Hi Benj, thanks for being with us today. Can you tell our audience a bit about you and your work?
I'm Benj Miller—"Renegade" visionary, serial entrepreneur, and advocate for helping founders build healthy, scalable businesses. I've built seven profitable businesses, including the business operating framework, System & Soul. Now, instead of building my own businesses, I'm helping founders in hundreds of small businesses reach breakthroughs and find freedom from the grind.
Either by luck, determination, or insanity, I’ve gone through the challenges we face as founders in ten businesses over the last two decades. I know the journey you’re on extremely well. Each time I’ve encountered the challenge of growing a healthy business, I gained some insights—from success and failure alike—that I think can save us all some time and heartache. I can help us move forward with a better plan than giving into the business and losing yourself as a “Renegade” Visionary or continuing to face the resistance you’re likely feeling all around you.
Renegades: Break Rules. Find Freedom. (A Book for Founders)
"Renegades" teaches you how to take a business to scale, re-engage your strengths, and allow you to re-discover your entrepreneurial freedom. Bottom line: You don’t have to trade anything about who you truly are. You don’t have to give up your entrepreneurial spirit for rules and systems. You have the opportunity to lead through your strengths and shift your focus to leading your people. Freedom like you’ve never known is on the other side.
Don't run your business.
I had to accept that the way I operated in the past was not going to take us to where we wanted to go in the future. There were things the business needed that I simply did not have the skills, capacity, or interest to pursue.
There are six specific mental shifts I had to make that truly transformed how my business operated. Here they are, along with one question or idea you can use to take the next best step:
Ask everyone on your team to tell you the mission of their role. Do they know why they do what they do?
2. Create a cadence for your workflow.Set a weekly meeting with your team, set your agenda, and don’t skip it.
3. Set the score so you can know if and when you are winning.Build a scoreboard with the top five most important metrics that demonstrate to the team when they are winning in the pursuit of your most important goals.
4. Communicate the destination.Can you answer why you want to grow, expand, and be the #1 company that does X in the next 5-10 years? Can your people?
5. Define your ethos.What matters to you about how you do the work you do and the identity you represent?
6. Build this with healthy, growing people.Your business is built on the quality of your leadership and how you pass that leadership along to the team. Ask them to answer the questions above with you. Invite them into the conversation.
For me, it's weaving stories into my speaking engagements. Naturally, I'm a bullet point kind of person. Give me a list, a concise summary, and I'll run with it. I thrive on efficiency, clarity, and brevity. However, I've come to realize that the power of storytelling is undeniable, and it’s something I need to practice and perfect.
Speaking in bullet points is like driving a high-speed train—direct, efficient, and to the point. But storytelling is more like taking a scenic route. It’s about engaging the audience, taking them on a journey, and making them feel every twist and turn. My challenge has been to slow down, paint vivid pictures with my words, and evoke emotions that resonate deeply.
Let me share a story—ironically, about my struggle with storytelling. A few years ago, I was invited to speak at a leadership conference. The topic was close to my heart: building effective teams. I had my points lined up, each one neatly encapsulated in a single, powerful sentence. I thought I was ready.
As I stepped onto the stage, I could see the audience’s expectant faces. I launched into my first point, expecting nods of agreement. Instead, I saw blank stares. I moved to my second point, then the third. Still, the audience seemed disengaged. It was like I was speaking a foreign language.
Then, I remembered a story from my early days as an entrepreneur. It was about a team I had assembled for a new project. We were passionate but inexperienced, and our initial efforts were a series of spectacular failures. There was the time we launched a product only to find out that our primary competitor had released a better version just a week earlier. Or that our tour bus caught on fire, and we spent an entire weekend salvaging what we could, bonding over shared adversity.
As I started telling these stories, I noticed a shift. The audience leaned in, their eyes brightened, and some even laughed at our misfortunes. I talked about the lessons learned, the resilience we developed, and how those experiences shaped our team into a cohesive unit. By the end, the energy in the room was palpable. People came up to me afterward, not to discuss my bullet points, but to share their own stories of overcoming challenges.
That experience was a turning point for me. I realized that while bullet points can convey information, stories create connections. They make the abstract concrete and the theoretical practical. They turn a speaker into a fellow traveler, sharing the journey rather than just the destination.
So, I made a conscious decision to incorporate more stories into my talks. It wasn't easy. My natural inclination was to revert to bullet points. I had to practice, to dig deep into my past, to find stories that were not only relevant but also engaging. I had to learn to be vulnerable, to share not just my successes but my failures as well.
Now, when I prepare for a talk, I think about the stories I can tell. I consider the emotions I want to evoke and the lessons I want to impart. It's still a work in progress, but I've seen the difference it makes. The audience is more engaged, the message more memorable, and the impact more profound.
In essence, storytelling doesn't come naturally to me. It's a skill I’ve had to cultivate, a muscle I've had to strengthen. But it's also become one of the most rewarding aspects of my work. It allows me to connect on a deeper level, to inspire, and to lead more effectively. And that's worth every effort.
LinkedIn: Benj Miller
The 261: System & Soul