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112: Do Less Better w/ Lee Benson · Harder Than Life

• 0:07
  I'm Kelly Siegel, and this is Harder Than Life, a podcast about self-love, self-awareness, business, and health. We tell outrageous stories and boil everything down to simple, practical advice you can start using today. Let's get living.
• 0:23
  Today I'm thrilled to welcome an incredible entrepreneur and results driven leader to the heart of life podcast. Lee Benson has dedicated his career to helping businesses harness the power of alignment and accountability to achieve extraordinary results. As the founder of execute to win, he's transformed countless organizations with the mind methodology, showing leaders how to drive their teams forward. Their most important goals with clarity and purpose.
• 0:50
  You're going to want to take notes on this podcast because Lee grew his first company from three people to 500 employees with 15 consecutive years of 20% compounded average annual growth before his exit. Absolutely extraordinary, guys. I agree.
• 1:07
  I can't thank you enough for coming on the show. Thanks for joining us. I can't wait to dive in the insights on this achieving meaningful, measurable, or what you call mind. But guys, the reason why I met Lee, I read his book. I tagged him. The power of social media. I've made a lifelong friend. If you're watching the show, your most important number is...
• 1:30
  is the book that I read. And you all know, if you follow me, we're an EOS shop and we've kind of replaced most of our EOS with your most important number. So thanks for joining us, Lee. All right, Kelly. It's so good to be here. I've been looking forward to this. Me too. This book has been sitting on my shelf right behind me. I'm going to hit it right in the box because the whole time I'm reading the book, I'm like, okay, so what's your most important number?
• 1:55
  Tell us what inspired you to write the book and what the key takeaway you hope the readers to achieve. Yeah. You know, as you know, Kelly, I've started eight companies from scratch now and I've grown them. You know, the one was to a nine figure exit that you are referencing and it was a 21.6 X multiple of EBITDA. So this is a hundred million dollar business, very profitable business.
• 2:23
  At a time when everybody else was getting an 8x, if they were really strong, we got over 20x. And why was that? Because everybody was really focused on value creation in there. And how the book came about, Your Most Important Number,
• 2:38
  is I developed something called the MIND methodology, which stands for most important number and drivers. And one of the questions I would ask team members as I was developing this and certainly before, how do you create value for the organization? And I would get a lot of kind of crazy answers that told me they had no idea.
• 2:57
  And so with the most important number in drivers, every team has one number that above all others says they're winning or losing the game. It's reflective of the value that they're creating, and it will drive the majority of the right behaviors. They're measuring other things. They help make better decisions to improve that number, but they all have one. And so now when you ask the question, how do you create value for the organization? They say, for example, I'm on the marketing team.
• 3:21
  Our most important number is generating qualified leads. This is how many leads every month, and this is how it's growing. This is where we started. This is where we're going. We're currently on track, or maybe we're not, or maybe we're overdriving it. Here's the definition of a qualified lead, certain percent closing ratio, and this is the best work I'm doing to support that on the team. That's a pretty powerful answer.
• 3:45
  And so if every team in the company has a most important number, everybody's doing their best work to improve that number. When it improves, it accretes all the way to the most important number for the entire organization. And in the for-profit world is generally going to be some kind of version of profit. It could be EBITDA, net profit. If it's a capital intensive business, it really could be cash flow and probably should be.
• 4:11
  But the nice thing about this, whether you have one team, five teams, 10 teams or thousands of teams, these all bolt together like Legos. When one improves, it accretes up and improves all the way to the top.
• 4:25
  So guys, go to www.etw.com, and he's got so many freebies and explanations on there that you can go in. And there's even a mastermind, I noticed. So there's some really interesting stuff. And did I hear you right? 21.6 multiple?
• 4:44
  21.6. Yeah. Guys, we're going to dive into this. As you know, I own an IT company. And so I was reading this book, trying to figure out what our sales most important number is. And the whole time you're thinking, oh, of course it's closed business.
• 5:01
  By reading your book, I figured out it wasn't even closed business. It wasn't even quoted business. What do you think, in your opinion, what have you seen in a sales-driven organization? What's the most important number most of the time? Or is it different for every organization?
• 5:17
  Well, I believe, well, it depends on the stage, but I believe that it should be reflective of the value of the organization. So when you look at the market, how would you value your business? How is everybody else valuing theirs? And where do you sit in there? So that would be it.
• 5:33
  Now, for a sales driven organization, you have marketing, you have closing the sales, you have delivery of services, you have all of that stuff. They'll all have their most important number. But for the overall organization, how would you value it? For example, Kelly, in my execute CEO mastermind groups that I run, every single CEO in the group, and we limit it to eight so we know so much about each other's business,
• 5:58
  Their primary job is to continually and responsibly increase the value of their business. That's it. And we're all leaning in like it's a conglomerate that we've invested over half of our money in it metaphorically to make sure that that's happening. So I don't think it really matters what the for-profit business is. It should be the value of that business and how you look at it. Does that make sense?
• 6:20
  Yeah, so with us, we figured out as we drilled down, our most important number in sales was the first-time appointments. Because what was happening is we were growing internally. We were, you know, once we have those appointments, they typically close, better than 50% close rate. So what really moves the number in our business is just bringing new people in.
• 6:44
  So since I read this book and we've just changed that and literally we manage the sales team on that every week. I don't look at anything else. I don't care if it's closed. It's just how many new appointments did we bring into the funnel? And needless to say, we're leveraging AI and a grand slam offer and we're gonna make, we're gonna quadruple that and I'll bet you
• 7:06
  our revenue uh our sales quadruple as well so that's we literally leveraged to a t and then i took it over because i'm like this is fantastic what is our most important number in our service and we figured out our time to resolution was it because our people want their tickets closed fast and you can sit here and you can sell a promise all you want
• 7:31
  but selling proof and showing them the number, like this is how fast it takes us. We're averaging, I have all of this written down, but I know it to a teats. Two and a half hours average to close resolve, not close, we use resolve because we don't have any recidivism. All of our help desk tickets. So if you call in with a, I can't bold in word or,
• 7:53
  My screen is blue screen two and a half hours later on average. So that means that, you know, some are five hours and some are one minute. Yeah. And it's, it's unheard of in the business. So we're so fast. We asked competition to compare and nobody wants to, nobody wants to play with us. All right. Well, I, I love that. And we're, we're finding this really everywhere when the team has a clear understanding of how they create value, this number that you're talking about.
