Have you ever dreamed of leaving your corporate job to start a business with your spouse? It sounds exciting, but the reality can be far more challenging than you might expect. In this episode, I sit down with Meredith and Craig Bennett, a couple who took the leap from corporate careers to entrepreneurship.
Their journey wasn’t a smooth ride. They share how their initial business venture left them feeling unfulfilled and put a strain on their relationship. But through perseverance and self-discovery, they found their true calling as relationship coaches.
In this episode we discuss
- The importance of understanding your “why” before starting a business
- How to navigate working with your spouse without damaging your relationship
- Why personal growth is crucial for entrepreneurial success
- The power of community and saying “yes” to new opportunities
Practical Tips for Couples in Business
- Set clear boundaries between work and personal time
- Leverage each other’s strengths in your business roles
- Make time for regular check-ins and debriefs
- Prioritize your relationship above all else
Meredith and Craig’s story is a testament to the power of perseverance and the importance of aligning your business with your values. They remind us that success often comes from unexpected places when we’re open to growth and willing to take risks.
Whether you’re considering starting a business with your partner or simply looking to improve your relationships, this episode offers valuable insights and inspiration. Tune in to learn how you can create a thriving business and a strong partnership simultaneously.
Want to skip ahead?
1:00 The journey from corporate job to starting a business together, the good, the bad, and the uncertain.
6:00 How personal learning and growth can provide surprising opportunities.
15:00 Balancing work and personal life when you work with your partner.
Meredith & Craig Bennett
www.roadoflifecoaching.com
https://www.instagram.com/meredithandcraig
https://www.facebook.com/meredithandcraig
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredithandcraig/
https://www.youtube.com/@RoadOfLifeCoaching
Grab more resources at https://easystylewithsami.com
Follow us on Facebook at https://facebook.com/ssmulhern
Follow us on Instagram at https://instagram.com/ssmulhern
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (00:00):
Welcome to Easy Style with Sami. I'm your
(00:02):
host. Sami Bedell-Mulhern, eachepisode, I invite a friend,
family member, colleague or justsomeone I've met on this journey
called life, to come and sharetheir personal style and
approach to business, parenting,life and everything in between.
You'll hear motivational andinspirational stories that will
help you refine and build yourown personal style. Remember,
(00:25):
style is easy when it comes fromwithin.
Hey, friends, welcome to anotherepisode of Easy Style with Sami.
And today, my guests areMeredith and Craig Bennett,
thanks for being here today.
Meredith Bennett (00:37):
Oh, thanks for having us, Sammy. We're super
excited. Yeah, pumped to behere. Thank you.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (00:41):
You are my first official couple on the
podcast, and I wanted to do thisfor some time, so I'm really
excited for this conversationwe're playing with. You know,
we've got some more gentlemencoming on the podcast this year
as well. So I think important tohear all sides of the story, The
Good, the Bad and the awesome.So why don't you just start by
introducing yourselves and tellus a little bit about who you
(01:03):
are.
Meredith Bennett (01:05):
Sure we're Meredith and Craig, and we are
best friends, business partnersand a married couple, so we wear
a lot of hats in ourrelationship. We didn't always
we started off actually workingin the same company. We weren't
always entrepreneurs. We didn'talways have that business
partner hat on. And then ourcompany gave us a giant gift, of
(01:30):
you can move across the countryor you can leave, and it was a
really stressful decision in themoment, but in hindsight, it was
a huge gift, and we ended up, weended up leaving the corporate,
the corporate world, and tryingto figure out this whole
entrepreneurship thing once weonce we were out of corporate,
and so we kind of jumped intothe plane and decided we would
(01:51):
figure out how to build aparachute on the way down. And
it wasn't a straight line. Iwould say, we didn't jump out of
corporate into entrepreneurshipand have success?
Craig Bennett (02:02):
No, there was, yeah, it definitely was not a
straight line. There were lotsof U turns and detours and
mistakes and but we ultimatelyrealized that we hadn't done the
work when we left our corporatejobs really understand who we
were. Yeah, we thought that wasour main focus when we when we
realized that was to double downon that and jumped into
(02:24):
entrepreneurship and becamerelationship experts and
coaches.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (02:29):
I love that. So I have some friends who
are also in the online businessspace. And they, you know, one
of my good, good friends, Becky.She was on the podcast her
husband left his corporate jobto come into her business, and
now they work together. Youknow, I so I know of several
couples where they do this,personally for myself, my
husband's a huge supporter. Ileft my corporate job to start
(02:51):
my own business without reallyknowing what I was going to do.
Just yet, he's super supportive.But for us to work together
would not be a good thing. So Ialways admire couples that can
make that work. And so I kind ofwant to talk a little bit about
your journey. Because, you know,when you messaged me, you
mentioned that you your firstbusiness just was not great for
(03:13):
a lot of reasons, right? So whydon't you share kind of what
that first experience was like,and kind of what it took for you
to kind of come through that andwork your way through that.
Craig Bennett (03:22):
It's funny, because when we left the
corporate job, one of thereasons we left was, one, we
didn't want to move across thecountry, further away from all
those we love and all the peoplein our world. But the second
thing was, there was this senseof unfulfillment with our
careers, like there was thisjust this sense of there's more
we can give the world off of theworld. And so when we left the
corporate job, we still didn'tinitially do the work to
(03:46):
understand what it was on ourheart that we wanted to give the
world. What was rising up withinus was this scarcity of leaving
behind our corporate jobs withthe income and the salaries and
the benefits and all that stuff.And it was like, how do we
replace that very quickly. Andso we jumped into a real estate
business that, you know, we didthe research and was like, 90%
(04:08):
of millionaires can't be wrong.It's, it's they make their
wealth in real estate. We gotta,we gotta get in real estate. And
so we jumped into this realestate business. And there was
an altruistic kind of bend toit, where we would, we would
help first time home buyers in areally tough market get their
first home and help investorsand all this stuff. But what we
quickly realized was it was noton our heart to do, like, even
(04:31):
though there was that altruisticend, it wasn't the thing that we
were meant to give the world.And I don't like to use the word
hate, but I hated the work thatwe'd signed up for, like, the it
was, was basically our corporatejob, what, without the corporate
paycheck? Yeah, and,
Meredith Bennett (04:48):
and so he was miserable, and, and he knew
that, and, and it was impactingour relationship, right? We were
starting to get short and eachother, which was not the
relationship that we had beensuper into. Intentional about
building all the way along, likewe both been through the ringer
and relationship histories andwith our parents and all, like
we've, we've seen the the otherside. And so when we got
(05:09):
together, we were superintentional, but building a
really strong foundation. And wehad done that, and then up until
this point, with this, you know,real estate business that we
both were miserable in, but weweren't really talking about how
miserable we were. We were justkind of taking kind of taking it
out on each other. Finally, he'slike, all right, I got it for
the challenge flag. We got tohave an uncomfortable
conversation. What the heck arewe doing? And that's when we
(05:31):
realized we were chasing money,right? We were trying to replace
our corporate income and chasingmoney. I mean, when you chase
anything, what happens? It runsaway. Chasing money is never, a
good idea. And number two, wehadn't done the work to figure
out who we are, because we wereboth going through a bit of an
identity crisis, leaving ourcorporate roles right. We had
high performers, top achieverslike we a lot of our identity
(05:52):
was tied to our corporateperformance, so we lost our
identity. So we didn't know whowe were, we didn't know who we
wanted to be, and we didn't knowwhat we wanted to offer the
world. We just knew we had toreplace our corporate income
like yesterday, and so that, ofcourse, didn't get us anywhere
near where a place where we feltlike we were actually able to
contribute, be our best selvesand contribute something
meaningful and valuable to therest of the world. So that's
(06:15):
when we decided, Okay, closethis business. This is not
serving us or anybody else, andwe need to focus on us, and we
kind of stumbled backwards intopersonal growth.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (06:27):
So it sounds like okay. So I have two
questions. One is like, when youwere leaving your corporate job,
was it just an assumption thatyou were going to stay in
business together, or did youhave conversations about like,
each individually doingsomething different. And then
the second part to that is itsounds like in that moment of
crisis, you didn't give yourselftime to kind of dream or to kind
(06:49):
of vision what things might looklike if you could do what you
wanted. So when you closed downthis first business, did you
take that time then to be like,to dream and kind of think about
what that would look like. Andthen in the second iteration,
did you guys ever considereddoing business separately? Or
has it just always been likewe're going to be in business
together?
