Unlocking Leadership Potential and Team Alignment with Benj Miller

In this episode of Career Coaching Secrets, our guest is Benj Miller, a visionary entrepreneur, author, and coach dedicated to helping leaders unlock their potential and build thriving organizations. Benj shares insights from his extensive experience in business leadership, team alignment, and organizational clarity, offering practical wisdom for coaches and professionals aiming to scale their impact. Discover how his frameworks for purpose-driven growth and leadership development can transform the way you lead and coach others.

You can find him on:

https://www.benjmiller.co/ 

https://www.staggr.com/benj-miller

https://www.linkedin.com/in/benj-miller-business-growth-impact-framework-coach/

https://www.systemandsoul.com/ 

https://www.systemandsoul.com/261

Transcript

Benj Miller: 0:00

I've got no secrets for you there. Everything that we've tried to grow and gain market share has absolutely failed. That's felt like a waste of time, a waste of money. But what keeps happening is through the work that we do, people keep telling other people. And people hear an entrepreneur and they hear where they're stuck and they're like, you really need to check out System and Soul, or you really need to talk to Bench. You really need to talk to one of Bench's coaches. Or on the flip side, somebody's thinking about becoming a coach and they're exploring all these opportunities. And we get lucky enough every once in a while that somebody intersects that moment and says, Hey, go go talk to Bench. Go talk to System and Soul. Before you make any decision, you gotta at least check them out.

Davis Nguyen: 0:42

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Wynne, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Kevin Yee: 1:13

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm Kevin, and today we are joined by Benj Miller. He is the founder of System and Soul. He's been in the coaching industry for six plus years and has a previous life in brand strategy. Welcome to the show, Benj.

Benj Miller: 1:29

Thanks, Kevin. Appreciate it. Let's have some fun.

Kevin Yee: 1:31

Yeah, let's have some fun. I'm actually really curious because pre-podcast, you're breaking down your previous life. So I want to hear the origin story, the lore. Let's start at the very beginning. How did you get into coaching and more importantly, turn it into a business?

Benj Miller: 1:45

It has been a journey and it was all accidental. So I started from my first business 21 years ago. Still operating without me on the board. We meet once a quarter and they run the thing without me whole thing along the way. Started, bought, and sold several other businesses. So a little bit of a recovering serial entrepreneur. One of the things that really, really helped me along the way was finding a business operating framework, this operating system that gived me some tools and some common language that I could use across my portfolio of companies to just have a system for execution and strategy and culture, leadership development. And I used that across the breadth of the companies. And so when I had worked my way out of my agency, I found that all of the work I had done helping with companies and senior leadership teams of companies facilitate brand strategy conversations just led me to, I'm kind of a natural at the strategy and organizational thinking that comes when we're talking about organizational strategy as well. And I fell in love with, you know, along the way of building businesses, I fell in love with business building, the art, the science. And I found myself being able to apply that to help other people do the same. Tons of fun. And 21 kind of launched system in Soul, which took on a mind of its own and began also certifying other coaches. So we've got 40 plus coaches around the country, a couple international. What I do with our own business operating framework, and we've got software and tools and content and facilitate a lot of quarterly strategic planning sessions for companies that are wanting to grow both the system side of their business and the soul side of their business.

Kevin Yee: 3:30

System and soul. I love that. And it seems like there's probably a holistic side to the way that you approach business. How did you come up with the name? And tell me a little bit about your methodology, I guess.

Benj Miller: 3:41

Can't take any credit, even though I'm a branding guy, I can't take any credit for the name because only time, like literally at my desk, need a framework to take to my clients to use with my clients. And I'd really, my experience, I was a very soulful leader. So I found a business operating system. It really helped me because I already had this soulful business, like really focused on culture and humanity and people and leadership development, identity. And then the systems really helped me. But then as I looked around, all these different systems that are out there, if you just do those, then you're void of kind of the soul side. But I'm sitting here at my desk and literally it was divine download. Like I have no idea where it came from. It's just on a piece of paper, system is sold. Here's the model, here's the framework, here's the name, here's a mandate on my leadership. And oh, by the way, we're gonna impact 25,000 companies by the end of the decade. I don't know where it came from, and I still don't know how we're gonna pull it off, but we're on a mission to do it.