• 8:20
  they can actually create that value. And in most companies, they're just not that clear. You know, you talked about EOS, but it could be OKRs. It could be a number of other systems out there. There's a lot of goals that just aren't that thoughtful. And people are accomplishing a lot of things, but they're not moving the needle. With the most important number for every team, the needle moves really fast. And we're seeing it like literally everywhere.
• 8:45
  So my next question, you'll appreciate this, and it's a personal question. So your mind methodology has transformed companies, but how can individuals apply it to their own lives? The first thing I thought of when I was reading this, man, I'm like...
• 9:00
  oh my God, I have a most important personal number. And I'll tell you what it is after you explain it. This whole approach here is about creating value. And I think about creating value holistically, material value, which we all get, emotional energy value, which positive emotional energy, in my view, is the scarcest commodity on the planet.
• 9:22
  And then spiritual value creation at its core is about connectedness with yourself, your family, a higher power, communities that are important to you, all of that. And my personal most important number for me is fulfillment.
• 9:39
  And, you know, people talk about being happy and everything's great. If you're happy or not, something must be wrong. Well, it's impossible to be happy all the time. We're going to go through life struggles. We have to struggle to grow. So we're not going to be happy all the time. But I have noticed that my internal fulfillment can continually go up over time.
• 10:01
  That's so would it be any surprise to you that my most important number is seven? It is an actual number and it's the number of workouts I do a week because everything in my life trickles down from my workouts, everything. And if I go six, it is my happiness decreases my just everything falls apart from that. And I got to go. Yeah.
• 10:24
  Guys, if you haven't read this book, whether you're an EOS user, a Sprinter, whatever, read this book. You will learn things. If you guys can see it.
• 10:35
  If anybody's watching this, I have probably 50 pages pinned back strengthening. This is a leadership. He keeps saying, I call it an optimization book. We're just going to optimize everything and provide clarity. I always say fail to plan, plan to fail. And this book, actually, you know who actually turned me on to was Evan.
• 10:58
  And on our podcast, he said, I said, what book would you recommend right now? And he recommended that. And I listened to my podcast a second time with him. And I'm like, wait, I missed that book. And I read it. And then now I've made a friend. So you haven't read this book and whether you're in business or not, this also applies to your personal life. So what's the most surprising story of transformation you've seen from someone using these principles in your book?
• 11:26
  Another really good question. I think for the most part, people are surprised at how fast it goes. So we had one construction company based in California in five states. In less than a year, they had it out to all approximately 1,000 employees all the way to the front line. Every team organized.
• 11:51
  And in that particular case, the CEO had a plan to sell or exit in three to five years. They did so well the first year they exited in 18 months. And it was more than they thought. When we started, I looked in, in fact, we started with them right in the middle of the pandemic. And they'd never made $3 million in EBITDA.
• 12:16
  And fast forward 18 months, they're at a run rate of just under $20 million in EBITDA. Wow. That's amazing. Had another virtual assistant-based company, got involved with them. They've been around a little over a year, had 67 VAs.
• 12:35
  And six months later, they had 350 as part of the process and part of the services. And I helped them recruit a president. 20 months later, when that president was in there around 350 BAs, that was valued at $1.7 million. We had an external valuation service on that. And then 20 months later, it was valued at $48.6 million.
• 13:00
  So it's amazing what happens when you organize everyone in a way to just be focused on creating more and more values and organization. And for sure, the number that's more material, whether it's cash flow or profit.
• 13:16
  It's wildly important to cultivate that, but you don't get nearly the multiple or the pace of growth if you're not focusing on improving the emotional energy value created inside the business and the connectedness value with all of the team members.
• 13:31
  As well, because we want them productively engaged. We want them all acting like the CEO of their own role and just going for it. I mean, this is the sense of achievement, accomplishment, self-esteem. All of that comes from accomplishing really amazing things.
• 13:48
  And we want this high level of productive engagement inside the organization. So every time it's done with a serious effort, because there's no silver bullet or magic pill, right, Kelly? It's like you actually have to lift a finger and do something. Yeah.
• 14:04
  But when it's done, it works literally every single time. And the couple times that it hasn't worked, it made the founder or CEO wildly uncomfortable because there's a lot of transparency that goes along with this. And that's okay. Not everybody's comfortable sharing all the numbers.
• 14:24
  And what I believe, if we can't show our team members the bullseye, how do we expect them to hit it? We can't just say, stay in your silo and do your best work, and it will all come together. With a mind methodology, everybody can see each other's most important number. When applied properly, they can see how the company is doing.
• 14:44
  They all realize that if the company increases in value over time, it's going to be good for everyone for so many reasons. So with very few exceptions where I've seen it not work, it's just it's made senior leadership uncomfortable being that transparent. In all other cases, it's been transformational.
• 15:04
  Does that make sense, Kelly? Dude, I follow it to a T because you know we live and breathe and eat it. That's why I had you on the podcast because this, you know, I didn't know this existed, so we implemented EOS. And it's funny, you just said this. This is faster than EOS because it took us two years.
• 15:23
  to feel the effects of implementing EOS. We changed a few things. Now, it probably helped that we'd run EOS and people understood it, but we changed and moved to the most important number, and we could feel the effects a lot faster. So it was way quicker than two years. It was probably a couple of months, and it really just razor-focused everything that we did. What was that...
• 15:49
  Is it the bobsled? There was a story and I'm going to, I'm going to butcher, but basically it was, um, I want to say it was a bobsled team or something about, oh no, it was the, it was the, it was a bike team, a racing bike team that was trying to go on the tour de France. And they said everything that their most important number was, does it make the bike faster?
• 16:10
  So every question, everything they did was, does it make the right question? It's, it just simplifies life because you had 85,000 things going on at once. You know, I have a personal brand. I have 30 people that report to me and there's certain times where I just, I can't see which way is up. So in, in,
• 16:31
  In EOS terms, if you're an EOS person, this is not a knockout. We're in Michigan. I know Gino personally. His partner's been on the podcast. It's different strokes for different folks. It's what works for you. Every business and every person is different. So if this works, great. We're just giving you other options. And I can tell you this much. Lee is an amazing gentleman, and he's amazing.
