Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / Betting My House On The Deal Everyone Said Would Fail

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Betting My House On The Deal Everyone Said Would Fail · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Not the best family environment,
• 0:01
  toxic and a little bit dangerous.
• 0:03
  I spent one night actually in my truck And then the next night I
• 0:06
  was working full time as a cook,
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  I realized my parents couldn't raise themselves,
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  let alone five kids, so it really wasn't about me.
• 0:13
  there was a purchasing agent that said,
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  Look, I want an all-expense paid trip to Las Vegas whenever I want it,
• 0:18
  and if you don't give it to I'm gonna pull all the work out and send
• 0:20
  it to another vendor.
• 0:21
  I'll assume the debt put my house up as collateral for the creditor debt,
• 0:25
  but for the paper debt, I get to decide whether I can afford to pay it back or not.
• 0:29
  I knew we were doing the right work because the harder it got,
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  the harder we laughed.
• 0:32
  look at your podcast beyond fulfillment.
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  that's what's most important for me.
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  But once you're fulfilled, how do you keep creating value past it?
• 0:45
  All right, Lee Benson, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
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  Great to be here. Thanks for having me,
• 0:49
  Dave.
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  Yes, so excited you could take the time.
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  so Lee, you know, most people hear nine-figure exit and they assume there's some
• 0:58
  sort of privileged backstory, the right school,
• 1:00
  the right connections, the right family.
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  But your story starts completely different.
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  You were kicked out of your house at the start of your senior year of high school.
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  You are already working full-time just to survive,
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  and somewhere between sleeping on couches and playing in a band and working
• 1:14
  a day job in a machine shop.
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  You decided you're gonna build something.
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  So take me back to that version of you and and what was burning inside
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  you before you had any of the language or the plan.
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  Yeah,
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  I looked at being kicked out of the house as probably one of the best things that
• 1:27
  ever happened to me. I spent one night actually in my truck that I purchased with
• 1:31
  my own money. And then the next night I was working full time as a cook,
• 1:34
  so I had enough money to find somebody that needed a roommate.
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  So I'd had an apartment and it was great.
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  went on to, playing a band the first half of the nineteen eighties,
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  played over a thousand shows is how I made most of my money back then.
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  but yeah, I was financially self reliant from seventeen until now.
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  Family was low income, but we always had a roof over our head,
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  always had food. Not the best family environment,
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  ~ toxic and a little bit dangerous.
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  ~ dysfunctional is normal. This was beyond that.
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  so in a lot of ways, best thing that ever happened to me.
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  for me, it's all about like how do I create value in the world?
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  I'm just leaning in to everything I did.
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  I wanted to be the best that ever did it.
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  You know, like the restaurant,
• 2:11
  best dishwasher they ever had,
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  best busboy, best cook, best guitar player.
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  Player in the Phoenix Metro area.
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  And I just took that into everything that I did.
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  And that led to, eventually starting eight businesses from scratch.
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  I've sold three of them, one for well into nine figures.
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  I'm CEO of two companies today.
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  one I started, one I rescued. And that's been a two-year passion project,
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  and it's super interesting and very rewarding.
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  I'm still in the game. So 64
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  years old and I feel like I'm speeding up when I hear so many people talk about
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  slowing down. It's like why would you do that?
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  it's so good for our brains and our bodies and just everything to stay
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  in the game with the right kind of healthy struggle and keep growing.
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  Does that make sense, Dave?
• 2:51
  Yeah, absolutely. And I love that mindset,
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  love that attitude. And that's a whole other conversation we could
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  get into around retirement. And you just you just mentioned off camera too,
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  you're just about to qualify for Medicare,
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  ~ you know,
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  Yeah.
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  at at your age.
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  I love the fact that you're still doing what you love.
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  You're still active in business.
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  You've got a lot of companies you're invested in.
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  You run a couple, you're in your studio,
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  you're recording new music. So you're truly living life on your terms,
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  which is I'm sure what everyone would want at that age.
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  but let's go back to prior. So toxic family environment.
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  You're kicked out very early, senior year.
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  So you're used to having to make your own money and just survive on your own.
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  And like you said, that's great for your self-development.
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  And you always have this just natural passion to want to be the best
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  at whatever you do. how did you take that and go from,
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  working in a restaurant and playing in a band and all that to actually getting into
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  the entrepreneurial game?
