Show Your Value with Lee Benson
Sep 16, 2026 · 47 min · 12 segments
Bruce Cardenas helped Quest Nutrition for nine months without being paid. He walked away with equity in a billion-dollar company. He was 46 when he met the founders, and he'd already been a police…
Bruce CardenasGuestLee BensonHost
You know, they would come in with their resume, and we weren't big resume readers, to be honest with you, because, listen, everyone's the number one graduate in their class, right? But I said, let's put the resume aside.
And they would always come in and want to be the director of some department, and obviously starting at $150,000.
And what really brought things in perspective, because they would sometimes call me into interviews and say, oh, hey, Bruce, this is so-and-so.
Why would you work for nine months for free? Well, fast forward, I had equity in a billion-dollar company.
Even when I try and break it down to them, they'd say, I'd rather have the money right now up
I think for as much time as it takes to cultivate material value creation, and it does take time to be good at business or any of that kind of stuff.
In my view, in my experience, it takes just as long to be really good at cultivating emotional energy value.
You know, they would come in with their resume, and we weren't big resume readers, to be honest with you, because, listen, everyone's the number one graduate in their class, right? But I said, let's put the resume aside.
And they would always come in and want to be the director of some department, and obviously starting at $150,000.
And what really brought things in perspective, because they would sometimes call me into interviews and say, oh, hey, Bruce, this is so-and-so.
Why would you work for nine months for free? Well, fast forward, I had equity in a billion-dollar company.
Even when I try and break it down to them, they'd say, I'd rather have the money right now up
I think for as much time as it takes to cultivate material value creation, and it does take time to be good at business or any of that kind of stuff.
In my view, in my experience, it takes just as long to be really good at cultivating emotional energy value.
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