Show Your Value with Lee Benson

Mike Zisman wrote his first program in 1967. He built and sold Soft Switch to Lotus, then watched IBM take over Lotus eleven months later, going from a company of 450 people to one of 250,000 in under a year. He's 77, still writing code, and runs Golf Genius, which now handles over 40 million rounds of golf a year.

In this conversation with Lee, he explains the thing he thinks most companies never account for: coordination cost. The friction of getting people pointed in the same direction, which rises exponentially as a company grows. His head of engineering worked out that a part-time competitor was moving faster purely because he had none of it, so he went off and did the same thing, and what came back changes what they ship next.

Mike is also blunt about AI. 95% of the code his team produces is now written by Claude. His headcount has been flat for two years and there are no new hires in the 2027 plan, and he's clear that he doesn't have a good answer for what that means at scale. He also points out the trap nobody's solved: stop hiring junior developers and in ten years you have no senior ones.

Plus why he thinks vibe coding misses the point, and the line he uses on anyone who says their own software is easy to use.

Lee shares his side, including the competitor who approached him asking to sweep floors just to learn what they were doing, and what Mike makes of a 21.6x multiple when the average business sells for six or seven.

More from Mike: golfgeniussoftware.com

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

Mike Tecku built and sold companies, was ready to retire, then his girlfriend went blind in one eye and was diagnosed with MS. She ended up on 50 different supplements and pills a day, and one morning she physically couldn't swallow them anymore.

He put them in a shake. That became Momentum.

In this conversation with Lee, Mike explains why he has no interest in building the billion-dollar version of his company, and what he thinks the private equity playbook is doing to good businesses: outsource the production, the sourcing, the customer service and the distribution, spend everything on marketing, then pass it to the next buyer before the value runs out.

He also gets into why complexity is usually an ego defence. If you make something so complicated only you can run it, you never have to admit you're the bottleneck. His own conclusion: "I need to fire myself as CEO."

Lee shares his side of it too, including the years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in doctors and protocols that made his health worse, and the $8 batches of homemade yogurt that turned it around.

Plus why he sources vanilla from one farmer in Uganda, had a custom enzyme blend developed in Japan, and spends more on single ingredients than most companies spend on an entire product.

More from Mike: momentumshake.com

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

Building the team, systems and customer base your business needs can take years. Could buying another business help you get there faster?

Tom Shipley joins Lee Benson on Show Your Value to explain how he used acquisitions to solve problems he couldn’t afford to fix from scratch, including buying an established business to help scale a $331,000 skincare brand.

They explore how to evaluate an acquisition, understand what a seller really wants, and bring two companies together without losing the people and value you paid for.

In this episode:
• How acquisitions can unlock growth beyond sales and marketing
• Financing a deal without giving away too much ownership
• What makes buyers discount the value of your business
• Partnership and equity mistakes that become expensive later
• What to do during the first 30 days after an acquisition
• How to prepare your business for a sale before you need one

If you own a business and want to grow, reduce its dependence on you, or prepare for an eventual exit, this conversation will help you ask better questions before your next move.

Subscribe to Show Your Value for conversations about building stronger businesses, leading better teams and creating lasting value.

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

Bruce Cardenas helped Quest Nutrition for nine months without being paid. He walked away with equity in a billion-dollar company.

He was 46 when he met the founders, and he'd already been a police officer and built a protective services business. He wasn't looking for a break. He solved problems because that's how he'd always shown up, something he traces back to watching his father.

In this conversation with Lee, Bruce is honest about the part nobody says out loud: there was no promise, some owners will absolutely take advantage of you, and you have to know when your self-worth is starting to erode.

He also talks about the lieutenant who corrected him on an arrest early in his LAPD career, and the line that stuck: that's someone's brother, someone's father. And the anonymous survey at Quest that showed employees felt disrespected while leadership had no idea.

Plus the intern who kept showing up on weekends when it wasn't her job, and went on to become CMO.

Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com.

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

What makes successful people want to help you? Chris Widener learned that it starts with a different question: “How can I help you?”

In this episode of Show Your Value, Lee Benson sits down with the bestselling author and speaker who worked alongside Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar and John Maxwell.

