As The Leader Grows with Ken Joslin

Lee Benson | Holistic Value Creation

• Ken Joslin

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Looking for a podcast episode that will challenge your perspective on value creation? Join me, your host Ken Joslin, as I sit down with Lee Benson, CEO of Dinner Table Family, for an eye-opening conversation on holistic value creation. Lee shares his life motto and reveals how true value creation extends beyond material wealth to encompass emotional and spiritual dimensions. Discover the importance of connectedness in both personal and professional settings, and learn how businesses can transform into value creation machines through strategic collaboration and leadership. With insights from Lee's own experiences, including founding and selling multiple companies, you won't want to miss this thought-provoking episode on creating value in all aspects of life.

Are you a CEO looking for innovative strategies to enhance value creation? In this episode, I chat with Lee Benson, CEO of Dinner Table Family, about his unique approach to running mastermind groups. Lee explains why it's crucial to prioritize holistic value creation over traditional management systems, like EOS and OKRs. Discover the "Mind Methodology," a framework that identifies the Most Important Number and Drivers for a business, fostering a culture that increases value across all dimensions. Hear stories from Lee's own entrepreneurial journey, including the pitfalls of solely focusing on material gains, and learn how a balanced approach to value creation can lead to long-lasting fulfillment.

Join me and my guest Lee Benson, CEO of Dinner Table Family, as we explore the role of leadership resilience in value creation. In this inspiring episode, we discuss the importance of positive energy and resilience in times of adversity. Discover how leaders can turn struggles into growth opportunities and energize their teams to create value amidst market changes. Drawing on insights from the late Jack Welch's philosophy, we uncover the key qualities that make a great leader and how to overcome negative patterns that may be holding you back. Don't miss this episode filled with valuable advice on leadership and creating value in all aspects of life.

Welcome to the ATLG podcast I am your host Ken Joslin, former pastor turned coach & host of CREATE, the #1 Faith-based Entrepreneur conference in America. My mission is to help faith-based entrepreneurs become the best version of themselves by growing in our Core 5: Faith, Health, Relationships, Business & Finances. You can get more information as well as join our FREE Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/676347099851525

If you enjoyed the podcast, come join our FREE GSD Community of hundreds of entrepreneurs & a ton of FREE Content including CREATE Conference recordings with Ken, John Maxwell, Gary Brecka, Ed Mylett & more. growstackdrive.com/free

Speaker 1:

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of as the Leader Grows. I am your host, ken Jocelyn. Today I've got an amazing guest. This is going to. I'm super excited about this conversation. I've got my friend, lee Benson, who is the CEO of Dinner Table Family. This guy has built and sold several companies over his life. He's coached hundreds of leaders and he literally lives a life and lives every single day to create value in the world.

Speaker 2:

Lee and welcome my friend and good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

Hey, do me a favor take a minute or two and explain a little bit. When we say value creation to our audience, will you explain that? I mean, it's really like your life motto. Will you take a minute and explain that just a little bit? When we say value creation to our audience, will you explain that? I mean, it's really like your life motto. Will you take a minute and explain that just a little?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think when a lot of people talk about adding value, most of the time it's just virtue signaling. When I think about creating value, I think about creating it holistically. So there's three macro buckets. There's material value, creation, money and things and most people absolutely get that. But there's also emotional energy value that can be created, as well as spiritual value that can be created.

Speaker 2:

And the spiritual side is all about connectedness. Some people are deeply religious, others aren't, but connectedness is important to everybody. And so when I create holistic value, material side is important, especially for families, but companies for sure. We don't make money, we can't stay in business, we can't pay our people, but the emotional energy value created is the scarcest commodity on the planet in my view, because it supercharges everything else that we do. And then the the spiritual side of the connectedness piece. You know know how connected are family members to each other. You know even kids to themselves. To understand their own self better In the business world.