Meredith Bennett (07:09):
Yes, yes to all
Craig Bennett (07:13):
the answer to your first question, it was
never a question that we weren'tgoing to do it together. We
always when we made the decisionthat we were going to leave our
corporate jobs together. We weregoing to do something together.
Our relationship is ourfoundation. It's our superpower.
We want, we always wanted to dosomething together.
Meredith Bennett (07:29):
To be honest, we didn't even really consider
the alternative. It wasn't. Itdidn't even appear to be an
option. I didn't even thinkabout it. Yeah, I didn't. I
didn't it. Didn't even
Craig Bennett (07:39):
we did both. Just defaulted that we were going to
do this together. Yeah. And thento answer your second question,
yes, we went when we realizedthat we hadn't done that
dreaming and understand what itis that we actually want and
build the life that we actuallywant. That's when we started. We
undertook that work,understanding who we are, who we
(07:59):
want to be, and what we want ourlife to look like, and how we
want to serve the world. Thosewere the those were the main
ingredients that we then soughtto to figure out on our journey,
and then to answer that questionagain, no, when we when we hit
the reset button, we still wereunder the assumption we were
doing it all together. Yeah,yeah.
Meredith Bennett (08:17):
The Dreaming part. I'm so glad you honed in
on that so quickly, because thedreaming part was actually the I
mean, there was a lot of bigmissing pieces around our
identity and our and ourcontribution, but the dreaming
part like we had started todesign a real estate company
that in no way aligned with ourvision of the dream life we
wanted to live like that was thefirst big realization that we're
(08:41):
building a company that requiresus to be right here, right now,
in this one community, doingthis one thing, it's like that
is so far from the life that weenvision for ourselves having
left the corporate job we weenvisioned more freedom for
ourselves, and we immediatelyput ourselves in a position
where we didn't have Thatimmediately, because we hadn't
actually articulated what wewanted like it was kind of, you
(09:04):
know, up in the sky somewhere,some somewhere in our brain,
somewhere. But we didn'tactually kind of put pen to
paper and say, what does ourlife in a perfect world? What
does our dream life look like?We just never did that work till
after.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (09:19):
Yeah, that's really interesting,
because I have multiplebusinesses, and my main gig is
digital marketing strategy fornonprofits. And so when I left
my business, that's what I wentinto. Like it was a very natural
leap, because for me, it waslike, I just want to be able to
serve more businesses, morenonprofits, more small
businesses, versus just workingfor one. I also realized that I
(09:43):
don't work well in a corporatesetting, but that's just a whole
nother conversation. But thatwas an easy leap for me, so like
for me to start my business wasno big deal, and still in that
had multi I've had multipleiterations of my business as
I've decided what I like to do,what I don't like to do. And who
and how I want to serve peopleso to have that clear path and
(10:04):
have it still be so difficult, Ican't imagine kind of the
journeys that you guys have beenon when you're like, Okay, well,
we can do whatever we want. Wecan make up whatever we want and
do whatever we want. And so forme, this podcast and easy style
with Sammy has kind of birthedout of like me needing a
different creative outlet tojust, kind of, this is just my
fun project. And so I love thisconversation so much, because
(10:27):
I'm in this iteration right nowwhere I'm like, Okay, well, now
what do I want to do with this?I've been doing this for a
while. Like, how do I want tokind of take it to the next
phase? So I kind of love yourapproach to reverse engineering.
This is what I want my life tolook like. And now let's put the
steps in place for how I'm goingto get there. So kind of, what
did you come up with or and kindof, what do you do now that you
(10:48):
guys are so excited about? Well,it's interesting.
Meredith Bennett (10:51):
When we first started the dream work like we
looked at it from multiplelenses, like, what do we want
our relationships to look like,our health and our vitality to
look like, our free time andgeographically? And then there
was the work component. What isit that we want to be doing, and
how do we want to contribute?And that part, I would say, was
the hardest part, the hardestpart most ambiguous, like, we
want to do something together.We want to make the world a
(11:12):
better place. You know, it wasvery the
Craig Bennett (11:14):
flexibility of being able to be nomadic, move
around a little bit. We don'twant to be tied to one place. We
want to see the world travel. So
Meredith Bennett (11:21):
we didn't have a very specific box yet of what
that was. We just had some somesome bigger picture strokes of
what we wanted that to look likeand and we didn't rush it, I
think was the key part of this,part of the journey, is we had
the, I say, we stumbled kind ofbackwards into personal growth,
because when we decided to closethat real estate business. We
(11:41):
actually had tickets to a realestate conference. So we're
like, well, we might as well goto this investing conference and
just you know, see what welearned there. And this
conference, which we thought wasjust like your regular real
estate conference, had a realkind of Tony Robbins personal
growth vibe to it that we werenot expecting. And so we ended
up discovering some limitingbeliefs about ourselves, both of
(12:02):
which kind of centered aroundnot feeling good enough, and so
getting to do some of this workto doing that personal growth
work separately is reallyimportant piece of figuring out
who you are and what your giftsare, but doing it together
created a level of closeness wehadn't even yet experienced in
our relationship, because we gotreally we dug really deep with
(12:25):
each other and shared some ofthis stuff that we didn't even
consciously know aboutourselves, that we were sharing
out loud. So ended up beingreally cool, and that was kind
of our first toe in the water ofpersonal growth. And so it was
fun, it was hard, but it waslike we felt the value from it.
So we just started going to moreof these types of personal
growth events, and we found thatat these events, people would
(12:47):
come up to us, usually one at atime, and say, like, how you
guys are doing this together?That's really cool. I can't get
my husband to come. I can't getmy wife to come. What do you
suggest? And we ended up talkingto people, sometimes couples,
but mostly people wanting theirpartner to come along, and just
answering their questions andand that was fun for us, but we
didn't really realize what wewere doing yet. And then at one
(13:09):
of these events, the guy puttingon the event was like, hey, you
know a I think you guys wouldmake great coaches. And we're
like, oh, yeah, you know what?Yeah, we, we've been coaching
our like upon, you know, lookingback, we've been coaching our
whole lives, that's a greatidea. What would we coach,
though? Like that part stillwasn't clear to us, even though
we kind of had been doing it.And then same guy says at my
(13:30):
next event, I actually want youguys to co to speak on stage
about building strongrelationships. And we were like,
wow. So our relationship hadbeen our like, our superpower,
but it actually is oursuperpower, like, out to the
world to help other people.Because what we've come to
realize is that having a reallythriving relationship,
(13:53):
especially as your marriage, butdoesn't have to be your
marriage, a really connected,thriving, healthy relationship,
is a cheat code for life, likewhen you don't have to spend the
time and energy always fixing,always coming through arguments,
always like walking oneggshells, tiptoeing around,
trying to avoid the big blow up.When you're not spending that
time and energy and focus doingthat, and you're in maintenance
(14:17):
mode and things are working andflowing, you have so much more
time and energy and focus to putout to the rest of the things
you want, to the other goals anddreams you have in your life,
and the other person does too.So it's this, like synergistic,
like exponential energy that younow have to level up every other
area of your life. So it's like,it's a huge cheat code, and
that's kind of how we stumbledinto coaching, relationship
(14:40):
coaching. It's
Craig Bennett (14:41):
when you if you had asked us to plan it out
looking forward, we never wouldhave been able to connect the
dots. They only connect lookingbackwards, right? So anyone
who's kind of at this placewhere they're like, Oh, I've got
so much freedom, and I don'tknow where to take this, I would
say is like, surrender a littlebit and just go with the flow.
And. Yeah, because the universeis always kind of working in
(15:02):
your favor. And that's one ofthe biggest lessons that we
pulled from this, is thatthings, if you just take action,
take a step towards your future,just as small as it is, the next
step reveals itself. So wedecided, okay, we're going to
focus on our own personalgrowth. We're going to go to an
event. And then when we didthat, other options opened up
for us, other steps. And then wemet, you know, this gentleman
(15:24):
that that Meredith justmentioned, and he kind of
pointed us towards coaching, andthen eventually relationships.