• 16:53
  The proof is in the pudding, man. He's done the real deal. So where I was going to go is this is delegate and elevate, really is what it is. It's delegate and here's what your number is. And we take it a step further. We have digital displays for everybody to see their number, and then they compare each other. And then they help each other because we've built this culture, which you discussed in there. So how do you...
• 17:19
  incorporate the culture into the mind methodology yeah well a value creation culture is what i believe we're all shooting for we want to build a machine a company i metaphorically think of a company as a value creation machine everybody plays a part they're a gear their transmission they're you know they're an engine
• 17:41
  But they all play a part. All has to fit together really well. So once you start implementing the mind methodology and everybody's talking about their most important number, it automatically drives cross-functional collaboration. You know, the sales team is curious what the marketing team is doing. They're both curious as to what delivery of service is doing because they're they they all help each other as each one of those gets, you know, gets better or improves.
• 18:07
  So just just changing the language a little bit starts to drive a changing culture. I get communications from folks around the world regularly that have read the book, didn't do a formal implementation. All they did is tell me, hey, we just changed the language. Everybody has the most important number. And then here we are a month later. The CEO wants to do something and his team is looking back saying, why are we doing that? What does that have to do with the most important number?
• 18:36
  Perfect. So, you know, one of my slogans, Kelly, is do less better until you're doing the basics really, really well. And I found that generally there's not more than three or four things that drive over 80 percent of the value in every organization until you're doing those incredibly well. Why would you pick something else?
• 18:56
  you know, to do. So just changing the language a little bit changes the culture in the direction of a value creation culture. Now, one of the things I love about the MIND methodology, when you put this basic foundation in place, so every team has a most important number, they have a set of drivers, which are just categories of work that they can leverage to improve their most important number. So this is the continuous improvement part of it.
• 19:24
  And then they have their meetings where they're discussing and taking actions around the best work they can do to improve their most important number. So once that's in place, anything else you want to do becomes easy. If you have a strategy session, which in my view is nothing more than just approaches to increasing the value of the business, stop making it complicated. It's just approaches to increasing the value of the business. You can now cascade that out appropriately to every single team.
• 19:51
  If you have an intentional culture where you have a list of behaviors that cause the most value to be created and you want everybody to live it, you cascade that right into the system. So it causes the culture to move in that direction of value creation just by changing the language. And then you can be if you want to be and I talk about this in the book, you can be really intentional about driving a culture that does create the most value.
• 20:22
  You guys got to listen to the words he's using. By the way, do less, better. That's fire. You're going to see a bunch of reels from me about that. Do less, better.
• 20:33
  Keep it simple. We're always so worried about expanding and the newest, latest, greatest, but do what you do and do it best. Create value and deliver results. Business is that freaking simple. Now, I will tell you, if you listen to the podcast at all and I talk about business, I started when I was 12 years old, I lied and said I was 13 and started a paper route.
• 20:57
  And the one thing that I've done to build every single business I've ever done to success is have a plan and execute that towards that plan. And that's literally what most important number is about. So if you're starting a business and you're listening to this podcast or you're thinking about starting a business,
• 21:16
  get some sort of business operating system, whether it be most important, the mind methodology, EOS or something, because I fought it for years. And then when I put it in during the pandemic, we doubled in revenue and we tripled profit because we had a plan, we had a map. So if you hit, it's like a GPS, GPS,
• 21:41
  You hit your GPS, it gives you the simplest and quickest route to where you're going. That's what this is. So if you're even thinking about starting a business, run out, buy this book. Go to his ETW, execute to win.com. Get in the room with this guy. He's absolutely brilliant. And then we're going to jump into the podcast because he's got a brilliant podcast that
• 22:01
  Somehow I weaseled my way on and it was a good, good time because this man is a brilliant, brilliant genius and everything he touches goes, it goes to gold. So your podcast deep dives, and by the way, it's called show your value. So please follow it. Show your value. Here we go again. Value results. I said, I can't get over the do less, better do less, better Lee. That's beautiful. I have a t-shirt I'll send you if you want it.
• 22:27
  Isn't that what we all want? Excuse me. Your podcast dives deep into performance-driven cultures. What's the biggest lesson you've learned from your guests so far? That is another amazing question. So I've had about 50 guests so far on the podcast. I started earlier this year going through.
• 22:54
  There's so much from all of them. I love Brian Smith, founder of Ugg Boots. So the sheepskin boots from Australia. And it was probably, I want to say, 10-ish years before they even hit a million dollars in sales. And then it was another five or six years before they sold it. And I think it was in the $25 million range. And then fast forward 20 years and they're doing $2.2 billion in sales or something like that.
• 23:22
  And one of the things he said that really stuck with me, and you and I know that business is hard, it's challenging, but it's fun, it's rewarding. It's our healthy struggle so we can grow ourselves, totally get it. We know it's not a straight line, but he said it's really a series of plateaus. I love that lesson. Like you figure something out, you take a big jump, like putting in an operating system.
• 23:47
  And then you stay there for a while, then you figure something else out and you take another jump, whatever that is. And I just thought that was that was so, so spot on. But, you know, so so many lessons and it doesn't happen overnight. There's always a pre story to the story, sometimes a couple of pre stories. So when people think, oh, my gosh, how come this stuff that doesn't just happen for me?
• 24:17
  And I had an employee actually say that. So every month back in the aerospace days, I would bring in all the new employees, talk about the history and what we're doing. And he actually said that, how come this stuff never just happens to me? And I'm like, well, I guess at this point, this is my, at the time, 23 year overnight success story. So I guess it didn't just happen to me, to me either. And I don't, I think a lot of people want something without having to go through what it takes to earn it.
• 24:46
  And I think that's a
• 24:48
  That's an issue. You actually have to earn something. And for me, and a lot of what I talk about in the podcast and the folks I interview, they're in it to create real value in the world. Oh, and by the way, all of this profit, all this recognition, brand, everything kind of happens alongside. But you can tell that they're just so focused on creating value in the world, not rigging the game, trying to make as much money as fast as they can. Mm-hmm.
