poor Heather. And eventually he ended up selling the company basically to one of our vendors. So they were buying it for production and I got restructured out, which is the nicest way to say you're fired that has ever happened, right?

Chris Benedict (26:48.439)
Yeah.

Chris Benedict (27:11.042)
Right.

You

Heather Boehme (27:16.023)
So that happened to me and that was my get online moment, right? I was like, I'm never gonna work for anybody again. And in my mind, I was burnt out because I didn't make enough money, which makes no sense, right? Like at the time it did. So I was like, I'm never gonna work for anybody again and I'm gonna make a butt ton of money. So I went into real estate, LOL, right? Like going to real estate.

Chris Benedict (27:28.752)
But at the time it did.

Chris Benedict (27:37.824)
yeah, good job with that one. Why do people think that if they get a real estate license, Manu will suddenly fall from heaven?

Heather Boehme (27:47.479)
Well, because it sounds so sexy when you're watching HGTV and you see like the podcasts and the Instagrams, like real estate's a little bougie. And so you see these people driving Ferraris that they probably rented for the day, you know? And you're like, there's so much money to be made. And there is, that's the thing, is what I loved about real estate, I learned very quickly and I got a coach and everything, but.

Chris Benedict (28:01.304)
Sure, sure.

Heather Boehme (28:12.245)
It was all about the process. Like if you did the process, you succeeded. And I got really good at the process of cold calling, sales, et cetera. So I made a lot of money hunting every day. And it turns out I'm really good at hunting, right? So like I was great at it, but I was still miserable.

Chris Benedict (28:20.216)
Sure. Hunting. You're hunting every day. Hunting, hunting, hunting.

Heather Boehme (28:33.589)
I was still miserable. So then I had my kid and I realized that I'm working 90 hour weeks, hunting all the time, making all this money, feeling miserable, stressed out, like still beating myself up. So I'm like, it's real estate. It's not me, it's real estate. So I decided to go into coaching. I got my coaching certification. I was like, I can help other people, which is so ironic because I couldn't even help myself. It's always hard, the audacity.

Chris Benedict (28:58.03)
But it's how we start. We have a vision. It's a vision of purpose. Yeah, it's the vision of purpose.

Heather Boehme (29:03.149)
Exactly. And so I did coaching for like a year and then I was like, oh my god, Heather, you're miserable again. You're not getting where you want to go. And I had to take a hard look and say, who who who's the common denominator here? It's not my bosses. It's not my team lead at the real estate. It's not the industry of coaching. Girl, it's you. And that was a hard

Chris Benedict (29:25.11)
Hahaha!

Heather Boehme (29:28.299)
realization it was about two years ago because I remember I was nursing my second child and I'm sitting there five weeks into my eight week maternity leave Where I was gonna get my shit together, right? I was gonna figure it out on this eight week maternity leave when I wasn't networking I wasn't doing anything and I'm looking down this baby watching criminal minds and I was like I'm wasting

this maternity leave, I'm not doing anything I said I would do, something needs to change. And that's when it clicked. It was like, you are the one that needs to change. It's not industry. It's not go back to real estate. It's not, you know, get a job. It's like you as a human being need to change. And that's where everything shifted for me. All of a sudden I went from being like, why should I change in my mind? Because that was always the like background noise. It's like, I don't need to change. They need to change.

Chris Benedict (30:16.066)
right.

Heather Boehme (30:16.992)
But that moment I was like, okay, you can't change anybody else. So you can change you though. So you may need to change. And that's where I started really seeing traction and really working on myself. And now I'm still ambitious. I'm still like, go get our still wanna build these crazy impossible things.

but I'm working on not beating myself up and I work on not being burnt out and I try to work smarter, not harder, which is why I resonated with you so much was because I always default to harder, work harder. And I feel like when...

Chris Benedict (30:49.845)
I, I...

