Maximizing Impact: Leadership & Mind Methodology with Lee Benson

Thank you for tuning in to the True Grit and Grace podcast. I'm Amberly Lago, and I'll be sharing inspirational stories of resilience and empowering ideas to elevate your business and your life, ignite your passion, and fuel your purpose. Hey there, it's Amberly Lago. Thanks for tuning in to True Grit and Grace. Today I have Someone who has one of the most brilliant minds that I cannot wait to dive into all that he does. I have Lee Benson here with us. He's a Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Your Most Important Number. He sold his company, Able Aerospace, for 9 figures, and he's now on a mission to help other entrepreneurs win. I can't wait to dig into, like, how to significantly better ways to build a business And also, he's got something called MIND Methodology that I think that we will all benefit from. So thank you for being here, Ben. I'm so glad to have you on the show.

It's really good to be here. Thanks for having me, Amberly. Appreciate it.

Oh, yeah. Well, a big shout out to Bo Hawkins. And I think we have some mutual friends, Evan, Stephen, and some other friends. And I loved researching more about you. And there was something I just heard on one of your interviews when I was Stalking you, basically. Um, something that really hit home for me because I'm a mom and I can see how my daughter— she's not glued to social media, but I can see how, like, she— it's a big deal when she gets all these TikTok likes and people share her video and she'll tell me how many followers. And you said something on one of your interviews that, you know, what about if kids made their identity, the value that they create in the world versus how many likes they got on TikTok, or that's that sort of numbers. And that really hit home for me. But how do you teach that to children?

I think one of the challenges with all of this stuff is you can talk about it, and we can motivate people for a short amount of time, but then it just goes away. And you have to operationalize it in some way, or a simpler way of saying it is make it how you do things within the family. This whole, this whole concept of creating value in the world. When you look at K-12 education, I don't hear anybody talking about the purpose of an education being to create value in the world, whether it's material, emotional energy value, spiritual value, you pick it. They're not connecting the dots for the kids. Most adults I know can't connect dots very well, and the kids are just, let me get a good grade. I want to get a diploma. I want to get a degree. I want to get a job. Not very motivating at all. And they're not connecting the dots to how it can help them be successful in life. So The way you get at it, to kind of answer the question, is there's a book that I just co-authored with Scott Donald. It's coming out next week.

Really?

The title is Value Creation Kid, and the subtitle is The Healthy Struggles Your Children Need to Succeed. And in there, we have something we call the Gravy Stack Method, and there's 4 parts to it. First is value creation. So in the home, how do you talk about creating value? for the family? What does it really mean? Material, how to manage money and do all of that. I mean, everything in there, just value creation as a concept. That's what we're here to do. And then second is house rules. What's your job for the family? What are the extra things you can do to earn money, you know, within, you know, the family? The third piece of it's financial competency. So we just don't want kids to be financially literate. We want them to be financially competent. They know how to manage money, how to save it, how to share it, and of that eventually invested. And then the last part, the most important part is healthy struggle. Healthy struggle is what kids need to go through as well as adults to be able to create more value in the future. So that's the most important part of the Gravy Stack Method. So the simple way to think about it is you have a healthy struggle that's designed for a kid, and then they use that struggle to develop a capability. And then with that capability, they gain confidence and they use that confidence to create value. And you just stay on this wheel. And when I look at my life, you know, I started it at 6, 7 years old pulling weeds for 20, 25 cents an hour. And then that led to shoveling snow for about a buck an hour. And that led to a paper route, then 4 paper routes, and then a dishwasher, a busboy, a cook, playing in a band some years in the 1980s, over 300 nights a year, made really good money doing it. And that led to the business. So I just stayed on that value creation cycle.

Yeah.

And it just gets better and better and better and better. I don't have glory days. My best days are ahead of me from a fulfillment standpoint and from a value creation standpoint. So, you know, your question, like, how do you ingrain this in kids? Well, you have to operationalize it or make it how the family runs. And we've come up with a really simple, elegant way of doing that in this Value Creation Kid book that Scott Donald and I just finished. And, and it's, I mean, it's something any family can do. Sit time completely changes the perspective and it works fast. I mean, it works really fast. We have lots of examples of it.

