May 12, 2026 – Value Creation Family Lee Benson and Greatest Hits Second Act Jay Samit

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from am and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration award winning school for startups radio where we talk all things small business and entrepreneurship. Now here is your host, the guy that believes anyone can be a successful entrepreneur, because entrepreneurship is not about creativity, risk or passion. Jim Beach,

Jim Beach 0:26
hello everyone. Welcome to another exciting edition of School for startups radio. I hope you’re having a great day out there making the most of what God gave you. You know that’s why I love entrepreneurship so much. It uses the skills that God gave you better than any other vocation, skill anything else could do. It pushes you far past what your skill set is. It makes you learn finance also, or makes you learn marketing, or makes you become a good leader. Entrepreneurship forces you to improve all your skill sets, personality management, your EQ, all of it, so that you become a better person and better leader. I love it because of that. All right, we got a great show for you today. First up, we have Lee Benson. We’re going to talk about value creation, especially in the family. It is an amazing interview. I took notes, as I always do, and I wrote down great right next to it. So it is great, in my opinion, after that, Jay Sammet is going to be with us. He is a very famous writer and entrepreneurial thinker, thought leader. He had a book out in 2015 that made him famous. This is that interview as our greatest hits. As you may or may not know we lost the server that it had all of our stuff on for 10 years. The company went out of business, and so we had to put it up on a new server, and that’s what we’re doing, by including it in the show as part of our greatest hits. So Jay has a new book out right now that you need to go check out anyway. Thank you for being with us. We’re gonna get started. Here we go. We are back and again. Thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great guest. Please welcome Lee Benson to the show. He has 25 years of experience as a CEO, he owned and sold able aerospace for nine figures. I had to write that down and figure out what nine figures meant. That’s $22 trillion that he sold his business for. That might not be accurate. Don’t quote me on that. That was my my calculation. Anyway. Then he went on to create executive to win, e, t, w, it helps senior leadership teams experience great results by working together, by improving their most important organizational numbers. Lee, welcome to the show. How you doing?

Lee Benson 2:54
Jim, great to be here. I’m doing really well. I’m calling from Arizona today,

Jim Beach 2:58
and I didn’t mention but congratulations on the new book, value creation kid, the healthy struggles your children need to succeed. I love it.

Lee Benson 3:09
Yeah, yeah. Actually, my latest book, which I released in February, is value creation family. And it’s about helping families intentionally create holistic value and grow it generationally. And it’s doing really well.

Jim Beach 3:24
All right, you have three books out I’m seeing now

Lee Benson 3:28
I do. All

Jim Beach 3:29
right, tell us about value creation, family. What are we learning there?

Lee Benson 3:36
Yeah, what I’m doing there, I’ve been involved with K 12 education in Arizona for a long time, and affiliate with a number of nonprofits leaning in helping them, raising well over $100 million to improve conditions for kids to learn. And every time we went to the state legislature, it was always adults fighting over money. It was never about the kids. And I got this idea probably 10 years ago, we’re going to have to go in through families and help parents raise kids that will create value in the world. And let’s build a huge community of families who finally got around to starting that almost two years ago, and we have over 40,000 parents in our dinner table family community. And the website for that, by the way, is dinner table.com to learn about the work, but the goal is to take it to millions of families raising kids that will create value in the world, and intentionally creating value as a family holistically, which money is really important in it. But it’s not just that,

Jim Beach 4:35
all right, so is this a political organization, negative organization, or purely educational.

Lee Benson 4:43
It’s purely value creation oriented. You know, how do we think about creating value? Like all of my businesses, I’ve created value holistically, and when I say that, what I’m talking about is material. The money is important. You need that. It’s it’s lifeblood, but it’s also emotional. Energy. The second bucket, I think that’s the scarcest commodity on the planet. In the third bucket, I call it spiritual value creation. But at its core, it’s about connectedness. It’s not about religion, but it can be part of it. It’s connected with self, with family, communities that are important to you, which vary widely from people. You work with nonprofits, you’re involved with your neighborhood organizations, you know all of that, and that’s why I was able to sell three companies so far for a lot more than my peers at those times were selling for, in some cases, three times as much, because we focused on creating value in all three buckets. And it’s, it’s been incredible.

Jim Beach 5:46
All right, what are you helping these kids and the families? Is their instruction, education components as well?

Lee Benson 5:55
100% Yeah. How do you how do you create value, material, emotionally and spiritually within a family, and what are the best ways to do that? And in my book value creation family, it outlines all of that work, lots of amazing stories from families that we’re working with. I actually personally run five different communities of families, three that are virtual and two in person. And every month we get together for an hour and a half to two hours, and we just run through creating value as a family. Every month we do these deep dive different topics, but foundationally, just having a monthly family meeting where you go through and refine as a family the goals everyone’s job for the family, what it means to be a leader in the family, and the review last month’s budget and how you did. And I love making budgeting in the household a family team sport where every single family member has a line item on the budget, even kids as young as six years old have a line item going through it, because we want to teach him life skills and be ready for being a successful value creating adult in the world, the household is an amazing place to learn those skills. And I look at, you know, I actually look at running the household kind of like running a business. You have a certain amount of money, you’re starting with, you have all these expenses, and the goal is to have money left over and you want enough of a cushion to survive, you know, challenging times. No different. Let’s develop our kids to be able to take on more and more of those responsibilities, and then they’re much more fully ready for adulthood when they get there someday.