Chris shares how he moved from an unstable childhood to a life shaped by faith, purpose and mentorship. Together, they explore the four qualities that build influence, why knowledge means little without action, and how to pursue success without sacrificing your peace.

You’ll hear why a CEO paid $70,000 to learn his employees’ names, how Chris and his wife approach disagreements, and when protecting a relationship matters more than proving you’re right.

Follow Show Your Value for conversations about creating meaningful value in your business, relationships and life.

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

Eric Malka sold his car for $12,000 and asked himself the smallest possible question: what's the tiniest business I can start with this? Twelve years later, Procter & Gamble bought The Art of Shaving.

Three businesses failed before that one. The last one left him ready to quit entrepreneurship entirely, and it gave him the philosophy he's built everything on since. Start small and grow big, because starting big is a great way to grow small.

In this conversation with Lee, Eric lays out the choice he puts to every founder he advises: you can succeed in fifteen years or fail in five. He explains why most entrepreneurs he meets are ahead of their skis, what a business model actually is, and how a thousand conversations with customers in one tiny store wrote his entire brand for him.

He's also frank about the people who came after it. The supplier who demanded half the company or he'd cut off the products. The private equity firm he says deliberately wrote covenants designed to trip. The investment bank that cost him a third of his exit.

The last stretch is the one worth staying for. Eric hit every financial goal he'd set by the age of 40 and still felt anxious, and what he did about that is the part he says changed his life.

Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com.

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

A teenager watched a night of news full of leaders behaving badly and asked his grandfather, "Pops, you're a leader. Is that how you lead?"

That question became Keith Wyche's book. Keith has been President of Pitney Bowes US, a senior executive at IBM, and ran a 30,000-person region at Walmart. He's on the board of Brinks.

In this one he lays out how far trust has fallen, seven in ten people don't believe leaders tell them the truth, and government trust has gone from 73% in 1958 to 17% today, and what rebuilding it takes. His formula: trust equals character times competency times consistency.

Lee shares the moment that shaped his career, turning down a bribe from the customer that was 90% of his business, losing the account, and taking over the failing company by assuming its debt. It sold 23 years later for well into nine figures.

Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com.

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

"Priority" comes from a Latin root meaning first. So what's the plural of first?

Jay Papasan co-wrote The One Thing, which has sold more than 4 million copies in over 40 languages, and he's CEO of Productive, the One Thing Company. In this conversation with Lee, he argues that you can only ever have one priority, and that most productivity problems are clarity problems wearing a disguise.

Jay walks through the diagnostic he uses with every client. Productivity sits above the waterline, priority sits below it, and purpose sits below that. When someone comes to him with a productivity problem, he starts three levels down. He also shares the core values exercise that became his own unlock, why "should" is almost always a shame-based statement, and the weekly meeting he's held with his own goals virtually every week since September 2000.

Lee brings the other side of it, including what three spinal surgeries taught him about performing in a season that isn't your best one, and the mantra that came out of it.

Also in this one: the Day Before Vacation Miracle, why Hemingway wrote at a fourth grade level, why you can't time block a goal, and the question worth asking anyone walking into a storm.

Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com.

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

"Jobs are a silly phase that work is going through."

Rishad Tobaccowala spent four decades advising the world's largest companies, most of them as chief strategist at Publicis Groupe, and made ten predictions in India's largest business paper that all came true. In this one, he gives Lee the five tectonic shifts reshaping business, why 68% of the world already earns without a job, the demographic cliff nobody's pricing in, and the leadership crisis he summarises as: look in the mirror.

Plus the immigrant mindset, why every career has a midnight hour and the smart people leave at five to twelve, the daughter who left Google to make films, and why AI is alien intelligence, a collaborator, not a tool.

Rishad writes weekly at rishadtobaccowala.substack.com.

Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com.

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

Fewer than 1 in 10 performance reviews end with both people walking away glad it happened. Lee Benson stopped running them years ago.

In this episode, Lee breaks down the performance snapshot, the replacement he's used across eight companies: three clear goals per person, expectations defined from day one, and the review itself done in front of the whole team. It sounds uncomfortable. He's run hundreds, and it's why the process works, one person can't remember everything someone did, but the team remembers everything.

He also shares the clarity effect behind his claim that of the ten people you'd fire for poor performance, seven or eight get saved when expectations were genuinely clear from the start.

Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com.

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/