Show Your Value with Lee Benson

Hosted by Lee Benson

Business Entrepreneurship

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Episodes

145

Latest episode

Aug 2026

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EN-US

About the show

Each week, we will explore the Art of Value Creation in three macro buckets. Material value creation, emotional energy value creation, and spiritual value creation. Lee Benson is a value creation expert with over 30 years of experience in the business world. He is the CEO of Execute to Win, a firm that helps organizations of all sizes to accelerate the value they create. Lee began his value creation journey early, pulling weeds for 25 cents an hour. Since then, he has founded and led seven companies, including Able Aerospace, which he grew from two to 500 employees and 2,000 customers in 60 countries culminating in a 9-figure exit in 2016. Learn more about Execute to Win - https://etw.com/

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60 recent

September 2, 20261 hr 2 min

$12,000 to a P&G Exit with Eric Malka

Eric Malka sold his car for $12,000 and asked himself the smallest possible question: what's the tiniest business I can start with this? Twelve years later, Procter & Gamble bought The Art of Shaving. Three businesses failed before that one. The last one left him ready to quit entrepreneurship entirely, and it gave him the philosophy he's built everything on since. Start small and grow big, because starting big is a great way to grow small. In this conversation with Lee, Eric lays out the choice he puts to every founder he advises: you can succeed in fifteen years or fail in five. He explains why most entrepreneurs he meets are ahead of their skis, what a business model actually is, and how a thousand conversations with customers in one tiny store wrote his entire brand for him. He's also frank about the people who came after it. The supplier who demanded half the company or he'd cut off the products. The private equity firm he says deliberately wrote covenants designed to trip. The investment bank that cost him a third of his exit. The last stretch is the one worth staying for. Eric hit every financial goal he'd set by the age of 40 and still felt anxious, and what he did about that is the part he says changed his life. Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com. For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

August 26, 20261 hr 0 min

Why You Are the Biggest Bottleneck in Your Company with Keith Wyche

A teenager watched a night of news full of leaders behaving badly and asked his grandfather, "Pops, you're a leader. Is that how you lead?" That question became Keith Wyche's book. Keith has been President of Pitney Bowes US, a senior executive at IBM, and ran a 30,000-person region at Walmart. He's on the board of Brinks. In this one he lays out how far trust has fallen, seven in ten people don't believe leaders tell them the truth, and government trust has gone from 73% in 1958 to 17% today, and what rebuilding it takes. His formula: trust equals character times competency times consistency. Lee shares the moment that shaped his career, turning down a bribe from the customer that was 90% of his business, losing the account, and taking over the failing company by assuming its debt. It sold 23 years later for well into nine figures. Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com. For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

August 19, 20261 hr 0 min

Your Priority List Is a Contradiction with Jay Papasan

"Priority" comes from a Latin root meaning first. So what's the plural of first? Jay Papasan co-wrote The One Thing, which has sold more than 4 million copies in over 40 languages, and he's CEO of Productive, the One Thing Company. In this conversation with Lee, he argues that you can only ever have one priority, and that most productivity problems are clarity problems wearing a disguise. Jay walks through the diagnostic he uses with every client. Productivity sits above the waterline, priority sits below it, and purpose sits below that. When someone comes to him with a productivity problem, he starts three levels down. He also shares the core values exercise that became his own unlock, why "should" is almost always a shame-based statement, and the weekly meeting he's held with his own goals virtually every week since September 2000. Lee brings the other side of it, including what three spinal surgeries taught him about performing in a season that isn't your best one, and the mantra that came out of it. Also in this one: the Day Before Vacation Miracle, why Hemingway wrote at a fourth grade level, why you can't time block a goal, and the question worth asking anyone walking into a storm. Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com. For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

August 12, 20261 hr 2 min

The Future of Work Has No Jobs in It with Rishad Tobaccowala

"Jobs are a silly phase that work is going through." Rishad Tobaccowala spent four decades advising the world's largest companies, most of them as chief strategist at Publicis Groupe, and made ten predictions in India's largest business paper that all came true. In this one, he gives Lee the five tectonic shifts reshaping business, why 68% of the world already earns without a job, the demographic cliff nobody's pricing in, and the leadership crisis he summarises as: look in the mirror. Plus the immigrant mindset, why every career has a midnight hour and the smart people leave at five to twelve, the daughter who left Google to make films, and why AI is alien intelligence, a collaborator, not a tool. Rishad writes weekly at rishadtobaccowala.substack.com. Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com. For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

August 6, 20267 min

What I Do Instead of Performance Reviews

Fewer than 1 in 10 performance reviews end with both people walking away glad it happened. Lee Benson stopped running them years ago. In this episode, Lee breaks down the performance snapshot, the replacement he's used across eight companies: three clear goals per person, expectations defined from day one, and the review itself done in front of the whole team. It sounds uncomfortable. He's run hundreds, and it's why the process works, one person can't remember everything someone did, but the team remembers everything. He also shares the clarity effect behind his claim that of the ten people you'd fire for poor performance, seven or eight get saved when expectations were genuinely clear from the start. Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com. For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

July 29, 20267 min

The Scarcest Resource on Earth Isn't Time or Money

Lee Benson has built eight companies from scratch. In this solo episode, he shares the framework that's run through all of them: holistic value creation, built on three buckets, material, emotional energy, and connectedness. His core argument is that emotional energy is the scarcest commodity on the planet, and the most overlooked lever in leadership. Lee explains why the leaders who deliberately build energising environments consistently get the best results, what that looked like inside his own 500-person company, and how the framework held up when he lost over a million dollars on investments last year. Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com. For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