Jim Beach 7:36
I love it very, very interesting model. And even a six year old, you say, can participate as a line item. What is the line item for a six year old?

Lee Benson 7:45
100% and every families is different. So in my family, when the youngest ARIA got involved with this, you know, her line item was the Dutch Brothers line item, and her and her sisters love having those drinks, and once they saw what it was costing, they went and started buying the supplies at the grocery store, and now they can have as twice as many of these hot drinks that they love at half the price going in. And because it’s a team sport, all the kids get to decide what to do with that extra money, and for example, last summer, they wanted to go to Yellowstone, so we took that money, went to Yellowstone, spent a week with no internet, just hanging out, enjoying each other’s company and nature. It was awesome.

Jim Beach 8:34
I love Yellowstone. My father and I used to spend a week every winter at the Bear Lodge in West Yellowstone and go snowmobiling. And it’s some of my greatest memories. Take the back in the winter too, Lee.

Lee Benson 8:48
I love that, and I’d love to go there and kind of get as close as I can, but safely to wolves in the wintertime, that would be amazing. So I’ll take you up on that.

Jim Beach 8:58
Yeah, and the three Bear Lodge is the place to stay, nice place

Lee Benson 9:03
I’ve taken, I’ve taken a note here. Thank you.

Jim Beach 9:05
Yeah, West Yellowstone is the best entrance. Each entrance has its own pros and cons, and I like the West Yellowstone entrance. I think it’s the best for the animals and everything. All right, back to the book. You start off by talking about adulthood in mind that you need to have adulthood as part of your plan. Talk to me about teaching a six year old that they need to start thinking about adulthood.

Lee Benson 9:32
Yeah, 100% so for every single kid as a parent listening, what are the character traits, capabilities and beliefs that you think will make them the most successful when they become an adult and legal at 18, you’re an adult. A lot of kids aren’t ready for that these days, but if you start early enough, and you start listing out, what are those character traits, capabilities and beliefs, and then you’re working with the kids to develop those things. Over time. As they get older, they’re more and more involved, because they need to own it. It’s going to be their life. I want to, I want to be there with every single kid’s potential and get excited about how they build momentum in the world. But that’s the foundational list Jim that we, that we work with, and then we design very healthy struggles to allow the kids to develop those things, and all of the opportunity in the world, in my view, and I talk about it in the book, is in the struggle learn to trust that. We talk about this value creation cycle, where you struggle to get a capability. It builds confidence, self esteem. Use that to create some value, and then you can keep taking bigger and bigger steps, and there’s no end to what you can accomplish. I came from a super low income family, and by six years old, I’m pulling weeds because a neighbor asked me unsolicited that we didn’t know not a family friend, would you pull weeds in my garden for 25 cents an hour? And that felt amazing. Back in the mid 60s, you could buy two candy bars and have change. And that went on to shoveling snow and mowing lawns and paper Olis, dishwasher, bus by cook. By the time I was kicked out of the house the beginning of my senior year in high school with no financial backstop, I was already financially independent at 17. Finished putting myself through high school, but I kept taking bigger and bigger steps on this value creation cycle, and that led to starting eight companies from scratch. I’ve sold three so far. You mentioned one of them. I’m currently CEO of two companies, execute to win and, or ETW and dinner table and, and there’s, there’s no end to this. I just love leaning in and creating value. And so this struggle, when I get back of the you know, working with kids, learn to actually trust that. And I think, with the best of intentions, parents have been taking as much struggle away from kids as possible in this movement towards safetyism. We don’t want anybody to get a boo boo. Well, that’s that’s kind of moved into the emotional piece of it too. They can’t have an emotion that’s stressful for them, and what’s happening from that is, by the time they become an adult, they’re not ready for it. They’re just not and so I encourage, and again, I talk about a lot of this in the book, I encourage parents to allow the healthy struggles to happen. If there happens to be an unhealthy struggle, improve life conditions as quickly as you can, sort of, you know, tease out of that with the kids, and you learned that you can use to create more value in the future, but never make it your identity and be a victim. And so you’ve got these normal, healthy struggles work through unhealthy struggles, and that these supercharged, intentionally designed healthy struggles to develop character, capabilities and beliefs that will make them most successful. And Jim, I work with lots of kids. I think I’m now just about 5000 high school juniors and seniors that I’ve worked with over the last 12 years in smaller groups of 25 to 50 at a time. And the biggest thing that we can do as adults, and I’m finding, is change their belief structure. They just don’t believe they can do it because it’s so many of our leaders, especially elected officials, are saying it’s not your fault that things are tough. It’s somebody else’s fault. Forget all of that. What decisions can you make and what do you believe is possible? And most of these kids don’t really believe they can start a business. They don’t believe that they’ll be successful if they come from families where nobody’s gotten a higher education. And when I tell them about my story, by the end of even just a 90 minute conversation, they’re walking away saying, I can start anywhere and go everywhere. I’m like, 100% you can 100%

Jim Beach 13:41
How do you teach accountability in a society where accountability is now outlawed, illegal, immoral?