Oh, that's amazing. And I think I'm going to get that book for my daughter, both of my daughters actually, I think, because, um, well, especially my oldest daughter, she really saw, I was a single mom with her and she saw me build a business from the ground up. And she has really a strong work ethic. She's about to graduate from Yale, which is a big deal because I didn't even go to college. And then when you talk about the healthy, the struggle, I think, believe it or not, horseback riding for my youngest daughter has been such a great way of teaching her that kind of circle to create the healthy struggle because she's been thrown off her horse so many times and she learns a better way of doing it. She gets back up and then And that builds her confidence. And I've seen that where she's had the struggle or the, and the confidence knocked right out of her and got back on and repeated. But I, I just wish that every kid could learn this because as someone who runs a business, I have had young people that I've tried to bring in and teach and lead them. And sometimes the work ethic just isn't There. They, they're not hungry. They just have a lot of expectations just to be given stuff. Um, and so, goodness, I think this book is going to be something for all kids to read and parents to read. Um, I want to talk about Your Most Important Number, though, this book, and determine how— what, first of all, what inspired you to write this book?

What's interesting about how companies operate is there's literally millions of ways that companies operate and it's always, or most of the time it's homegrown based on the team that's there. And virtually all the time when they get extraordinary results, it's because there was a superstar leader leading the whole thing or leading a team or whatever it is because they just won't let things fail. But this is a pretty small percentage of the population. And, and I've run a number of different companies. The, the company you mentioned in the beginning, Able Aerospace, that I sold, we had over 500 employees at the time I sold it. I stayed 17 months to make sure the transition went well. I wanted everybody to continue to have a job. It was really important. We all got there collectively. It wasn't just something that I did, you know, in a vacuum. But then I set out on this journey. How do I come up with an operating methodology that'll work for 80% of any team anywhere, even when a superstar leader is not in the room. And there was a lot of operating systems out there. There's 40X, there's OKRs, there's EOS or Scaling Up. There's so many different, you know, popular ones and probably hundreds of thousands of operating methodologies that consultants have put together. The challenge they have is they make process more important than what is most important. And so when a star leaves the room, a superstar leader, everybody makes success, oh, I spent so much time in the meeting doing this, so much time doing that. I parking-lotted items over here. We did this. We made sure everybody set goals. Yay, we won. And yet the company isn't going anywhere or it's failing. So, what's really going on there? So, I wanted to develop a process, an operating methodology that it doesn't rely on a superstar being in the room. And we've exceeded our goals around this because it's working for literally 100% of the teams out there.

Wow. Well, first of all, I want to go back to What do you think makes a superstar leader? And how does someone become a better leader?

That's such a big question. There are billions and billions of dollars spent every year on leadership development. And typically, it's just a one-size-fits-all. And it does virtually nothing to move the needle. And so I believe if you want to be a better leader, in short, your job is to get results. And your job is to continually improve the results and sustain it Over time. So you have to develop a great environment, great culture, et cetera, to make that happen. And if your job is to get results, and if you go back to my book, Your Most Important Number, the MIND methodology, which stands for Most Important Number and Drivers, if every team has one number that says above all others, you're winning or losing the game and that will drive the majority of the right behaviors, That is your goal for the team. Here's where we're at. Here's where we're going. Here's all the work we're doing to get there, the best work we're doing. And at any point in time, we can see whether we're on track, at risk, or behind. And from that, if you're falling behind or even if you're on track or slightly ahead, what are the 1, 2, or 3 areas where you need to develop as a leader to accelerate that value creation? And so when you're studying the work, everybody on the team is in the game. You're looking at what they're doing. It's so easy to see this leader needs to develop here next to get there. And it may be be strengthening a strength, not just going after a weakness, but whatever will accelerate that most important number and continually do that over time. That's the best way to develop as a leader, you know, because your job really as a leader is to create an environment where every single team member is intrinsically motivated and empowered to create value. That's it. That's your job. So if you ask most leaders in organizations and even non-supervisory team members, How do you create value for the organization? What kind of an answer do you think you get? I mean, they don't know what to say. They'll list a job description. I do this, I do that. Not our team was designed to create this value. Here's the one number that we measure it by. Oh, here's 20 other numbers that we measure just to help us make better decisions to improve that number. And this is the best work that I'm doing to improve it. That's a solid answer and everybody's fully aligned. But in most companies, they don't know. And another, you know, big issue out there is goal setting. I've never seen traditional goal setting stand the test of time. It works so amazing at the top. You lay it all out, everybody has all these goals and you cascade them down. It's just gonna be magic. But what typically happens is everybody's been directed to create a goal or 3 every quarter, let's say, get it approved by your manager and rinse and repeat. That feels terrible for most employees to go through it. And then when you go audit the goals, 90% or more of them just aren't very thoughtful because they, they don't know. But if they, if they have one score that says my team's winning or losing, they can focus on that as a team. I think that's how teams prefer to work. And then every role will have outcome-based responsibilities associated with it that they need to achieve to do their best work to help the team achieve that number.