I remember that conversation when you and I were talking because Heather had reached out to me to pitch me from some of her coaching services as a platform for other property management business owners. she wasn't, Heather, you was not pitching me direct. She was pitching an idea, which of course, if I'd liked, I might've obviously subscribed to it. But at the time, it wasn't sales. You were asking, hey, is this something that other owners might like? And in that conversation, I was like, Heather, you went from selling real estate to selling this course. You went from selling

one hunting program to another hunting program. What if I could show you how to build a subscription-based model that makes money for you while you sleep? And it's not a miracle drug. It's not some crazy fanatic idea. It was just a simple basic service, which by the way, there's lots of industries that can cover this. So I don't want to specifically hone in on what we were doing at the time. But the idea was like, hey, what if you could sell once and then it continually paid you?

for anywhere from two, three years upwards of 15 plus years, which is the average client. So that was what I think triggered in your mind to understand that maybe there was something beyond the hustle.

Heather Boehme (32:01.643)
Yeah, and that's the thing is like you have talked about this to a lot of people over the years. I remember you saying that like, is this something you want to learn? And I was like, yes, tell me exactly how you did this and how I can do it too. And you were like, wow, you're one of the first people that actually.

Chris Benedict (32:16.014)
Well, I spent a lot of years. you know, after the 08 market crash and we got into, I was still working for a national brand company as a realtor, but I started shifting. Like in the beginning, I was doing 80 % sales, 10 to 20 % of my grossly income was management. By about three years later, we were like 80 % management and every sale was just bonus. It was icing on the cake. Cause I no longer felt any pressure. And by the way, what a great sales tactic to walk and say, look, I don't really care whether you signed with me or not.

care whether you sell or not. I don't need your sale to pay my bills just so you know. So if I'm gonna tell you the price and what I'm gonna do you can trust that it's the truth and I closed a lot of deals doing that with no competition but it was on my 40th birthday 2012 Stephanie said to me we don't need to work for this other brokerage anymore they're taking too much of our action

Heather Boehme (32:50.273)
Yeah, like emissions are gone.

Chris Benedict (33:11.758)
You've got 90 days to open your own business Yeah, so I did I got to work man I woman Stephanie tells me jump I say how high and she says she's been a great business partner with that and and wife and So yeah, man, I went and you know, tell me what sure I went I got that within 90 days I got it all set up 12 12 of 2012 a date that I will always remember Was the day I officially opened my own business and that was the start of where I?

Heather Boehme (33:14.967)
love Stephanie.

Chris Benedict (33:41.784)
am now, which is correct. I live in Florida. I have companies in three different states. I don't work nearly as hard as I used to because I used to have a saying like, hey man, dishwashers work hard. Right? You can always work harder. I don't want hard workers. I want smart workers. There's nothing wrong with working hard. All right? You want to dig a ditch? Be the best ditch digger you can be. But understand that there's only so many hours in the day and only so many years your body can handle that type of physical labor.

Heather Boehme (34:10.541)
And that's the thing, I have a saying that I think I say it like six or seven times a week just in my conversations, right? High upfront cost, low long-term maintenance. And most of time I'm talking to business owners about implementing processes and systems and CRMs and automation. And I'm like, yeah, you're gonna have to work hard for a little while upfront.

Chris Benedict (34:22.541)
Yeah.

Heather Boehme (34:34.817)
but the whole point of the upfront work is low long-term maintenance. So you'll have to work 80 % less hard. And I think when we say work harder, not smarter, it's kind of like saying you need to work on the business, not in the business. And people nod because that sounds right. But at their core, I don't think people truly understand what that means for them. They understand it for other people, but when you're in the thick of it, it's hard to realize where you're working harder, not smarter.

Chris Benedict (35:02.958)
Well, they don't have the vision of where they're going because most people are focused on the next step. So if you understand Kiyosaki's cashflow quadrant, you start with the E, which is the employer model, and then you break into the SE, which is the self-employment model, and eventually you hopefully become the business owner model. And then eventually, if you hopefully have enough money, you put all that aside and you become purely the investor model, which is like, hey, your money just works for you. That's it. I only make money off of working my money.