Speaker 2:

What are we doing to strengthen the connections so between all the team members, so everybody is so much more productively engaged with creating value for the business? Because every business out there in the for-profit world it's a value creation machine. How is it designed to create value? What's everybody's part in that, and are we collaborating appropriately? Are we fully connected, and is the CEO continually and responsibly increasing the value of their business over time, which is what I think their primary job should be? So that's how I think about value creation. It's holistic. Money's important, but if you don't do the other two, you miss out. And one thing I'll say I've started eight companies from scratch. I've had exits from a few million to well into nine figures, and I always got much higher multiples because of approaching it this way.

Speaker 1:

I was going to ask you in the Able aerospace you guys had 500 employees, 2000 customers in 60 different countries. When, in the process of being an entrepreneur and a CEO, did this come to you of, oh, or did you have this the entire time come to?

Speaker 2:

you of? Oh, or did you have this the entire time this holistic value creation mindset? Yeah, I think, if you're trying to create value, so you're in the marketplace. When I started this, what turned into Able Aerospace? When I sold it in 2016 to Textron, it was three employees. We did electroplating. We did something called brush plating. So we're electroplating aircraft parts by hand, not getting very much money for it, and I said, hey, why don't we just go directly to aircraft operators? If they buy a part for $10,000, we can save it for less than $5,000. So that's going to be a really good deal.

Speaker 2:

So, as we're creating this value and we're going out there, how do we grow? How do we make more money? How do we hire the teams and get the equipment that we need and all of it? So, if you're applying math, common sense, logic, facts and reason to going down this road to create more and more value, everybody will go past these road signs, right? If you're caught up in things that don't matter for you know that don't relate to value creation you'll miss the road signs, but you go, buy those. And so it just came.

Speaker 2:

Came to me that, wow, hey, we're working really hard. No, no big issue there. But we now we have culture challenges, so let's get on top of that. And then, oh my gosh, we develop a product or service. We get 0.2% market share penetration and then develop another one.

Speaker 2:

It's like, wait a minute, let's get smarter from a strategic standpoint. Wait a minute. Leadership matters. We want consistent, capable leadership across the board. So, as I'm going through all this stuff and keeping the structure of the organization, ie the functional structure, all the pieces that matter that have to be in balance to continually increase the value of the business, keeping that where it should be allocation of resources, defining roles I'm saying a lot right now, but it's wild how you discover this stuff and as you figure something out, you take another giant step forward and then you figure something out, you take another step forward and keep going. And that's where I evolved into this holistic value creation model. And, for example and I can't say what the number is we sold it for because of the agreement when we sold it. But what I can say is that we were very run the strategic buy everything in there and strong companies in the industry at the time were getting 8X, so we blew them away almost threefold what they were getting because of approaching it this way.

Speaker 1:

I love that you said math common sense and you talked about value, math common sense and you talked about value. And when you said that a lot of CEOs, a lot of entrepreneurs are and I'm sure you're familiar with the EOS system, with Rocket Fuel, the integrator and the visionary A lot of visionaries math common sense go out the window and there's a lot of emotion involved in what they do, in those decisions. What would you say to entrepreneurs? That defines me Now.

Speaker 1:

I have great common sense but I am passionate about what we're doing and it's hard sometimes for me to pull my desire and my passion out of. Sometimes for me to pull my desire and my passion out of. Okay, let's look at what we have so we can figure out are we adding and creating holistic value, not just for our company but for our clients? What would you say to the CEO or the visionary that is super passionate, but it's hard for them to take a step back and take an unbiased look at what's going on in their company and take an unbiased look at what's going on in their company?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that is a great question. As you know, I run mastermind groups for CEOs. I have three full groups with eight members in each and these groups and I'm certifying chairs to do this process as well. A full group is six to eight, so it's smaller, and every two months we do a deep dive into everybody's business. And the foundational piece here to your question is that, philosophically, every CEO's job in the room is to continually and responsibly increase the value of their business. So our job is to make sure they're doing the right work at every point in time to responsibly do that and time to responsibly do that.

Speaker 2:

And the challenge I have with EOS and OKRs and scaling up and and you know 40X and all these other systems is that they management operating systems. They make process more important than what is most important. They start putting people in boxes. They assume a one size fits all, which is ridiculous to me and that's why I wrote my book. Your Most Important Number and I have an operating management system titled is an acronym the Mind Methodology Most Important Number in Drivers, because everything's about creating value, not what some system says you're supposed to be.

