Show Your Value with Lee Benson

154 Episodes

Reverse

I Sold My Company at 42. Within 90 Days I Was Miserable.

2026-10-2801:03:17

Derek Bullard sold his first company at 42. He had money, young twins, time to travel and coach soccer. Within 90 days he was miserable, and he spent the next year in a depression he couldn’t explain to anyone, least of all himself. In this conversation with Lee, Derek talks about what he wishes he’d planned before that exit. He picked the buyer mostly on valuation, when the partner, the arrangement afterwards and what he’d do with his days mattered just as much. On every exit since, he’s map...

I Sold My Company for 21.6x. 10 Years Later It Had Stopped Growing.

2026-10-2131:07

Lee Benson sold his aerospace business in 2016 for 21.6x EBITDA in an industry where 8x was considered a great result. For fifteen years before the sale, the company grew more than 20% a year. Ten years later he walked back in for the first time. The business was still running well, still a respected global brand, still improving bit by bit. In a decade it had grown 20% in total. In this conversation, Lee explains what he thinks happened, and the difference between a business that runs withou...

Time Management Is a Lie (with Erik Qualman)

2026-10-1459:56

Erik Qualman has written five number one bestsellers, spoken in more than 60 countries, and reached over 60 million people. He also tracks how many nights a year he's away from his daughters. Last year it was 37, down from 52, and that number shapes what business he takes. In this conversation with Lee, Erik makes the case that time management is the wrong problem. Give anyone 48 hours a day and they still wouldn't clear the list. What actually runs out is energy and attention, and the questi...

Why AI Won't Replace Your Business (But Something Else Will)

2026-10-0701:00:26

Mike Zisman wrote his first program in 1967. He built and sold Soft Switch to Lotus, then watched IBM take over Lotus eleven months later, going from a company of 450 people to one of 250,000 in under a year. He's 77, still writing code, and runs Golf Genius, which now handles over 40 million rounds of golf a year. In this conversation with Lee, he explains the thing he thinks most companies never account for: coordination cost. The friction of getting people pointed in the same direction, w...

Why I Don't Want a Billion Dollar Company with Mike Tecku

2026-09-3001:00:51

Mike Tecku built and sold companies, was ready to retire, then his girlfriend went blind in one eye and was diagnosed with MS. She ended up on 50 different supplements and pills a day, and one morning she physically couldn't swallow them anymore. He put them in a shake. That became Momentum. In this conversation with Lee, Mike explains why he has no interest in building the billion-dollar version of his company, and what he thinks the private equity playbook is doing to good businesses: outso...

#box-pro-ellipsis-179347399683164{-webkit-line-clamp:2;}Show Your Value with Lee Benson