Yeah, it's like keeping score just like you would a game.

Exactly. Just like you would a professional sporting event, you know, pick football or, you know, whatever, whatever your sport is. Yeah. And the challenge, and this is exciting, you have to have the entire team come up with a number. And the challenge is coming up with a number that does the 2 things I mentioned earlier, says above all others are winning or losing, and it drives the majority of the right behaviors. So we, we deal with companies that are as small as 3 or 4 employees all the way up to over 40,000 employees.

Really?

You can bolt this on, like every team has a most important number that does those 2 things. Even if it's hundreds and hundreds of teams bolted together or it's one team in a small company, it really doesn't matter. But when you come up with the most important number, the challenge for most initially, but they get it pretty quickly, is what do you mean by drive the majority of the right behaviors? And so in medium-sized companies and larger, HR is such a perfect example of where they get it wrong almost every time when we go in.

Really?

HR will say, well, our most important number is retention or it's employee engagement. So, okay, well, let's play with one of them. Let's say it's retention and you have 100 employees and, you know, fast forward 3 years, you put me in charge of HR. I have 99% retention, only lost one, never mind that 60% of the people that work here can't do the job that we're paying them to do. But I kept them. So I didn't drive all the right behaviors, did I? So I think a better number for HR would be percentage of seats filled with capable people as defined as they are delivering or overdelivering on their outcome-based responsibilities for their role. Now it's driving behaviors such as better onboarding, better training, better leadership development, give them the tools they need to make sure everybody's fully capable of creating the value that they were hired to create. So there you can go to finance, you can go to production, customer service, marketing, sales, you can go to all the different departments, have this amazing conversation around how do we create value and what's that number that does those 2 things. And when it improves, it will improve the next one up and accrete all the way to the top of the organization.

That's amazing.

Simple, elegant conversation to have and everybody gets it.

And I love that you work with small teams all the way up. to companies with 40,000 or more people. My team is small. Um, you know, there are 5 of us, but I'm constantly, you know, working to be the best leader that I can be. I also want people to really have fun doing, you know, working together. But how— and I think you have something on your website where people can take a little quiz to see where their number is. Um, Mm-hmm. Can you tell everybody who's listening how to find that so they can find their number? And find out more about that?

Yeah, there's a lot of information on our website and the website is themindmethodology.com. So if you go to that website, you can take a test to see how aligned you are as an organization. There's lots of information on there about describing what a most important number is, the most effective way for a team to come up with that and do their best work to improve it. So yeah, the mindmethodology.com website has a ton of information. You can reach out and contact us through that website as well.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, this could not have come at a more perfect time because I just onboarded a new assistant. Well, it's a husband and wife team. And so I'm going to find out the number. I'm going to have them do it. And I want to get back to you and just show you how the business has scaled since we've Since we have done that. So do you do one-on-one coaching with people?

I do, and we do. So we have a decent-sized team internally that does this work to install the MIND Methodology within companies. I'll do occasionally one-on-one coaching with CEOs. I wish I had 15 of me so I could do a lot more of it.

You know why I'm asking? Because selfishly, I'm like, how can I work with you?

Uh, absolutely. Yeah.

And if you guys, if you're listening and you're not watching this on YouTube, you should see his studio. It looks like he is sitting in, well, it's like a nightclub, but it's in your home and you have all these guitars hanging up. And now by exiting out of the company, are you getting to do a lot more time playing music, that sort of thing?

It's actually about the same amount of time. I'm working more hours now than I ever have when it comes to work. And I love the work and it really stretches 7 days a week because there's so many different, you know, companies that we work with. But I still make the time for music. You know, I started playing guitar when I was about 5. I don't remember not knowing how to play guitar.

Really?

And, you know, all through, you know, grade school, junior high, high school, played in jazz bands, had, had, you know, rock bands where we would play for the school. And very shortly out of high school, I started playing professionally out in clubs. And in the 1980s, uh, there were a number of years where we played over 300 nights a year. It was nuts, uh, what was going on.

Oh my goodness. Now, where were you playing mostly?

Because we had a sound crew, light crew, all of that.

Wow. Wow. Where now, um, were you traveling all over the country or were you going overseas as well?

