Show Your Value with Lee Benson
Oct 21, 2026 · 31 min · 8 segments
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…
Uh, for me, it's always been about responsibly and continually growing the value of my business, and I've started eight different companies from scratch now, and the challenge is how do we get everybody focused on increasing the value of the business? All of the leaders, the senior leadership team, every single team member, how do we incentivize everybody to move in that direction? And the simplest way I could do it is to have a most important number for every part of the business.
One that's overarching for the company that is basically used in determining the value of the business, and then a number that's, uh, important for every function within the business.
And the MIND methodology, the acronym MIND, M-I-N-D, stands for most important number and drivers.
So if you have a most important number of profit for the business, EBITDA or whatever form you have, you know, basically, what, what is that number today? What do you want it to be in a year, in two years, three years? And you put that plan in place, and you're tracking for it.
If it's marketing, how many qualified leads do we want coming in, and how does that increase over time? Same thing for sales, same for, for operations, for finance, for legal.
Just depends on the type of business, but this is something that's universal that applies to every single business out there.
Doesn't matter whether it's a service business, product business, government agency.
Okay.
So what, what I'm hearing is the most important number for the whole, uh, organization and, and most important number for each of the drivers, right?
Most im-most important number for each of the departments, teams, functions within the business.
This also implies that there is, uh, full transparency within the organization.
Um, but I've always believed if we want everybody increasing the value of the business, we have to show them the target.
So if our goal is to increase profit twenty percent this year, thirty percent the following year, whatever that is, how do we get everybody engaged in doing that if they can't see it? And I've never seen an issue anywhere with, uh, showing the numbers to all of the team members.
One of the most common worries, I would, I would say, from CEOs, "If I show our, our, our team members the numbers, um, they may want to negotiate a raise, or if they see how much money we're making, uh, they're gonna think it's unfair." I've never seen that.
Occasionally, you have maybe one or two employees that, um, might respond that way, but on average, it's never been an issue.
Uh, for me, it's always been about responsibly and continually growing the value of my business, and I've started eight different companies from scratch now, and the challenge is how do we get everybody focused on increasing the value of the business? All of the leaders, the senior leadership team, every single team member, how do we incentivize everybody to move in that direction? And the simplest way I could do it is to have a most important number for every part of the business.
One that's overarching for the company that is basically used in determining the value of the business, and then a number that's, uh, important for every function within the business.
And the MIND methodology, the acronym MIND, M-I-N-D, stands for most important number and drivers.
So if you have a most important number of profit for the business, EBITDA or whatever form you have, you know, basically, what, what is that number today? What do you want it to be in a year, in two years, three years? And you put that plan in place, and you're tracking for it.
If it's marketing, how many qualified leads do we want coming in, and how does that increase over time? Same thing for sales, same for, for operations, for finance, for legal.
Just depends on the type of business, but this is something that's universal that applies to every single business out there.
Doesn't matter whether it's a service business, product business, government agency.
Okay.
So what, what I'm hearing is the most important number for the whole, uh, organization and, and most important number for each of the drivers, right?
Most im-most important number for each of the departments, teams, functions within the business.
This also implies that there is, uh, full transparency within the organization.
Um, but I've always believed if we want everybody increasing the value of the business, we have to show them the target.
So if our goal is to increase profit twenty percent this year, thirty percent the following year, whatever that is, how do we get everybody engaged in doing that if they can't see it? And I've never seen an issue anywhere with, uh, showing the numbers to all of the team members.
One of the most common worries, I would, I would say, from CEOs, "If I show our, our, our team members the numbers, um, they may want to negotiate a raise, or if they see how much money we're making, uh, they're gonna think it's unfair." I've never seen that.
Occasionally, you have maybe one or two employees that, um, might respond that way, but on average, it's never been an issue.
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