Striving for Excellence in Every Aspect of Life and Business

Chia-Li Chien | Mar. 15, 2012

What does a typical famous sports figure usually do when coming out of retirement? Well, the famous David and Jason Benham (see picture on left for Jason’s family), the identical twin brothers who retired from the St. Louis Cardinals, know their path with more clarity than anyone else.

“God favors and opens the doors, but business excellence keeps you there!” said Jason Benham. Both brothers strive for excellence in every aspect in life including business, family, community and spirituality.

See below for a timeline of accomplishments from the team best known as the Benham Brothers of the BENHAM Companies.

2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012
Retired from St. Louis Cardinals	Marketresearch in real estate business	Formed BENHAM Real Estate Group; a Real Estate Broker niche in foreclosure	Formed an Entity 2 in Property Mgmt. Firm		Franchised BENHAM REO Group		Formed Entity 3 “shared service” outsourcing	BENHAM REO Group reached 100 offices		ThereIsMore.com TRUE wealth Movement
Franchised BENHAM REO Group	BENHAM Foundation	Merged with Flatworld Solutions
Exit 1
Exit 2	Exit 3	Exit 4

Spotting a need and meeting a need. The Benhams began to notice billboards with messages such as “Bankrupt OK,” or “Zero money down to move you into your dream home.” “Even while already involved in conducting typical real estate transactions, the Benham brothers spotted this need in the marketplace in 2003.” This need is not defined well in the story. It is explained later on in the paragraph: Suggestion: the Benham brothers anticipated the need for liquidation and foreclosure specialists in the marketplace back in 2003.

What would banks do if they had an influx of inventories they needed to liquidate? At the time, the answer they got from the banks was. “That’ll never happened, and even if it did, we’ll have real estate brokers sell it for us.” Once the brothers spotted the need, they specialized their business in liquidation and foreclosure properties for banks.

Leveraging Market Makers. In addition to the niche market the Benham brothers entered in real estate industry, they leveraged and built solid relationship with their market makers. Market makers are entities that have exactly your ideal target customers (in their case, domestic banks). The Benham brothers became a key relationship management tool for the market makers in their business.

Capitalizing on their know how – The now formidable real estate team began to automate liquidation and foreclosure management, and tracking processes. “Process before profits,” vowed David Benham, when they knew had to have the ability to process forty foreclosure properties as fast as 400. They intuitively knew to have a system in place that could manage all details of foreclosure properties and its tracking. Why? Their brand promise was to handle liquidation for banks in a quarter of the time of any other brokers in town. Having a solid system as a foundation allows them to speed to response with every bank they work with, regardless of the profitability of the properties.

“I never thought about exit strategy before” David Benham told me during my third annual BVD study/interview with them. They learned that term while both David and Jason filled out the on-line BVD assessment. If you take a close look at the timeline above, you will notice the Benham brothers had already at this point used four different exit/transfer methods without realizing it.

Scale the business model with a solid foundation to handle volume. The Benham brothers have leveraged their solid proprietary online business management system, which they can scale easily. They franchised their business model in 2007, using one of twenty-even exit strategy methods:

1) External Transfer – Outside (Continued). Credit their solid foundation of a system or their know how, but within two and a half years, the brothers had reached the mark of 100 offices nationwide. (See Exit 1 in above table.) (Note: you can see all twenty-seven exit/transfer methods in one of my recent articles Plan for the End Game and Reward Yourself for the Risk.)

Meanwhile, the Benham brothers knew to stay focused on only investing in their core competency. They used another of the twenty-seven exit strategy methods: 2) External Transfer – Outside (Retire). They profitably sold an entity that was not their core competency. (See Exit 2 in above table.)

In 2009, the Benhams used another one of the twenty-seven exit strategy methods: 3) Internal Transfer – Charitable Trusts to create the BENHAM Foundation that allows them to continue on their Reverse Missioneering quest to spread their spirituality message around the globe. (See Exit 3 in above table) They re-circulate portions of their profit back into the local community where their facility is located. They currently have one model company fully functioning with seventy-five employees in Davao City, Philippines. They will soon to break ground on a Ghana location.

In 2010, they used another one of the twenty-seven exit strategy methods: 4) External Transfer – Outside (Continued), by merging their shared service outsourcing entity with Flatworld Solutions. (See Exit 4 in above table)

If you are like me, you are by now wondering how the Benham brothers always knew what to do and how to continuously be successful in all aspects of life. They humbly credit their success to their father, Flip Benham, who leads Kerygma Church in Concord, NC.

“My father taught me everything in life; not to be just a business man but to be a biblical thinker,” Jason Benham says. Because of their devotion to their purpose and passion in life to make an impact, they created and still follow the three core values of Benham Companies:

• Produce Value
• Be Faithful in the Little Things
• Breathe Life

These three core values are the calipers used to measure the BENHAM Company’s success.

David Benham’s FamilyDavid Benham is a father of five and married to Lori (see the picture on the left). Jason Benham is a father of four and married to Tori (see the picture top of this article). They have already started passing on their beliefs to their children by not only having them involved in their philanthropy efforts but also these core values. The couples strive to position the next generation for continuous success in life as well as for making impact in the world.

The Benham brothers drive their business value up by consistently re-aligning the three business value factors, which include 1) personal timing 2) business timing and 3) economic timing. They stay true to their three core values and use them as the rule for their journey. Along the way, they are leveraging as many exit/transfer strategy methods as possible to properly claim their reward by compensating themselves for the risk they took in creating and running their businesses. Meanwhile, they continue to re-circulate portions of the profit back into the local community where their businesses operate.

“Exit” is neither a bad word nor losing your social status or ego. It merely means to re-position yourself for your NEXT JOURNEY®! With several business entities, the Benham brothers had already used four different exit/transfer methods without realizing it. Think about it—how many exit/transfer methods can you use in your business(es) so that you too can properly claim the reward by compensating yourself for the risk you took in creating and running your business(es)? Perhaps just like the Benham brothers, you too can be a part of or create a movement to better our community at the same time.