Um, actually just in the Southwest. You know, we, we stayed pretty locally, drove everywhere that we played and originals, covers to, you know, to pay the bills. A lot of times, and the crowds could be anywhere from just the cook and the bartender because nobody showed up, or it could be 5,000+ outside at a concert. You know, it was, it was a lot of fun. It was all about the emotional energy that we were creating on stage as a band. And over time, that's all I really cared about anymore is like, what kind of an emotional journey were we taking the listeners on?

That's amazing. That's one of the reasons I got into speaking is because I love connecting with people and I love the energy that you can feel and the emotion that you can feel. Um, I was telling you before we started recording that my daughter is a musician and my ex-husband was, uh, he played guitar and he had long hair and I was like, he was the singer, he was the front man, you know? And so her whole side of the family, uh, on her dad's side, they're all musicians. Have you ever heard of Don Randy and Quest?

I have not.

No, he's a lot older than you. Um, but he played with Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra and Elvis and the Beach Boys. And so he's got, he's very well-known jazz musician and pianist. So I just wondered if you'd ever heard of him, but—

Yeah, name rings a bell. That's probably why, but I don't know him. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's so awesome that you run, like, don't you run like 7 companies or something?

Well, I'm on my 7th company I've started from scratch, but I'm invested in quite a number of different businesses and I'm usually in weekly meetings with these organizations.

Wow.

And everything's about, you know, creating value as fast as we can and accelerating that over time and creating, you know, I love the, you know, true grit and grace, especially the grit part of it because staying in the game when it's really, really hard, That's what most don't have. They just don't have it. And I was talking earlier about the healthy struggles our children need to succeed. Well, when it gets really hard as an adult, why do they act like victims? You know, instead of the better perspective would be, this is a healthy struggle I need to go through to develop a capability of doing this thing, to build my confidence so I can create more value and stay on that wheel. And so the ones that really make it, are the ones that have the grit and they stay in there and they trust the work. They know that the struggle is necessary for them to get to the next level.

I couldn't agree more. And people ask me all the time, you know, after my motorcycle accident and going through 34 surgeries, they're like, how did you get through 34 surgeries and, and learn to walk again when you were told you'd be in a wheelchair? And that, and I think that it was the struggles that I had as a kid that developed my grit, that gave me the right mindset to get through those times. But it wasn't because my childhood was easy, that's for sure. And so sometimes, you know, I struggle with this. There's a fine line between, you know, you want to give your kids so many things that you didn't have or make their life a little bit easier, but you do want them to— like, I want my kids to appreciate You know, how it, how it, you know, being able to ride a horse, being able to have horseback riding lessons. And so I try to teach my daughter these things and she, she comes up with some funny ways of doing it. Like she really, she imports. So my 14-year-old imports fish from Indonesia. She's got like 10 fish aquariums. And she needed money and I'm like, I'm not going to just give you the money to buy another fish. Like, you've got to come up with it. So she, she traded me gift cards. She traded me gift cards and she's like, here, Mom, I will give you all of these gift cards if you just let me use your PayPal and you can keep the change. And I was like, okay, we got a deal, you know, but figuring out how to do it. But what do you, how would you, what would you suggest to someone who, like, they're a parent who's like, But I want to give my kids everything. I don't want them to have to work hard like I did because I started working at age 13 and before that I started babysitting at like age 8. What's the kind of the balance between teaching kids? Yes, you know, they, they want to have that healthy struggle, but gosh, you don't want them to struggle too much to where they're just miserable.