Kevin Yee: 4:39

How many companies are you at so far?

Benj Miller: 4:41

We're in the 3000s right now, four years in. So it's within the realm of possibility. That's so interesting.

Kevin Yee: 4:47

It sounded like, you know, maybe Unchin Divine download. It sounded like a huge whiteboard session for like maybe across a few days, maybe. And then that was your business plan. That's so crazy. That's awesome.

Benj Miller: 4:59

Yeah, I would like to say it was super strategic, but it just kind of appeared and it really felt like a calling. All my other businesses, you know, I I love the game of business, and so when I saw an opportunity, I'd try and take it take advantage of it. This one feels very, very different, and it's very focused on the impact that we're making with these entrepreneurs for them and for their businesses and everybody it touches.

Kevin Yee: 5:22

You mentioned impact. What kind of impact are you noticing on these people's businesses that you work with?

Benj Miller: 5:27

Um, I mean, we can get into the financial impact. I've got great success stories of companies that have, you know, tripled in two and a half years and had massive exits. I've got a couple companies that I'm working with right now that are going to market and they're gonna transact in the next year. And that those are life-changing events for people, and those companies are full of generosity. So there's a lot of people in those companies that are gonna benefit, not just a founder or a couple of shareholders. So those are really cool. But what I love to see along the way is the change that happens when you unlock the potential of the senior leadership team. And that's usually where companies are stuck or stalled. And maybe it's not the right people, maybe they don't have the clarity, but so often it's baggage that we bring in just as humans into the room, whether it's the need to protect, the need to promote, it's our own egos that get in the way. We're not saying the thing that needs to be said, we're not trusting the room to deal with the things that need dealt with. And when you have those kind of breakthroughs, it's not uncommon that I would have a client, like every client would at some point have this like tears moment with grown men in a business setting going, you know, thank you. I needed to hear that. Whether it's from me or somebody else in the room, but just creating the environments where they can have raw, honest conversations. I see my job as like to uh surface reality. So much of like reality is kind of hidden down a layer too deep. And if we can surface reality and then create an environment of trust that the room can solve, whatever the thing is, whatever's down there, the ugly, if we can get it to the top, if we can name it, if we can talk about it, and then we trust the room can deal with it. And they always can. The fear is always greater than the reality. So we just got to get reality to the surface and create the trust where we can have those conversations.

Kevin Yee: 7:22

It's really interesting how you're talking about the relationship dynamics between these leaders and all that. And then also the way that you're describing, it almost feels like kind of like in the therapy world, they talk about shadow work and stuff and how we repress things and how they manifest into our real life and all that. It feels like you're kind of doing this for like businesses where you're uncovering the things that are unspoken but need to be said as well and you're creating that environment.

Benj Miller: 7:50

Yeah. We internally with my other, as I train my other coaches, we talk about this a lot. Like we are basically business therapists, but nobody would ever go hire a business therapist. They would hire a business strategist or a business facilitator, right? So we're a little bit of a a sheep in wolves clothing where they're gonna hire the wolf to come in and tell them what what's going on, but we're really caring and tending for the hearts that are in the room as well. Work with founders, one of the big things that we're working with there is their ability to elevate themselves out of being the person that has to do all the things or make all the decisions. That's a huge unlock. A lot of times they're actually not wired to have their heads down in the business, but you know, you go through founder mode, and that's the only way through founder mode is to go founder mode heads down, do all the things. So now you've done all the things in the business, and so you're having trouble trusting the people to do their things, or dance was never really your thing. So it's easy to trust that person, but product was your thing, so you have a lot of trouble trusting them. So the therapy that has to happen there to hire the right people and then fully empower them so that you can continue to elevate into the highest and best impact that you can make as a founder, leader, or CEO. That's therapy too. We'd never admit it out loud, right? These are the secrets of coaching. That's why we're talking about on the podcast. We talk about it internally with our coach community, but a lot of times I don't think our clients even know what's happening.

Kevin Yee: 9:15

Thank you for kind of sharing the behind the scenes of that. That's really, really interesting. One thing I did want to ask you too was like, I think earlier you mentioned that you've helped about 3,000 businesses so far. That's not a small number. And so I'm kind of curious about your marketing. Like, how do people usually find out about you? What kind of marketing are you guys doing?