• 25:18
  there's a big difference between those two. And, and, you know, I, I think going forward, there's going to be very few startup entrepreneurs that I'll get involved with because it seems like the majority of them are in it for the wrong reasons, not to really create value in the world. And I think those that are really in it to make a difference in the world, I don't know. I'm wondering what you would guess, Kelly. I think it's less than 10% of them, maybe less than 5% of them. Unfortunately, you know, I'm going to,
• 25:50
  i i i'm an optimist so i would hope it's higher i would guess around 50 just because i'm the internal i believe most people are good but i'm naive well i'm not saying i'm not saying they're bad i think they're in it for the wrong reasons like they i went i went for example to um uh arizona startup week and they're probably 40-ish founders in the room
• 26:13
  And I talked to most of them and there was one that was so passionate. She had this health tracking product and what they could do with it. Like, I need to learn more, but I would invest in that. The rest of them, the questions were, what do I need to put in my deck for you to give me money?
• 26:30
  And like they couldn't even have a conversation about the value. They just wanted to go there. And so there's one said there's one in 40 that I met in one instance. And I get to meet a lot of them. They're not they're not bad people. They they see successes. Oh, I made a bunch of money. And I look at I look at everybody else doing it. I want to do that, too, instead of I really want to solve this problem, which will cause that other stuff to happen for them a higher percentage of the time. In fact, I titled my talk.
• 26:58
  Why 90% of startups fail and why 90% of them don't have to. You know, it could be less than 10% if they're really focused on creating value. This isn't a good or bad comment or set of comments coming from me, Kelly. It's just let's go at it with the right intent and you'll probably make a lot more money.
• 27:19
  Yeah, I used a bad word. What I meant is that their intentions are good and bad. Either way. Yes, 95% intentions are good, maybe more, 100%. Do you think that...
• 27:34
  A lot of that has to do with the lack of being able to be emotionally intelligent and just communicate like you and I do. Like just looking at someone and saying, Lee, I'm struggling. I don't know what to do here. And just admitting it. I find that in my business, communication is 90% of the puzzle.
• 27:57
  Yeah, I think there's a large part of it where people are just uncomfortable being vulnerable around that. We both heard people don't fake being depressed. If anything, they fake things are way better than they are. And then we find out there was a giant problem because they wouldn't talk about it. But here's my belief is that if you're not in balance when it comes to what I'm calling sort of three macro buckets or categories of value creation, it's not going to feel good.
• 28:27
  If you're focused primarily on the money and you haven't worked on, you know, equally as hard cultivating positive emotional energy, which, again, scarces commodity on the planet because it supercharges everything we do. And you have an intentionally cultivated connectedness, you know, understanding yourself, your family, God, whatever's important to you around that communities, all of it. If you're not in balance in those three ways. Yeah.
• 28:55
  And everybody gets to pick what that balance looks like. It doesn't feel good. It's the stories where the multibillionaire commits suicide. They were wildly unhappy. Well, they didn't spend the same amount of time cultivating emotional energy and spiritual value creation. So for me, the more I work on all three buckets, keeping it in the right balance for me,
• 29:17
  the better I feel, the more fulfilled I am. Last year, there was an investment I made, not that large, relatively speaking, $300,000. There was probably a little over, right around $3 million in total that was raised. The company went under. And the relationships that I made, the connections in there and the emotional energy of just working with the internal team and their passion
• 29:44
  Way more than covered up that $300,000 loss. But the rest of the folks were really upset about it, the investors that came in. So I'm looking at it. Well, I'm in balance on all three. I can leverage the relationships I made to go make more than that money back if I choose to. I mean, there's clear dots being connected over in that direction. And it was a non-event for me. But because so much of our culture today is about the money.
• 30:10
  even your relative status as a person. It's crazy that that happens. So long way around answering your question. I think it's because they're out of balance between material, emotional, and spiritual value creation. All of them important. They're just out of balance. How does that land on you, Kelly? It's ironic you say that because I've been working lately on...
• 30:36
  just focusing on the day-to-day consistency of positivity and divorcing the outcome and just saying, no matter what happens, as long as I came and day in and day out gave it the best I could with the best intentions and forget about the outcome, all of a sudden the outcome is showing up faster and quicker
• 31:04
  And that's everything in personal life and my professional life. And it's been over the last couple of weeks because I did a priming session with a business coach where he noticed that the harder than life mantra and name, I was actually waking up every day and making life hard, business hard.
• 31:27
  Because everybody says it's so hard. So I would start a fight and create a fight that didn't exist. And I was actually creating the resistance. So now that I wake up and you talk about spirituality and just say, today's going to be a good, easy day. And the universe is going to provide me with many gifts and many...
• 31:47
  My days have gotten so much better. And this is, I'm successful. We are on a multimillion dollar cybersecurity IT business. The Heart of Life brand is blowing up. And I was waking up creating my own resistance. So what you just said is very real. And I feel it every, I am a living, breathing example of, I was the biggest problem. And I always, and frankly, I always am.
• 32:15
  Yeah, we do seem to create unnecessary emotional struggle. And I think that's probably true for just about everyone. And that means there's something there to kind of work on. And one thing that I've fully learned, and it's been this way for a long time, is to trust the struggle.
• 32:36
  Sometimes the harder it is, the more of a warm, fuzzy, tingling feeling I get inside because I know it's going to be amazing when I come out the other side, even when it kind of sucks right now, if that makes sense. And, you know, just like you doing your workouts and going to the gym, you're so incredibly fit. That's a struggle. You're putting in effort to improve yourself physically, which leads to emotionally, you know, mentally, you know, being stronger.
• 33:03
  And there's healthy struggles and there's lots of those. There's unhealthy struggles, could be illness, drug addiction or something worse. And then there's intentionally designed struggles. So I think when we're building a business, we've intentionally designed this struggle sandbox.
• 33:20
  And and are we're in there to figure it out. And we know we're doing the right work when the business is continually and responsibly increasing in its actual value going forward. So trusting struggle is a is something that parents are taking away from all the kids with the best of intentions. No wonder they're not ready to be an adult. A lot of them.
• 33:42
  And I think employers are taking struggles away from team members and we're not doing anybody any favors. Like, how do we grow without some sort of effort to improve? Like, I don't I don't I don't get it. Like the whole premise is screwed up. And I don't know how we got here. I see it easier should be better. Not really. Not in all cases. Trust the struggle.