That's such a big perspective question. There's parts of the world where they would just give anything to have the lifestyle that most low-income families have here in this country, right? So I think it's, I think it's really all around perspective. But I would suggest work backwards from the, you know, I don't know what, what ages we're talking about here, but anything K through 12, work backwards from what's the, this value-creating adult we want to launch from high school into adulthood? How would you describe that? So what do you want them to be able to do? I think they should be able to think critically. They should understand how the world works. They should be financially competent and as financially independent as they choose to be. You know, for example, I was kicked out of the house the beginning of my senior year in high school. It was a non-event for me to get my own apartment 2 days later. I had to spend one night in my truck that I bought with my own money because I was already financially independent by then. It was a non-event. And if they understand how the world works and they believe that the purpose is to create win-win value in the world, material, emotional, spiritual, continually increase that over time, leading to greater fulfillment. So I've got some pretty powerful ideas about what I think launching an 18-year-old into adulthood looks like. And so if you work backwards from there, if you take all struggle away from the kids, how could they ever be that? You know? And so if you take the struggle away, all you've done is move them into this new category we call the emerging adult phase, which is from 18 to who knows, 36, where they finally wake up and become an adult. And it's not one 100% on the parents. The kids have choices here too. And I think it's majority of the parents when, when a child is born, and then it just sort of in a linear fashion becomes more and more on the kids as they go through to adulthood. They get to make a choice too, but we're not doing any favors for our kids by removing all struggle. If you think about healthy struggle as built to do it, to build a capability, to build that confidence, to create value, That's what we should be doing for our kids all the way through. And, and it, it really is kind of silly if you think about it. It's like, let's take all struggle away. Well, if that really worked, I should get stronger and more flexible just by not going to the gym. I don't want to have to struggle and do that. You know, what about taking your brain to the gym? You know, interviews like this exercise our brains. When I work with companies to try to create value faster with all the moving parts, Mm-hmm. I love taking my brain to the gym every single day. Oh, that's amazing. You know, I'm still through my struggles just like everybody else to create value, you know, faster and faster and always in a win-win way. You know, how do you fix the bigger problems? So, you know, kids do launch out of high school making decisions that create better conditions to work, live, learn, and play for themselves, their families, the communities that they engage with. These are the kids that I want to see launched. And I'm spending a lot of time and resources in Arizona around trying to make that happen with K-12 education and exporting it to other states. So there's 3 nonprofits that I'm really active with. Wow.

You are amazing. You are just incredible.

Well, isn't it being really selfish on my part? Because I don't— I love dystopian future movies. They're kind of entertaining, but I don't want to live in it. So these kids are going to be running the world that we retire in. And I feel like I've got a responsibility here, and we all do as adults. to get this right. And so there's like a weight of responsibility around this that I wish more people actually had going in. So there's a lot going on in my life, that's for sure. But that's why I'm doing this. It's why I co-authored this book, The Value Creation Kid, working with the nonprofits. How do we fix it? I mean, the current system is not working where, you know, the kids launching out of high school are less and less and less reliant, know less about how the world works. I mean, I keep hearing surveys and interviews, you know, they'll just go talk to a college kid. Have you ever been to another country? And they'll say something like Florida. Or do you know the 3 branches of our government? The answer is about as ridiculous as what's a branch? I mean, they don't know how the world works. And so they're going to be voting for things and people that are not going to create better conditions to work, live, learn, and play. So that's a really long answer to your question, but I want to launch these critically thinking, financially competent, capable kids into adulthood that think about creating win-win value. That's— so work backwards from there. And so what would have to happen in your home to get the kids moving this direction? If it took you— think about anything that was an epiphany for you or a big learning. If it took you 3, 4, 5 years to develop that way of thinking, give your kids at least 3, 4, or 5 weeks to figure something out. Don't explain it once and they don't get it and go, they don't understand. And it takes us a while to get stuff too. So this is a journey. Enjoy that journey. Be comfortable with the struggle and never let them forget that you love them. You know, that's unconditional with the kids. And this is for your own good. You know, there are parents out there that have— they do boot camps. There's a daddy boot camp, a mommy boot camp, and the kids have like lists of things they want to be capable in, like going to the airport, getting a taxi home. Making your bed, like, how do you do this? And what a, what a cool, fun way to approach it.

Oh, yeah, I love that. And, you know, I think it's, it's good. I think when— I know that when my daughter wants something bad enough, she figures out a way to get it. And so she collects these Breyer horses. They're like little miniature statues of collect— she's got hundreds that she's bought. Some have been gifts. Well, when COVID came, she really wanted tickets to go to this Briarfest that was going to be online. And I'm like, you know what, it's a lot of money, you're gonna have to come up with a way to figure that out. And she started taking horses and creating her own molds of horses and selling sculptures. And the first day, I mean, And we went to bed. I fell asleep in bed with her and she had asked me some questions about building a website. She stayed up that night. The next morning I woke up, she goes, Mom, look what I did. She created a website. She created a way to get payment. And within a week, she was, we were sending boxes of these sculptures that she had made out. And I was like, I want you working with me. Come help me with my business because you're amazing, kid. You know what I mean? But she wanted to get those tickets and had to figure out a way to make the money. And she did it, you know. And so it's challenges like that, that she developed her confidence to build a website to make money and go be able to buy the tickets.