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  I never used the word or even thought about surviving,
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  I was thriving on my own. This was so cool.
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  And when people ask me, hey, where did you get your start in business?
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  I'm not joking when I say I was six years old,
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  a neighbor unsolicited, didn't know them,
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  asked me to pull weeds for 25 cents an hour.
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  And back in the, mid-sixties, that's actually a lot of money for a kid.
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  And that was really cool. And then it went on to shoveling snow and mowing lawns
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  and paper outs.
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  and so by the time I was kicked out of the house,
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  I was financially self-reliant and very financially competent for that age.
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  And so I I've learned to call it
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  This value creation cycle to where I struggle to get a capability,
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  I build some confidence, I use it to create value,
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  builds even more confidence, and then I take a bigger step if I choose to.
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  And each time I take bigger steps going around this value creation cycle,
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  the struggles become more intense,
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  the effort, but they're wildly healthy and so fulfilling,
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  and you grow going through it.
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  And so that's all it really was for me from six years old,
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  and maybe it took about
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  23, 24 years from there to take bigger and bigger and bigger steps to where,
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  my gosh, I made a million dollars in a year,
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  and then it just took off from there.
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  and then the other thing I learned,
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  I wanted to create value holistically.
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  A lot of people, virtue signal,
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  add value and whatever. but what does that really mean?
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  And so I look at and I say, I want to objectively create holistic
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  value.
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  Value and push back on things in the world,
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  taking value out of the world.
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  And so for me, it's material, it's emotional energy,
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  and it's spiritual. And spiritual is about connectedness with myself,
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  my family, communities important to me,
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  higher power, anything that's important to me.
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  And I actually teach that I've worked with thousands of high school kids,
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  thousands of leaders inside organizations.
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  Like, let's create value holistically.
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  The money is wildly important.
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  We have to support our families,
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  we have to do all this other stuff.
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  But positive emotional energy,
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  I think, is the scarcest commodity on the planet.
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  It supercharges everything we do.
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  So I want to do that. It's the X factor for leaders and do it really well.
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  And then spiritual value creation,
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  about connectedness, that's about opportunity.
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  It's like, my gosh, the more I lean into communities and the companies that
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  I work with, the team members that I work with in my businesses,
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  it just exposes you to so many more things when you're building this spiritual
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  or connectedness.
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  In this, you value creation bucket.
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  So that's a long way of saying,
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  for me, it's all about getting that balance right for myself.
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  And when I work with others, I'm encouraging them to find the right balance
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  for them. And when I hear people say,
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  it can't be about the money and all this other stuff,
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  that's crazy. Money is wildly important,
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  but it's one part of these three different buckets.
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  And so I think it's really healthy,
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  at least for me, as I go through life,
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  to continually get better at the material value creation,
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  the emotional
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  energy and and the spiritual piece of it.
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  And that's how I grow and go through life.
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  And it feels good because isn't that what this is all about?
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  How we feel going through life,
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  Dave,
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  A hundred percent. you wanna enjoy what you're doing,
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  you wanna feel good about it. That gives you more energy to put more effort,
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  time, and just keep going, right?
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  Everyone feels good when they're creating value and they they're enjoying what
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  they're doing.
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  My most important internal number is fulfillment.
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  And so look at your podcast beyond fulfillment.
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  And I was thinking, like, well,
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  that's what's most important for me.
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  But once you're fulfilled, how do you keep creating value past it?
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  And that's how I've been thinking about your podcast getting ready
• 7:03
  for this discussion and listening to a number of your conversations that
• 7:07
  you have with your guests on your podcast.
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  I think fulfillment's it. And when you get in that sweet spot of growth
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  and creating value and pushing back on things,
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  taking value.
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  value
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  out of the world, what a cool place to be.
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  And I don't think there's any end to how we can elevate consciousness
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  or whatever you want to call it and how we get on that track and
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  for our personal journey.
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  Yeah, absolutely.
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  All right. So let's talk about the company that you're most notable for
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  is this nine figure exit. And when you took over that company,
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  the company was in some dire straits,
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  about to go under and you basically assume the debt.
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  you had a very rocky road before you ultimately grew that into what would become
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  that nine figure exit.
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  I would say that company I took over,
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  that was my first venture into my gosh,
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  I have my own business now. And it was one second or less into signing
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  the papers and it was mine that it felt amazing.
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  Like I can't believe I waited this long.