• 34:07
  Oh man, listeners, you're getting, this is free. That's what's great about it. He's giving you a free, this is all it. This is what I do every day. So thank you for sharing. I want to unpack that even more, but I still got questions about the podcast. So, because I love your podcast, it's free. Another free resource that you can go out there. So there's absolutely no reason to...
• 34:33
  fail unless you just give up. I mean, the resources, you can listen to this show, you can reach out to me, you can read this, what was the book, 20 bucks? Read this book, 20 bucks. You can read Gino's Wickman's Traction. Everything you need.
• 34:52
  is available and most of it is free and some of it is so simple um what do you hope the listeners gain from tuning into your show 50 yen what do you what do you what do you what do you gain besides value that you keep repeating over and over and over
• 35:07
  To approach life through a value creation lens, a holistic value creation lens. Again, the material, the emotional energy and the spiritual like go through that. You know, I've had a number of folks ask me the question, how will we apply that to voting? Because I think there's an election coming up, right? I saw that. Yeah. And so I did about a 15 minute, you know, short on my podcast around that where I just talked about it.
• 35:35
  And if you think about the most important number of concepts, and now we want to make decisions that improve the conditions in our lives, right? So when I think about government, at a high level, their job is to continually improve conditions to work, live, learn, and play for the citizenry at a lowering relative cost over time. And so when you step back, is that what they're supposed to do? Is that what you want them to do? I think that represents the majority of Americans, even though they can't articulate it.
• 36:06
  And then great. So now let's analyze it. If they are capable of doing that. I also think they need to be moral. So we have to make win-win decisions in the best interest of the country, not for personal power or financial gain. But if they're capable of doing it, you would see the results. And you could take any any federal agency. If you just want to start there, if we if we look at the group of health agencies, FDA, CDC, NIH.
• 36:37
  Their collective missions, if you go to their websites, are directionally to continually improve the health and well-being of the citizenry.
• 36:45
  So every year, more and more money goes into those collectively. And every year, the health and well-being of the citizenry gets worse and worse. So for me, they're not capable of doing their job. So when I think about voting, who will make a change there? Because there's nothing more important than that. Our health and well-being, it's the foundation of everything that we do as a citizenry. And I could do the same thing in education, more money going into the K-12 system,
• 37:14
  Every year the results are going down. They're not capable. And you'll find a lot of, you know, captured agencies, you know, from it could, you know, could be big pharma on the on the health care side. It could be curriculum providers, you know, school bus contracts. It's so strange when you go to the state legislature in Arizona.
• 37:37
  And it's supposed to be about the kids when the K-12 stuff comes up. But the vast majority of the discussions are adults fighting over money, and it's not about the kids.
• 37:46
  It just isn't. So this is all about and this is why I started the podcast. I'm trying to perpetuate holistic value creation behaviors out into the world. Think about applying it holistically in your for profit company, in your nonprofit company, and especially within your family. What would be different in every family if.
• 38:09
  They were building legacy holistically, not just a bunch of money, divide and hope for the best someday. Let's let's build a generation generation as well as the emotional energy, what it feels like to be in the family and how connected the family is to themselves and everything important to that family. Build legacy that way. That's why, Kelly, I took over recently as interim CEO of a company called Dinner Table.
• 38:38
  parents in our parenting community. And then we have more actively engaged communities beside that. But our whole goal is to, you know, basically raise the next generation of value creators. And the community is just one big community of parents raising kids to create value in the world. So when I look at the three legs of the stool where I'm trying to have impact in the world, it's for-profit, non-profit, and now families that, you know, we're going to
• 39:07
  to drive these holistic value-cruiser behaviors. And if we get it right with the kids, oh my gosh, I mean, that's going to be an amazing world for us to age out in someday. How much of the Execute to Win Mastermind program is about mindfulness? I find you're tremendously mindful. And that's why I think I resonate to you. What you're really saying is take out the emotions.
• 39:34
  And, and folk, and that's literally when you focus on your most important number, that's what you do. I never even thought when I was going through the show prep and I was looking through all your podcast guests, I, the first one I looked at was that, uh, the voting, I'm like, oh, I got to listen to this one. And I didn't even think about it. Cause you're right. How many people do you hear? And I don't want to go down to politics last podcaster we had went down politics and it
• 40:02
  It just literally I'm voting for Kamala because
• 40:06
  I don't like Trump. Well, that doesn't make sense. The vice versa is true. I'm going to vote for Trump because Kamala, well, she hasn't given us any numbers. I don't know. I don't want to make this a bad thing, but I just like to use references. But if I have a nickel for every person that said I'm going to vote for one or the other because I don't like the other person, it's like you missed the mark. And I think that's what you were saying.
• 40:33
  So again, I asked you a question and I freaking talked over you. So I apologize. How much of the program is mindfulness? Because I find you tremendously mindful.
• 40:42
  Yeah. Well, with with every CEO in each of these groups, you know, our job is to keep them at that right place where they need to be at every point in time to responsibly and continually increase the value of their business. And I would I would say that emotion plays a giant part in in all the work that I do. What's helpful about organizing things?
• 41:06
  you know, the most important numbers and how to think about strategy and business model and the value of our products and culture and all of that is when the emotions are swinging and that happens in all of us, you can look back at the value that you're creating right in front of you and it keeps you right there. And it's so helpful for me that when negative emotions might come up, you know,
• 41:34
  Noise from the outside, because not everybody's happy with everything that I do as I'm passionately creating value in a certain area. Having this value creation lens, I just look at I look at internal talk that maybe isn't that most helpful or external noise.
• 41:50
  Does that have anything to do with reality of, you know, around the value I'm trying to create it? The answer is no. It's such an easy hack, right? To keep it there. And, and, you know, you, you brought up the voting piece of it. I never would tell anybody who to vote for. I just say, hey, I'm encouraging you to vote for folks that will create policies that will improve conditions for your family and communities that are important to you.
• 42:20
  And that's it. Take the emotion out of it. The challenge that most of the citizenry has, in my view, all of the voters, is that our news media business model has become one of monetizing division. That's it. The more upset they can get people, the more eyeballs and more money they make on advertising.
• 42:44
  through the value creation lens that takes a lot of value out of the world. And I look at the United States and there's, I could go around the world with this. I just look at the United States and my view, we're not even realizing 10% of the value we could be creating as a country, not even 10%. And I think the most pent up unrealized value creation potential is,
• 43:05
  is in the low and middle income families. And I say that because the kids have way more drive than the upper middle income and above families. Way more drive. They want it. I came from a super low income family. You and I have talked about this before. Lots of crazy chaos, you know, family members in and out of prison for some bad things.