Speaker 2:

So when somebody says I'm the visionary and I do this and I can't do that, that's the wrong conversation. To me, the right conversation is where's your business at today? Let's look at your business model. Let's look at the value that customers perceive and actually get from your company and the products and services. Let's look at your culture, the behaviors that you want to drive that will cause the most value to be created. And then let's look at your approach to strategy, which is nothing more than approaches to increasing the value of your business.

Speaker 2:

Now, all these other operating systems they end up getting really complicated. You have to learn a whole new language. And am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? Is the question. Instead of I don't know, let's take a really clear look at the company. Let's do less, better and responsibly increase the value of it.

Speaker 2:

So it's not about put yourself in a box and everybody's passionate about something. For me, are we doing the work we should be doing right now to increase the value of the business. And once you're building that muscle, just like any new skill, the first year is going to feel clunky, but after that it's like wow, I'm on the right track and I'm building momentum on my own and you get better and better and better and better and it's a very healthy struggle for entrepreneurs to kind of work through that, the leaders of these organizations, but really leaders at all levels. But once you get on that track you'll start picking up speed and it's amazing what you can do over time. As long as you stick with it and you value the struggle, you don't give up because, oh, it's a little bit hard today.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I love that. I'd say constantly that it's about the journey, it's never about the destination, and I've had several friends who've exited. I had one, casey, who spoke at my mastermind a couple of years ago and he had just exited for about 35 to 40 million, and he said three weeks later, nobody needed me, nobody needed my vision, nobody needed me at the office. And he said, literally I'm sitting in a Starbucks parking lot contemplating ending my life. Oh, my gosh, here I've done all the things that I wanted to do and I've built this house on that. I've got all the and I'm like the purpose was completely gone out of that. And so when we talk about holistic value creation, what do you think I mean? You're Execute to Win, you've coached. You just said you've got masterminds with high level CEOs. What do you see is the number one or number two thing that most CEOs struggle with?

Speaker 2:

Well, what you just described. I believe that happens because they focus mostly on the material value creation bucket, which is important, and didn't focus on the emotional energy and spiritual value creation bucket. And once you do those things in balance for you and it's going to be different for everyone you generally feel significantly better. Like, for example, part of what I do is I'll invest in early stage companies, but I invest in real estate and a lot of different things. And there was a company last year that went under and they were going to be in the VR space virtual reality. Look where it's going. It was not much. I put $300,000 into it. They raised a little over $3 million and they went under and most of the investors were really angry. Like I can't believe this is happening and all of it. And I'm looking and say, well, the people that I met, like the team internally, the emotional energy that was going on there was insanely cool. The connectedness side now I know a lot of people that I just love that. I got to meet them. I got more than $300,000 in return on the emotional energy and the spiritual value creation buckets and if I want to leverage those relationships to make up the 300,000, I could. I can easily do that. I'm never short of things to get involved with. But it was a non-event for me. It's like that was a really cool experience you know going through.

Speaker 2:

But most will say and it's virtue signaling to me, it's it can't be about the money and that doesn't matter. But when you look at their actions they're like literally 95% about the money. When you intentionally cultivate holistic value creation in all three buckets, keep it in balance for you. You have to figure that out. You won't have that issue Like when I sold my aerospace companies, I combined two into one. I had already started my consulting company, execute to Win. I'm already doing all these other things. I've already decided that the reason I'm here is to drive holistic value creation behaviors into the world in for-profits, nonprofits and through dinner table in families, creating value creation cultures within families. Started building that community in April of this year and we have over 13,000 families in our parenting community and we'll be well over 100,000 families in our parenting community and we'll be well over 100,000 a year from today. So I'll never have the problem that your friend's talking about. For that reason you can win so big on the material side If you're out of balance. It feels terrible.

Speaker 1:

So out of those three buckets, is there one that sticks out when you talk to CEOs the most, the one they neglect or the one they don't go after?

Speaker 2:

Well, not looking at it holistically, I think is the biggest challenge for them and the scarcest commodity on the planet for me is positive emotional energy because, as I said earlier, it does supercharge everything we do.