Benj Miller: 9:35

I've got no secrets for you there. Everything that we've tried to grow and gain market share has absolutely failed. It's felt like a waste of time, a waste of money. But what keeps happening is through the work that we do, people keep telling other people. And people hear an entrepreneur and they hear where they're stuck, and they're like, you really need to check out System and Soul, or you really need to talk to Bench. You really need to talk to one of Bench's coaches. Or on the flip side, somebody's thinking about becoming a coach and they're exploring all these opportunities. And we get lucky enough every once in a while that somebody intersects that moment and says, Hey, go go talk to Bench, go talk to System and Soul. Before you make any decision, you gotta at least check them out.

Kevin Yee: 10:17

Mostly word of mouth through the work that you've done through these other companies. Yeah. Also, like 3,000 companies. I'm sure you're not working with all 3,000 all at once in one day. But like, I guess, like, how do you manage all those clients? Like, it seems like you have a team. Tell me about your team and how you manage these clients.

Benj Miller: 10:35

All of the impact, not all of them have even ever been quotes clients, but uh, some of them have done some of our free workshops, some of them have downloaded some of our tools. I've got a daily newsletter that's just like newsletter's not even the right word. It's a daily email with like a tip or reminder, or you know, it's something that we all know. It's not all like these brilliant things, but you can read it in 10, 15, maybe 20 seconds. And it's just like that reminder for the day like, oh yeah, lock in, remember that, ask this question, look for this in my leadership. There's so many things we know we're supposed to do as leaders, but we forget and you know get sucked into our email. So it's just that reminder to get your head above water. So we've got a lot of people that interact with those emails. And then we also have a software that teaches our framework. So if you're not at the place where economically or ego-wise, which is something else we could talk about, you're ready to hire a coach, then there's kind of a do-it-yourself option there to dig in and start using some of the tools to make some of the progress, even without a coach.

Kevin Yee: 11:38

Well, that's really interesting that you have software as well. And you mentioned the ego part too. That's pretty interesting as well. Which leads me to this next question, too. I would it sounds like you have a lot of different offers and stuff. I know some of the coaches they do one-on-one coaching, they have like organizational trainings. I guess like I'm so curious, what kind of offers do you kind of have for your business right now?

Benj Miller: 12:00

Yeah, 90% of the work that we do is we lead the quarterly offsites for senior leadership teams. And so we don't do a lot of one-to-one and we don't go a lot deeper in organizations. We can if they really need us to, but we prefer to empower that leadership team to take what we're teaching them and they become the leaders that teach the next level in their organization. And then they become the leaders that, you know, and that's how leadership works, right? If I have to come in and teach every level the organization, then there's some dependency on me, and they didn't get the reps of being able to teach what they learned because that's how we really learn it, right? We go execute it, and then if we can teach it, then we know we've learned it. So we're actually trying to empower these organizations to self-multiply within versus being dependent on us. So most of the work that we're gonna do internally to organizations, actual clients, is gonna be on those quarterly cadence. Um, and then we do some stuff externally, like workshops. Some of that is just to give back, some of it's to engage a larger audience. Those are like one-off opportunities, really focused on one aspect of leadership or execution and our strategy.

Kevin Yee: 13:10

We're essentially teaching people, I hate this term, but like teaching people how to hunt or how to fish almost like and be self-reliant within their own businesses. That's what it sounds like.

Benj Miller: 13:20

100%. Yeah, we believe in leadership-driven companies, right? So we're trying to take what we know, what we've learned, what we do even, even as facilitators and leaders in those quarterly sessions and teach the organization how to run like that. Because the more you can increase the horsepower and the production capacity of your leaders, that becomes exponential for your organization.

Kevin Yee: 13:43

One interesting thing I think about because leadership isn't it's hard to sometimes attribute like well, I talked to a lot of different coaches through this podcast, right? And it's hard to attribute like the value of empowering these leadership teams and all that. It's not like sales, right? Sales is an actual number associated with it, and it's easy to attra attribute the numbers behind it. And so one of the things that a lot of coaches listen to this struggle with is things like pricing strategies. And of course, you don't have to give any hard numbers, and if you're open to it, I love to kind of hear how you guys structure your pricing. Do you guys do like project-based? Do you guys do a retainer since it's quarterly? Kind of curious about the different models you tried or thought about.

