Lee Ellis on Leading with Honor in Business (The Price and Value Journey, Episode 146)
What does leadership forged in the crucible of a POW camp teach us about running a professional services firm today? Retired Air Force Colonel Lee Ellis knows the answer firsthand. Captured in Vietnam and held for over five years at the notorious Hanoi Hilton, Lee endured brutal conditions yet emerged with a leadership philosophy rooted in courage, humility, accountability, and trust.
In this episode of The Price and Value Journey, Lee shares stories from captivity and the leadership principles he has spent decades teaching to business leaders and organizations around the world. He explains why balancing accountability with compassion, integrity with results, and courage with humility is essential for anyone leading a business or team.
For expert-service professionals, Lee’s lessons are more than history. These principles directly apply to how you serve clients, lead your practice, and confidently set prices under pressure. His insights remind us that trust, principled decision-making, and resilience are not abstract ideals. They are survival skills, whether in a POW camp or in the marketplace.
The Price and Value Journey is presented by John Ray and produced by North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of the Business RadioX® podcast network.
Key Takeaways You Can Use from This Episode
- Leadership grounded in integrity builds long-term trust, even in high-pressure situations.
- Balancing courage with humility makes you more effective and more respected as a leader.
- Accountability is not punishment; it is mutual responsibility that strengthens teams.
- Resilience is built by focusing on what you can control and bouncing back from setbacks.
- Openness and trust foster a culture that welcomes honesty and course corrections.
- Modeling secure leadership encourages your clients and colleagues to admit mistakes and grow.
Topics Discussed in this Episode
00:00 Introduction and Guest Welcome
01:54 Lee Ellis’s Early Life and Military Career
03:35 Capture and POW Experience
05:36 Lessons in Leadership and Accountability
12:41 Resilience and Overcoming Adversity
25:16 The Importance of Connection and Collaboration
32:06 Trust and Humility in Leadership
39:15 Conclusion and Contact Information
Lee Ellis, Colonel USAF (Ret), Leading with Honor®
Lee Ellis is Founder and President of Leading with Honor® and FreedomStar Media®. He is an award-winning author, leadership coach, and expert speaker in the areas of leadership, team building, and human performance. His past clients include Fortune 500 senior executives and C-level leaders in telecommunications, healthcare, the military, and other business sectors. Some of his media appearances include interviews on networks such as CNN, CBS This Morning, C-SPAN, ABC World News, and Fox News Channel, plus hundreds of engagements in various industry sectors throughout the world.
Early in his career, Lee served as an Air Force fighter pilot, flying fifty-three combat missions over North Vietnam. In 1967, he was shot down and held as a POW for more than five years in Hanoi and surrounding camps. For his wartime service, he was awarded two Silver Stars, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star with Valor device, the Purple Heart, and the POW Medal. Lee resumed his Air Force career, serving in leadership roles with increasing responsibilities, including command of a flying squadron and leadership development organizations, before retiring as a colonel.
Lee has a BA in History and an MS in Counseling and Human Development. He is a graduate of the Armed Forces Staff College and the Air War College. He has authored or co-authored seven books on leadership and career development. His latest bestselling book is entitled Captured by Love: Inspiring True Romance Stories from Vietnam POWs. Two additional, award-winning books share leadership insights gained from his POW experience. Leading with Honor: Leadership Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton won book-of-the-year awards and was selected in 2013 for the USAF Chief of Staff Professional Reading List. His follow-on book, Engage with Honor: Building a Culture of Courageous Accountability, was selected as best in class for the “Leadership” category.
In 2014, Lee was inducted into the Georgia Military Veterans Hall of Fame, and in 2015, he was a DAR Medal of Honor recipient for a lifetime of patriotic service as a military officer and spokesman for leading with honor.
Lee and his wife, Mary, reside in the Atlanta, GA, area and have four grown children and six grandchildren.
Website | Lee on LinkedIn | Leading with Honor: LinkedIn | Instagram
John Ray, Host of The Price and Value Journey
John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey.
John owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include business coaching and advisory work, as well as advising solopreneurs and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their expertise, such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, coaches, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
In his other business, John is a podcast show host, strategist, and the owner of North Fulton Business Radio, LLC, an affiliate of Business RadioX®. John and his team work with B2B professionals to create and conduct their podcast using The Generosity Mindset® Method: building and deepening relationships in a non-salesy way that translates into revenue for their business.
John is also the host of North Fulton Business Radio. With over 880 shows and having featured over 1,300 guests, North Fulton Business Radio is the longest-running podcast in the North Fulton area, covering business in its region like no one else.
John’s book, The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices
John is the #1 national best-selling author of The Generosity Mindset: A Journey to Business Success by Raising Your Confidence, Value, and Prices.
If you are a professional services provider, your goal is to do transformative work for clients you love working with and get paid commensurate with the value you deliver to them. While negative mindsets can inhibit your growth, adopting a different mindset, The Generosity Mindset®, can replace those self-limiting beliefs. The Generosity Mindset enables you to diagnose and communicate the value you deliver to clients and, in turn, more effectively price to receive a portion of that value.
Whether you’re a consultant, coach, marketing or branding professional, business advisor, attorney, CPA, or work in virtually any other professional services discipline, your content and technical expertise are not proprietary. What’s unique, though, is your experience and how you synthesize and deliver your knowledge. What’s special is your demeanor or the way you deal with your best-fit clients. What’s invaluable is how you deliver outstanding value by guiding people through massive changes in their personal lives and in their businesses that bring them to a place they never thought possible.
Your combination of these elements is unique in your industry. There lies your value, but it’s not the value you see. It’s the value your best-fit customers see in you.
If pricing your value feels uncomfortable or unfamiliar to you, this book will teach you why putting a price on the value your clients perceive and identify serves both them and you, and you’ll learn the factors involved in getting your price right.
The book is available at all major physical and online book retailers worldwide. Follow this link for further details.
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