Speaker 2:

It's the X factor for leaders. I've done really well on the material side, but I think if I was going to pick one of the three that's my strength above the other two it's going to be the emotional, energy side and I intentionally cultivate that and think about that and how has that worked for me over time, even when I couldn't articulate what I was doing. Um, everybody wanted to help me because of that energy. They want, they want to be around it. And then you know, if you think about the organization and whether it's, you know, one leader and a and a team, a small team they have. Or when I sold the aerospace company at 64 leaders and just at the height, just over I think it was 503 employees they created. We collectively, as leaders, created the environment from which all the employees created value.

Speaker 2:

And there were three buckets. There was how you show up as a leader with traits. There was foundational readiness rates. There was foundational readiness Were any and all of you ready at any point in time to grow? 20%, were you foundationally ready to grow? Because it's healthy to grow as a company? And then there was the management operating system. What were the regular, consistent with discipline things that you did to cause the most value to be created the meetings, the training, the maintenance, like whatever that was. And there were several elements to each or subcategories, each of these three categories, and I ranked every leader red, green or yellow in all of them and it was on a giant poster for everybody in the company to see. And when I first did it, there were a few leaders that were mostly red, there were a few that were mostly green and the middle was kind of all over the place. Once I posted it, within 90 days, virtually all of them were mostly green and our results started jumping.

Speaker 2:

You know, in that first category, how you show up as a leader. You need to have positive energy in good times and especially bad times, when things are going sideways. That's when we need a leader. If everything's perfect, why would I need a leader to do anything? Everything's just perfect. And then and then, uh, you know the ability to energize your team by the environment that you're creating. So you have to, you have to be able to do that. Um have to have the um and I, a lot of these, my, my partner, um in ETW, before he passed, was Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric. He and I became good friends and he called the four E's and a P and I adopted those.

Speaker 2:

But I also added resiliency in there as well. When times get tough, don't think about quitting. You know, lean in and go for it. You have a really bad day. You come back the next day productively, focused on addressing that and moving forward, not feeling bad or sorry for yourself. And I even had a leader once start telling a senior leader non-supervisory team members he's thinking about quitting because the last week's results weren't very good. It's like no, you're more resilient than that. Are you kidding me? Let's stay in the game. Of course, sometimes it's hard, like for all of us that are running companies as they start getting bigger. I've never had a day where everything's perfect. I've got a beautiful sandy beach over here. There's a hurricane coming in on this side. Why is this tornado behind me? Where the hell did that come from? Yes, that's my job.

Speaker 1:

Let me ask you a question, lee. Why do you think it's hard, or what, inside of a leader or a CEO? Because you said something that and I've been with great leaders and I've been with leaders that struggle, I've struggled with this sometimes to have a positive mental attitude when everything's going sideways. How do you do that and how do you teach leaders to do that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, another amazing question. There's no easy silver bullet to it, but I think it does come down to perspective Like what, what is your job? So, um, you know you're talking about the, the leader of the organization, a middle manager, a front line leader. Are you talking about the leader of the organization? Is that where you want to go?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I mean because it starts. I mean everything is. My good friend John Maxwell says everything rises and falls with leadership. I mean as a CEO, because you started with three employees and grew that to over 500. I mean there's a lot. I mean again, you said every day things happen. You get paid to solve problems. Like how do you deal with some of those big swings and shifts in momentum as the leader knowing?

Speaker 2:

everybody's looking at you to be able to lead the team, yeah, and I get paid to create value, so I don't even think of it as I get paid to solve problems. I think of it as I get paid to and, yes, we solve lots of problems all the time. My guess is, you and I are both are really amazing problem solvers and we go for it so, but I get paid to create value and my job is looking at the chessboard and it's moving around all the time. When, when the market makes a moves, like, oh, I didn't see that coming. Um, now I get to do a bunch of other stuff. So I always thought about it that way. Here are all these pieces, you know people, resources, customers, markets, whatever that. That is my chessboard, and every day somebody is going to make a move.