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  And so I'm in my late thirties when I did that.
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  like this is great. I'm glad I'm finally doing this.
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  It was fun. It was really tough the first year.
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  but what led up to me having an opportunity to take this company,
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  because I had a house and
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  you know, a little bit of savings,
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  but not much money by then, to speak of in a big way.
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  So
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  One thing I'll say is I think the biggest deficit on the planet is we
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  do not have enough leaders that are both capable and moral.
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  And most people will virtue signal,
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  but when it comes to any material amount of money that's at stake,
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  you'll see them act differently.
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  they won't approach a deal where all stakeholders involved need to come out winning.
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  Usually it's win-lose around that.
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  And so I had a a chain of those things going along.
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  so here I am, I'm playing in a band,
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  running this electroplating business as a shop foreman,
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  general manager. Got about twenty-five employees.
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  ninety percent of our business was with one customer.
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  today it's called Honeywell, but it was Allied Signal back then.
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  And there was a purchasing agent that approached and said,
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  Look, I want an all-expense paid trip to Las Vegas whenever I want it,
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  and if you don't give it to I'm gonna pull all the work out and send
• 9:38
  it to another vendor. we said no.
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  That's a really slippery slope you don't want to go down.
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  And it took them about six months and they had to hire one of our employees,
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  but they figured out how to do the work at another vendor that would play that game,
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  and all the work went away. And as I was sort of running around,
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  how can you do this? And I'm going through supply chain,
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  like it was a really corrupt supply chain back then,
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  like all the way through. But the net effect was,
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  you know, this is the crazy world,
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  and bam, 90% of our business is gone overnight.
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  So we went down to three employees.
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  My boss said, close or
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  To sell that you've got 30 days.
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  I couldn't find anybody to buy it.
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  And I said, Well, you know what?
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  I want to go this direction? I want to take our electroplating where we're repairing
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  parts for, Honeywell, that would go into a turbine engine.
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  We might charge them $300. We can go directly to an aircraft operator
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  and sell that repair for five or six thousand dollars because if they
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  get it through the OEM, the original equipment manufacturer,
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  they're charging them $10,000.
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  It'd be a great deal for everybody except for the OEM losing business.
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  And my boss said at the time, you don't know anything about that.
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  It'll never work. And I said, Well,
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  how about this? let me assume the debt.
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  We have two hundred thousand in creditor debt,
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  four hundred thousand in paper debt to pay back management fee that
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  we can never afford. and I'll assume the debt put my house up as collateral
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  for the creditor debt, but for the paper debt,
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  no interest, three thousand a month.
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  I get to decide whether I can afford to pay it back or not.
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  and over time. So it actually kind of worked out.
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  He walked away from 200k in personally guaranteed debt because I took that over.
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  And after 11 point whatever years,
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  he got $400,000 that was the end of 93 when I took it over.
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  It was 95 when I set up another aerospace company.
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  I set up another aerospace company in 99.
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  And I just kept sort of doing this in my little conglomerate that I have here.
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  when I took
• 11:19
  That one company over this electroplating process,
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  it was 100% of what we did then.
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  when I sold the company, that one in 2002-ish,
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  I rolled it into one of my other businesses,
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  and it was less than 0.02% of everything we did.
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  So we took that one process, developed a couple of repairs,
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  hit the road for eight months selling them,
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  and then fast forward, we have over 300,000 square feet
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  of manufacturing and processing space where we could build an entire helicopter from
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  scratch if we wanted.
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  wanted to from one little electroplating process,
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  seven repairs when I hit the road that first year in '94,
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  to ten thousand repairs and ridiculously cool capability.
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  And never once did we have to raise a dollar of outside investment capital.
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  there was a lot that went into that,
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  but just being really disciplined around when we make profit,
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  this percent goes to pay taxes.
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  and half of our money stayed in the business to grow at the rate we
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  Did there's just discipline systems,
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  everything that goes into it, and what an incredible 23-year overnight success
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  story. And I I guess I'm currently on my 64-year overnight success story
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  and I'm still cranking on it. It just
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  What a cool place to be in this healthy struggle,
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  just creating value in this way and pushing back on things,
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  taking value out of the world.
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  appreciate that whole story there.
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  And I love that term, healthy struggle,
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  by the way, as far as the way that you frame it.
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  And that's so important for just anyone as humans as we evolve and grow.