And then it all kind of juststarted to piece together. And
then, oh, here we go. This is,this is our gift for the that we
want to give the world. Yeah,well,
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (15:38):
I think Meredith, you said we kind of
stumbled into it at the end ofkind of your explanation there,
and I feel like that issomething we often say, like,
I'll say, oh my gosh, I got solucky. We just landed this big
client. Because in the moment,it feels like it just happens
out of nowhere. But in reality,to your point, Craig, you you're
just taking the steps that arebeing put in front of you. So
(16:00):
you so you are doing the workjust because it's not super
intentional. So I think whatyour story teaches us is
patience, like leaning into thenext best thing and just saying,
well, let's without expectation,right? Like, that's something we
talk about a lot, is haveconversations with people
without expectation and just seewhere the conversation leads
you. You might be surprised whatdoors can open for you. And then
(16:22):
also, like hearing what peoplesay to you about you, like, you
know, like this, this guy said,I'd love for you to come speak
about relationships, and youknow, you could, and maybe you
did, but you could haveimmediately responded with, oh,
no, we can't do that. We'venever done that before. That's
not something we're experts in,right? But like leaning into the
opportunities that presentthemselves, I think, like, is
(16:44):
that something that you haveworked on, or were working on,
and all of these things, becausethat's not something that most
people feel comfortable in.
Meredith Bennett (16:53):
Yeah, and we didn't for sure,
Craig Bennett (16:55):
I would say, I would say the a couple things is
one, it's the power ofcommunity, right? Like, it's
leverage, hearing what otherpeople are saying and listening
to what they're saying, andrespect. Yeah, there's new
perspective there that they seethings that you don't
necessarily see you're tooclose, and they have a different
perspective, and they can seethings you can't So, so
leveraging that community andthat that that extra perspective
(17:17):
that other people have. And thensecondly, yeah, it really is
about saying yes, as often asyou can, when you're presented
with an opportunity, explore itlike we do. Have an attitude for
adventure. We do. One of ourphilosophies is we're on an
adventure, like, let's just goand explore what this is. It may
be something that we go halfwaydown the path and we're like,
(17:38):
not for us, and then we changecourse and we do something
different, but at least exploreit. Because it came up for a
reason. There's some it waspresented to you for a reason,
and so it's really we've had tohone the skill of understanding
the universe is always workingfor us. This opportunity was
presented to us. So let's atleast explore that and say yes
and and go from there.
Meredith Bennett (18:00):
And we'd never, you know, spoken on a
stage before, especiallytogether, but like outside of
the corporate in a meeting, typeof situation, we've never really
gotten on stage and spokenbefore. So that was a scary ask,
not since
Craig Bennett (18:13):
like, grade three, when I was doing the
assembly or whatever.
Meredith Bennett (18:18):
Yeah, it was scary. It was similar, actually,
to the feeling when we left ourcorporate job, that our
corporate job like we said, wewere good at it, like we were
high performers, high achievers,like top performance reviews,
like checking all those boxes ofwhat society tells me success
is. So we were good at that,plus it was the only thing we
ever knew. And so when theopportunity came to leave. It
(18:40):
was really, really scary, andwere high plan like, type a
people that like, give me a goodchecklist, make sure I've got it
all figured out before I make mynext step. And so we didn't have
that when we left our corporatejob. We just kind of ended up
deciding based on this feelslike the right thing to do, even
though everything around itseems like chaos inside, it just
(19:01):
feels right when, when ourfriend asked us, our friend now
asked us to speak on stage athis event, it was like, Oh my
God. What? Like, yeah, and he'slike, I don't know, 60 minutes,
90 minutes, something like that.We're like, Oh my God. Like, it
was terrifying, right? Like,getting on stage in front of
people, talking aboutrelationships, of all things,
for like an hour seemed like areally giant mountain to climb,
(19:25):
but at the same time, it wasscary, but it still felt like
the right thing, and leadingwith courage like I really do
believe that when you take theaction that feels right even
when you're scared, especiallybecause, I mean, You only get to
practice courage when you'rescared, so especially when
you're scared, taking that stepforward and practicing being
(19:47):
brave, I think, is a reallyimportant skill.
Craig Bennett (19:50):
Yeah, yeah, it's when you feel that fear.
Everything we want, is on theother side of fear. That's where
the growth is. So lean into thefear and trust your intuition,
that's something that that's a.Skill that we're still honing.
Because I think for me, anyway,it went dormant a little bit my
corporate life, I maybesuppressed it a little bit. And
so when the less you listen toit, the harder it is to hear.
(20:10):
But when you start to tune intoit more, the voice gets a little
louder, and you can hear the youcan you can have that gut feel,
and so lean into that a littlebit. And that's a skill I think
you have to really developpractice.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (20:22):
Yeah, okay, so I want to get into a little
nitty gritty here, and change,change course just a little bit,
because now that you have yourbusiness, you figured out your
passion, you love what you'redoing. How do you guys operate
inside of the business? Like, doyou have very clear like, this
is my role. This is my role.Like, and how does that evolve
over time, as the businessgrows, or if you have, like, a
new idea, like, how do youapproach that while still, like
(20:45):
honoring your relationship?Because I think that's one of
the trickiest parts. Is, youknow, in a growth phase, growing
in the same ways together, bothin your relationship and in your
business.
Meredith Bennett (20:57):
Yeah, I would say in the beginning, we did not
have a clear, differentdifferentiation of roles,
because we really didn't have aclue what we were doing. So we
were trying to figure it out aswe go. And eventually we kind of
figured out each other'sstrengths a little bit, and
we've settled into roles kind ofday to day. We each have sort of
(21:19):
separate things that we that weown in the business. I think the
other key piece of it,especially for couples like
you're saying, is we have a veryclear differentiation of when
we're no longer at work, likewhen we've got the business
partner hat on. We're businesspartners. We're going to
challenge each other, and we'regoing to have conversations, and
we're on the same team aboutwhat's going to push the
(21:40):
business forward. But we mayhave different opinions.
Different opinions on how to dothat, and we keep our business
partner hat on for the day whenwe're doing that, and then at
the end of the work day, we takethat hat off and put our, you
know, marriage hat back on. Andoftentimes that involves, like,
an actual change of environment,like we'll get out and go for a
walk and kind of debrief, eventhough, like, we are literally
(22:02):
arm's length away from eachother most of the day, we still
kind of go on our walk anddebrief, like, even on this
podcast, right? We are, like,literally shoulder to shoulder
on this podcast, but we'llprobably go for a walk later
today and debrief how we eachexperienced it. Like, What were
our each of our highlights andlike, because we're going to
have a different, you know,different favorite part, and
we're going to want to talkabout that with each other. And
(22:24):
that's part of our sort oftransition from business partner
to back to, like, life partnerat the end of the day, let's,
let's close the laptops, let'sget out and go for a walk, get
some fresh air, debrief, kind ofput it all to bed for the day,
and then spend our eveninghaving fun, like, you know,
playing a game, making dinner,doing our thing, and then it
allows that. It just allows worknot to just creep all the way
(22:47):
through everything, so you stillget some time. Because what's
one of our biggest philosophiesis, what's you make time? You
make time for what's important.And this is super duper. This is
more important than anythinglike this is, it's this above
everything else. And if we'renot making time to just hang out
and connect and be togetheroutside of work, then we start
(23:09):
to lose this. And it's the mostimportant thing.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (23:14):
Yeah, my brother is my business partner,
and he will be listening to thisbecause he edits the podcast.
And it's not, it's not so badright now, I mean, because
obviously we're not married, butit's like a similar, similar
kind of like, things can bleedover into, like, family. And
when he was living on the WestCoast, and we were here in
Minnesota, um, he works later inthe day than I do. He doesn't
(23:36):
have kids, and so he gets uplater and works later. So he
would be calling me at like, sixo'clock my time to say, hey, I
have questions about thisproject, or where are we at? And
we had to have a very seriousconversation about, like, I'm
not I got school pickup startingat three o'clock, and then I'm
pretty much tapped out, becauseI get up really early. So it's
interesting. I think it's a goodlesson. Just in general, in any
(23:57):
sort of small business where youonly have maybe one or two
employees, or you have, like,one or two key stakeholders or
decision makers, that separationof duties and that separation of
time and space is so important.So I love that you just have
that kind of cut and dry. He gotto the point where I was like,
I'm not, no, I'm not taking yourphone calls anymore in the
evenings. If you're only goingto ask me about work, if you
(24:19):
want to check in about Lisa,then by all the words. And so we
found, yeah, now he lives inMinnesota also, so like, it's,
it's much better, but thatthat's smart, yeah, it's, I
think it's really
Craig Bennett (24:31):
important to have those those conversations and
those boundaries and then, andthen, once everyone's on the
same page, things can run alittle smoother, right? It's
when you don't have thoseconversations and expectations
aren't set. That's when you knowthe friction happens. So yeah,
he doesn't
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (24:46):
live in my house. He doesn't know what
we're doing. So why would Iassume that he would just figure
it out on his own? Right? And Ithink I love that you guys go
for a walk and kind of debrief,because it's it's easy to say,
Okay, well, I'm gonna just shutdown my computer and we're just
gonna. Flip, but the work thatyou do is also emotional. So I'm
sure that as you're working withyour clients, that you also just
(25:07):
kind of need to process what youexperienced and maybe get
through some of the emotion thatyou've been working through. And
so to be able to do thattogether with somebody who also
really understands that thatfeeling has to be really helpful
to kind of just help you winddown yourself
Craig Bennett (25:23):
100% Yeah, it is really helpful to be doing the
same thing with your spouse forjust understanding what you're
going through. That was reallyheavy. We just listened to
something really heavy. So let'sgo decompress. Let's go for a
walk. Let's get out in nature.Let's get the sun on our face.