• 43:28
  I had the drive. Right. So I look at that. And so I went from negative to having multigenerational wealth and just my time here. All of these kids can do it. But what do we have in the media? Oh, it's not your fault. It's that political party's fault or that person's fault that they make it sound like the most important thing in the world is the election cycle and who's going to win.
• 43:54
  Instead of what can we do as a country to create more and more value? Did you watch the capture of that booster rocket Elon Musk video that's been flying around? They just giant like 20 story booster rocket segment comes in and they capture it on the pole. It didn't land on the ground. They captured on the side of this of this frame.
• 44:19
  And you could see the people just going nuts with how cool that was. Like, look at this technology and what's going on. We need to get back to that. And it can be happening everywhere. Right. But instead, no, the most important thing, according to news media, is who's going to win an election and how upset we can make you with somebody else.
• 44:39
  Right. So it's so emotion plays a giant part. But let's be really mindful and let's have a framework for how to address these emotions that just are taking value out of the world, not helping you create more value.
• 44:55
  That's the only place I can go with that. United we stand, divided we fall. And here's a newsflash. No matter who the president is, I'm going to win. So are you. So really, they can divide us all they want. And it's just one side is winning. So I would tell you that
• 45:12
  You know, the most there's a reason why we haven't had an attack on U.S. soil that that will unite us. That's why they're attacking Elon Musk, because that space exploration unites us. I mean, that's why when we put people on on the moon.
• 45:29
  That was one of the most important times where we came together. When we do amazing, epic things, it unites us. And just like the infighting. But I want to flip it over because I'm just fascinated by you. You're doing good in the world, and you're trying to share good. You don't need to do any of this stuff. You don't need the money.
• 45:51
  I'm on your website, the ETW, and I drove into the execute chairs, not the chairs, but the mastermind. There's eight people allowed in there. What's it cost? $25,000 a year to be part of it.
• 46:07
  Okay, $25,000 a year is to be, and that's the best investment, because you are your best investment. It sounds like a lot. I've spent a lot more than that on myself, and you get it back probably 10x and even more, because you're going to be in a room with people that are doing what you're doing and want to do and think like you. And then to go back to your question, your thing about the lower to middle class kids, there's so many more of them.
• 46:37
  So why are we focused on the upper class when the lower and middle class
• 46:42
  There's just so many more kids and we need to get them those limiting beliefs that they learned from their parents out of them. You and I are a perfect example of that. I mean, one of the number one things I had to teach myself was confidence because everybody that I grew up with, their dad or in jail, and we were taught you're going to amount to nothing because you're where you grew up. And that is bullshit. Sorry, I emphasized that a little bit. Yeah.
• 47:12
  But I think you're right. Perspective is everything. If you can't believe it to be possible, then likely it's, you know, 99% probably never going to happen in there. So...
• 47:26
  Yeah, this is a huge opportunity. One thing I'll say when you say I don't have to do this, yeah, I could just go camping and play guitar. And I'm actually in another band just released an album and not do anything but that. I could do that. But I feel really good when I'm driving holistic value creation behaviors in the world. And the way I think about practicing virtue, because I think the majority of the world virtue signals a lot more than they actually practice virtue.
• 47:56
  And for me, it's creating objectively measurable value and at the same time pushing back on things, taking value out of the world. So you're either creating value.
• 48:07
  And it's measurable and you can feel it. Net positive value. If a company makes billions of dollars, but it takes a trillion out of the world to do it, that did not create any positive value. So you're creating value or you're taking it out of the world somehow by rigging the game. And what I believe is that for whatever I create, I need to push back on things, taking it out, at least in proportion. And so I agree with you. We're going to win no matter what.
• 48:35
  And I still think we need to push back hard on what's happening with social media and news outlets that are monetizing division to move them more in a direction of creating value. And the more value creators we create, just the math says the number that are taking it out of the world will decrease.
• 48:54
  And I think the reason it keeps rising up and blowing up and it's done it for all of recorded history is because those taking value out of the world never stop. But they get, you know, sort of ridiculous enough to where everybody else goes, OK, we've had enough and we're done. And once it's done, they go back to creating value and don't pay attention to them. What I'm advocating for, Kelly, is that we actually pay attention to it and call it out, shine a flashlight on it every time we see it. All of us can do it, even if it's just.
• 49:24
  You know, one situation, one person, all of us have the ability to do it. But I theorize the reason it keeps rising up and doing this is because they never stop and we stop until it gets bad enough to pay attention.
• 49:38
  Yeah, unfortunately, that's life, too. We have to hit proverbial rock bottom before we make change. And unfortunately, that's what it looks like our country is headed to. It's like we have to hit such divisiveness that we actually everybody feels it. And then we go, whoa, we shouldn't have done all this infighting and everything.
• 50:02
  focus on the most important number which is bringing the united states poverty level up so we could talk about this forever i want to get into some um yeah i i want to get in your personal life because you know right now it's your your you're very successful a lot of money you just talked about a band that you're in by the way it's a cool name tell me the name of the band
• 50:26
  It's landed. It's like a plane coming in for a landing, but it's landed is the name of the band. There's four of us released the album probably eight weeks ago now, and we have our first gig playing out in a few weeks.
• 50:43
  in phoenix we did a listening party here in my music studio that's what i'm calling in from here today and probably had um 80-ish people here it was just a lot of fun did it acoustically played five songs in it or six songs and then listen to the album but it's been a power hobby my whole life i started playing guitar so young i don't remember not knowing how to play guitar and i still make the time to play two to three sometimes more hours every single day to stay in
• 51:13
  Where can I get the album? Anywhere. Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal. I think it's in 18 different streaming services. I'll text you a link to the Spotify when we finish here.
• 51:26
  Next time you have those parties, let me know. I have to get to Arizona, and I only go out west when I have to be somewhere to support someone I love. And you're one of those people. And being in a room with you, you can't help but be better. What's the significance of landed? You told me, and it was remarkable, and I can't remember what it is.