Most people go from the E model, the employment, and that could be working as a school teacher making $35,000 a year all the way up to the executive making $750,000 or more a year who is miserable in his nine to five job. The amount of money is inconsequential if the misery is the same. But the idea is then they go, you know what? And I see this all the time. I've been in IT for 25 years and I just bought an insurance franchise.

Heather Boehme (35:58.487)
Yeah.

Chris Benedict (35:58.636)
You thought you bought a business and in your mind you're calling yourself a business owner. Sir, you went from the E to the SE, you're now in self-employment. So get to work. See, it's not a business if it doesn't work for you.

Heather Boehme (36:18.565)
If you got hit by a bus, would your business continue to keep running? If the answer is no, then you are working in the business.

Chris Benedict (36:28.362)
I could tell you right now, my two soul dots, as they would say, is Stephanie, who is the CFO, and Andreana, who is my lead PM. And let me tell you something. An amazing thing happens when I step back into the business. Chaos. It never helps. So I can't.

Heather Boehme (36:32.461)
Ha!

Heather Boehme (36:43.575)
chaos, it gets worse.

Chris Benedict (36:48.534)
So really what it came down to Heather, if we can get back to some of these, the tenants that we agree on kind of thing, understand that hustle is not the goal, freedom is. And what Heather is really teaching me is you don't build a successful business alone.

It was through you really saying, Chris, you know, this is your, you are only limited to what you can do. Let me show you. So in a sense, this has been a very symbiotic relationship because you don't know what you don't know as a business owner. And so I feel very blessed that I have you in my life now because you've opened my eyes to seeing like, okay, how do I get like, cause remember it, everything has a setting point where you reach balance. So what I mean by that is.

You hustle till you get comfortable, right? They say the wolf on the hill is always hungrier than the wolf at the top of the hill. And that is true. I'm, listen, I went on, if I look back to 09, living with my parents, having to look my wife in the eye, knowing that am I losing the respect of my family with three kids and no job, driving a limo through the Christmas holiday to put gifts on my, under the tree for my kids. I have no shame in doing that. I did what I had to, to hustle, to make it work.

But I always knew there was one thing that was the true factor of what real wealth was. Can you guess what that was?

Heather Boehme (38:17.357)
time.

is you can always utilize your time in different ways. And I think it's important to realize that there are different phases of your life, right? Like I'm raising young kids and so time for me is not gonna be spent doing things that...

I want to do, time for me is going to be spent pouring into my children because that's the phase of life I'm in and I've got 18 years to invest in these kids to make them good human beings who I want to hang out with as an adult and who want to bring my grandkids around me. That's high stakes game.

Chris Benedict (38:55.47)
It is high stakes game. In fact, I was at the dentist yesterday with my three children. I took them because Stephanie was getting ready for tax season. And so I was like, sure, I'll do the dad duty and take them to get their teeth. And you know what? The Karen, it's funny, her name was Karen, because I was making fun of her. But she just came in and she was doing my final cleaning. Or check up and she just said, I just want you to know how amazingly polite your children are.

Heather Boehme (39:11.629)
no.

Chris Benedict (39:23.724)
And I was like, you know, I beam with pride every time someone says that to me. I said, that also means there must be lot of hellions out there. She said, you don't even know how bad it is. But it was a point of pride. And Heather, I've said this to you. I've said this to every parent. It will snap time like that. goes so quick. And when you are raising children, you get three six year periods and each one of those is completely different than the other one. But the worst part of it is you really get 12 years because 13 to 18 while they are your children.

Heather Boehme (39:33.889)
No.

Chris Benedict (39:53.6)
It's the time that they're starting to leave the nest if not physically you can kind of get it to becoming young adults And it's not so so those 12 years grab onto them for everything. They're worth

Heather Boehme (40:05.183)
Yeah, it's it's you know, it's terrifying and exciting but that's the thing is so in this phase of my life That's where I'm gonna be pouring my time whereas you're kind of coming into that other phase of life where your kids are flying out of the nest and now

Chris Benedict (40:18.926)
Glitter sweet.