Perfect example of a healthy struggle. I've never built a website before. Okay, go figure it out. And dig into it. And then parents resist doing it for them. Let them go through the struggle, you know, guide them, coach them appropriately. But that struggle is really important. And I think when parents realize that that is the most, one of the most valuable things I can do for my kid, it changes everything perspective, like it's okay watching them struggle.

Yeah.

Healthy struggles are what they can handle, stretch, you know, going all the way along. I would even say that unhealthy struggles can be leveraged to create more value too. You know, all struggle can be leveraged to create more value. But that's—

Oh yeah.

That's a great example that you're talking about, like your struggle going through all those surgeries after the motorcycle accident. I think that in so many ways probably helps you talk to others that have gone through similar things and given them encouragement. That's creating great emotional energy value in the world, being able to do that. So you can leverage even the unhealthy struggles into creating more value in the world.

Oh, thank you. Yeah, I, when I'm ever in a struggle, um, I always ask, okay, what am I learning from this? You know, and I was struggling in every way after that. I lost my career. So this is all, this is all new to me, but we, we have a lot in common. I want to go back to, you got kicked out when you were a senior. Um, because I, at the end of my senior year, Ended up— I didn't sleep in my car. I'd bought my car by myself too, or with the money that I earned from working, and then saved up enough money to move out to California. But I had a friend that I stayed with. I got kicked out probably the last half of my senior year. So why did you get kicked out?

Well, what they said is I was never home. And so there's no reason for you to be here. The real reason it was completely differ in that. But it's true, I wasn't home much.

I, I wasn't either.

Taking 7 classes my senior year because I missed half of my sophomore year due to a leg infection. It was, it was pretty bad.

Really?

Lost my leg. And then I had a band. And, you know, back then I could sleep 3, 4 hours a night and be just totally fine. But that's what they said. But the home environment was toxic and dangerous. I mean, we had some pretty bad characters in the family. Younger brother in and out of prison 4 times before I disowned him. Horrible, horrible things going on. It was the best thing that ever happened to me getting out of there. And when I, when I talked to high school seniors and I've spoken to thousands of them, just sort of espousing the virtues of entrepreneurship and you create jobs and anybody that creates a job is a hero of mine because it's one more, you know, person that can support their family, contribute to the community, et cetera. I'll go through my story a little bit and I'll ask the kids, do you think that gave me an advantage or disadvantage? And the majority of them say disadvantage. A couple of them got it right and said advantage. You're absolutely right. It gave me a huge advantage. Like, I never, I was so happy that it happened and I just thought, why didn't I do this last year? You know, it was again, nothing to get an apartment and keep moving forward. And I got out of a toxic, unhealthy environment and I got into an environment of value creation where I could trust trading my best efforts for the best efforts of others, whether at a restaurant or you know, patrons coming to watch me play music. I loved it. And there was nothing that I thought I couldn't do, like literally nothing. So where did that come from? It came from staying on that value creation wheel and just learning to trust the work. And I know that I can actually do it. And most adults that I talk to about this concept, they'll say, oh, that makes all the sense in the world. And then the adults that, like, we all should do this and this is, that's exactly how it should be. And then I watch them struggle, these adults that have said to me this Makes all the sense in the world. And they act like little victims, which is crazy. It's like, it's easy to talk about stuff and recognize something, way harder to apply it. So you really have to grid up, if you will, and actually trust the work.

And yeah, yeah, but it makes all the difference. I mean, I knew it took me a lot longer to get my own car. My friends, most of them had a car about a year before me, but they didn't have to buy that car. You know, and guess whose car was the cleanest and nicest was mine because I cared so much about it because I was working hard to make those car payments. But I also had a very toxic home environment, which helped me because that pain really pushed me and my purpose and my passion pulled me, but I was grateful for the pain that pushed me and To get out even faster. And I was like, there's no going back. So I have to make this work, figure out a way somehow to keep a roof over my head. And the first 2 weeks I was in California, I had 4 different jobs. So I found a way, but it does build the grit. And gosh, we have so much in common. Like you had an infection in your leg as well.

It was pretty bad. It was, I was in the hospital and they were talking about cutting it off. And then it showed one little sign of healing, which I won't go into detail. And they said, well, let's watch it for a while. But it was, it was 6 months of laying in bed. It was the most painful thing I've ever gone through. But—

How did you get that?

I just stepped on something, ended up with 5 different staph infections. That's what they told me.

You are kidding.