• 51:48
  Well, everyone in the band, they've done amazing things and we're just coming around like what would the name of the band be? So we're a guitar band. And so it's almost like Black Crows, STP and Alice in Chains had a baby and that was the band. That's what we sound like.
• 52:08
  Oh, send me that link, dude. STP and Alice in Chains are two of my favorite bands. And I listen to rap because I grew up in the ghetto, but I still, if I want to get pumped up in the gym, I listen to rock and Alice in Chains. That was my college band when I first went to, and Stone Temple Palace. You just couldn't get through college without listening to those two. So, yeah, send me that link. I'm excited.
• 52:32
  Yeah, I will. And then, hey, we've all landed here and the groove is incredible. And we started talking about, hey, landed sounds like a pretty good name for the band and the cover of it. We landed on Landed. A Les Paul with wings and light behind it after one of the songs that we wrote. All right, I got some fun questions. So in your own life, what's your most important number that you focus on and why?
• 52:58
  I talked about a little bit earlier, but it's fulfillment because I think you can elevate that throughout your life, even when times are really tough and you go through periods of not being very happy for different reasons. Fulfillment can still climb. Am I doing the right work? Am I having an impact, whether it's for this life or the next? Selfishly, in a win-win way, it makes me feel really good to do that.
• 53:23
  And you notice people that are listening to this, this is a very successful, very wealthy man. And he, and he still makes time to have fun. I, you know, Lee full disclosure, I was grinding so hard. I'd forgotten to have fun in the last three weeks when I did that prime exercise, you hear me joking around and telling jokes and laughing and,
• 53:40
  I forgot to be me. I was just nose down, most important number, go, go, go, go. I forgot to be human and trust the struggle, as you said, and do less better, which you're just, dude, I'm loving these Benson-isms, if you will. So thank you for that. And so another question is, how do you stay motivated and align with your goals on a day-to-day basis when you don't really need to do this stuff?
• 54:09
  Well, I feel like I do need to do this stuff. Now, I don't need it to afford food or a roof over my head, but I feel like I, I mean, I'm driven to do this. I could stop. I feel like I'm making such traction, driving holistic value creation behaviors into the world in so many different ways.
• 54:31
  That's so fulfilling. Like if I stopped doing all this and I just plateau my internal fulfillment and that might start to go down and that would kind of suck. Like I like I have I this is important to me to do if I want to keep increasing that that internal most important number. I can't stop. And I've got a lot of diversity in the things that I do, you know, between the band and exercise. I've got another book I'm in the middle of writing.
• 55:01
  it's a full life and I love it. Please, when you get it, send it to me. So we'll have you back on the show. I love reading the books and sharing it with people because this is how you get smart. This is the cheapest and easiest personal development tool, reading. And it's available to everybody. So I just, I think I said this on your podcast, but I will tell this again, everybody. I'll tell you.
• 55:25
  Money doesn't make you happy, but happiness will make you money. So if you're going to focus on one, focus on your mind. Make your mind right. Do right. Do good. Feel good. Or feel good. Do good. Be good. And it's just, it's so simple, but we focus too much on external. If I just make this million dollars, I'll be worthy. I'll be good enough. No, no, no, no.
• 55:49
  don't you just be good enough and then you'll make them $10 million if you focus on the most important number, which to me is that seven working out, feeling good, doing good. And it's just, it's so much simpler than what we make it. So I'm going to ask you some personal fun questions because you're so serious, but fun. I'm going to ask you some fun ones. So I'm going to ask you to be cool.
• 56:16
  Guys, go out, get his book. This guy is a walking genius. And the whole time I was thinking, by the way, it's so funny we're talking about Elon Musk. The whole time I'm talking to you again this time, I was thinking Elon Musk. The two of you guys would have a very good conversation. That would be amazing. Someday it will likely happen. It will. It will. So if you could have any superpower to boost business results, what would it be and why?
• 56:48
  uh, wow. So I get to call the superpower, whatever I want. Uh, anything you want. Yeah. Well, it's back in that, that bucket of value creation, but it's confidence.
• 57:06
  I just, I love that answer. Cause I literally have been sitting here thinking about the harder than life coaching and like, what am I just abs? What's my most important number in the coaching program? And it's my girlfriend looked at me. She's like confidence. You're the most confident person I've ever met. It's like, Ooh, that was hard for me to accept. I don't know why. Do you get that in our conversations? And
• 57:32
  Well, you're very confident. And I want to qualify it and say it has to be real confidence, not a facade. Like the comments that I'll get, I did a workshop a couple weeks ago. And somebody just said he's never, like I always get asked for biggest takeaways. Like, did you get anything out of this? You know, yes or no. And either way, it's good information for me.
• 57:55
  And this gentleman's takeaway was he's never experienced somebody have the calm confidence to lead a session like this, like never experience a facilitator do that. I'm like, whatever. It's like breathing for me. I've done it so many times with my own businesses and helped others do it.
• 58:13
  There's like there's there's no imposter syndrome anywhere. It's like when it came to taking the hill, I built the hill, tore it down three times, took all sides and then took it another time. It's like so we we earn confidence. Right. And and I want folks to feel confident with what they've done and keep building on it to grow that internal fulfillment and confidence over time.
• 58:38
  Don't give in to I can't do it. You're here. There's always a better way than you can think of today. It's your job to find it. Work really hard on that instead of beating yourself up emotionally or in any other way. I've never said I can't do that. How hard could it be has always been my mantra for decades. Sure, I can do that. The initial company, we had a small ledger plating shop.
• 59:05
  weren't making it as a job shop. Hey, let's apply this to the aircraft industry. Well, how do we do that? Well, you have to become an FAA repair station to do it. Okay, well, I'll go do that. And I found somebody, I wrote the manual, got certified to do it. What would most people say, Kelly? Oh, I've never done that before. I can't do that. And then you just move on. It's like, ah. Or it can't be done. The big one is it can't be done. No is people's go-to. I would say, is it no...
• 59:34
  that you don't know how to do it or is it no, it can't be done? Or is it no, you just are giving me your limitations. I, and I always say, let's get to no K N O W let's, let's know what it entails. And you gotta, I just thought about this. I was talking to you, you take that confidence. And part of having that confidence is getting, is figuring out what that most important number is. And that gives you the razor focus. So think about this. I'll use me.