Lee Benson 13:49
Yeah, the foundation for that problem is, and this is the biggest deficit on the planet. My view, we don’t have enough leaders that are both capable and moral and and so there’s this situational, morality, ethics, accountability, you know, all of it. And I tell the kids, if you have and this is an amazing character trait for everybody, to have integrity, which means you do what you say. You will. If you have that, you’ll be a unicorn. And any organization you choose to work for, any company that you start, in the eyes of your customers, communities that are important to you and and so looking at looking at accountability, looking at Integrity, which, that’s the bucket that I’m putting it in, that is a superpower to develop around it. And and when you do that, the value you can create the response that you get, how people gravitate towards you. The challenge just getting them started on that track, so they get on the right track, they start building some momentum on their own, and then get out of the way and just just watch it run. And if kids are around adults that are with their potential, as I mentioned, or. Earlier, speaking with them about where they’re going, getting excited about their future and what they’re going to build, instead of talking at them, down to them over their heads, which most adults do, they don’t respond well to that. Nobody does. Watch out. It’s it’s incredible. So that that’s my approach to it. Does that make sense? Jim,

Jim Beach 15:20
yes, it does. Lee, what do you do when you have an adult child that you you have an adult child that’s not living the morals that you’ve taught them, what do you do then?

Lee Benson 15:35
Yeah, that’s it’s a great question, and there’s a lot of I call it, and I’ve heard others mention it similarly, I call it the emerging adult phase. So at 18 in the US, you’re legally an adult, but they’re not ready for it. So the emerging adult phase is what they’re going into, which is probably from about 18 to 32 and then they finally become an adult. And I think the best thing that we can do is maintain rules of engagement and boundaries. Create an environment from which they’ll just move in that direction. They’re not going to be rewarded for lazy behavior, entitlement behavior, any of that stuff. Create an environment that causes them to move in that direction. And people will say, you know, Jim, that that you know the kids are so different today, it’s like, no, I don’t actually think so. I think the environment is what’s different, because I don’t think human nature has changed in all of recorded history, but the environment does like. Why do people act so differently in a for profit business and a large public business and a government entity in a nonprofit, people are the same. Human nature is the same, but the environments are different, so they act different. So with the kids, get the environment right, that causes them to move in that direction, and when they’re struggling like crazy to adapt to it, that is a healthy struggle. Let them go through it to develop the character, capabilities and beliefs that will make them wildly successful and really contribute to the family over time. You know, when does, and this is an interesting phrase a lot of folks have used, but when does the Bank of mom and dad actually close? Is it 25 for non emergencies? Is it 25 is it 35 is it 40 I have friends have been wildly successful that had they didn’t do this stuff with their kids. Their kids are in their 40s, and they’re still reliant on mom and dad for everything they’re they’re not self reliant. So I think it’s the environment and be okay when they’re struggling and feel good about it as they adapt to it, because it’s, it’s really what’s best for them.

Jim Beach 17:43
No, I lost you. There somewhere. Lee, this is not what’s best for them. This is anyway I will get off track here. So the worst problem is they’re self sufficient, making tons of money, and therefore they think they’re valid in their other thoughts, you know. So anyway, I will digress really far. So let’s get off of that. When do you let children start managing their own money? Lee, I have a we have a famous family story that mom took me to the bank and I was 10 or something. And on the way home, she said, Well, how much money did you deposit? And I said, $56 and she was like in shock, where did you get $56 and I had deposited all of those old, old coins that were in the bottom of the drawer, in that special box. You know, those old, old worthless coins. I had deposited all of those? Well, it was my granddaddy’s coin collection from the 1800s that I had deposited.

Lee Benson 18:46
Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh,

Jim Beach 18:50
you know. So mother turned around and went right back to the bank. And they had put them aside. They realized something was wrong. It was a 70s when bankers were still had brains and stuff. So

Lee Benson 19:01
yeah,

Jim Beach 19:01
when do you let children manage their own money?

Lee Benson 19:05
Well, I and I talked about this in the book value creation family, there’s eight different money skills that we go through and applying all of them with a value creation mindset start as early as possible, even even with kids as young as three years old. It can be collecting seashells and playing games around counting and all of it. But when I run through the money skills, and there’s ways to teach this and build on it throughout a child’s life, you know, the first one is earning. What does it take to earn? The second money skill that’s really important to me is protect. It doesn’t seem to matter what how much you have or how little you know folks are coming for it. And then we have saving, and then we have budgeting, then we have spending, as you kind of go through that, and again, every family gets to do it differently, but go through these eight money skills that I outline in the in the book. And there are examples of how you can apply it to kids of all ages to get them fully ready by the time they’re an adult. And you know what’s what’s interesting? I just spent all day with a group of kids at a local high school, and there were six different periods of seniors that came through. And you know, we’re at the end of the year, and they’re going to be launching into adulthood. And when I talked about savings, and they thought that’s a really good idea, and I couldn’t find any any one of the kids, and I’d say, oh, so what’s 10% of this number? They could calculate 10% of a number. And so we’re really missing it in education, with these with these kids. And when I asked them, Would you all like to be self reliant financially when you become an adult? And they all all the hands went up 100% by what age do you think you’ll be self reliant? And the average age was 32 and I had some well into the 40s. And 12 years ago, when I started doing this with groups of kids. The average age was around 22 so it’s really changing, because the environment is changing. The kids aren’t different. The human nature isn’t

Jim Beach 21:10
different. Have you seen this mayor of Seattle, a 40 year old woman who is now the mayor of Seattle, and she openly admits that her parents still pay all of her bills.