And let's just, you know, talk,talk it through, get it, get it
(25:43):
out of ourselves, and then wecan go and enjoy the rest of the
day together, date, night,whatever it happens to be that
day. But being entrepreneurs,you know, obviously different
things come up at differenttimes. It's just really about
being intentional about, okay,tonight we do have a client
meeting where we have to, youknow, maybe we're going to have
some heavier stuff. So let'smake sure we have some time set
(26:04):
aside on the weekend where, youknow, we, you know, we've got
some set time in our calendarwhere it's just us time. So it's
really being flexible, becauseobviously you have clients, and,
you know, you kind of have tocater to some of their needs and
times and stuff like that. Butit's also making sure that
you've, you're setting aside thetime that you have for this as
well.
Meredith Bennett (26:22):
And it's interesting, we're really lucky,
I think, because we've alwayshad that, even in our corporate
job, we worked, eventually, weworked in the same department,
like different teams, but in thesame larger department, so we
knew who all the people were. Soon our walk home from work at
the end of the day, it was like,oh my god, I had a meeting with
this guy, and it's like, Oh, Iknow I had a meeting with him
(26:44):
last week. And so it was, it washelpful, even in our corporate
life, that we still use thatwalk home because we lived
walking, yes, we used that walkhome with our differentiator
then, which I think is what madeit easier to carry that over
into the entrepreneurship sideof things too, because the walk
home from work really helpedleave things at work and knowing
(27:07):
all the same players in theorganization, working in the
same company, and this on thesame floor, you know all the
same people, so you could kindof vent and have the other
person understand, as opposed toyou work at two different
companies, and you kind ofunderstand who the different
people are, but you Don't reallyknow them, so it's not quite the
same level of connection overthe people. So we've been really
lucky to have that. That's
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (27:27):
amazing. And my husband works in finance
and plays in spreadsheets allday, and I am in largely in
marketing and creative stuff. Solike, we could not be more
opposite in what what we do. Soit's funny because we both work
from home, so we'll havemoments. Well, he works in the
office part of the part of theweek, but where we'll like,
knock on each other's door. Doyou have two seconds? I just
need to vent real quick, andthen we just, like, spew it out,
(27:50):
and then we like, leave. So it'skind of nice to have that.
There's not a lot of back andforth, but we at least have
figured out that rhythm of like,I need a minute. But I guess,
you know, I'm curious, you know,as you kind of work through this
journey, and now you feel likeyou're in a place where you're
doing work you love. We all havedifferent seasons in our
businesses, seasons that arebusier than others, and kind of
(28:11):
that ebb and flow. But like,what are you excited for this
year? Like, what is, kind of thething that you guys are looking
forward to or working towards?Because you're, entrepreneurs
now, so it never just is what itis and stays that way. So kind
of what's the next step for youall?
Craig Bennett (28:27):
So a few things this year that are really got us
excited. We just launched amastermind, so we're leaning
heavily into that, and we'vecreated a really great safe
space for folks, and we've got abunch of people in there that
were super pumped for the forthe growth that we're seeing
with them, so we're leaning intothat and creating content for
them specifically. And then,
Meredith Bennett (28:48):
yeah, well, actually, I'm gonna build on
that for a sec. Yeah, the it's,it's new, and we're super pumped
about it, and it's, so far, it'sfar exceeded our expectations,
because it's, it's, it's abroader like, it's called the
infinite relationshipmastermind, and it's it's bigger
than marriage. Like we've met,marriage is our bread and
butter. We've like. We lovefocusing on marriage for sure,
(29:08):
but the skills you use to buildand strengthen a great marriage
apply in every relationship inyour life. It's just often
easier to learn them in amarriage. But they're not it's
not unique. And so we're we'vestarted actually the mastermind,
with the relationship withyourself, because it's like the
critical one that every otherrelationship is built on. And so
(29:28):
it's been far exceeding ourexpectations. So we'll get into
the other relationships, theother important relationships in
their life, too, and therelationships with their health,
with stress, with fun, with thefuture, like the big, important
relationships that you have inyour life, not just your
marriage. So we're super pumpedabout that, and then you go
ahead, keep going.
Craig Bennett (29:48):
So we're also, we have a podcast as well, and
we're expanding that. So ourpodcast is the road of life
podcast, and we do like, 15 to20 minute episode once a week
where we just share. Conceptabout relationships that's
really helped us and ourclients, and we just give that,
put that out to the world. Andnow we're going to focus on
adding another episode a weekwhere we interview other people
(30:10):
that are, you know, get theirperspectives and entrepreneurs
or corporate folks or, you know,just different perspectives on
relationships. And so that's,that's another thing that we're
really excited about this
Meredith Bennett (30:23):
year. Yeah, the again, the same idea of the
broader relationships, like wemight have a couple on or a
person on, talking about theirrelationship with their health
and how that's evolved, orsomeone talking with their
relationship with stress, orsomeone talking about
relationship with their mom, or,like, kind of that broader
relationship perspective. Sowe're, yeah, we're excited about
that. And we also have on thedocket this year, we want to
write a book. So we've got thatcoming up. Yeah, so those are
(30:45):
three big
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (30:47):
always impressed with people that want
to write books. I it. I somebodyapproached me about doing a
rewrite of their existing books,just to rewrite it for nonprofit
specifically, instead of theservice industry. So I had the
whole thing already done. I justhad to, like, add a few stories.
And I was like, I can't do this.This is too much. So that's
impressive, and I'm proud of youfor doing that, because that's a
(31:08):
lot. It's that's a big project.It's
Meredith Bennett (31:10):
a big project. It's a big project. We're super
excited, like, we've beentalking about it now for a
while, and it's like, okay,yeah, 2025 we're gonna do it.
Yeah,
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (31:19):
that's so great. Well, this has been such
a fun conversation. We couldprobably talk forever. I love
hearing entrepreneurial stories,but I love just like, just your
take on everything it doesn'tlike you said, doesn't have to
be just with your relationshipwith your partner, or it could
be all the relationships thatyou have in your life, work
related personal. So thank youso much for sharing your
(31:39):
experience and your story witheveryone, but if people want to
connect with you and learn moreabout you your mastermind, check
out your podcast. How do they dothat?
Meredith Bennett (31:48):
Well, we are most active and most fun on
Instagram, and we're at Meredithand Craig, and our Mastermind
and our podcast are both on ourwebsite, at
roadoflifecoaching.com
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (31:59):
I love it, and we will link all of that up
in the show notes ateasystylewithsami.com/38 but
thank you so much for being heretoday. This was a pleasure.
Meredith Bennett (32:09):
Oh, it was
Craig Bennett (32:10):
the pleasure. Was all ours. Sammy super It was an
honor. Thank you so much forhaving we had a lot of fun.
Yeah, great combo.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (32:17):
Big. Thank you to Craig and Meredith
Bennett for joining me today.What is such a fun conversation?
