Bethenny Frankel Is a Time-management Machine

She builds multimillion-dollar brands, stars in TV shows, and vigorously defends every moment of her day. The secret? It starts with deciding what matters (and what doesn’t).

- By Jason Feifer

“In my glamorous life of being a mogul today,” Bethenny Frankel says, “I cleaned up dog poop and steamed lotion off the carpet.”

We are talking at 6 p.m. on a Thursday. It’s been quite a day. The dog poop was the dog’s fault. The lotion was Frankel’s. She spilled it shortly after rushing to drop off her daughter at a playdate—a drop-off that was so hurried that her daughter’s hair was still wet from a shower. Frankel then had to take over a hotel reservation that someone was supposed to make for her, but they bungled it. Her wardrobe for a Home Shopping Network appearance was a mess, so she fixed that herself. After our talk, she’s filming an online video about BSTRONG, her initiative that raises money for disaster relief work. “I will have to proofread the entire post,” she says, “because it will be grammatically incorrect if I don’t.”

She isn’t complaining. Instead, she’s illustrating a problem she has yet to solve. Frankel has famously transformed her once fractured life—a difficult childhood among degenerates and gamblers, being flat broke in her late 30s, countless career changes, and then a star turn on The Real Housewives of New York City that she used to frame herself as a brand builder, including creating the juggernaut lifestyle brand Skinnygirl. But like most entrepreneurs, she has still not figured out how to exit the weeds.

“I’ve always wanted someone to be me—to be able to think like me and make decisions like me,” she says. “And I don’t even know if that’s possible.”