Lee Benson 21:25
Yeah, that’s, that’s amazing. You know, we should create an environment where you get rewarded for creating value. Because when I, when I look at, you know, capitalism, I wish we called it value creationism, because we’re exchanging best efforts, the value that we create. I’m exchanging my best efforts for somebody else’s accumulated best efforts, and the more more value that I bring, the more that I could get. This is the engine that runs the entire world, and it’s really dangerous to go in a direction, and there’s been some talk lately about universal income, if people don’t have to exchange value and work towards something, they’re going to drift and be completely lost. And there’s so many studies throughout history where that’s been a complete disaster, but it feels really good. It elevates self esteem, internal fulfillment, which to me, is my most important internal number when we’re creating more and more value over time. It feels great we’re accomplishing challenging things. So this, this drift towards you shouldn’t have to do anything, and somebody else will pay for it. You know, even the hands that go up saying they want that, they never in a million years would want to be paying for somebody else that didn’t earn it. So I am watching all of this, and I’d like to make creating value cool again. I actually believe, Jim, that we’re not even creating 10% of the value we could in the United States. What if it was 20% or 50% or 80% it would be an amazing world. And so I’m I’m optimistic, and that’s why I do so much of the work that I do is to move us in that direction, starting with families and the younger kids that said you can do this, starting at any age. One of my friends came to a community I was facilitating in person in Phoenix, and my kids are in their 40s, and he left crying, going, I didn’t do any of this. I’m going to start right now. You can start this at any age. Doesn’t matter. Just like starting a business, I’ve listened to a number of your your your podcasts on on Apple, or these, these radio shows and and you can start a business at any age. It doesn’t matter. Some parents, and this is a limiting belief, will say, well, it’s too late for me, because I’m 40 or I’m 50, it’s like, Are you kidding me? Go look up Colonel Sanders. I mean, look, there’s other so many examples out there, right?

Jim Beach 23:51
I love the Colonel Sanders story. That is a good one. Lee, how do we take this and make it nationwide? How do we turn you into the Secretary of Education,

Lee Benson 24:02
100% we need to make a change. I mentioned it earlier. It’s a real challenge going in from the system itself, k 12 education, and then you’ve got higher education, which has a whole host of other challenges, in my view, that we didn’t get into because it’s adults fighting over money. You know, United States is the biggest piggy bank on the planet, and everybody’s trying to get it, and you’re not making it about the kids. That’s why I’m starting with a family. So my goal is, let’s take this to let’s get 50 million families in the United States doing this, raising kids that intentionally create value and and when I think about education, we’re not teaching life skills. We’re not teaching them things they’re going to make them successful. It feels like this crony capitalistic treadmill. Get a good grade, get a diploma, get a degree, get a job, and they’re all getting paid that the kids are coming out, not in not in all disciplines, but in a lot of them without skills to really create value in the world and have the successful. Life that they want. So that’s why I like, I like getting the kids over time developed. And I have so many stories around this we don’t have time today developed around running the households, and now they got real life skills. If I could wipe out education today and start over again. Hey, we’re English because you communicate every day. We’re going to learn math because you use that every single day, we’re going to learn history, so we’re going to keep making the same mistakes, and we’re going to learn life skills, and then all the hobby disciplines, you know, music, for example, I think is what is wildly important. But all this stuff would be available, but those four core things incredibly important to get right. And all with the value creation mindset. I think the purpose of an education is to create value in the world. It’s not getting a piece of paper. That’s what it is. And I ran a college four times. I never completed a business degree because I’m building businesses. And I’m listening to people, these professors, talk about the business world, and they don’t know what they’re talking about most of the time. But I’m building these companies successfully. My best education ever is on the front lines creating value for my customers. That’s it. Like best education ever. Feel it feels amazing. I had one university call me and said, we teach all this stuff. We have no idea how to do it. Will you help us? And at the time, it was the fastest EMBA growing program on the planet. Said, Sure, I’m happy to help you do that. I wrote a course for them, taught it for a group of students and alumni, and just making the point that the best education is on the front line actually doing it. How does that resonate? Jim,

Jim Beach 26:38
fantastic. Unfortunately, we’re out of time. Lee, how do we find out more or get in touch with you? Follow. Touch with you, follow you online. Get a copy of

Lee Benson 26:45
the book, yeah, please go to etw.com you can learn about all the business and leadership work that I do. Join our community there. Also, you can go to dinner table.com and learn about this work around helping families intentionally create value. And as always, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I’m pretty easy to find there.

Jim Beach 27:04
Fantastic Lee. Thank you so very much for what you’re doing and amazing work. Godspeed to you, and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

Lee Benson 27:12
Thank you, Jim,

Jim Beach 27:13
and we will be right back. You.