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  so I love that framing. But so let's talk at this time,
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  right? So ninety percent of your business is with one customer,
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  you never want to do that in business.
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  That's already very dangerous.
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  And then
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  Okay.
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  You have a corrupt purchasing agent that basically gives you an ultimatum.
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  You pass on that and he pulls all the business out.
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  So now worst case scenario happens at 90% of your business with one customer,
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  they leave. you're down to three employees,
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  the owner wants to sell it and he's just like,
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  everything's falling apart. I don't want this anymore.
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  And you see this opportunity with going a different direction and selling these.
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  repairs from the OEM direct to the customer.
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  And he's saying that's crazy. That'll never work.
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  When you see this and you literally bet everything on it.
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  You put your house up, you structure this deal that's going to work out.
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  it sounds incredibly risky. the owner of the company,
• 13:30
  thinks there's no way this is going to work,
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  what did you see in that opportunity that made you so sure that you wanted
• 13:35
  to bet everything on?
• 13:36
  a couple of things. One from
• 13:37
  The previous owner's lens, I had never done that before.
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  And he's learned after years of being very successful in business,
• 13:44
  rarely, does something work when somebody takes on a project that's never done
• 13:48
  it before. So there was no evidence that I'd ever done that before.
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  Now, what I had going for me is this value creation cycle that I talked about,
• 13:55
  develop a capability through healthy struggle,
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  use that to create value and keep rinsing and repeating.
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  I've gone through so many hard things that I'd never done before.
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  I just knew I could do it. I knew I wouldn't fail.
• 14:07
  So when you say risk, I always wonder like what what really is risk?
• 14:10
  You know, is it financial? Is it emotional?
• 14:12
  Is it spiritual? Like what's the risk and and what are we really talking about?
• 14:16
  But for me, I've done so many things that when I jumped into it,
• 14:20
  I had never done it before, but I knew I could figure it out.
• 14:22
  it's not rocket science, right?
• 14:24
  It's not brain surgery. I know I can figure this out and I can
• 14:26
  probably figure those other two things out too if I really wanted to lean into it.
• 14:30
  But because I'd done that so many times.
• 14:32
  I knew it would work. I jokingly say it's like the parents,
• 14:35
  when we were growing up, we went to school both ways,
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  barefoot uphill in the snow. I'm like,
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  well, that first year in ninety-four,
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  I felt like we almost went out of business about fifteen times.
• 14:44
  It was crazy. Our CapEx budget that first year was $175.
• 14:48
  ~ the two guys that stayed with me,
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  I couldn't pay them the first year.
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  I just said, look, I've got this great idea.
• 14:54
  I'll give you some, you know, provisional or conditional equity if you if you stay.
• 14:58
  And one said it'll never work.
• 15:00
  We don't have customers. We don't have money.
• 15:01
  We don't have equipment. But sign me up anyway.
• 15:03
  I just want to see what's gonna happen.
• 15:04
  And the other one, ~ he goes like,
• 15:06
  yeah, this will work it will be great.
• 15:07
  And we did well enough that halfway through ninety four,
• 15:10
  nobody was gonna take pay, And then in ninety five we paid back
• 15:14
  for all that they didn't get the first half there and they kept their equity.
• 15:17
  And for the small amount of equity they got,
• 15:18
  one of them got a cheque for just over thirty million when I sold
• 15:21
  the business in twenty sixteen,
• 15:22
  the other one just over twenty million.
• 15:24
  And we made gosh, nine other multimillionaires in that deal and
• 15:28
  I still controlled the majority of the equity.
• 15:30
  Was it risky? It just felt like the only move.
• 15:32
  I've always felt more secure working for myself than working
• 15:36
  for someone else because they could close a division,
• 15:38
  the company could go out of business,
• 15:40
  you could get a weird manager and then you're out.
• 15:42
  but when I'm working for myself,
• 15:43
  now I basically work for my customers and if I do a good job,
• 15:47
  I'm gonna have a job, I'm gonna have income,
• 15:49
  and then gosh, what can I do from there?
• 15:51
  I can take it to the next level,
• 15:52
  then the next level.
• 15:53
  And keep going. So how a lot of people talk about this,
• 15:56
  it's so risky and it's hard. And my gosh,
• 15:58
  and why did you do this? I'm like.
• 15:59
  I know if I create the value for the customers,
• 16:02
  I'm gonna get the work. I see how poorly most actually do that.