Speaker 2:

I can't predict this thing out perfectly, for, you know, sometimes not even 30 days, but certainly not years. So I just need to get comfortable playing chess this way and my job is to create value, and anytime I would start thinking, oh, I'm a victim. And I remember the first couple of years. You know, almost going out of business many times Like this is so hard. You know almost going out of business many times like this is so hard.

Speaker 2:

And then I realized wait, a minute, most of my friends envy the fact, admire that I get to do this and they don't have the nerve to do it. It's like we are so fortunate to be able to do this. We're going for it. My job is to create value, and dealing with this chessboard the way I described it and dealing with this chessboard the way I described it really helps me from getting down in the dumps or sideways, because some really bad things can happen and sometimes you have decisions like I've got to let half my people go, or I've got to do this, or I've got to do that Sell my house, or whatever comes along.

Speaker 2:

That just happens to be what's on the chessboard that day. And as we develop as leaders, all of this struggle, I'm going to, I'm going to, you know, suggest here for all the listeners that all this struggle that we're going through, it's an incredibly healthy struggle, because once we get through it, we'll never struggle that way again, as long as we stay in it and come out the other side actually creating value. And I'm sure you see this, ken as well, where there are so many um leaders that they're, they're, they act like victims and all this stuff is going on and the obvious solutions are right there in front of them. And and so they're, they're in that you know poor situation for no other reason than themselves. They're the single biggest limiting factor their company has and they're acting like a victim rather than studying, learning, playing chess better and better and better every single day. Does that resonate?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, 100%. Why do you think leaders stay stuck there? What do you think the biggest reason when a leader gets there? Why do they? Why can? Because a lot of companies fold because of bad leadership can. And because I mean a lot of companies fold because of bad leadership Like, why, why, why does a leader stay stuck there versus going to ETW or or going to somebody else and getting help? What do you? What do?

Speaker 2:

you think the reason is for that? There's been a lot of different ways. This has been said. But when you know everything, you can't learn anything, and so a lot of times their world is so absolute. It's like this, is it? And so there's a couple of mantras I would suggest.

Speaker 2:

There's always a better way than you can think of today, and it's your job to go find it. So be wildly curious and always looking for that thing, and and don't don't try everything that comes along and and completely blow up your business. Be really, you know, strategic and methodical about the, about how you do things, but don't overanalyze either. I mean, you have to go at the right pace. But I think the reason they stay stuck in my experience and I've worked with so many, literally thousands of leaders now is they think they already know all the answers. They're not curious. They almost don't believe there's a better way. If you asked them that they'd go, of course there is, but their actions are telling me they don't believe that. So how, in fact, ken, how many leaders that you work with and you get to work with a lot in your mastermind um, what? How many of those leaders are super curious and listen really well?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, in our group, most everybody, because they're there, because one of the things we talk about in our core five faith, health, relationship, business and finances is how do I come, how do I become the best version of myself? So it's an ongoing thing and self-awareness is huge. I mean, it's one of my five personal core values, is self-awareness, and I tell friends all the time listen. I remember I walked into a meeting this has been years ago with a good friend of mine who was the mindset coach for, and still is, for LeBron James, for the Lakers and then for Miami. He's been on stage with the Obamas. He's got one picture with George Bush on one side and Bill Clinton on the other. He's just a super accomplished guy.

Speaker 1:

And we're going into this dinner one night down in Miami at the Fountain Blue, and I had never been at this level of a time and I just pulled him aside. I said, richie, if I don't ever want to be the guy that doesn't know what he doesn't know, if you need to say something to me, I'm giving you permission to say whatever you feel like you need to say to me, because I don't want to be the guy in the room that doesn't know what he doesn't know. Yeah, and I think the self-awareness component is huge. I think if you're self-aware, you're constantly in that mode of getting better, and then what you do is you're constantly looking and surrounding yourself with the people that can help you get better. I think that's huge.

Speaker 2:

Well, just to kind of keep going with this a little bit, self-awareness and curiosity is super important. A lot of people say they are, but their actions tell me they're not.

Speaker 1:

What are actions of somebody? Because I was going to mention the be wildly curious because I wrote that down and started. I love that. What are some of the actions of a leader who's wildly curious?