Benj Miller: 14:30

Yeah, when I started early in my career, I started just based on a session day rate and quickly migrated to this idea of monthly retainer. It helps them cash flow the instead of these big spikes once a quarter. I'm helping them cash flow it and I'm making myself available on those months in between quarters when they find themselves stuck or wondering question. And so I'll check in with them, you know, hey, how you doing? What's happening in the business? What do I need to know to help you serve, you know, to serve you better? So we're having those touch points, which creates a better engagement than just seeing or hearing from them once a quarter and showing up. So yeah, the the that's that's a really helpful tool, especially for longevity of a relationship, if and you know projecting my own growth and cash flow and my own practice, that's helpful as well. So love, I love that model. I want to go back to something you were saying though, about like the squishiness of leadership and not being able to make that like tangible. And I think that there's a few ways that we can measure it. We can measure it in um headaches and frustrations, which it is kind of squishy, but you literally feel it because you feel the momentum, like it's like the grease on the wheels, which leads to the second thing, which is the speed of the organization. When you're a leadership-driven organization, the speed can increase. And so you've got the momentum of the right people, the high trust, and the execution being like happening. So the momentum, the speed is just ramping up. You've got that. We have a very different approach to leadership than almost everything that you will find or hear out there. And it comes from a book by a guy named Tim Spiker. Tim's a friend of mine. He did a lot of the research with Vanessa Kylie, who's also a great friend and client. And what they went to do is try and use data, do read the research, and predict what would make somebody a great leader. And so they had access to 2,000 CEOs in this association. And they gave them all a uh, well, they had all their data from like a Myers Briggs, uh a disk assessment, strength finders. They put them in a computer and they found zero statistical data to be able to predict that. So they went back and gave them all 2,360 reviews to where their peers, their bosses, and the people that work for them were giving feedback. And then they processed the natural language of that and they found 10 attributes that articulated what exceptional leaders do. And it's stuff like martial resources, communicate effectively, create culture. It's things that you kind of nod your head like this, like, okay, but in there, there were two that yielded 77% of a leader's effectiveness. So while there were 10 things, you know, quick math, you'd be like, okay, each one's 10%. There were two that made up 77% of a leader's effectiveness. It was inwardly sound and others focused. Inwardly sound and others focused. The other eight are what great leaders do, but it was more important about who they were, the spirit, the energy, the being that they brought into the room to do those things than what they did. There's so much grace if they didn't communicate well, if they didn't cast vision well, if they didn't marshal resources well. There's so much grace. But that was contingent on them showing up inwardly sound. Know these people, just like a calm presence. They're consistent. You know that they're not operating from their own baggage, from their own ego, from their own need to promote themselves or protect themselves. And then because of that, they're able to show up and I can show up in the room and I can have Kevin's best interest, right? And I can be for you. And how do I show up on your behalf? And how am I able to tell you the truth that you need to hear? And you know that I love you, and that's why I'm telling you. And so 77% of a leader's effectiveness, this is a massive number. This is a this is a mind, this shifts the game, right? So, how do we learn how to lead ourselves well? Everybody wants to talk about leadership, like I'm gonna go lead all the people. But 77% of leadership is how do I lead myself well? And then if I can do that well, Kevin, the next question isn't how do I lead people? The next question is how do I help other people lead themselves well? And if you have a culture like that, like what happens? Your attrition drops. Nobody wants to leave a culture like that. I've got a bunch of people who believe in me, they're for me, they trust me, they're gonna tell me, they're gonna grow me.

Kevin Yee: 19:13

Like, you're on fire. I just kind of had this aha moment because I've always kind of like never been able to put it into words until like you kind of label it just now. But when we were talking about business therapists and like when I was thinking about inner work, right? Like a lot of entrepreneurs, they always talk about inner work or the deep work and stuff like that. But when I think about inwardly sound, my mind thinks to inversion, like the Charlie Munger thing, where it's like, oh, what does someone who's emotion like who is not like this? They're usually emotionally turbulent, unpredictable. And I've been in situations, especially when I was like a nine to fiver, where I think about these bosses, some of the worst bosses I've ever had, and they were all over the place, and it almost feels like a broken household. Like when I think when I look back at my childhood, my dad actually had PTSD, and so you never knew if he was hot or cold or whatever. You didn't know what you're running into, and so I think about that inner work and how important it is, and now I kind of connect the dots about why your work is so important for these leaders and teams and all that, too. So I don't know, I just had that like aha moment, like as you were speaking. Yeah.