Intro 2 27:34
Well, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a wonderful question. Actually, Jim, oh my gosh, I love the opportunity to do this. Thank you, Jim, wow, that’s, that’s, that’s a great one. You know, that is a phenomenal question. That’s a great question. And, and I don’t have a great answer. That’s a great question. Oh, that is such a loaded question. And that’s actually a really good question. School for startups radio.

Jim Beach 27:57
And welcome back to school for startups radio again. Thank you so much for being with us today. I am very excited and honored to introduce you to our first guest. His name is Jay Sammet and listen to this bio. First of all, Wired Magazine says that he has the coolest job in the industry. He has worked for clients like Coca Cola, McDonald’s, General Motors, United Airlines, Microsoft, Apple. He was one of the very first advisors to a company you may have heard of called LinkedIn. He was appointed to the White House Initiative on education and technology by President Bill Clinton. He is an adjunct professor at USC, and he also hosts the Wall Street Journal startup of the year series. He has advised popes and presidents. I’ve never said that before. That’s how cool he is. And has written for just about every publication out there, and is been on, of course, all the big networks, ABC, Bloomberg, CBS, CNN and Fox. Most importantly, though, we he has a brand new book out called disrupt yourself, Master personal transformation, seize opportunity and thrive in the era of endless innovation. Jay, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being with us.

Jay Samit 29:15
Thanks for having me.

Jim Beach 29:16
I’m excited to learn from you. The book has actually specific strategies that we can use, not only at the company level, but at the personal level, right,

Jay Samit 29:29
right? Well, it’s funny, everybody wants to change the world, but so few people think about changing themselves, and that’s where disruption begins. When you look at the billionaires in their 20s that are happening regularly, say, How is that possible? Well, we’re now in an interconnected world. Whether you’re in technology or not, it’s a part of your life. You’re one click away on your phone from 6 billion people, and now you have the ability, very easily, to turn that into a market opportunity. So every obstacle out there is actually a new. Of opportunity for an entrepreneur to create a solution to make life better and profit.

Jim Beach 30:04
That is a very powerful statement. So many people want to change the world, but not themselves, that I will definitely tweet that out. Jay, how do I know if I’m broken and need disrupting? You know, I like me. My friends tell me I’m a great guy. My wife says I’m handsome, but we all know she lies. How do I know what needs to be disrupted, what I should be trying to change about myself?

Jay Samit 30:27
Well, let’s start with the basic whether you want to or not, everybody will be disrupted. 60 years ago, they came up with a concept called the fortune 500 the 500 biggest, most powerful companies who would stand the test of time, only 57 of them were still around. So even if you thought you were taking the safe route and you’re going to get that gold watch, most companies aren’t going to be around long enough for you to do that. So you really have to look at as a as a marathon, but a series of short races, and you have to get your get your skills up to speed. And so thing is, first taking off all the what you don’t think you can do. Ever since we were little children, we were told what we couldn’t do. And there’s a there’s a famous study out of Canada that turned out that hockey players, professional hockey players, are most likely to be born January, February and March. And you say, Wait a second, this isn’t some astrology kick. The fact is, the cut off in the school year was such that the kids were held back and were bigger. So those kids were bigger by a year than all the other kids, so they were better. So then parents and coaches said, Wow, you’re really good at hockey. So then they got the positive reinforcement, wow, if I’m good at that, I’m going to practice, which made them better, which made them pros. Conversely, if you like me, I was a kid who my parents forged my birth certificate to send me to school a year early, so I was always the smallest gronist, so I was told I was lousy at Sports. Today, as a grown up, I’m not interested in sports. So the point is, we’re told things that are about our limitations. We live in a world that’s expanding. We actually are living in a limitless time of innovation. So you have to start disrupting. What are the things that you think you can’t do? Get outside your comfort zone and try it

Jim Beach 32:17
so you could get good at sports now if you wanted to, Jay,

Jay Samit 32:22
so when I turned 40, I was going through this, this self disruption and self destruction is like, it’s akin to surgery, except you’re the one holding the scalp. Sounds miserable. Second. I had this negative opinion about sports since I was four. Let me try something, let me get in shape, let me set a goal. And for whatever bizarre reason, I always loved the circus, and I wanted to fly on the high trapeze, and so when I hit 40, I spent six months training, and before you know it, I was flying through the air, and it was the most liberating and amazing feeling.

Jim Beach 32:55
Unbelievable. Is there video of that on YouTube? By any chance?

Jay Samit 32:59
No, I wish. I wish I lived in the era where we all had camera phones, but that was about 14 years ago. Okay,

Jim Beach 33:09
well, very impressive. That is cool. I can’t imagine the moral fortitude and courage that it took to get up there the first time and swing around. Were you wearing a safety harness? I hope,

Jay Samit 33:22
no, there was a net. But the first time, I was doing it in New York outdoors, so your sight liner, it’s high rise building, so you actually feel like you’re higher than you are. And yeah, that first time jumping off into the abyss is no different than being an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur knows what they want to accomplish at the end, and they have the guts to start, but all those steps in between, it’s just a leap of faith.