And I just love hearing howcouples work together. Like I
said, I love my husband. He'svery supportive of me and my
business ventures, but workingtogether probably not our thing,
but it's just so fascinating tohear how people kind of put
(32:40):
things together. And I also lovehearing entrepreneurs stories of
how they pull things together,what they come up with. And this
one was just such a fun, uniquestory. And you can tell that the
passion behind the work thatthey do is so strong and so
evident, and why they're seeingthe success that they're seeing,
because it's the passion that isinside. So I really hope that
you are inspired by this episodeand that you use it as a
(33:04):
reminder to just take a minuteto look at where you're at, what
you're passionate about, andwhat you might be able to just
take one step forward in. Youknow, you don't have to go quit
your job and and leap right in.But what's one thing that's just
gnawing at you, or somethingsomebody's been saying to you,
or something you just want topay attention to and just take
that little, itty bitty stepforward and see where it can
take you. Now, like I said, theshow notes are at
(33:26):
easystylewithsami.com/38 so youcan check out all of the
different ways to connect withMeredith and Craig there while
you're here, I would reallyappreciate you hitting that
subscribe button wherever you'relistening. Leave us a review if
you can, or a comment, and Ireally thank you for taking time
to listen through stories. Ifyou have somebody that would be
(33:46):
great for me to interview onthis podcast, you can send that
to hello@easystylewithsami.comotherwise, thank you so much for
listening, and I'll see you inthe next one.
Welcome to Easy Style with Sami. I'm your
(00:02):
host. Sami Bedell-Mulhern, eachepisode, I invite a friend,
family member, colleague or justsomeone I've met on this journey
called life, to come and sharetheir personal style and
approach to business, parenting,life and everything in between.
You'll hear motivational andinspirational stories that will
help you refine and build yourown personal style. Remember,
(00:25):
style is easy when it comes fromwithin.
Hey, friends, welcome to anotherepisode of Easy Style with Sami.
And today, my guests areMeredith and Craig Bennett,
thanks for being here today.
Meredith Bennett (00:37):
Oh, thanks for having us, Sammy. We're super
excited. Yeah, pumped to behere. Thank you.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (00:41):
You are my first official couple on the
podcast, and I wanted to do thisfor some time, so I'm really
excited for this conversationwe're playing with. You know,
we've got some more gentlemencoming on the podcast this year
as well. So I think important tohear all sides of the story, The
Good, the Bad and the awesome.So why don't you just start by
introducing yourselves and tellus a little bit about who you
(01:03):
are.
Meredith Bennett (01:05):
Sure we're Meredith and Craig, and we are
best friends, business partnersand a married couple, so we wear
a lot of hats in ourrelationship. We didn't always
we started off actually workingin the same company. We weren't
always entrepreneurs. We didn'talways have that business
partner hat on. And then ourcompany gave us a giant gift, of
(01:30):
you can move across the countryor you can leave, and it was a
really stressful decision in themoment, but in hindsight, it was
a huge gift, and we ended up, weended up leaving the corporate,
the corporate world, and tryingto figure out this whole
entrepreneurship thing once weonce we were out of corporate,
and so we kind of jumped intothe plane and decided we would
(01:51):
figure out how to build aparachute on the way down. And
it wasn't a straight line. Iwould say, we didn't jump out of
corporate into entrepreneurshipand have success?
Craig Bennett (02:02):
No, there was, yeah, it definitely was not a
straight line. There were lotsof U turns and detours and
mistakes and but we ultimatelyrealized that we hadn't done the
work when we left our corporatejobs really understand who we
were. Yeah, we thought that wasour main focus when we when we
realized that was to double downon that and jumped into
(02:24):
entrepreneurship and becamerelationship experts and
coaches.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (02:29):
I love that. So I have some friends who
are also in the online businessspace. And they, you know, one
of my good, good friends, Becky.She was on the podcast her
husband left his corporate jobto come into her business, and
now they work together. Youknow, I so I know of several
couples where they do this,personally for myself, my
husband's a huge supporter. Ileft my corporate job to start
(02:51):
my own business without reallyknowing what I was going to do.
Just yet, he's super supportive.But for us to work together
would not be a good thing. So Ialways admire couples that can
make that work. And so I kind ofwant to talk a little bit about
your journey. Because, you know,when you messaged me, you
mentioned that you your firstbusiness just was not great for
(03:13):
a lot of reasons, right? So whydon't you share kind of what
that first experience was like,and kind of what it took for you
to kind of come through that andwork your way through that.
Craig Bennett (03:22):
It's funny, because when we left the
corporate job, one of thereasons we left was, one, we
didn't want to move across thecountry, further away from all
those we love and all the peoplein our world. But the second
thing was, there was this senseof unfulfillment with our
careers, like there was thisjust this sense of there's more
we can give the world off of theworld. And so when we left the
corporate job, we still didn'tinitially do the work to
(03:46):
understand what it was on ourheart that we wanted to give the
world. What was rising up withinus was this scarcity of leaving
behind our corporate jobs withthe income and the salaries and
the benefits and all that stuff.And it was like, how do we
replace that very quickly. Andso we jumped into a real estate
business that, you know, we didthe research and was like, 90%
(04:08):
of millionaires can't be wrong.It's, it's they make their
wealth in real estate. We gotta,we gotta get in real estate. And
so we jumped into this realestate business. And there was
an altruistic kind of bend toit, where we would, we would
help first time home buyers in areally tough market get their
first home and help investorsand all this stuff. But what we
quickly realized was it was noton our heart to do, like, even
(04:31):
though there was that altruisticend, it wasn't the thing that we
were meant to give the world.And I don't like to use the word
hate, but I hated the work thatwe'd signed up for, like, the it
was, was basically our corporatejob, what, without the corporate
paycheck? Yeah, and,
Meredith Bennett (04:48):
and so he was miserable, and, and he knew
that, and, and it was impactingour relationship, right? We were
starting to get short and eachother, which was not the
relationship that we had beensuper into. Intentional about
building all the way along, likewe both been through the ringer
and relationship histories andwith our parents and all, like
we've, we've seen the the otherside. And so when we got
(05:09):
together, we were superintentional, but building a
really strong foundation. And wehad done that, and then up until
this point, with this, you know,real estate business that we
both were miserable in, but weweren't really talking about how
miserable we were. We were justkind of taking kind of taking it
out on each other. Finally, he'slike, all right, I got it for
the challenge flag. We got tohave an uncomfortable
conversation. What the heck arewe doing? And that's when we
(05:31):
realized we were chasing money,right? We were trying to replace
our corporate income and chasingmoney. I mean, when you chase
anything, what happens? It runsaway. Chasing money is never, a
good idea. And number two, wehadn't done the work to figure
out who we are, because we wereboth going through a bit of an
identity crisis, leaving ourcorporate roles right. We had
high performers, top achieverslike we a lot of our identity
(05:52):
was tied to our corporateperformance, so we lost our
identity. So we didn't know whowe were, we didn't know who we
wanted to be, and we didn't knowwhat we wanted to offer the
world. We just knew we had toreplace our corporate income
like yesterday, and so that, ofcourse, didn't get us anywhere
near where a place where we feltlike we were actually able to
contribute, be our best selvesand contribute something
meaningful and valuable to therest of the world. So that's
(06:15):
when we decided, Okay, closethis business. This is not
serving us or anybody else, andwe need to focus on us, and we
kind of stumbled backwards intopersonal growth.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (06:27):
So it sounds like okay. So I have two
questions. One is like, when youwere leaving your corporate job,
was it just an assumption thatyou were going to stay in
business together, or did youhave conversations about like,
each individually doingsomething different. And then
the second part to that is itsounds like in that moment of
crisis, you didn't give yourselftime to kind of dream or to kind
(06:49):
of vision what things might looklike if you could do what you
wanted. So when you closed downthis first business, did you
take that time then to be like,to dream and kind of think about
what that would look like. Andthen in the second iteration,
did you guys ever considereddoing business separately? Or
has it just always been likewe're going to be in business
together?
Meredith Bennett (07:09):
Yes, yes to all
Craig Bennett (07:13):
the answer to your first question, it was
never a question that we weren'tgoing to do it together. We
always when we made the decisionthat we were going to leave our
corporate jobs together. We weregoing to do something together.
Our relationship is ourfoundation. It's our superpower.
We want, we always wanted to dosomething together.
Meredith Bennett (07:29):
To be honest, we didn't even really consider
the alternative. It wasn't. Itdidn't even appear to be an
option. I didn't even thinkabout it. Yeah, I didn't. I
didn't it. Didn't even
Craig Bennett (07:39):
we did both. Just defaulted that we were going to
do this together. Yeah. And thento answer your second question,
yes, we went when we realizedthat we hadn't done that
dreaming and understand what itis that we actually want and
build the life that we actuallywant. That's when we started. We
undertook that work,understanding who we are, who we
(07:59):
want to be, and what we want ourlife to look like, and how we
want to serve the world. Thosewere the those were the main
ingredients that we then soughtto to figure out on our journey,
and then to answer that questionagain, no, when we when we hit
the reset button, we still wereunder the assumption we were
doing it all together. Yeah,yeah.