Heather Boehme (40:20.129)
That's the time of life where you can really focus on you, your goals, big things that you wanna do, which is so exciting. And what's great is you've built a business that gives you more choices. And I think that's one of the big tenants that we also agree on is being a business owner should not make you feel trapped. It should give you unlimited options. It should support your true goals and you shouldn't be feeling obligated to your business.

Chris Benedict (40:31.309)
Yes.

Chris Benedict (40:47.682)
Yeah, the goal is options, not obligations. You're absolutely correct. And I think of it to the way I, my father, who is 84 years old, said to me about a month ago, he said, you hit the nail on the head a couple of years ago.

Because I'm very anti possessions. I don't believe in I think possessions hold you you don't hold possessions That doesn't mean I don't want to have access to things, but I don't need to own them to feel comfortable But he said to me and I remember I forgot I told him this I said dad every time you acquire something your life a car Something anything that has an obligation It's like adding another link in the chain of the weights around your neck and it's true Because remember when you buy a boat, don't just buy a boat you buy a boat you buy a slip You buy a yearly licensing you buy insurance you buy maintenance you buy upkeep you buy

fueling, you buy docking fees, you buy transport, it all adds up. It all adds up. So remember those become and yeah so it becomes more obligation. you know wherever you're in life by the way whether you have

Heather Boehme (41:36.781)
and they break every time you take them out.

Chris Benedict (41:44.13)
whether you're single and running free like a wild wolf, you know, or you're a family person, a mother, a father, and you have obligations, by the way, none of them should be excuses as to why you feel you can or can't get to your goals. But you should understand if you don't yet have those obligations, then understand that there's going to be a price to be paid for them. And if you're going to have children, it is your obligation to be present in their lives, in my opinion.

The people that I hold the most heart out for are our military service people. I have utmost respect for the men and women who work to protect us in this country who do not get to see their children. And so to honor them, obviously I want to honor veterans everywhere I can, but I also honor them by being present for my children when I was able, knowing that many of them couldn't. You know?

Heather Boehme (42:37.967)
yeah, and that's the thing is like they physically can't and they are making the sacrifice for our freedom and I grew up, you know, we had the nice things. We had a big piece of land. We had a massive 4,000 square foot house. We had horses. We had motorcycles. We had all the things, but in order to support that lifestyle, my parents had to work so much. My mom was a night yarner. She would leave at 6 p.m. to go to work, get home at.

Chris Benedict (42:41.506)
physically care.

Heather Boehme (43:03.981)
7 30 a.m. And then sleep all day and my dad had two jobs He would leave at 6 a.m. To go to work and then he would go to his taekwondo school and work till 10 a.m. so

Chris Benedict (43:15.374)
grind, grind, grind, grind. Hey, what's the difference between that and working in the mines for 18 hours a day?

Heather Boehme (43:22.207)
Yeah, and so you've got all this money, you've got all this stuff, but when are you stopping to enjoy it? My mom's like constantly sleep deprived and her immune system is like shot because she's in a hospital and she's never sleeping. And then my dad's just gone most of the time, even on the weekends, he's working in the Taekwondo school and it just sounds and looked exhausting. And we were just, we were wild children. Like, I don't know how unpolite we were, but our house was always wrecked. We were...

Chris Benedict (43:48.8)
The last of the feral children.

Heather Boehme (43:50.487)
Cool again. Yeah!

We were absolute hooligans, like just constantly running around, you know, and the house was never clean. But how could it be where there were four kids and nobody taught us how to clean? like just insane. And I think that's a big part of like why I'm also a little bit more minimalistic is I want to create a home, but I cannot stand clutter. Like I don't want a bunch of stuff. My birthday parties drive me crazy because I love throwing the party, but I hate all the gifts my kids get. Like I'm like, no need.

Chris Benedict (44:03.64)
now.

Chris Benedict (44:20.598)
Yeah, right.

Heather Boehme (44:22.383)
more toys, you play with boxes more. But yeah, it's just kind of realizing that at the end of the day, we're not gonna remember the stuff, we're gonna remember the experiences.