Speaker 2:

Well, you can tell when they're not that they stay stuck, even when they say they're a certain thing. I'm enlightened, I'm self-aware, I'm curious, but they stay completely stuck. And it's really more behaviors. They won't really listen to their team, their team starts talking and they cut them off because they already have the answer for it. But it all comes in To me. If you're getting the result moving in the direction you want reasonably over time, then you are curious and you're learning and you're self-aware and you're figuring that out. If you're not, you're not. And another thing that I look for is excuses, like we would be here but this thing happened and that thing happened and that thing happened. It's like, well, but you're the one that position your company this way, so it's literally 100% on you. And even to the point, if you stay there long enough and it's a horrible market, there just isn't any business. You should have iterated and moved into something that has a much bigger total addressable market for you.

Speaker 1:

I love that I had a mentor. Tell me one time this goes back to a little bit about the positive emotional energy Probably 25 years ago a mentor told me he goes, ken, it's never as good as you think it is and it's never as bad as you think it is. How do you, how do you feel about that statement?

Speaker 2:

A hundred percent agree. Yeah, yeah, um, this, yeah, the Cisco CEO. Uh, what was the gentleman's name? He wrote a book, uh, connecting the dots. Um, john C Chambers, I think.

Speaker 2:

Um, I 100% agree, and he said it in the book that nobody's virtually nobody, is as good or bad as anybody says they are, and I 100% agree with that.

Speaker 2:

So I don't think about good or bad, I think about creating value or not creating value or taking value out of the world.

Speaker 2:

When I think about creating virtue excuse me, practicing virtue for me it requires two things create objectively measurable value holistically in those three buckets and pushing back on things taking value out of the world, at least in proportion. So, like a lot of the craziness in the world right now, with wokeness, and you need to be this way or that way to fit in, I shine a spotlight on all of that stuff because it's not creating value. And you know, please do the math for me and show me how this is creating positive value in the world in any one of the three buckets. And nobody ever has anything when it comes to a lot of the nonsense that's going on out there. So I'm not virtue signaling like most do on the planet. It's like let's create some real value and push back on things that are taking it out of the world, and the more people do that, that's going to be a way better world for you and I and our family to interact with.

Speaker 1:

Well, I you know one of the my motto I live by is great leaders want something for people, not from people, and what you just said is a group of people who are focused on themselves and they're not focused on adding value to other people. So you've taken on a passion project at this stage of your life called Dinner Table Family, and you have a dream to help families create an atmosphere and culture within their homes of holistic value creation. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I've worked for decades with for-profits and non-profits to create a value creation culture very successfully with so many different companies from startup to north of $60 billion market cap companies and now really focusing on creating a value creation culture within a family from startup to north of $60 billion market cap companies and now really focusing on creating a value creation culture within a family. So at Dinner Table, we are a community of families raising kids to create value in the world and we're a place to go for practical family wisdom and build on it. Like, where else do you go to kind of share what's working and isn't working in the real world and get better and better and better at doing it? Like, where else do you go to kind of share what's working and isn't working in the real world and get better and better and better at doing it? And you know sitting back and saying look, every family member has a job for the family. You know could start as early as three years old. But what's your job? And that job changes from you know early age till they launch into adulthood. If everybody does their job for the family, you don't get paid extra for it. As kids, we have a much higher chance of hitting our family value creation goals. And so we've got all of that and we teach sort of how to build holistic family legacy. So let's build on the financial side, even if you start negative, you can start it from any place. And then, on the emotional energy side, what does it feel like to be in the family and how do we build that over time? You know the stories we tell, intentionally, realizing the impact we have when we're in a bad mood, which all of us will time to time not be in the best mood. And then, on the spiritual value creation side, what are we doing to strengthen connectedness, you know, with the immediate family, extended family communities that are important to us, and I took over as interim CEO.

Speaker 2:

The board of directors asked me to do it. There was a company called Gravy Stack that was a kid's banking app and it objectively didn't work, and there's a lot of reasons for that, in my view. And the board said you know what could you do, lita, turn this in a certain direction. And I said well, we can definitely build these communities, started working on this a little over a year ago with them and building communities of families that we can have millions of families in this and the ROI or return investment for families doing this work is incredibly high. Started actually building the communities in April of this year. We have over 13,000 families in our parenting group, and then we have a number of different groups that they can get involved with. I think a year from today will likely be over 100,000 families represented. I want to get to millions and I'm not charging them $1 to do this work Like this is so important.