• 16:05
  it's probably only 10 or 15% of people that lean in to really create value
• 16:09
  and do what they say they will.
• 16:11
  I think I have that back then in spades.
• 16:13
  I know this will work, but it's gonna be a lot of hard work and I knew
• 16:16
  we were doing the right work because the harder it got,
• 16:18
  the harder we laughed.
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  I'm not kidding about that. It's like you just know like we're having fun.
• 16:22
  my gosh. It's like going to the gym you have a great workout and it feels amazing,
• 16:26
  even though it was ridiculously hard.
• 16:28
  It's kind of the same thing, in business.
• 16:30
  if you're doing the right work,
• 16:31
  the harder it gets and along with that the harder you're laughing.
• 16:34
  That's a good indicator. If everybody's more stressed and you and
• 16:38
  the needle isn't moving, change up what you're doing.
• 16:40
  Okay. The harder it got, the harder you laughed.
• 16:42
  And you you liken it.
• 16:43
  We st we still
• 16:44
  we still laugh today. Like my gosh,
• 16:46
  I'm still in touch with all these folks.
• 16:47
  We get together for dinners. There's at least a hundred of the employees that
• 16:51
  I'm following and they're going around the world doing amazing things.
• 16:54
  Yeah, we still laugh even today.
• 17:36
  All right. And so despite it being very tough in the very beginning,
• 17:39
  it sounds like you made traction very quickly.
• 17:42
  The people that stayed on, you're able to pay them within six months or so,
• 17:45
  and then you continue to build from there.
• 17:47
  So talk about the process, because you mentioned you started several other aerospace
• 17:51
  companies. Talk about how that evolved up until the exit.
• 17:55
  Yeah. the original owners they kept nineteen percent of the company
• 17:59
  and they put some restrictions.
• 18:01
  One was hey, we have a seventy five thousand dollar credit line that's completely
• 18:04
  maxed out. It was maxed out when I took the company over and it was
• 18:07
  my liability at that point. if you wanna raise more money you have
• 18:10
  to get their approval if I want to get more
• 18:12
  credit, debt, any type for the business.
• 18:14
  And I went back to the need to do this,
• 18:16
  and they said, Well, do that, but you have to give us more equity.
• 18:18
  And it was material, like another 10% Like,
• 18:21
  why would I do that? And you're hurting the business.
• 18:23
  We don't care that we want it,
• 18:24
  or I was like, okay. So I'm not going to worry about that.
• 18:26
  So I'm building this business,
• 18:28
  I'm incredibly cash restricted.
• 18:30
  And they start another engineering business called Able Engineering.
• 18:32
  So the first one was Able Metallic Services,
• 18:35
  then Able Engineering started in '95,
• 18:37
  we're
• 18:37
  Building this team that can engineer solutions to safely reduce operating costs
• 18:43
  for aircraft operators. And then in 1999,
• 18:46
  I started ABLE Aerospace, and it was manufacturing new parts from scratch that
• 18:51
  we got approval from the Federal Aviation Administration
• 18:54
  to manufacture as replacement parts for aircraft like a Boeing 737,
• 18:58
  for example, or a Sikorsky helicopter.
• 19:01
  And so all this stuff is legal.
• 19:02
  There are literally thousands of repair statements.
• 19:04
  Stations and approved and placement part companies,
• 19:07
  over the US and around the world.
• 19:08
  And all of it with a mission of safely keeping aircraft operating
• 19:13
  and meeting their emission profiles.
• 19:14
  So we're doing all of this. I was cash restrained.
• 19:17
  They wouldn't let me do it. Now,
• 19:18
  what would be different if I would have said,
• 19:20
  sure, I'll buy you an all-expense paid trip to Las Vegas whenever you want?
• 19:24
  What a crazy slippery slope. What would be different my life today if
• 19:27
  I made that unethical decision?
• 19:29
  What would be different for these two individuals that the brothers that kept part
• 19:33
  of the equity and they limited the company because
• 19:35
  they wanted to get it back. What would be different for them if they supported
• 19:39
  us and helped us grow? that part of the business would have gone even bigger.
• 19:42
  They would have gotten a bigger return.
