Mike Zisman wrote his first program in 1967. He built and sold Soft Switch to Lotus, then watched IBM take over Lotus eleven months later, going from a company of 450 people to one of 250,000 in under a year. He's 77, still writing code, and runs Golf Genius, which now handles over 40 million rounds of golf a year.

In this conversation with Lee, he explains the thing he thinks most companies never account for: coordination cost. The friction of getting people pointed in the same direction, which rises exponentially as a company grows. His head of engineering worked out that a part-time competitor was moving faster purely because he had none of it, so he went off and did the same thing, and what came back changes what they ship next.

Mike is also blunt about AI. 95% of the code his team produces is now written by Claude. His headcount has been flat for two years and there are no new hires in the 2027 plan, and he's clear that he doesn't have a good answer for what that means at scale. He also points out the trap nobody's solved: stop hiring junior developers and in ten years you have no senior ones.

Plus why he thinks vibe coding misses the point, and the line he uses on anyone who says their own software is easy to use.

Lee shares his side, including the competitor who approached him asking to sweep floors just to learn what they were doing, and what Mike makes of a 21.6x multiple when the average business sells for six or seven.

More from Mike: golfgeniussoftware.com

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

Mike Tecku built and sold companies, was ready to retire, then his girlfriend went blind in one eye and was diagnosed with MS. She ended up on 50 different supplements and pills a day, and one morning she physically couldn't swallow them anymore.

He put them in a shake. That became Momentum.

In this conversation with Lee, Mike explains why he has no interest in building the billion-dollar version of his company, and what he thinks the private equity playbook is doing to good businesses: outsource the production, the sourcing, the customer service and the distribution, spend everything on marketing, then pass it to the next buyer before the value runs out.

He also gets into why complexity is usually an ego defence. If you make something so complicated only you can run it, you never have to admit you're the bottleneck. His own conclusion: "I need to fire myself as CEO."

Lee shares his side of it too, including the years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in doctors and protocols that made his health worse, and the $8 batches of homemade yogurt that turned it around.

Plus why he sources vanilla from one farmer in Uganda, had a custom enzyme blend developed in Japan, and spends more on single ingredients than most companies spend on an entire product.

More from Mike: momentumshake.com

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

Building the team, systems and customer base your business needs can take years. Could buying another business help you get there faster?

Tom Shipley joins Lee Benson on Show Your Value to explain how he used acquisitions to solve problems he couldn’t afford to fix from scratch, including buying an established business to help scale a $331,000 skincare brand.

They explore how to evaluate an acquisition, understand what a seller really wants, and bring two companies together without losing the people and value you paid for.

In this episode:
• How acquisitions can unlock growth beyond sales and marketing
• Financing a deal without giving away too much ownership
• What makes buyers discount the value of your business
• Partnership and equity mistakes that become expensive later
• What to do during the first 30 days after an acquisition
• How to prepare your business for a sale before you need one

If you own a business and want to grow, reduce its dependence on you, or prepare for an eventual exit, this conversation will help you ask better questions before your next move.

Subscribe to Show Your Value for conversations about building stronger businesses, leading better teams and creating lasting value.

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