Benj Miller: 20:27

Well, we do a little exercise when we introduce this, where I'm kind of doing it in reverse order, but yeah, have people before we even spill the beans on that stats and the data and what this means and the definition of inwardly sound, and we go through this whole exercise, but I start by just saying, Who's who's the best boss you ever had? And maybe it's not a boss because you've had bad bosses, but uh maybe it was a coach or a mentor, but somebody that you had a real personal relationship with. And then I have them write down like what was it about them? And they always write the, you know, they believed in me, they were encouraging, they told me what I needed to hear, they had a calm presence, and they build this list, and the math always maths. Their list is always like 70 to 80 percent who they were when they showed up, and maybe 20 or 30 percent something that they did to exhibit like true leadership in an organization the way we typically think about it. And so when we think about our own reason, like I could almost feel you experiencing what I was saying is truth. And the reason that's true is because we've experienced this when we know great leaders that have impacted our lives. This has been true of them.

Kevin Yee: 21:37

That is so impactful. Oh my god. Uh, part of me is also like really curious about the stats.

Benj Miller: 21:42

It's all in the book, The Only Leaders Worth Following, by Tim Spiker. All the maths in there.

Kevin Yee: 21:48

Awesome. I do want to switch gears for a second. I'm curious about your future goals, right? I know that you have this vision of impacting 25,000 companies, but I guess where do you want your business to take you in the next few years? Do you have any like secret dreams, big ambitions no one knows about? Are you thinking about hiring more? Like I'm kind of curious to know your thoughts about that.

Benj Miller: 22:09

Yeah, I think the biggest thing that I think about is democratizing our framework because I want more and more companies to be able to experience it and to be impacted by it. And so one of the things that we actively work on internally is how do we give more of it away? And in our world, there's typically two paths. One is kind of a do-it-yourself, and like I can give you, I can tell you exactly what to do as an organization. And nine times out of ten, you're gonna really, really, really struggle to implement it, which is the value of a coach, right? And one out of ten times you've got somebody in that organization that understands it and can absolutely nail it and knock it out of the park. That's awesome, but it's really rare. Over here on the other side of the spectrum, you've got a pretty big out-of-pocket expense, and you've got to believe that that's gonna pay off. And you've got to believe that that's what you need as an organization. And this goes back to I mentioned that ego. A lot of people say, Well, I'm not sure about the price, but really you hear, well, there's a couple things that we got to get in order before we're ready to do that. It's like the person that's like, I can't go to CrossFit, I gotta get in shape before I go to CrossFit. Like, okay, but that's why you go to CrossFit, or like, or why haven't you already done those things? It's because you need help, and that's what I'm here for to help. So, um, and it is prices, right? So whether it's ego or price, this is on one side, and the failure rate on do-it-yourself is on the other side. And I think there's a huge middle ground. And we're in this beautiful time right now where technology and AI and UI and UX can, I think we can do a much better job at helping a company adapt this operating framework and this mindset, even if they're not able or ready to go all in. And that's my mindset around why I say democratize it. Like, can we get it to more companies faster, cheaper, at scale, not dependent on coaches? And when these companies, when they're in there, there's gonna be a point where you're like, all right, we're ready for the next level. Let's get a coach in here, let's level up, let's get a facilitator. Because we use the expression a lot, it's hard to read the label from inside the jar. And when you're working in a company all the time, it's almost impossible to get outside that jar. And it sucks to try and facilitate and participate at the same time. So the value of a coach, facilitator leading those off sites is exponential, but they might not be right there yet. So, how do we get this to more and more companies before they're ready to go all in with a coach?

Kevin Yee: 24:46

Yeah, I always hear that expression. I used to be a drug dealer, by the way. I used to be a pharmacist back in the day. And so they always say you can't read the label from inside the bottle, right? And so that's so funny. But you do mention a really interesting point where we live in a really great time of AI where people can build these like bots or chat bots and like uh and team enablement solutions easier than ever before. And what's really interesting is since you've had all these businesses, you bought these businesses, you built out your like systems and all that sort of stuff. I think that's really genius that you kind of created this, like how you termed it. Would you consider a software, I guess?