My, my parents had no idea. You know, I said, hey, my leg really hurts and there's red streaks running up the leg. And my mom said, oh, it's a rash, probably just go back to bed. And then middle of the night I wake up, it's double in diameter. Oh my gosh, did that, that hurt. That was something.

Oh, I've been there before. And they put a mark on my leg to make sure the line wasn't going up more. But I knew I had an infection. And I drove myself to the hospital. I told my husband, I said, hey, I have a little infection. I'm going to go to the ER, just get some antibiotics, and I'll be back home. And I got to the hospital. They're like, Oh no, we have to admit you. This is not good. If you're if the metal in your leg gets infected, they are most definitely going to have to cut your leg off. And I was like, oh my gosh! I called my husband and I said, hey, you won't believe this. They're admitting me. He goes again because he had been in and out of the hospital with me so many times. You know, but wow, we have a lot in common. I just think it's amazing. All that you do. I want to get really clear on the number for my business and everybody on my team to get that number. So again, can you please tell everybody where they can find your MIND Methodology and they can learn this so they can start adding more value and building their business?

Absolutely. Go to themindmethodology.com and you'll find everything that you need there, including contacting us if you want additional help. And there's a lot of ways, again, that we help. We work directly with companies to install the MIND methodology. You can DIY it, no problem. It always goes faster when our team is in the room, you know, helping you do that. We have lots of content so you can take courses as you go through this journey. And with the MIND methodology, again, most important number and drivers creating value, there's no end to how you can increase that over time. There's just no end. So it's a never-ending journey staying on the leading edge of where you can accelerate the value your organization was designed to create. And in the for-profit world, it's almost always something around profit or cash flow depending if you're capital intensive or not. And cash flow is a really good one even for a public company, but it could be shareholder value as well depending on the stage you're at. Early stage companies, the most important number often will change like out of the gate, we just need users and then we can shift to profitability once we have a real business, you know, up and running. But it's always typically that for the, for the for-profit world. In the nonprofit world, it's a reflection of impact. Why is the world a better place because you exist? And how do we measure that? What's the best way of looking at it? They also need to measure raising money because you have to pay for the impact and all of it too. And again, just because you have one number for a company and one number for each team within a company doesn't mean you're not measuring 10, 20, 30, 40 other things to help you improve that number. Going in. But yeah, go to themindmethodology.com and you can get all this information.

That's amazing. Do you also speak at like different masterminds too?

Well, I do a lot of speaking, which I love communicating this way of thinking about creating value. I also run with some of my colleagues internal CEO masterminds. So, there are meetings that are 6.5 hours long. They're once a month. We limit it to 6 to 8 people max in a group and we solve for the problem that most other masterminds have, which is a superficial problem and a process over what's most important problem or challenge. And so on the superficial side of it, most masterminds, and I've been part of, you know, different groups like Vistage and Renaissance Executive Forums, there's a whole bunch of them out there. But collectively, I bet it's 30 years of being parts of different groups like that. And you'll get 5 minutes to say, this is my challenge. Everybody asks a clarifying question, you write it down, but everybody gives you their suggestion because they can't see into their business. You don't get to use everybody's brainpower to really help you. So in our masterminds, we use the MIND methodology. Every CEO in the room has a most important number. They have drivers that they can leverage to improve it. We know what winning looks like now, later, what has to get done in the next couple of quarters to set set us up to win now and later. And we see so much deeper into each other's business that we can use 80+% of our brainpower to really help them. In fact, usually when they bring a challenge, it's always something, almost always something else that's causing it and we get to the root cause of it. And so these companies are just accelerating growth a lot faster. To be in the group, you have to be thinking about growth and really going for it. You can't be a lifestyle business. You have to believe that when you help other businesses, especially out of your area of expertise, work on improving, it develops you professionally and personally going forward. And the way we think about the group is if all of us had 100% of our family's retirement money in here and we wanted to ensure we get a good return, what would we want to know and what would we do to make sure that happens? So, it's a really cool environment. So we've got, we have these groups. I have a number that I run and some of my colleagues run them and we've certified others to run these groups. We call them Execute CEO Masterminds. And now an idea that has just spun out of it is when our youth, you know, let's say starting at 16 or 15 years old, they start a business in high school and whatever it is, and they get a little bit of growth in revenue or at least enough material growth that they get 3 years of that. They qualify for a junior group. So we're putting our first junior entrepreneur group together for these Execute CEO Masterminds and they are so excited to be part of this. So they've got their peers in the room, they're starting from scratch. We have one kid who, his name is Nick and he went from, you know, $30,000 range hanging Christmas lights when he was 16 with a buddy, tripled it the next year, doubled it again the next year.