Chris Benedict (44:31.126)
you're not only are you not gonna remember the stuff but the thing that you think your kids need and want and I'll tell you this because success does not look the same for everyone and what you think is success or what you think your kids want is usually vastly far different and I'll tell you right now I spend some good money planning a Disney vacation I think we stay at the Polynesian and

It was a, but I mean, it was like, you we're staying on property. We have the best park tickets. mean, you know, and I felt myself like, do you want this glow stick? Do you want this flashy thingy? Do you want, and the kids were like, nah, it's cool. And I felt like, what? You don't want this crazy glow thing for Fantasmic? And they were like, no. And so we did all this stuff and we did, you know, the Cinderella's castle. was, was all of it was wonderful.

But do you know what their most favorite memory of that vacation was? Every night at the resorts, the deluxe resorts, play, they do one of those blow up outdoor theater, they blow the screen up and they project a movie, one of their Disney movies on it. And this one happened to be Frankenweenie.

Heather Boehme (45:28.63)
What was it?

Heather Boehme (45:41.633)
you

Chris Benedict (45:46.766)
And so we were, it was a beautiful night. was like 73, low humidity, cool breeze. The fireworks are off in the distance and we're sitting on these beach chairs watching Frank and Weenie and eating lobster rolls. And that family time, that's the memory that they have the entire trip. That's their most, the strongest, happiest moment. And I was like, and it didn't cost me anything but a couple sandwiches.

Heather Boehme (46:14.637)
Mm-hmm.

Chris Benedict (46:15.916)
And that's when I realized it's not about the actions, it's the time as a family that you're gonna spend. And I've watched people spend so much money thinking that's gonna end. And I'm like, the kids just want your time more than you probably realize. So success doesn't look the same for everyone. And I'm not here to tell you what success is. You, the listener, that's up for you to decide what success is. But we just want you to understand that do not base your vision of success on anyone else because in the end, it is only your race to run. So.

Heather Boehme (46:26.583)
Yeah.

Chris Benedict (46:44.554)
That being said, what can we expect in the... please. Okay.

Heather Boehme (46:46.005)
And then I have one more thing to add to that and then we'll wrap it up because we're coming toward the end of the time. But one of the questions I like to ask people, because I think we always look at things very pessimistically, like what if this goes wrong? What if this goes wrong? But I like to ask people, what does your life look like if everything just goes right? It's five years from now and everything worked out.

What are you doing? Where does your time go? What do you, like what's your work? Because let's be honest, we'd be bored if we weren't doing something. Like we can't watch, you can only watch Netflix for so many hours of the day. What does your life look like if everything went right? And that question is such a good lead in to start building out your vision. Because I have had people get...

massively uncomfortable when I ask that question. And it's wild to me that so many people do not look ahead five years and say, what do I want my life to look like in five years? It's not that far along.

Chris Benedict (47:41.708)
No, because they don't know, especially moms who are in the middle of it and men, because men really aren't allowed to ask for what they want. We're told to just sit up, shut down, shut up, sit out and do your job. I mean, in all walks of life. And obviously there's challenges, especially for the moms out there of trying to do that work-life balance. And so we're here to say it's okay.

to define success your own way and realize that there is no one set way. So what can you expect as we go through future episodes? First of all, Heather's gonna be taking us deep dives in the system, scaling and stepping back. That is her expertise. So I'm gonna say thank you for showing that stuff. I'm gonna have real talk about what actually works well in business as a business, a multiple business owner who is past the 10 year point of ownership. And of course we'll have personal lessons, funny stories, maybe a

maybe a little friendly arguing and always always some shenanigans thrown in.

Heather Boehme (48:41.169)
shenanigans. And if this resonated with you, subscribe and follow along. And if you're stuck in the grind and want out, DM us on our social medias, which will be linked somewhere in this video when we edit it. Let's talk about it. We'd love to address it on the episodes.

Chris Benedict (48:55.47)
first step is make a decision you want to make change. So thank you for joining us and we'll see you on the next episode.

Heather Boehme (48:57.933)
Exactly. Have a good one, you guys. All right, I'm going to stop this. Oh, there you go.