• 19:43
  And there was one point where I rarely share this story,
• 19:47
  but we're several years in, we're about five million dollars in sales
• 19:51
  in my different businesses, now it's starting to grow and this is so much fun,
• 19:55
  it's so great. one of those brothers came in and and I just played with my band,
• 19:59
  the CD release party. This is ninety seven,
• 20:02
  and we sold about five thousand dollars in CDs and t shirts and hats,
• 20:05
  and he told me, he goes, Look,
• 20:07
  I want
• 20:07
  20% of every business you ever start for the rest of your life.
• 20:11
  And I said, Well, how are you justifying that?
• 20:12
  And he said, Well, I, in his words,
• 20:14
  I taught you about business. So you owe me 20% of everything you do for
• 20:18
  the rest of your life. And I said,
• 20:19
  Well, let me check this. I just sold five grand,
• 20:22
  forget that there's cost to make the CDs,
• 20:24
  but five grand worth of stuff last night.
• 20:26
  And so by your logic I should give you a thousand bucks,
• 20:30
  twenty percent. He goes, Yeah,
• 20:31
  you probably should. And I just said,
• 20:32
  I'm never gonna worry about you again.
• 20:33
  I see you as maliciously opportunistic and this is crazy.
• 20:37
  You're out for yourself and everybody else loses.
• 20:40
  never gonna worry about you again.
• 20:41
  and then I bought their nineteen and a half percent of whatever they had
• 20:44
  out a few years later, worked out a deal with their attorney and,
• 20:47
  I thought they did great. They got four hundred grand in paper debt,
• 20:49
  walked away from a couple hundred grand in
• 20:51
  creditor debt and then got some money for me to buy,
• 20:54
  their equity out. So it's way better than just closing and and writing all that off,
• 20:58
  right? So I think everybody won,
• 21:00
  that's how I think about it. Not everybody thinks that way.
• 21:03
  And it goes back to I think, you know,
• 21:05
  the biggest challenge on the planet,
• 21:06
  whether it's in business, nonprofits,
• 21:08
  government, we need more leaders that are both ethical and moral capable leaders.
• 21:13
  Yeah.
• 21:13
  Wow. Now quick question about that because given how it all worked out,
• 21:18
  you look at them as getting a great deal.
• 21:19
  Are did they ever reach out to you when you actually made this exit years later?
• 21:23
  No. it was really strange. you think somebody's on your side,
• 21:26
  but when it comes down to money they show you who you are and like
• 21:29
  I don't wanna hang out with people like that.
• 21:31
  So we had no ongoing relationship,
• 21:32
  but he was an older gentleman and my guess is he's probably not around anymore
• 21:36
  by this point.
• 21:37
  All right. you buy them out after they show you who they are.
• 21:40
  that really kind of frees you up to have total control of the company.
• 21:43
  You continue to grow it year after year.
• 21:45
  And then how did the exit ultimately come about?
• 21:47
  we're cranking along and Bell Helicopter approached us.
• 21:50
  one of the internal teams that's in charge of the aftermarket,
• 21:53
  like supporting aircraft around the world,
• 21:55
  approached my team and my and my team came to me and said,
• 21:57
  Hey, they'd like to start laying the groundwork to buy us.
• 22:00
  And I had no interest in selling the business,
• 22:03
  wasn't even a thought in my mind.
• 22:05
  and then finally some conversations got going and I had the CEO,
• 22:09
  the CFO, and a few others come in and they're like,
• 22:11
  we'd really like to do this.
• 22:12
  I said, all right. And I went and wrote a number on the board.
• 22:14
  And they got up and left. It was like incredible theater,
• 22:17
  like stormed out of the room. You're crazy.
• 22:19
  and then they kept trying to negotiate with my team,
• 22:21
  let's stay at the table, let's figure it out,
• 22:23
  and basically telling them worth nothing.
• 22:25
  And at that time, you could sell an aircraft aftermarket business like this,
• 22:29
  in the repair and overhaul industry for if you were really good
• 22:32
  for eight times EBITDA. so they were trying to.
• 22:35
  Say we're only worth four, and it's like it doesn't matter,
• 22:37
  we're not gonna sell it. And like I tell everybody that I coach,
• 22:41
  all the CEOs that I work with,
• 22:42
  making your company, keeping it an equally good,
• 22:45
  if not better, option to selling is always the best position to be in.
• 22:48
  So, fast forward, they ended up giving me half the number that I wrote
• 22:53
  on that whiteboard, but that was still 21.6x multiple of EBITDA.
• 22:58
  And at a time when again the strongest ones were getting eight.