July 22, 20261 hr 2 min

Marty Cagan: AI Is Helping Bad Companies Fail Faster

Marty Cagan has spent 45 years building technology-powered products and coaching the companies everyone else copies, Amazon, Netflix, Nvidia. His books are the closest thing product management has to a bible. In this conversation with Lee, he explains why 85% of products still fail in the market, and why AI is making that worse, not better. The two get into the distinction that separates the best companies from everyone else: building to learn versus building to earn. Lee shares the $27 million software write-off that taught him the difference the hard way, and Marty's response might surprise you: today that same lesson costs about $2,000. Also in this one: why ROI estimates are nonsense and what good companies demand instead, the SpaceX versus Boeing story and what it proves about culture, how Trainline went from irrelevant to the UK's largest IPO, why stakeholders lie to CEOs about projections, missionaries versus mercenaries, and the AI productivity paradox, why companies are blowing through annual AI budgets in a quarter while the needle doesn't move. Marty's work is free at svpg.com. Serious about increasing the value of your business? Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic at etw.com. For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

July 15, 20267 min

Why CEO Peer Groups Stop Working After Two Years

Most CEO peer groups work brilliantly for about six months to two years. Then they quietly stop. Lee's been in these rooms for over 40 years, Vistage, YPO, EO, all of them. The pattern's always the same. The groups get too big. Nobody knows enough about each other's businesses to get past the surface. Process takes over, and the problem a CEO actually brings to the room is usually a symptom of something deeper that a quick lap of feedback will never touch. So he built a different kind of room. Eight members. One full day a month. A proper deep dive into every member's business every two months. One number visible to everyone at all times, so the whole group knows whether each business is actually getting more valuable or just staying busy. Along the way: the three buckets of value creation that earned Lee significantly higher multiples across his exits, why front-line CEO wisdom beats anything from a book, and why he treats his group like a conglomerate he's invested half his retirement in. Serious about growing the value of your business? Learn more about EXECUTE CEO MasterMIND For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

July 8, 202657 min

The Human Code Your Business Data Can't See | Johanna Faigelman

Every business problem is a human problem. The companies that win are the ones that learn to decode it. In this episode of Show Your Value, Lee Benson sits down with Johanna Faigelman, anthropologist and founder and CEO of Human Branding, a global consultancy trusted by Johnson & Johnson, Nestlé, Visa, and Logitech. She's spent 25 years studying why humans actually do what they do, and she's built a career taking that lens into the boardroom, where the data ends and the real answers begin. Johanna explains why surveys tell you everything about the what and nothing about the why, and why the why is where all the value hides. She shares the story of taking a banking executive out of his boardroom and into a customer's living room in New Jersey, sitting cross-legged on the floor in his socks, and the epiphany he still talks about years later. Her iceberg principle runs through the whole conversation: 80 percent of what drives your people and your customers sits below the waterline, invisible to dashboards, and that's exactly where culture lives. Lee brings the operator's side of the same truth. He built a company of over 500 people with no HR department, no employee lawsuits, and no leader who ever quit, then watched that culture change the moment new ownership set a different tone. He's candid about where he thinks the leadership industry gets it wrong, and why concepts that never connect to measurable value creation are wasted money. Along the way, they cover: What an anthropologist sees in your company within an hour of walking in Why leaders hide behind surveys instead of talking to their people The living room epiphany that changed how one C-suite leader saw his customers forever Why AI gives leaders amazing answers to the wrong questions, and why human wisdom is becoming more valuable, not less The most emotional purchase decision you'll ever make (it's not what you think) Fulfilment as the most important number, and how intentional value creation earned Lee a 3x exit multiple Learn more about Johanna's work at humanbranding.com. Most leadership teams don't have an effort problem, they've got an operating discipline problem. For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

July 1, 20261 hr 4 min

Alex Osterwalder: Make Your Company Worth 20x More Without Growing Revenue

What if you could multiply the value of your business without adding a single dollar of new revenue? In this episode of Show Your Value, Lee Benson sits down with Alex Osterwalder, the mind behind the Business Model Canvas and one of the most influential business thinkers alive, to unpack the part of business most leaders quietly ignore: the business model itself. Alex explains why the best companies reinvent their business model constantly instead of treating it as a one-time startup decision, and why the kind of revenue you earn matters far more than the amount. Variable revenue tends to be worth two to three times EBITDA. Fixed, locked-in revenue can be worth around twenty times. Lee brings the lived proof, sharing how predictable long-term contracts helped his aerospace business exit at a 21.6x multiple when seven or eight would've been a strong result in that space. Along the way, they get into: How to spot a business model that's quietly dying before it's too late The "better revenues" framework, and how to shift income from variable to predictable to fixed Why most sophisticated leadership teams can't answer three simple questions about their own business The difference between managerial and entrepreneurial CEOs, and why it decides who actually innovates The three-part health check that reveals whether a company can innovate at all Why "condemning your teams to succeed" kills the bold bets that matter most How emotional maturity across a team turns into real business velocity This is a conversation about the fundamentals that create enterprise value, and the discipline it takes to keep them alive as a company grows. Learn more about Alex's work at strategyzer.com. For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/