Meredith Bennett (08:17):
The Dreaming part. I'm so glad you honed in
on that so quickly, because thedreaming part was actually the I
mean, there was a lot of bigmissing pieces around our
identity and our and ourcontribution, but the dreaming
part like we had started todesign a real estate company
that in no way aligned with ourvision of the dream life we
wanted to live like that was thefirst big realization that we're
(08:41):
building a company that requiresus to be right here, right now,
in this one community, doingthis one thing, it's like that
is so far from the life that weenvision for ourselves having
left the corporate job we weenvisioned more freedom for
ourselves, and we immediatelyput ourselves in a position
where we didn't have Thatimmediately, because we hadn't
actually articulated what wewanted like it was kind of, you
(09:04):
know, up in the sky somewhere,some somewhere in our brain,
somewhere. But we didn'tactually kind of put pen to
paper and say, what does ourlife in a perfect world? What
does our dream life look like?We just never did that work till
after.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (09:19):
Yeah, that's really interesting,
because I have multiplebusinesses, and my main gig is
digital marketing strategy fornonprofits. And so when I left
my business, that's what I wentinto. Like it was a very natural
leap, because for me, it waslike, I just want to be able to
serve more businesses, morenonprofits, more small
businesses, versus just workingfor one. I also realized that I
(09:43):
don't work well in a corporatesetting, but that's just a whole
nother conversation. But thatwas an easy leap for me, so like
for me to start my business wasno big deal, and still in that
had multi I've had multipleiterations of my business as
I've decided what I like to do,what I don't like to do. And who
and how I want to serve peopleso to have that clear path and
(10:04):
have it still be so difficult, Ican't imagine kind of the
journeys that you guys have beenon when you're like, Okay, well,
we can do whatever we want. Wecan make up whatever we want and
do whatever we want. And so forme, this podcast and easy style
with Sammy has kind of birthedout of like me needing a
different creative outlet tojust, kind of, this is just my
fun project. And so I love thisconversation so much, because
(10:27):
I'm in this iteration right nowwhere I'm like, Okay, well, now
what do I want to do with this?I've been doing this for a
while. Like, how do I want tokind of take it to the next
phase? So I kind of love yourapproach to reverse engineering.
This is what I want my life tolook like. And now let's put the
steps in place for how I'm goingto get there. So kind of, what
did you come up with or and kindof, what do you do now that you
(10:48):
guys are so excited about? Well,it's interesting.
Meredith Bennett (10:51):
When we first started the dream work like we
looked at it from multiplelenses, like, what do we want
our relationships to look like,our health and our vitality to
look like, our free time andgeographically? And then there
was the work component. What isit that we want to be doing, and
how do we want to contribute?And that part, I would say, was
the hardest part, the hardestpart most ambiguous, like, we
want to do something together.We want to make the world a
(11:12):
better place. You know, it wasvery the
Craig Bennett (11:14):
flexibility of being able to be nomadic, move
around a little bit. We don'twant to be tied to one place. We
want to see the world travel. So
Meredith Bennett (11:21):
we didn't have a very specific box yet of what
that was. We just had some somesome bigger picture strokes of
what we wanted that to look likeand and we didn't rush it, I
think was the key part of this,part of the journey, is we had
the, I say, we stumbled kind ofbackwards into personal growth,
because when we decided to closethat real estate business. We
(11:41):
actually had tickets to a realestate conference. So we're
like, well, we might as well goto this investing conference and
just you know, see what welearned there. And this
conference, which we thought wasjust like your regular real
estate conference, had a realkind of Tony Robbins personal
growth vibe to it that we werenot expecting. And so we ended
up discovering some limitingbeliefs about ourselves, both of
(12:02):
which kind of centered aroundnot feeling good enough, and so
getting to do some of this workto doing that personal growth
work separately is reallyimportant piece of figuring out
who you are and what your giftsare, but doing it together
created a level of closeness wehadn't even yet experienced in
our relationship, because we gotreally we dug really deep with
(12:25):
each other and shared some ofthis stuff that we didn't even
consciously know aboutourselves, that we were sharing
out loud. So ended up beingreally cool, and that was kind
of our first toe in the water ofpersonal growth. And so it was
fun, it was hard, but it waslike we felt the value from it.
So we just started going to moreof these types of personal
growth events, and we found thatat these events, people would
(12:47):
come up to us, usually one at atime, and say, like, how you
guys are doing this together?That's really cool. I can't get
my husband to come. I can't getmy wife to come. What do you
suggest? And we ended up talkingto people, sometimes couples,
but mostly people wanting theirpartner to come along, and just
answering their questions andand that was fun for us, but we
didn't really realize what wewere doing yet. And then at one
(13:09):
of these events, the guy puttingon the event was like, hey, you
know a I think you guys wouldmake great coaches. And we're
like, oh, yeah, you know what?Yeah, we, we've been coaching
our like upon, you know, lookingback, we've been coaching our
whole lives, that's a greatidea. What would we coach,
though? Like that part stillwasn't clear to us, even though
we kind of had been doing it.And then same guy says at my
(13:30):
next event, I actually want youguys to co to speak on stage
about building strongrelationships. And we were like,
wow. So our relationship hadbeen our like, our superpower,
but it actually is oursuperpower, like, out to the
world to help other people.Because what we've come to
realize is that having a reallythriving relationship,
(13:53):
especially as your marriage, butdoesn't have to be your
marriage, a really connected,thriving, healthy relationship,
is a cheat code for life, likewhen you don't have to spend the
time and energy always fixing,always coming through arguments,
always like walking oneggshells, tiptoeing around,
trying to avoid the big blow up.When you're not spending that
time and energy and focus doingthat, and you're in maintenance
(14:17):
mode and things are working andflowing, you have so much more
time and energy and focus to putout to the rest of the things
you want, to the other goals anddreams you have in your life,
and the other person does too.So it's this, like synergistic,
like exponential energy that younow have to level up every other
area of your life. So it's like,it's a huge cheat code, and
that's kind of how we stumbledinto coaching, relationship
(14:40):
coaching. It's
Craig Bennett (14:41):
when you if you had asked us to plan it out
looking forward, we never wouldhave been able to connect the
dots. They only connect lookingbackwards, right? So anyone
who's kind of at this placewhere they're like, Oh, I've got
so much freedom, and I don'tknow where to take this, I would
say is like, surrender a littlebit and just go with the flow.
And. Yeah, because the universeis always kind of working in
(15:02):
your favor. And that's one ofthe biggest lessons that we
pulled from this, is thatthings, if you just take action,
take a step towards your future,just as small as it is, the next
step reveals itself. So wedecided, okay, we're going to
focus on our own personalgrowth. We're going to go to an
event. And then when we didthat, other options opened up
for us, other steps. And then wemet, you know, this gentleman
(15:24):
that that Meredith justmentioned, and he kind of
pointed us towards coaching, andthen eventually relationships.
And then it all kind of juststarted to piece together. And
then, oh, here we go. This is,this is our gift for the that we
want to give the world. Yeah,well,
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (15:38):
I think Meredith, you said we kind of
stumbled into it at the end ofkind of your explanation there,
and I feel like that issomething we often say, like,
I'll say, oh my gosh, I got solucky. We just landed this big
client. Because in the moment,it feels like it just happens
out of nowhere. But in reality,to your point, Craig, you you're
just taking the steps that arebeing put in front of you. So
(16:00):
you so you are doing the workjust because it's not super
intentional. So I think whatyour story teaches us is
patience, like leaning into thenext best thing and just saying,
well, let's without expectation,right? Like, that's something we
talk about a lot, is haveconversations with people
without expectation and just seewhere the conversation leads
you. You might be surprised whatdoors can open for you. And then
(16:22):
also, like hearing what peoplesay to you about you, like, you
know, like this, this guy said,I'd love for you to come speak
about relationships, and youknow, you could, and maybe you
did, but you could haveimmediately responded with, oh,
no, we can't do that. We'venever done that before. That's
not something we're experts in,right? But like leaning into the
opportunities that presentthemselves, I think, like, is
(16:44):
that something that you haveworked on, or were working on,
and all of these things, becausethat's not something that most
people feel comfortable in.