Speaker 2:

I've spent the last decade in Arizona and I put in about $2 million of my own money into nonprofits to improve conditions for K-12 students to learn that the purpose of an education is to create value in the world.

Speaker 2:

And what I realized is that when I go to the state legislature, you know, through the different teams that I've been working with, it's adults fighting over money. It's not about the kids. And so I thought gosh, you know we have to build communities of families to affect change. We can't do it from inside the system. And then, with the transition with GravyStack this kid's banking app to dinner table, rather than me just starting a new nonprofit to go after these communities of families, let's do it over here and I won't charge you a dollar for it. Let's get this thing going, and I love the progress that's happening right now. So yeah, ken, that's why this is so important to me, because this will change the world in a very selfish, win-win value creation way. It'll be an amazing world for me to age out in if I can get a few million families to do this. I love that.

Speaker 1:

What's some of the framework or some of the principles that you're teaching families through Dinner Table Family.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, we bring coaches on board that can guide families through this and we have facilitated discussions, deep dives on topics. Every month there's a first 12-month flow and then it goes on from there. Foundationally, inside the household, we put in something called the dinner table method. There's four components to it value creation, house rules, financial competency and struggle, healthy struggle. And on the value creation side, it's how you talk about it as a family. It's not just money Money's wildly important but we talk about emotional and spiritual value creation and how they contribute to that. On the house rules side, it's kind of a dinner table, you know home economy system, if you will, where you know what's the job or expectations for each kid, really every family member. What expenses do they pick up as the kids get older and how do the kids earn extra money so they can learn to manage money and do all of that? And then financial competency financial literacy isn't enough. It's not moving the needle at scale anywhere.

Speaker 2:

Being financially competent is what we're looking for, and holding all of it up is this concept of struggle, and there's three kinds of struggle. There's healthy, normal struggles that every kid should go through and it's super important that they do that so they're ready for adulthood. And then there's unhealthy struggles. Could be an illness, drug addiction, something worse but at Dinner Table we teach don't wear it as your victim identity. Do your best to work your way out of that situation and then leverage that struggle to create value. Any struggle, even unhealthy struggles, can be leveraged to create value in the world. If nothing else, helping others. And then the third category is intentionally designed struggle. So when parents are working with their children, hey, what characteristics you know character traits, what capabilities would you like to have when you launch into adulthood and you're collaborating on that more and more as they get older. And then you work backwards and say what healthy struggles can we design today to get them more ready to be self-reliant, amazing value creating adults. So that's some basic stuff, but yeah, we have a lot Ken.

Speaker 1:

Do you think that? Because in my generation we didn't wear seatbelts in the car, I never wore a bike. I don't even know what a bike helmet looks like when I was a kid Like we're, you know, we're eating dirt, we're doing all this stuff back in the day. It's like, okay, go do it. It's almost like maybe even my generation or guys a little younger than me I'm 56, the Gen Z generation. They coddle kids.

Speaker 1:

I think it started when everyone started getting participation trophies. When I was a kid, if you got a trophy you were good or you were on a good team and I'll never forget playing baseball. I was probably 11 or 12. And we won our division at the boys club and won the whole thing. We had one of the best teams. We had a really good. It was the first trophy I ever got. I'll never forget getting that trophy. I still remember I played for the Indians. I can tell you what our uniforms looked like at 11 or 12 years old. But now everybody gets a participation trophy. How much do you think that hurts and affects the next generation? It just giving them a pat on the back because it doesn't lead into healthy struggle at all. How much do you think that hurts or wounds the next generation into becoming really what they're designed and capable of becoming?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, what you're talking about is right in that category of struggle. So it's with the best of intentions, let's take all the struggle away from the kids. I mean, what's the thing that we hear from a lot of parents? I don't want them to struggle the way I did and I'm going to make sure my kids never do. And you know, in a way that's virtue signaling to look how good I am and I'm doing this. You just made it way worse for the kids coming in. So if we don't accomplish challenging things and build self-esteem by doing that, that's the problem. And so we want to take struggle away. The parents that tell me they never want their kids to struggle the way they did, my first response is always but I love who you are and you wouldn't be who you are without those struggles. So our job, I believe, as parents, is to design struggles in a healthy way for the children, at the level they can handle it, and then keep increasing the amount of struggle so they learn to value the struggle. You know, at Dinner Table we have this thing, this value creation cycle that we talk about. Identify a capability that you would like to have or a character trait, you struggle, you obtain that and then you don't stop there. You use that to create value and then you keep going. You know it's um.