• 23:02
  And after they bought us, and I had a whole justification why it was worth that
• 23:05
  to them, 'cause they were a strategic buyer,
• 23:07
  they had this amazing global, channel that they could they could leverage.
• 23:11
  they could have tripled or quadrupled the business within just a couple of years.
• 23:14
  It would have been like they did buy it for four or five X and would have been
• 23:17
  amazing. They never really executed on that strategy,
• 23:20
  but after they bought us and I stayed 17 months to make sure
• 23:23
  the transition went well, and I could see under the covers,
• 23:26
  their break even price was right about the number I wrote on the board.
• 23:29
  So they did the same math that I did.
• 23:31
  I know for a fact because I just believe in myself and believe in the team that
• 23:35
  I had built back then. we would have grown it way faster than they've grown
• 23:38
  it since they took it over. And my hat's off to them because
• 23:41
  the company's still there. It's got a great global reputation.
• 23:44
  It is still growing
• 23:45
  a lot of times when big companies buy smaller and mid sized businesses,
• 23:48
  they blow up. And they've been really good stewards of it.
• 23:51
  I can't complain at all. so happy watching that on LinkedIn when I
• 23:54
  see the different posts going on and some of my friends that still work there
• 23:57
  and the stories they tell me.
• 23:58
  Okay.
• 23:59
  You're having a blast, growing this company.
• 24:01
  It's been a crazy journey. You're not thinking about selling.
• 24:04
  You go through this whole process with them.
• 24:07
  You ultimately sell. So how did your life change after that?
• 24:10
  Well, I had started my consulting business,
• 24:13
  ETW. It's called Execute to Win.
• 24:15
  So etW.com is the website. I started that in 2011,
• 24:19
  and I just turned the page and I just kept going.
• 24:21
  And I was taking what I did to grow that business to other companies
• 24:25
  and develop software to make it easy to sustain and scale it.
• 24:29
  I wrote a book titled Your Most Important Number a few years ago that kind
• 24:32
  of describes all of that and how to think about it.
• 24:35
  And that's morphed into the CEO mastermind groups that I lead,
• 24:38
  the CEOs that I coach, and working directly with businesses to help them,
• 24:43
  accelerate or increase the value of the business.
• 24:45
  Because for me, the job of a CEO or the top leader in any organization
• 24:49
  is to continually and responsibly increase its value.
• 24:52
  And so in my groups, each group's limited to eight,
• 24:55
  so every two months we can do a deep dive in everybody's business.
• 24:58
  But in my group, we capture what's the value of your business today,
• 25:00
  what do you want it to in one year,
• 25:01
  two years, three years, and we keep track of the top three
• 25:05
  to five strategic initiatives at any point in time to keep them on track for it.
• 25:08
  and so I've got all this going on,
• 25:10
  it's how I built my business, and I had this ecosystem of 540 employees when
• 25:14
  I sold it, and now it's tens of thousands of employees in different
• 25:18
  Companies where it wasn't like this thing,
• 25:20
  and I'm struggling to find the next thing.
• 25:22
  I I had already turned the page.
• 25:23
  and my baby was this laboratory of helping a company,
• 25:27
  increase its value, and now it's just expanded more than exponentially.
• 25:31
  it's incredible. and even at that time in 2011,
• 25:34
  when I started the business, Jack Welch the guy that used to run General Electric,
• 25:37
  and at the time when he was CEO,
• 25:39
  he built the most valuable.
• 25:40
  Company on the planet, story got his attention,
• 25:43
  and he was my business partner.
• 25:44
  He and his wife Susie were 20% owners in the company up until when he passed,
• 25:48
  and then I bought stake out. So I just kept going.
• 25:52
  it threads into every single thing that I do.
• 25:57
  So I'm working with families, one company I'm CEO of today.
• 26:00
  It's called Dinner Table. DinnerTable.com is a website.
• 26:03
  We have over 50,000 parents in our dinner table family community,
• 26:06
  the free community. And we just launched a a more intensive sort of paid community,
• 26:11
  where families, if they want to intentionally create value and build legacy
• 26:15
  as a family and raise kids that will create value in the world
• 26:17
  and everything that goes into that journey.
• 26:20
  That's incredible. So now I've got nonprofits,
• 26:22
  for profits, government agencies,
• 26:24
  and now families raising kids to create value in the world,
• 26:28
  which makes for a better world for,
• 26:29
  you know, Dave, you and I and and everybody else when that's actually happening.