Benj Miller: 25:27

Yeah, we have our own software, and now we're coming back and adding, and it's not just like everybody thinks like chatbot, right? That's our first AI, but how can the data see things about your company before you see them? How can we know the trends? How can we how can we know that uh you know, Sally does not like being held accountable before anybody is willing to say it and kind of call it out like, hey, you know, we've got some lack of results over here that nobody's talking about, and that's really holding back the business. So can we have a conversation about that? Sorry if your name's Sally and you're listening right now.

Kevin Yee: 26:03

Yeah, you were offended that you talked to my you're gonna get an email from Sally. How did you know? We lost all our Sally's that were listening to this, but that's really interesting because like one thing I also noticed using AI, even for like my personal stuff or my personal coaching and stuff, it's very different coming from something that is not human, something that is on the outside, just noticing these patterns as well, but that doesn't trigger the ego, and so I think that is actually value, valuable.

Benj Miller: 26:33

Yeah, and I think a coach can do that if they have the right demeanor in the room, but you're right, it feels different coming from a teammate or a boss. It's objective, right? It's just like no judgment, no context. This is what the pattern says.

Kevin Yee: 26:48

Now, I'm also curious as you're thinking about maybe scaling like this, I guess. What kind of challenges are you kind of running into in this season of business right now? Maybe some things that people probably wouldn't know outside looking in.

Benj Miller: 27:04

It feels like just like a market awareness. How do we continue to build market awareness that we are an option? There's a lot of competitors out there, and we're also now in this age and time where anybody who's employed can say that they're a coach or consultant on their LinkedIn, right? So it's like this red ocean of coaching. Think standing out in the noise. One of the things that makes us stand out is just that we're not one-to-one coaching, we're not executive coaching, we're not life coaching, right? We are coaching leadership teams of these SMB companies. And then the other thing that's totally unique is just that there's nobody out there that's coaching on both the system and the soul of the business and integrating those two so that they multiply each other. How do I get more and more people to know that? How do I find the right coaches that will be will exemplify what we're doing, have the right demeanor, have the right leadership, the right experience to go in and do what we do with companies, do it really well. So it's finding the right people to be coaches and finding those companies that are looking for the same thing. It's all market awareness, Kevin. We got the rest down, knock on wood.

Kevin Yee: 28:17

You bring up some really interesting points there. Benji, I would love to play a game with you if you're open to it.

Benj Miller: 28:21

I love games.

Kevin Yee: 28:22

I actually learned this game from uh storytelling. I don't want to call him the storytelling master, but he's a pretty famous storyteller. His name is Matthew Dix, and he won like the Moth Storytelling Ball or I don't remember. It was some like award thing. Yeah, but pretty popular guy. And I want to kind of do it through the lens of business investments because a lot of coaches listen to this, they've invested into things, and I think there's a lot of wisdom that we can get from these stories of like business investments. As you know, a business investment could be coaching, training, team members, marketing, masterminds. It could be a lot of different things, and I'm curious about your experience. Okay, so I'm gonna prompt a phrase and you just tell me the first thing that comes to mind. And if there's a story associated with it, tell me about it, okay? All right, there's four. Okay, first business investment in your member.

Benj Miller: 29:06

First business oh, started an agency, right? That's what I told you, but really I just, you know, 21 years ago went out on my own as a freelancer. I wasn't trying to start a business, but I kind of accidentally kept growing and needed to hire some help. And so I hired another designer and then I hired a developer, and then I hired three more developers, and then another designer. And none of those felt like investments because I already had the work that I knew they were gonna cash flow, but I needed help running the business. And so my first hire, this is silly thinking about it now, but was like an office manager kind of administrative assistant. And it was the first investment that I made in a non cash producing investment in our business. So it was the I can't bill for this, so it's a cost without a revenue. And I remember how scary that was doing it for the first time.

Kevin Yee: 30:00

Love that. Thank you for that story of a vulnerability with a younger Benj over there. Okay. Last business investment you made.