Jim Beach 33:47
Wow, good analogy. I like that. All right. So we’ve used the scalpel. We’ve decided some things about ourselves. What are some of the strategies that we can actually implement? What are some of the action items that we should be taking. Jay,

Jay Samit 34:03
okay, so here’s how I can turn any listener into the equivalent of the top venture capital firm in Silicon Valley in just one easy month. And I tell my students to do this. I teach graduate students at USC how to start high tech startups every day for a month, write down three things that you come across that are problems in your life. We all have. I’ll give you a basic one, that morning commute, that traffic was horrible. Somebody wrote down that idea and start thinking about it. Said, Wait a second, if every phone would communicate to each other, we could reroute cars, and that’s what Waze does. And Waze revolutionized traffic and made a couple kids in Israel billionaires. So every day, write down three ideas of problems that you have, because every obstacle is an opportunity in disguise. And at the end of the month, you’ll have 90 killer ideas. So then you want. Go through those ideas and figure out which ones are you most passionate about? Which ones do you really think you can pursue? It’s that easy,

Jim Beach 35:07
okay, but at the end of three months, I’m gonna have this list. But I’ve always hated traffic. 6 billion, 7 billion of us are really fed up with traffic. What’s the distinction that helps me go from i hate traffic to being an Israeli billionaire who wrote ways. And there’s another step or two there.

Jay Samit 35:28
I haven’t written a line of code since the 1970s Okay, so you don’t have to be a technologist. You have to see the pied piper that leads the charge. You start thinking that idea, and you start thinking, how can I solve this? How can I make cars move out of their way? What what technologies are out there? Who do I need to put on my team? Who do I need to attract? I’ll give you a very simple example. Business associate of mine missed this flight that’s happened to all of us, and we sit around the airport lamenting it. He was stuck in Puerto Rico, and he saw a bunch of other people were stuck. And he looked around, did some math in his head. Wait a second by charter little plane. I sell tickets. Everybody can get to where they want to go. And he held up a sign, and he was a music Exec. Up a sign said, Virgin airways, $36 and that’s how Richard Branson started a billion dollar airline, because he missed a flight, he looked at an obstacle as an opportunity.

Jim Beach 36:25
Okay, all right. So

Jay Samit 36:27
that easy.

Jim Beach 36:28
Okay, that is easy. That sounds very easy, but again, my very stubborn listeners and myself are going to want some more action items. So I’ve got a list of 90 things on my problems of the world list, right? How do I sort through them? How do I take that step of saying, Here’s how to solve them. Are there some more action items here?

Jay Samit 36:51
Absolutely, and that’s what I cover in disrupt you. I really walk you through it. So the next step on that is, where can you capture the most value? And so a big mistake people do is they see the size of a market, but not that piece that they can capture. When Sean fanning walked into my office 1516, years ago with Napster, he completely disrupted the music industry, but he didn’t figure out how to capture any of that unlocked value. So where you have to look at is where can you not only disrupt something, but figure out what’s the piece of that value chain that you can own and defend? The first person you’re going to educate in business is your competition. I’ll give you another simple, simple example of a friend of mine. Friend of mine looked in the backyard and saw that dogs weren’t tied up in the backyard anymore. They were in the home and family members said, Well, you would feed a family member better than you would a barnyard animal, who said, Why don’t I invent premium dog food? He wasn’t a scientist, he wasn’t a nutritionist, he wasn’t a vet. He researched, figured it out. And the funny thing was, the wholesale price of his premium dog food that made dogs have a better, shinier coat was more than the retail price of the big guys. The big guys all laughed at him, until one day he sold I’m dog food to Procter and Gamble, and was the largest multi billion dollar acquisition that Procter and Gamble had ever made, and he was the sole owner with no partners, no debt, no shareholders. It really is that easy.

Jim Beach 38:31
Okay, so I’ve got a list of companies, and I’ve made a calculation on where I can capture the most value. I’m confused because I use Waze every day. Jay, it’s a great app that sends me down streets that I didn’t even know existed, but I’ve never paid a penny for it. So how am I creating value for these is really billionaires?

Jay Samit 38:54
Ah, the company was sold and acquired for billions of dollars. A lot of things and people get lost on is, most of the millionaires from the high tech era have made and become millionaires without ever making a profit.

Jim Beach 39:09
Doesn’t that bother you? Jay? Doesn’t that bother you? I mean, isn’t that? How is Waze ever going to validate that investment? Then how will the current owners ever get money from it.

Jay Samit 39:21
Well, because Google is getting tremendous data of knowing how you and your car move around, and they can then better target advertising, knowing your patterns of shopping, knowing that you parked it used car lot and are in the market to buy a car, knowing that you go to the theater or the beach or this restaurant or that. So Google needed the data created. Data is the most valuable tool out there. So it’s not the old fashioned when you look at public companies with huge market caps, less 15% of the value of a public company is intrinsic items, inventory, furniture, property. Properties. When you look at the largest accommodations firm, the largest hotel company in the world, it doesn’t own any hotels. That’s Airbnb, the second largest doesn’t own any hotels. That’s price line. The largest retailer in the world owns no inventory. That’s Alibaba. The largest content company in the world creates no content. That’s Facebook. They are using data and monetizing because they’ve captured the point of commerce, and that’s where the value was