• 1:00:01
  I want to lose weight or I want to be in the, I want to be in, I want to have a six pack of apps. It isn't, oh, I got to go do, I got to go diet. I got a meal prep. I got my most important number with my goal. Most important numbers, get to the gym seven times. So without that, nothing happens. Nothing. You can diet all you want. You're not going to get six pack. So you take this simple, simple.
• 1:00:27
  manage most important number and build it with consistency and confidence. That's literally what my coaching program is. Consistent confidence and confidence and your most important number. And you got the heart of the life coaching program and it works. This is a scary part about it.
• 1:00:44
  It works for business, fitness, relationships. It works anything you want. Want to talk about relationships? I can sit here and tell you what your most important number is. And it might be a reverse reciprocal, which is the things you shouldn't be doing that you are doing.
• 1:00:59
  Hmm. It's, it's wild where you can take this and it's fascinating, but it is simple. Um, which is a funny question I put together here cause I don't, I don't like it, but I think it's going to give us some good dialogue. What's one thing you're surprisingly terrible at despite being a master of alignment and efficiency.
• 1:01:20
  Ah, that's funny. Dancing. So I need to get with Evan to help me with that. Like I've been on over a thousand stages running around playing guitar and all that, but lose my prop. What am I supposed to do? And I, and I think the reason for it is I played so many nights in bars. The last thing I ever wanted to do was go to a bar and do anything. They're dancing, drink or anything. If I wasn't working, you know, playing in a bar, but that would be it. How long have you been married?
• 1:01:48
  I've never been married. You're not married. Okay. So there's what we got to do. Your most important numbers to go dancing at the bar and then we'll get you married. See how it works. That's hilarious. I just love you. You're a great dude. All right. Last question. And then I'll give you the floor. If you had to pick a thing song that plays every time you walk into the room, what would it be? I will end up by my band Landed.
• 1:02:18
  Now I got to send me that song, please, because I want to hear it. All right, we're done here, but I want to ask, is there anything else that I didn't ask you that you felt compelled to share?
• 1:02:31
  I think we covered a lot of stuff and each category could probably go another hour by itself. One thing I would add to having an operating system and you've emphasized the importance of it. And I 100 percent agree with you. Doesn't matter what you do, whether it's EOS or mind methodology or OKRs or scaling up or 40X. There's a lot of popular ones and thousands of those that are not as popular.
• 1:02:57
  Doing anything to intentionally increase the value of your business, just focusing on that and having that discussion always gets a short-term bump. Now, the challenge with most operating systems is they make process more important than what's most important. So our teams are running around, did I do the meeting right? Did I do this right? Did I do that right? Right.
• 1:03:17
  The reason I developed the mind methodology was we're all going to focus on what's the value we create and what's the best work we're doing to continually do that. That's why I evolved because I tried just about everything else way back in the day as I was going through it. Yeah.
• 1:03:34
  Anything you do, please do something that's really important. And then look at what you're doing and make sure you're not making process more important than creating value. So there is that. And then, you know, anybody that wants to learn more about the work that I'm doing, just go to my website, etw.com. We have a mind methodology course there. Take the course.
• 1:03:55
  Read the book, change the language just a little bit inside your business and the results will change. And I have hundreds and hundreds of examples of that of people from around the world communicating it to me. And probably in about Kelly, probably in about.
• 1:04:10
  30 to 60 days, we're re-releasing the book. And I added an eighth chapter to the book. And it addresses an issue that we talked a little bit about earlier. So there's chapter seven and then an appendix, which is a DIY section.
• 1:04:27
  Today, the eighth chapter is going to be going over why sometimes even when you apply an operating system, you fail. And it gets into the business model strategy or approaches to increasing the value of the business, the actual value of your product or service. Do you love your stuff more than your customers do? And what are you doing about it? And then fourth, culture. So some would say, oh, I did EOS and it didn't work. I don't know. Did you really do it with the right intent? Yeah.
• 1:04:56
  I did my methodology. That didn't work. They were looking for a silver bullet. They looked at the book. They didn't even read it, and it didn't work. So therefore, that didn't work. No. So why does it fail sometimes when you intentionally follow installing and operating methodology in your business? So I felt it was really important to add that chapter. That's coming in the next 30 to 60 days. I love it. I'm going to learn it all. Could you send that to me electronically, or do I got to go buy the book and read it? I just want that last chapter. I want to know that.
• 1:05:25
  You know, I'm going to I'm going to email you. It's a draft. Please don't share with anybody. No, no, I won't share that. I just want it. I want it because ours is working. And I would tell you what you just said. And the number one quote, I hope we use this as the show title. Do less better.
• 1:05:40
  Because we focused and we run in our meetings correctly. And then we break out the traction book and we break out and we go through it. That's why I like the most important number. It's like it doesn't matter. Just focus on what moves the needle. So I would tell you the same thing. Don't focus on the the the the journey.
• 1:06:03
  Take it easy because I read business books all the time. 10X is greater than 2X or easier than 2X. Buy back your time. And, you know, you kind of got to steal from it and then make it your own because we're all different. And I find that about your book tremendously. And, you know, like prior to reading your book, if I didn't have this podcast, I would think EOS was it. And it just, it got to a point where it was like,
• 1:06:31
  We're focused on the process more than we are the results. And that's why when I got your book, it's like, oh, thank goodness. And by the way, we're talking about spirituality. Everything happens when it's supposed to happen. That's how I get to meet you. So please let me know when the next time you guys are having something to do with the band. I want to support you as much as I can. Every time I get to interact with you, I just realize how I'm...
• 1:06:57
  beautiful you are and you admit just love and positivity and the world needs to know more and more about you and uh i'm honored that to call you friend guys go out and buy the book wait for it in the new chapter to come out if you're watching on youtube it's right here i'm putting it up it's an easy read i i read it really really really slow because i wanted to digest it
• 1:07:19
  And if I could, you could see how many things I pinned back and I got notes and notes and notes. This man is the real deal. Thank you for playing. Thank you for being harder than life. And thanks.
• 1:07:36
  Please rate and share this podcast. I'm active on all social platforms and love to hear from my Segal supporters. Each and every episode is sponsored by my company, National Technology Management, the easiest and best IT company to do business with, delivering peace of mind with technology every day, even simplifying cybersecurity. Visit TrustNTM.com for more info. Until next week, be harder than life.