Speaker 2:

On the material value creation side, I always tell the story when people say where'd you get your start? As well as for 25 cents an hour pulling weeds when a neighbor asked me to do it at six years old and I just remember what that felt like. I came from a super low income family and I went out. I did this back then because I'm 63 you're just a kid to me, man I could buy two candy bars and have change, and then I was shoveling snow and mowing lawns and then paper outs and then dishwasher, busboy, cook. By the time I was kicked out of the house. At the beginning of my senior year in high school I already purchased my own truck. I slept in the back of my Chevy Blazer one night. Then I found somebody that needed a roommate the next night. It was a non-event for me financially because I started on this value creation cycle early and then I developed the emotional energy and the spiritual side and that just it just brings everything into balance doing it that way.

Speaker 1:

What does the word fulfillment mean to you?

Speaker 2:

It's my internal most important number. Fulfillment mean to you. It's my internal most important number. Yeah, and in the work I do with companies, the mind methodology most important number in drivers, what's the one number for the company that, above all others, reflects the value of your business and will drive the majority of the right behaviors? And every team has that. And when you, when a team and a company, increases their number, it always accretes up and improves the value of the overall business.

Speaker 2:

Well, as an individual people talk about if you're not happy, something's wrong. Well, that's crazy because we go in and out of it. It's normal when we struggle you can't be happy 100% of the time. If you are, what drugs are you on? But we can increase fulfillment over time. And I'm more fulfilled today than I've ever been in my entire life. And the value that I've created so far I haven't even created half the value that I know I'm going to create in the coming decades. For me, I'm 63. A lot of people talking about slowing down and this weird word called retirement, which I took out of all my dictionaries. I'm not even halfway done. It's like I'm just I'm leaning in and going for it. So fulfillment is, it's everything and there's so much I do around that. But in a short way to answer your question, it's my most important number.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, good news. My good friend Braca says in our lifetime. He really believes people will get to 125 to 150 years old With functional medicine and everything we're doing now with stem cells and all this stuff. Best place, lee, for people to contact you and get in touch with you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, two places. On the business side, please go to etwcom. You can learn about all the things that we're doing. Get my book your Most Important Number. It'll help you focus on creating value, unlike most other operating systems that are about process and learning a new language. Twcom for the business. And then, on the family side, please go to dinnertablecom. Join our free community, start learning about what we're doing, and we would love to have you in our community of families raising kids to create value in the world and learn from your wisdom as well.

Speaker 1:

Lee, thank you so much for your time today. My friend, I appreciate your time and I'm super excited about what you're doing and grateful for our relationship and grateful we got to connect and kind of swap podcast shows and hear more of your story. And the more I study, the more super impressed I am with who you are. And when you ask people the question about what does fulfillment mean, and they say everything, like it really is everything, and fulfillment's that one thing you cannot put a price tag on. There's not a zero or a comma in your bank account. That leads to fulfillment. It's about the difference that you're making, the influence that you have in other people's lives.

Speaker 2:

Ken, thank you for having me on the show and I look forward to growing our friendship. I've only recently met you, but I'm enjoying this, thank you. Thank you, my friend.

Speaker 1:

Guys, thank you for joining us on another episode of as the Leader Grows. Listen, connect with us at growstackdrivecom forward slash community. We've got a free online community of faith-based entrepreneurs who are focused on becoming the best version of themselves in their faith, health, relationships, business and finances. We'll see you next week on as the Leader Grows.