Jim Beach 40:31
all right. Now I’m scared at a different level, for ways. I’m scared a little bit about my data privacy. You know, I love Waze, but if it will all of a sudden, let my wife know that I’ve been hanging out at an hourly rental motel on a seedy part of town, right? I don’t want people to know that, right? And I’m being a little bit facetious here, but still, I don’t want them to know that I’m in the market for a used car at some point. Do you not get scared about your data. Jay,

Jay Samit 41:02
yes and no. A lot of people come up with all these horrible things that will happen with data, but you don’t think of the benefits. So the fact that you’re walking around with the cell phone is all that knowledge is already known by where you move with your cell phone. But what if you were going to buy a house? You imagine the 21st Century having to fill out tons of forms, have them go to credit reports that already have all this stuff. Wouldn’t it be better if instantly, the day you want to buy a house, every bank said, here’s the best deal we’ll give you, because we know your information. So there’s pros and cons to all this. I used to be CEO of an ad tech company, and I was able to drive consumers into retail and let people know where they were in the store. So if you’re standing in the printer aisle, Best Buy for 10 minutes, wouldn’t HP love to give you a coupon for $10 off, but they don’t want to give it to somebody that’s just walking in and buying the thing. So what you’re going to see in the near future is variable pricing, just like we have on airplane seats for everything at retail. And if this scares you, what should scare you more is if you’re not part of this, then you’re not being competitive with those companies that are using big data.

Jim Beach 42:12
Well, yeah, well, it’s different from a company standpoint versus a private individual standpoint. I would definitely want all of my companies that I invested in and part of to have all of the data of everyone else. I’m just scared about you having my data, right? There’s a difference there. Do you see that?

Jay Samit 42:31
Yeah, no, I absolutely in different countries. So I’m a public CEO of a company called Sea Change International. We’ve we invented video on demand, and we’ve powered cable companies all over the world and different countries have different levels of privacy laws, but the end of the day, all that anybody’s trying to do is an advertiser is trying to get you an ad that enhances your life, not bothers you. Every time for the past 30 years, I’ve seen a tampon commercial on television, I still have not become a customer. Another way of saying that is the tampon company is wasting their money on my eyeballs. So it’s a waste of my time. It’s a waste of their money. I would much rather see an ad for something that could enhance my life and go, Wow. Thank you.

Jim Beach 43:18
Yeah. But when I see the prostate exam commercials, I changed the channel as fast as I can, Jay, you know,

Jay Samit 43:24
to remind you of the truth.

Jim Beach 43:26
Well, it’s just, I don’t want to be, you know, I’m watching video on demand that you provide me. Thank goodness. I love that. That’s the coolest thing ever. And you know, you have made binge TV possible. But when my escapism is interrupted by your facts of life, it upsets me. You know, how can as a consumer, or how as you as the CEO of sea change International, can you figure out that I only want to see happy ads, not health care ads? I don’t want to see ads about

Speaker 2 44:00
Well, absolutely we can, because the difference nowadays in a over the top on demand, video on demand, Youtube world, is we also know the second did you switch the channel, stop watching the video, go do something else. So if every time that ad comes on, people are flicking off, they realize this is not the place for us to be advertising. Maybe we should only advertise on a movie where you watch somebody die prematurely and their loved ones crying, and then you say, have you had your prostate checked? So context is very important, and I can give you, you know, the most famous example, and I’m old of this, was the NAT Nash, the Natural Gas Association trying to get people to cook with gas was the first commercial sponsor on a mini series called Holocaust, right when Meryl Streep went into the gas chamber? Yes, that was the all time worst placement of an ad in the history of advertising. Nowadays, thanks to big data, those types of things shouldn’t have. Than occasionally they do

Jim Beach 45:02
that is horrible. Is the book Jay disrupt you? Is it better for the individual or for the CEO who’s trying to create a disruptive company, which which target audience is better served by the book?

Jay Samit 45:15
So it’s both, and the reason it’s both is you can’t change a company without having people inside the company being able willing to change themselves. So the first third of the book is about how to look at yourself differently and how to thrive and seize opportunity. The second is how to do that either in a corporate structure. And I’ve run large companies like Sony and EMI and universal, and I’ve run startups that have become multi billion dollar companies, and then the last third is really one of my favorite pieces. It’s for those who want to go beyond just changing their lives or making money. It’s how you can apply these same four steps to changing the world. And if you really think about the only problems that ever gets solved are problems that are solved by entrepreneurs. So we live in a world with huge problems. And if I got on a soapbox for one second, when I look at what’s happening in Baltimore or Ferguson or ISIS, I don’t see race or religion. I see massive unemployment for those under 30 in the US, we’re now looking at the largest generation that we’ve ever had, 80 million millennials, and there’s less jobs. The 2008 downturn in the economy was a jobless recovery. Big corporate jobs are not coming back. Half of all jobs created since 2008 were created by startups, unless we teach people how to build a business, how to solve problems. Problems aren’t going to get solved,

Jim Beach 46:47
and I don’t think we are teaching millennials that. I was a university professor, sort of like you. I did it for nine years, and I’m wholeheartedly unimpressed with the education that the millennials already have their desire for more education, and you know, there’s always outliers and things like that, and their willingness and ability to get dirty and actually go out there and code for 20 hours a day, they seem just too lethargic and full of Just malaise in general, to actually go out there and do those starting jobs that propel a career and get people moving. Do you agree or disagree with me? Jay,