Wow.

And now he's got this lighting business going that's going to be incredible. And so these are the types of folks that we want in the room. It's not just any kid with an idea. It's like you have to show that you know how to hustle and you've actually created some revenue moving forward. So the folks that will run those groups will be the CEOs that are in our Execute Mastermind groups.

Oh, I love that. I want my daughter to be in that group.

Yeah.

And hey, talk about Nick hanging Christmas lights. We could not believe how much money it costs to hang lights on our— we just moved into this house right before Christmas, and we hired a company to put the lights on. That's a big business. It was expensive. So good for Nick. That's amazing.

Yeah, how many kids are coming out of high school making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, but it's only over a season hanging lights Taking them down. Incredible.

Yeah, it's amazing. Well, that is amazing. And one thing that I really love also that you have it a smaller group, because I have paid thousands of dollars before to be a part of a mastermind. Well, I've been a part of several masterminds, um, thousands of dollars to be a part of an intimate mastermind. And I get on the call and there's like 150 people on the call. I'm like, this isn't even a mastermind. Like, that to me is not a mastermind. Um, then I've been on other masterminds where I didn't really get value. Um, and so that's what actually led me to create my own mastermind because I was like, okay, I've learned from every different one that I've been a part of, of what I want to do and what I don't want to do. But I think that yours, having it that intimate, 6 to 8 people, mine's intimate. It caps off at 15 people and we're like family, you know? So I love that. So I want people to be able to find your mastermind as well.

And you can find information on that at themindmethodology.com website as well. And I think what virtually all of these mastermind groups do that creates value, or at least has the potential to create value, is the community where it becomes like family. You've got other folks that are kind of in the same boat. You're not completely alone. Again, the big difference in what we're doing is we keep people on the leading edge of creating value faster in their organizations using the MIND methodology. None of the other groups have anything like that. You know, they get lots of members. There's a huge hunger for it. But most, you know, sort of time out within sometimes a year, 2 years, 3 years because they're just not getting value anymore out of it to help their business. We don't have that challenge. Like there is no end to how you can create value and we keep everybody on that leading edge.

That's amazing. We need more people like you in the world adding value. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show. I mean, I loved learning about you and listening to different interviews, and I was excited to talk with you, but then getting to know you more and realize that we grew up in a very similar way and have so much in common, I'm just I'm just really excited to get to know you more and more and learn from you more and more. So if you're ever in Dallas, let me know so I can take you out to eat. If I'm— next time I'm in Phoenix, I'll definitely let you know. But thank you. If you're listening to this and there's one part that stuck out, take a screenshot and tag me @AmberlyLagoMotivation on Instagram. And where do you hang out the most on social media, Lee?

Really just LinkedIn. LinkedIn. Yeah.

I'm not surprised. I'm getting more on LinkedIn. It's, I think, for people who are really serious about building business. So, yeah. So, well, then tag us on LinkedIn so we can see. I'll be sharing this on LinkedIn, on all social media platforms.

Yeah. And if I could, like, a great first step for all the listeners is order my book, Your Most Important Number. This will give you really a complete picture of what the MIND Methodology is all about. And if you like audiobooks, I recorded 25-minute interviews after every chapter for more insights and background. And if you get all the way to the end, I did just an impromptu one-take, 3-minute guitar solo. So you got that.

Oh my goodness. Well, I have an Audible credit. I'm going to go get it on Audible right now because I do love being able to go to the gym or drive and listen to a book. But I like the real actual book so I can highlight stuff. But yes, check out his book, Your Most Important Number. And then what is the name of your new book coming out next week for kids?

Value Creation Kid, with the subtitle, The Healthy Struggles Your Children Need to Succeed. You can actually start to order it now. It's trickling out to 40,000 different channels where you can buy books.

Well, congratulations. That's amazing.

We want to make a difference in the world. My goal isn't to be an author, it's to make a difference. And sometimes a book is a necessary part of that.

Well, that's amazing. And you're making a huge impact in such a positive way. And so I'm hoping one of these days I can get in your mastermind, and I'm hoping my daughter can too, because she's a little entrepreneur.

Great. Let's stay in touch. I have a feeling we're going to be in touch for a long time.

Thank you again for listening to the show. Thank you, Lee, for being here and sharing your I'll see you next week.