Benj Miller: 30:08

This is so small, but it's by definition the last. Me and my friends here in town got into pickleball because we're old and that's what you do. And so I'm like, there are no cool pickleball brands. Like, period. And so there's like everybody's trying to get in the game, but they're trying to be a tennis brand plus pickleball, whatever. So I spent six grand on deadball.com and created a kick-ass logo and put up like a print on demand kind of store, drop ship, whatever. I did all that in a weekend, got my kids into it. We built it, and the stuff looks sick, and we have some clothes and stuff, and we've done nothing with it since. So I've probably got, I don't know, seven or eight grand into this. You can go to it, deadball.com. It's an amazing domain and looks good, but man, it's it's sat there for probably been a year.

Kevin Yee: 30:55

It's been about nine months. That's crazy. That's so funny, though. I like that. That was fun. I could probably safely assume that wasn't your best investment, but definitely not best business investment you made.

Benj Miller: 31:05

A best business investment. Are you asking from a cash perspective or what makes best?

Kevin Yee: 31:10

Well, it's subjective for a reason. So yeah.

Benj Miller: 31:12

Okay. Monetarily, my best one is I started 90.io, um, one of the founders, and I'm out of it now. Got out of it about a year, two years ago. And at that point, it was about a 200 million dollar valuation.

Kevin Yee: 31:26

Wow, it's crazy. Okay. Worst investment that you kind of wish you got your money back from.

Benj Miller: 31:30

That's painful, Kevin. It's an easy answer, but it's painful. I, with a group of friends here, bought a gun range and gun club that came up for sale. And so we bought it. It was 24 lanes. There's probably 15 investors in it, but I was one of the top three or four. You know, we all kind of put in the same capital. And here's the mistake on that. We got it had real estate and a business, which was great because then we could get a longer term note based on the real estate, basically buy pay for the business, but finance the real estate. But we did an SBA loan on that. And what we did not, what I did not realize as a you know outside limited partner was that the SBA loan was variable rate. And this was like right before COVID. And then you remember interest rates shot through the roof. So next thing we knew, our payments on that property were double what they were double, you know, and that just absolutely just destroyed cash flow. So we ended up having to sell it and did not get our money back anywhere near out of that.

unknown: 32:30

That's very, very painful.

Kevin Yee: 32:32

I would have never expected that variable loan, but interesting.

Benj Miller: 32:35

I learned way too late on that one.

Kevin Yee: 32:36

As you're sharing these stories, I'm kind of curious. Like, we talked about your first business investment, last business investment. I guess how has your decision-making process changed and what to invest in and what not to invest in over the years?

Benj Miller: 32:48

Most people talk about, you know, they I think most people start with like they invest in the product or idea, and then at some point they get smart and realize it's about the team. That is obvious to me. I think for me personally, this is personal, not because there's other people that are really, really good at this. Me personally, I want to invest in something that already has distribution. As long as we're talking about like a B2B or B2C company and not, you know, something financial or asset-based, then I want you to prove you have distribution. Because if you have distribution, you can solve product problems, innovation problems, culture problems, cash flow problems, whatever it is. If you can't solve distribution, nothing else matters. Such wise advice.

Kevin Yee: 33:30

Quick question for you. How do people, we're coming near the end of the podcast, but how do people connect with you and find you?

Benj Miller: 33:36

Super easy. Benjamiller.com, B-E-N-J Miller.com, and from there you can get to my LinkedIn, to the email newsletter, to System Install, whatever else. I don't even know. But it's all just linked right off there on the homepage.

Kevin Yee: 33:47

I have to say I really enjoyed this podcast. You're definitely not your normal like career coach that I speak to. You're a wonderful storyteller. I can tell that you have like this amazing, huge vision, and also very, very down-to-earth. I loved your investment questions and the stories of vulnerability. But I also feel like sometimes the business, and you really emphasize this, is like the human or soul aspect that's missing a lot of times. And I just want to thank you for kind of talking about it, shedding light on it, and hopefully it's a reminder to not only the audience, but also to myself listening to this too. Like there's a soul to business, and we can't forget about that. So thank you, Ben.

Benj Miller: 34:23

Yeah, thank you. You're playing a vital role helping us to share our message and invite other people into it. So thank you. Thank you.

Davis Nguyen: 34:30

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe to YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This conversation was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to seven and eight figures without burning out. To learn more about Purple Circle, our community, and how we can help you grow your business, visit joinpurplecircle.com.