Jay Samit 47:30
well, I can see the symptoms, but I also want to look at the cause. And the cause is no one has connected the dots. To show people how easy it is to make a change, how easy it is to change the world and disrupt you is really a manifesto about change and how to embody it. I’ve gotten to work with some of the most successful people on the planet. I’ve had the fortune to work with, you know, the Richard Branson’s and the Bill Gates’s and and and the reed Hopkins. And what I’ve seen is that these are regular people that just weren’t buying into the I camp. And the second you start realizing what is possible, then we live in a limitless world,

Jim Beach 48:16
you really think that they’re just normal people. I think they see the world entirely different from the student that I’m concerned about. I don’t look at Reid Hoffman and go, he’s pretty normal. He’s within the bell curve. He’s as far on the right of the bell curve as a person can be.

Speaker 2 48:37
Well, I’ll agree with Reid Reed is the smartest human being I’ve ever met, and I’ve said this for years, and every time he tells me the next idea, and my brain goes, Oh, that sounds stupid. I go, No, it’s Reed. What does he see that I don’t see when he came, came and talked about Airbnb. I’m like, I don’t get it. And I and I admit what I don’t get. But No, what I’m what I’m really saying is it doesn’t take a super intellect, most, most of the successful billionaires that live today were self made. They didn’t inherit. It doesn’t take access to family, wealth or society or class. What it does take is drive and ambition and being you know, most people are not willing to give up what they have for something better. Most people aren’t willing to work 80 hours a week at something they love instead of 40 hours a week at something that they hate. At the end of the day, if you really are honest, I want everybody to ask themselves that’s listening, are you really living life or just paying bills till you die? She only got one shot. I recently spoke in Mumbai and said, I really envy you guys, because, you know, I only have one shot at this world, and you guys get to come back again. But unless you really believe that

Jim Beach 49:50
that’s funny,

Jay Samit 49:50
you’re really, yeah, I gotta laugh, but you really want to make a difference with your life. And to me, the purpose of life is a life with purpose. And once. To discover what your purpose is, and mine is try to give back and educate and teach the world how to be entrepreneurs and how to be successful without it taking the 30 years that it took me, and I think everybody has that possibility. We’re all connected to so much knowledge. Half of all the information in the world is being created every 18 months. Majority of photos taken in the world took place in the last year. So the speed of this change opens up so much opportunity. 3d printer, the printing, the Internet of Things, big data, autonomous vehicles, that could go on and on. All these are new fields and new mind. So even if it’s not to go and start your own company to position yourself to be part of these trends and benefits, why wouldn’t you want to do

Jim Beach 50:50
that? Jay, when did you realize that you were going to be different from your peers? You graduated from UCLA in the early 80s. I believe at some point you were the president and vice Senior Vice President of companies like EMI and Sony and Universal Pictures and stuff like that. During that interim, how did you see that you are going to be extraordinary, that your life was not going to be like 99% of the other graduates who graduated with you? How did you differentiate yourself and come to realize that you were going to be a superhero in the world?

Jay Samit 51:28
Well, you’re too kind on the definition. But when I got out of school, was a great recession, and there were no hiring. And I tried and I couldn’t get a job, so I took $1 and printed up business cards with Jasmine productions, JL, Samit, and it’s mine, that’s where the name came from. And I went around to try to hustle any type of business that I could do, special effects, for commercials, for movies, anything I knew how to use a computer. And what I found was nobody would hire me, kids straight out of college, but everybody would hire this company that they never visited and actually never existed and only had the business cards. And the second you got the taste of, Wow, I just did a million dollars off of a $1 business card. I’m never taking the straight job. And those three corporate gigs that you mentioned in each case, I was brought in to create a new division. I was the first studio to go on to the internet, you know, to change the music industry, from selling around things to sitting with Steve Jobs and setting up things like iTunes and Pandora and all the other things. So I love to create, and the difference was, I just enjoy building something rather than living someone else’s dream. I’d rather follow my own dreams and get paid to implement someone else’s

Jim Beach 52:45
Well, that’s a great Twitter moment, right there, too. Jay, how can we find out more about you? Follow you on social media, become one of the 100,000 people that follow you on Twitter and, most importantly, get a copy or your new book and disrupt ourselves.

Jay Samit 52:59
So on Twitter, it’s my name, J, a, y, s, A, M, as in Mary, I T, as in Tom, J, Samit. J, samit.com you can learn about the book, disrupt you, and if you email me on the site, I will give any of your listeners the companion workbook to help them figure out how to change themselves. I will give that to them for free, for just being so gracious and spending time listening to the show today.

Jim Beach 53:26
Fantastic. Well, Jay, thank you for that offer that is really kind of you, and thank you for spending time with us today. Really amazing information. It’s been our honor, and I hope the book sells a million copies. Congratulations.

Jay Samit 53:37
Thank you. Thank you. Have a good

Jim Beach 53:39
one. You too. We are out of time for today, but back tomorrow. Be safe, take care and go make a million dollars. Bye.