• 26:33
  That's my thing. It never changed.
• 26:35
  So that was a kind of a big way of saying,
• 26:37
  I just keep building on this thing and selling that company,
• 26:40
  great. but it's all part of just building this.
• 26:43
  drive holistic value creation behaviors into the world and personally
• 26:46
  get good at making money, building positive emotional energy myself and
• 26:51
  in the world and the connectedness piece on the spiritual value creation side.
• 26:54
  So no change.
• 26:56
  Okay. All right. And Lee, when you look at your whole journey,
• 26:59
  right, from how things started and all the adversity you had in business,
• 27:04
  dealing with these various unscrupulous people,
• 27:07
  all the challenges, the belief in yourself classic entrepreneurial mindset
• 27:11
  of I know I can figure it out.
• 27:13
  And then executing the way you did,
• 27:15
  having the massive business success and now really thriving well into your sixties.
• 27:20
  looking at your whole journey,
• 27:21
  what's been the best part of it for you?
• 27:22
  Well, it's the growth. I think the whole purpose of the human existence
• 27:26
  is to elevate human consciousness.
• 27:28
  And I think for each individual it starts with you and then the more you do it,
• 27:31
  that goes out into the world, everybody that you interact with.
• 27:34
  I love that. I I love all the next steps.
• 27:37
  You know, I hear people say, gosh,
• 27:38
  if I could do it over again, I would do this differently or that differently.
• 27:41
  in the family I grew up in, I had family members in out of prison,
• 27:44
  some for some really bad things and all the stuff that happened,
• 27:47
  you know, I realized when I was kicked out of the house my parents couldn't raise
• 27:50
  themselves, let alone five kids,
• 27:52
  so it really wasn't about me.
• 27:54
  I wouldn't think about the world the way I do today if I didn't go through
• 27:57
  all of this. So it's like at every point in time,
• 27:59
  like this is the coolest thing ever.
• 28:01
  a year from today, it's gonna be even cooler and cooler.
• 28:04
  But like let's fully do this thing we're doing right now.
• 28:07
  That that's how I think about it.
• 28:08
  So there wasn't any one rewarding thing.
• 28:10
  It's just I got on a developmental path or journey and I've never gotten off.
• 28:15
  wanna keep doing that because that's really what feels the best.
• 28:18
  Okay. All right. And Lee, if people want to find out more about your company Execute
• 28:22
  to Win, or Dinnertable dot com or any of these other initiatives you're involved
• 28:26
  with, what's the best way people can find you online?
• 28:29
  Yeah, thank you. you can connect with me on LinkedIn.
• 28:31
  I post there pretty frequently a lot of different things that we're doing.
• 28:34
  But if you want to learn about some of the things I've talked about here
• 28:37
  and how we may be able to help or work together,
• 28:39
  go to etw.com and there's a quick three-minute sort of fit check.
• 28:44
  what could be an interesting fit for you,
• 28:46
  whether it's leadership development,
• 28:47
  a CEO group, using our software to grow your business,
• 28:50
  whatever that is. And then if you have a
• 28:52
  family and you want to more intentionally create value as a family
• 28:56
  and raise kids that will create value in the world and build them for
• 28:59
  how they show up as an adult someday when it comes to character capabilities
• 29:03
  and their belief structure, go to dinnertable.com and
• 29:06
  join our really fast growing community.
• 29:09
  Like like I say, we have fifty thousand plus members now,
• 29:12
  parents globally in about seventy countries.
• 29:14
  My goal is over the next three or four years to grow it to millions
• 29:17
  of families and really make a dent in a positive way in the world.
• 29:20
  So ETW dot com and dinnertable dot com.
• 29:23
  Okay. All right. And we will link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 29:26
  all right, Lee, thank you so much for taking the time to be here
• 29:28
  and sharing all this incredible wisdom from your journey with our listeners.
• 29:32
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 29:33
  Yeah, this was my pleasure. I really enjoyed the conversation and thanks
• 29:36
  for the work you're doing. Like the insights you're gleaning out of
• 29:39
  all of your guests. I mean, I learned stuff this morning,
• 29:41
  listening to a few hours of your podcasts,
• 29:43
  and keep up the great work, man.
• 29:44
  Really appreciate you.
• 29:45
  Hey, thanks
• 29:46
  so much, Lee.