Derek Bullard sold his first company at 42. He had money, young twins, time to travel and coach soccer. Within 90 days he was miserable, and he spent the next year in a depression he couldn’t explain to anyone, least of all himself.

In this conversation with Lee, Derek talks about what he wishes he’d planned before that exit. He picked the buyer mostly on valuation, when the partner, the arrangement afterwards and what he’d do with his days mattered just as much. On every exit since, he’s mapped it out first.

He also shares the night in 2008 when his company went from making money to losing millions a year, with his house on the line for the loan. The only way through was telling his team the truth, and he says that honesty did more for the business than anything he’d tried to hide.

Plus the stretch of his early career he can’t remember. A former employee recently thanked him for lunches they had years ago, and Derek has no memory of them. He was so stressed and so short on sleep that whole parts of the journey are gone.

Derek became a foster parent at 22, taking in a boy for what was meant to be three days. It became four years and changed the course of his life. Today he’s CEO of Already Autism Health, with around 1,400 staff across seven states.

More from Derek: alreadyautismhealth.com

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

Lee Benson sold his aerospace business in 2016 for 21.6x EBITDA in an industry where 8x was considered a great result. For fifteen years before the sale, the company grew more than 20% a year.

Ten years later he walked back in for the first time. The business was still running well, still a respected global brand, still improving bit by bit. In a decade it had grown 20% in total.

In this conversation, Lee explains what he thinks happened, and the difference between a business that runs without you and one that keeps growing without you. Most owners build the first and assume they’ve got the second.

He also gets into why he shows every employee the company’s numbers, despite the fear most CEOs have that it’ll start pay fights. In decades of doing it, he says it has almost never happened. He explains why every person in the business should be treated as the CEO of their own role, with clear outcomes, the skills to hit them, and the numbers in front of them.

Plus the hard truth about selling. Most businesses that try to sell never do, and the time to make yours worth buying is years before you want out.

Take the free two-minute Executive Alignment Diagnostic and see where your business is leaking money: https://etw.com

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/

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

He's blunt about the advice we give young people too. Follow your passion is a bad short-term instruction. Follow your talent, get good at something, and let that become the stepping stone to the thing you're passionate about.
Erik also shares the system he built for saying no, including the time he turned down a volunteer request at his church, got asked a second time, and copied and pasted the same refusal straight back. The rule underneath it: if it isn't a heck yes, it's a no, and a fast no is kinder than a slow one.

Plus the two-minute habit he's kept for years, scoring every day from plus three to minus three with a reason written next to it, and what the patterns told him.

Lee shares his own version, including why internal fulfilment is the number he measures everything against.

For more free videos, tools, and resources about the MIND Methodology go to https://etw.com/