Meredith Bennett (16:53):
Yeah, and we didn't for sure,
Craig Bennett (16:55):
I would say, I would say the a couple things is
one, it's the power ofcommunity, right? Like, it's
leverage, hearing what otherpeople are saying and listening
to what they're saying, andrespect. Yeah, there's new
perspective there that they seethings that you don't
necessarily see you're tooclose, and they have a different
perspective, and they can seethings you can't So, so
leveraging that community andthat that that extra perspective
(17:17):
that other people have. And thensecondly, yeah, it really is
about saying yes, as often asyou can, when you're presented
with an opportunity, explore itlike we do. Have an attitude for
adventure. We do. One of ourphilosophies is we're on an
adventure, like, let's just goand explore what this is. It may
be something that we go halfwaydown the path and we're like,
(17:38):
not for us, and then we changecourse and we do something
different, but at least exploreit. Because it came up for a
reason. There's some it waspresented to you for a reason,
and so it's really we've had tohone the skill of understanding
the universe is always workingfor us. This opportunity was
presented to us. So let's atleast explore that and say yes
and and go from there.
Meredith Bennett (18:00):
And we'd never, you know, spoken on a
stage before, especiallytogether, but like outside of
the corporate in a meeting, typeof situation, we've never really
gotten on stage and spokenbefore. So that was a scary ask,
not since
Craig Bennett (18:13):
like, grade three, when I was doing the
assembly or whatever.
Meredith Bennett (18:18):
Yeah, it was scary. It was similar, actually,
to the feeling when we left ourcorporate job, that our
corporate job like we said, wewere good at it, like we were
high performers, high achievers,like top performance reviews,
like checking all those boxes ofwhat society tells me success
is. So we were good at that,plus it was the only thing we
ever knew. And so when theopportunity came to leave. It
(18:40):
was really, really scary, andwere high plan like, type a
people that like, give me a goodchecklist, make sure I've got it
all figured out before I make mynext step. And so we didn't have
that when we left our corporatejob. We just kind of ended up
deciding based on this feelslike the right thing to do, even
though everything around itseems like chaos inside, it just
(19:01):
feels right when, when ourfriend asked us, our friend now
asked us to speak on stage athis event, it was like, Oh my
God. What? Like, yeah, and he'slike, I don't know, 60 minutes,
90 minutes, something like that.We're like, Oh my God. Like, it
was terrifying, right? Like,getting on stage in front of
people, talking aboutrelationships, of all things,
for like an hour seemed like areally giant mountain to climb,
(19:25):
but at the same time, it wasscary, but it still felt like
the right thing, and leadingwith courage like I really do
believe that when you take theaction that feels right even
when you're scared, especiallybecause, I mean, You only get to
practice courage when you'rescared, so especially when
you're scared, taking that stepforward and practicing being
(19:47):
brave, I think, is a reallyimportant skill.
Craig Bennett (19:50):
Yeah, yeah, it's when you feel that fear.
Everything we want, is on theother side of fear. That's where
the growth is. So lean into thefear and trust your intuition,
that's something that that's a.Skill that we're still honing.
Because I think for me, anyway,it went dormant a little bit my
corporate life, I maybesuppressed it a little bit. And
so when the less you listen toit, the harder it is to hear.
(20:10):
But when you start to tune intoit more, the voice gets a little
louder, and you can hear the youcan you can have that gut feel,
and so lean into that a littlebit. And that's a skill I think
you have to really developpractice.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (20:22):
Yeah, okay, so I want to get into a little
nitty gritty here, and change,change course just a little bit,
because now that you have yourbusiness, you figured out your
passion, you love what you'redoing. How do you guys operate
inside of the business? Like, doyou have very clear like, this
is my role. This is my role.Like, and how does that evolve
over time, as the businessgrows, or if you have, like, a
new idea, like, how do youapproach that while still, like
(20:45):
honoring your relationship?Because I think that's one of
the trickiest parts. Is, youknow, in a growth phase, growing
in the same ways together, bothin your relationship and in your
business.
Meredith Bennett (20:57):
Yeah, I would say in the beginning, we did not
have a clear, differentdifferentiation of roles,
because we really didn't have aclue what we were doing. So we
were trying to figure it out aswe go. And eventually we kind of
figured out each other'sstrengths a little bit, and
we've settled into roles kind ofday to day. We each have sort of
(21:19):
separate things that we that weown in the business. I think the
other key piece of it,especially for couples like
you're saying, is we have a veryclear differentiation of when
we're no longer at work, likewhen we've got the business
partner hat on. We're businesspartners. We're going to
challenge each other, and we'regoing to have conversations, and
we're on the same team aboutwhat's going to push the
(21:40):
business forward. But we mayhave different opinions.
Different opinions on how to dothat, and we keep our business
partner hat on for the day whenwe're doing that, and then at
the end of the work day, we takethat hat off and put our, you
know, marriage hat back on. Andoftentimes that involves, like,
an actual change of environment,like we'll get out and go for a
walk and kind of debrief, eventhough, like, we are literally
(22:02):
arm's length away from eachother most of the day, we still
kind of go on our walk anddebrief, like, even on this
podcast, right? We are, like,literally shoulder to shoulder
on this podcast, but we'llprobably go for a walk later
today and debrief how we eachexperienced it. Like, What were
our each of our highlights andlike, because we're going to
have a different, you know,different favorite part, and
we're going to want to talkabout that with each other. And
(22:24):
that's part of our sort oftransition from business partner
to back to, like, life partnerat the end of the day, let's,
let's close the laptops, let'sget out and go for a walk, get
some fresh air, debrief, kind ofput it all to bed for the day,
and then spend our eveninghaving fun, like, you know,
playing a game, making dinner,doing our thing, and then it
allows that. It just allows worknot to just creep all the way
(22:47):
through everything, so you stillget some time. Because what's
one of our biggest philosophiesis, what's you make time? You
make time for what's important.And this is super duper. This is
more important than anythinglike this is, it's this above
everything else. And if we'renot making time to just hang out
and connect and be togetheroutside of work, then we start
(23:09):
to lose this. And it's the mostimportant thing.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (23:14):
Yeah, my brother is my business partner,
and he will be listening to thisbecause he edits the podcast.
And it's not, it's not so badright now, I mean, because
obviously we're not married, butit's like a similar, similar
kind of like, things can bleedover into, like, family. And
when he was living on the WestCoast, and we were here in
Minnesota, um, he works later inthe day than I do. He doesn't
(23:36):
have kids, and so he gets uplater and works later. So he
would be calling me at like, sixo'clock my time to say, hey, I
have questions about thisproject, or where are we at? And
we had to have a very seriousconversation about, like, I'm
not I got school pickup startingat three o'clock, and then I'm
pretty much tapped out, becauseI get up really early. So it's
interesting. I think it's a goodlesson. Just in general, in any
(23:57):
sort of small business where youonly have maybe one or two
employees, or you have, like,one or two key stakeholders or
decision makers, that separationof duties and that separation of
time and space is so important.So I love that you just have
that kind of cut and dry. He gotto the point where I was like,
I'm not, no, I'm not taking yourphone calls anymore in the
evenings. If you're only goingto ask me about work, if you
(24:19):
want to check in about Lisa,then by all the words. And so we
found, yeah, now he lives inMinnesota also, so like, it's,
it's much better, but thatthat's smart, yeah, it's, I
think it's really
Craig Bennett (24:31):
important to have those those conversations and
those boundaries and then, andthen, once everyone's on the
same page, things can run alittle smoother, right? It's
when you don't have thoseconversations and expectations
aren't set. That's when you knowthe friction happens. So yeah,
he doesn't
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (24:46):
live in my house. He doesn't know what
we're doing. So why would Iassume that he would just figure
it out on his own? Right? And Ithink I love that you guys go
for a walk and kind of debrief,because it's it's easy to say,
Okay, well, I'm gonna just shutdown my computer and we're just
gonna. Flip, but the work thatyou do is also emotional. So I'm
sure that as you're working withyour clients, that you also just
(25:07):
kind of need to process what youexperienced and maybe get
through some of the emotion thatyou've been working through. And
so to be able to do thattogether with somebody who also
really understands that thatfeeling has to be really helpful
to kind of just help you winddown yourself
Craig Bennett (25:23):
100% Yeah, it is really helpful to be doing the
same thing with your spouse forjust understanding what you're
going through. That was reallyheavy. We just listened to
something really heavy. So let'sgo decompress. Let's go for a
walk. Let's get out in nature.Let's get the sun on our face.
