Meet benj miller | Leadership Team Coach

We had the good fortune of connecting with benj miller and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi benj, other than deciding to work for yourself, what was the single most important decision you made that contributed to your success?
For sure the single most important decision I made was to hire a coach. I wanted someone who had been down the road I was traveling and knew how to navigate the way. I thought I was hiring someone who understood business, but I was shocked how much of the coaching came back to my own identity and character pushing me to grow and mature.

I have been with that same coach for over 15 years and along the way have enlisted some side coaches for very specific growth areas… speaking, fitness, and spiritual formation to name a few.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
For the last two decades I’ve been an entrepreneur (a serial entrepreneur). There was a season where I started a new business almost every year as crazy as that sounds. But I love building things! It’s my super power to get an idea from 0 to 1, so the journey has been absolutely incredible and so much fun.

But, something big changed for me (and in me) in the last several years that’s really got my full focus and energy.

As much as I love starting businesses, I’ve realized I’m even more passionate about helping all small businesses thrive and the founders who started those businesses re-discover their entrepreneurial freedom. What I mean by that is there are too many cases where a founder loses their joy and energy for what they’ve built. They suffer and so does the future of the business. What happens is that “Renegade” Founder goes from being an independent, radical visionary with a killer ideas and a bias toward action to being forced to follow protocols, build structure, and slow their pace. Oftentimes they don’t even recognize it until they’re deeply unhappy and stuck running a business day-by-day, reacting, making every decision, working non-stop, and ultimately chained to the hamster wheel.

I knew there had to be a way for a business to thrive and founders like me to continue to offer the best of themselves without becoming trapped.

That’s why I created a business operating framework called System & Soul that helps companies like the ones I’ve founded create clarity, build smarter ways to operate daily, find unity and alignment inside their teams, and become really awesome places where awesome people want to work.

It wasn’t easy to discover and simplify a framework that really helps leaders connect their vision to execution so quickly and sustainably, but I think my team and I have built something transformational. I’ve never seen an operating framework that creates dignity and values people as it creates systems for growth like ours does. Our goal right now is to impact 25,000 companies by 2030 because we believe small businesses are the life-blood of communities. We are determined to create a ripple effect wherever we go and within all the communities we touch. We want to build better businesses and communities with and for people.

A lot of my passion around this work comes from my own experience. It started with building my own marketing agency as I grew from a one-man shop to hiring my first employee to later having a team of fifteen, then twenty. I learned (sometimes the hard way) that the way I operated on my own didn’t work to lead this team of people I was now responsible for training, guiding and inspiring. It’s SUCH a hard job. I needed to drive the business forward but my capacity was at a max and I was so busy in the day-to-day that I never felt like I was doing what I was best at: being the visionary leader.

Fast forward 20 years and I’ve learned a massive amount about how to lead, manage, and be the crazy visionary I want to be. Now I’m sharing the things I’ve learned to help the businesses we serve at System & Soul and in a brand new book I’m excited to give to the world called, Renegades: Break Rules. Find Freedom (A Book for Founders). I’ll give you a little of what I learned and how my thinking has shifted.

I had to DESIGN my business with clear intentions.
I had to create a CADENCE for our workflow.
I had to set the SCORE so we could know if and when we were winning.
I had to communicate the DESTINATION.
I had to define our ETHOS.
I had to build this WITH healthy, growing PEOPLE.

The gist is:
It starts with YOU.
It multiplies with THEM.
It scales with a SYSTEM and a SOUL at the foundation.

Like I said, I learned all this over several decades of figuring it out, failing, and piecing together wisdom I’ve picked up along the way. It’s not the method that they teach you in business school. It’s not intuitive for entrepreneurs like us who are used to making our own way and shirking the system.

But, the results I’ve seen for myself and the founders I know are unreal.

I’ve seen nine-figure exits with businesses that were projected to run out of money in less than a year.

I’ve seen small agencies double their revenue.

I’ve seen family-run businesses build succession plans that allow the business to continue to grow from generation to generation.

Best of all, I’ve seen hundreds of founders and leaders like us rediscover their freedom to bring their visionary genius to their work and truly be able to trust the team they’ve empowered to run alongside them.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Well my real answer would be hanging out in my backyard with my kids and my wife around a bonfire or in our living room watching a good movie together. I love getting quality time with my people, so my favorite spot in ATL would be wherever they are.

When we get out around Atlanta some of my favorite things to do are:
– wake surfing on Lake Lanier
– fishing the Chattahoochee
– take out-of-town friends to the roof at Ponce City
– eating dinner at Rumi’s Kitchen
– going to an Atlanta United game

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
John Richie is the coach I mentioned in the previous question. He’s like my Yoda. As the saying goes it takes a village… I owe a lot to the other leaders in my peer group, my wife and family, my “wolfpack”, my business partners, and a few clutch guys that are always up to help with the ugly stuff.

Website: https://systemandsoul.com/

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

Other: NEW Book – Renegades: https://www.systemandsoul.com/renegades Newsletter: https://www.systemandsoul.com/261

Image Credits
Leggy Bird Photos Austin Martin Photography Deane Lawton