And let's just, you know, talk,talk it through, get it, get it
(25:43):
out of ourselves, and then wecan go and enjoy the rest of the
day together, date, night,whatever it happens to be that
day. But being entrepreneurs,you know, obviously different
things come up at differenttimes. It's just really about
being intentional about, okay,tonight we do have a client
meeting where we have to, youknow, maybe we're going to have
some heavier stuff. So let'smake sure we have some time set
(26:04):
aside on the weekend where, youknow, we, you know, we've got
some set time in our calendarwhere it's just us time. So it's
really being flexible, becauseobviously you have clients, and,
you know, you kind of have tocater to some of their needs and
times and stuff like that. Butit's also making sure that
you've, you're setting aside thetime that you have for this as
well.
Meredith Bennett (26:22):
And it's interesting, we're really lucky,
I think, because we've alwayshad that, even in our corporate
job, we worked, eventually, weworked in the same department,
like different teams, but in thesame larger department, so we
knew who all the people were. Soon our walk home from work at
the end of the day, it was like,oh my god, I had a meeting with
this guy, and it's like, Oh, Iknow I had a meeting with him
(26:44):
last week. And so it was, it washelpful, even in our corporate
life, that we still use thatwalk home because we lived
walking, yes, we used that walkhome with our differentiator
then, which I think is what madeit easier to carry that over
into the entrepreneurship sideof things too, because the walk
home from work really helpedleave things at work and knowing
(27:07):
all the same players in theorganization, working in the
same company, and this on thesame floor, you know all the
same people, so you could kindof vent and have the other
person understand, as opposed toyou work at two different
companies, and you kind ofunderstand who the different
people are, but you Don't reallyknow them, so it's not quite the
same level of connection overthe people. So we've been really
lucky to have that. That's
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (27:27):
amazing. And my husband works in finance
and plays in spreadsheets allday, and I am in largely in
marketing and creative stuff. Solike, we could not be more
opposite in what what we do. Soit's funny because we both work
from home, so we'll havemoments. Well, he works in the
office part of the part of theweek, but where we'll like,
knock on each other's door. Doyou have two seconds? I just
need to vent real quick, andthen we just, like, spew it out,
(27:50):
and then we like, leave. So it'skind of nice to have that.
There's not a lot of back andforth, but we at least have
figured out that rhythm of like,I need a minute. But I guess,
you know, I'm curious, you know,as you kind of work through this
journey, and now you feel likeyou're in a place where you're
doing work you love. We all havedifferent seasons in our
businesses, seasons that arebusier than others, and kind of
(28:11):
that ebb and flow. But like,what are you excited for this
year? Like, what is, kind of thething that you guys are looking
forward to or working towards?Because you're, entrepreneurs
now, so it never just is what itis and stays that way. So kind
of what's the next step for youall?
Craig Bennett (28:27):
So a few things this year that are really got us
excited. We just launched amastermind, so we're leaning
heavily into that, and we'vecreated a really great safe
space for folks, and we've got abunch of people in there that
were super pumped for the forthe growth that we're seeing
with them, so we're leaning intothat and creating content for
them specifically. And then,
Meredith Bennett (28:48):
yeah, well, actually, I'm gonna build on
that for a sec. Yeah, the it's,it's new, and we're super pumped
about it, and it's, so far, it'sfar exceeded our expectations,
because it's, it's, it's abroader like, it's called the
infinite relationshipmastermind, and it's it's bigger
than marriage. Like we've met,marriage is our bread and
butter. We've like. We lovefocusing on marriage for sure,
(29:08):
but the skills you use to buildand strengthen a great marriage
apply in every relationship inyour life. It's just often
easier to learn them in amarriage. But they're not it's
not unique. And so we're we'vestarted actually the mastermind,
with the relationship withyourself, because it's like the
critical one that every otherrelationship is built on. And so
(29:28):
it's been far exceeding ourexpectations. So we'll get into
the other relationships, theother important relationships in
their life, too, and therelationships with their health,
with stress, with fun, with thefuture, like the big, important
relationships that you have inyour life, not just your
marriage. So we're super pumpedabout that, and then you go
ahead, keep going.
Craig Bennett (29:48):
So we're also, we have a podcast as well, and
we're expanding that. So ourpodcast is the road of life
podcast, and we do like, 15 to20 minute episode once a week
where we just share. Conceptabout relationships that's
really helped us and ourclients, and we just give that,
put that out to the world. Andnow we're going to focus on
adding another episode a weekwhere we interview other people
(30:10):
that are, you know, get theirperspectives and entrepreneurs
or corporate folks or, you know,just different perspectives on
relationships. And so that's,that's another thing that we're
really excited about this
Meredith Bennett (30:23):
year. Yeah, the again, the same idea of the
broader relationships, like wemight have a couple on or a
person on, talking about theirrelationship with their health
and how that's evolved, orsomeone talking with their
relationship with stress, orsomeone talking about
relationship with their mom, or,like, kind of that broader
relationship perspective. Sowe're, yeah, we're excited about
that. And we also have on thedocket this year, we want to
write a book. So we've got thatcoming up. Yeah, so those are
(30:45):
three big
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (30:47):
always impressed with people that want
to write books. I it. I somebodyapproached me about doing a
rewrite of their existing books,just to rewrite it for nonprofit
specifically, instead of theservice industry. So I had the
whole thing already done. I justhad to, like, add a few stories.
And I was like, I can't do this.This is too much. So that's
impressive, and I'm proud of youfor doing that, because that's a
(31:08):
lot. It's that's a big project.It's
Meredith Bennett (31:10):
a big project. It's a big project. We're super
excited, like, we've beentalking about it now for a
while, and it's like, okay,yeah, 2025 we're gonna do it.
Yeah,
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (31:19):
that's so great. Well, this has been such
a fun conversation. We couldprobably talk forever. I love
hearing entrepreneurial stories,but I love just like, just your
take on everything it doesn'tlike you said, doesn't have to
be just with your relationshipwith your partner, or it could
be all the relationships thatyou have in your life, work
related personal. So thank youso much for sharing your
(31:39):
experience and your story witheveryone, but if people want to
connect with you and learn moreabout you your mastermind, check
out your podcast. How do they dothat?
Meredith Bennett (31:48):
Well, we are most active and most fun on
Instagram, and we're at Meredithand Craig, and our Mastermind
and our podcast are both on ourwebsite, at
roadoflifecoaching.com
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (31:59):
I love it, and we will link all of that up
in the show notes ateasystylewithsami.com/38 but
thank you so much for being heretoday. This was a pleasure.
Meredith Bennett (32:09):
Oh, it was
Craig Bennett (32:10):
the pleasure. Was all ours. Sammy super It was an
honor. Thank you so much forhaving we had a lot of fun.
Yeah, great combo.
Sami Bedell-Mulhern (32:17):
Big. Thank you to Craig and Meredith
Bennett for joining me today.What is such a fun conversation?
And I just love hearing howcouples work together. Like I
said, I love my husband. He'svery supportive of me and my
business ventures, but workingtogether probably not our thing,
but it's just so fascinating tohear how people kind of put
(32:40):
things together. And I also lovehearing entrepreneurs stories of
how they pull things together,what they come up with. And this
one was just such a fun, uniquestory. And you can tell that the
passion behind the work thatthey do is so strong and so
evident, and why they're seeingthe success that they're seeing,
because it's the passion that isinside. So I really hope that
you are inspired by this episodeand that you use it as a
(33:04):
reminder to just take a minuteto look at where you're at, what
you're passionate about, andwhat you might be able to just
take one step forward in. Youknow, you don't have to go quit
your job and and leap right in.But what's one thing that's just
gnawing at you, or somethingsomebody's been saying to you,
or something you just want topay attention to and just take
that little, itty bitty stepforward and see where it can
take you. Now, like I said, theshow notes are at
(33:26):
easystylewithsami.com/38 so youcan check out all of the
different ways to connect withMeredith and Craig there while
you're here, I would reallyappreciate you hitting that
subscribe button wherever you'relistening. Leave us a review if
you can, or a comment, and Ireally thank you for taking time
to listen through stories. Ifyou have somebody that would be
(33:46):
great for me to interview onthis podcast, you can send that
to hello@easystylewithsami.comotherwise, thank you so much for
listening, and I'll see you inthe next one.
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