Welcome back to the show, my fellow extraordinary Americans.  Today we have our guest, Jason Miller. 

Jason is a seasoned CEO with an Overwhelming passion to help other business owners and CEOs succeed. He was nicknamed the bull because he takes no BS And no excuses from the People he serves, he has mentored thousands of people Over 2 plus decades and he has built several companies of his Own from the Ground up Since the late 90s.

Jason’s specialty is helping businesses create a passive system of income and guiding other Business owners through the rough waters. Of growing and scaling their company. He currently operates the Strategic Advisor Board and the Miller Company, as well as other companies with multiple brands. He’s also a best-selling published author in the business world and includes three Times International bestsellers; his seven published books have been featured in Barnes and Noble stores worldwide and are also available on Amazon. He donates all his book sales to Home for Heroes, of which donations Have played a part in building multiple homes for wounded warriors. 

Jason has also been featured in Voyage Denver magazine twice for being one of Colorado’s most inspiring companies, he’s also been featured On Forbes entrepreneur, ABC, FOX, NBC, CBS, and many more. Jason is also the creator of the famous Strategic Advisor Board podcast called War Room Roundtable, where he talks about business and how to leave a footprint. 

Well, Jason, thank you so much for taking the time to do this show. I know that You are a serial entrepreneur or a bestselling publisher and also a great podcaster. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, your background, and how you got started?

For starters, thank you for having me here; I appreciate being on the show to hopefully share some knowledge with the audience, but my background is that of a farm kid. I grew up a farm kid That worked a really hard farm kid life. My parents were both entrepreneurs. I Have a long family History, the military, and my family are all important to me. 

So, I didn’t really want to Stay on the family farm. So I decided to join the military. Well, I had that entrepreneurial bug no matter what because I watched my parents both be successful in their entrepreneurial journeys, and I had that bug. 

And while I was in the military, I couldn’t help myself, but you know, I wanted to be in business alongside my day job, whether it was a side hustle or whatever the case may be. Because that’s how it usually is. A lot of Startups start out. They’re just a side hustle, right? Well, I love doing both, so I served the milk in the military. I retired and really focused on starting the company at the same time, and you know, I loved that part of what I was doing and being able to serve in two different ways: serving in business and serving my country at the same time. 

So, I kind of fast-forward through a lot of things. Coming into retirement, I really wanted to figure it out. You know, OK, I have these companies now? What do I want to do with them? All right, because now I’m stepping out of uniform and That’s all the business. Things that I had going at the time. Some of them still exist today. We’re all pretty much automated. They had people running them so on and so forth. 

I didn’t really have much to do with them, so it was like that. I couldn’t just retire and do nothing. There’s only so much traveling we can do. It’s only so much fishing. One can do so. 

I wanted to change the face of consulting, and that’s what I did. What I did, I created. The well is, at least to my knowledge, the only Purely results-based strategic firm that comes into a company and helps them scale, and we only win if they win. I won’t go into the details about that, but I started that model and then scaled it. What we have now is the Strategic Advisor Board. Where we do the same thing Now it’s just time to multiply by 10 because we call it the power of 10. There are ten of us that are CEOs and on the strategic advisory board, and we just go into companies and really help them get through all the waters and the garbage. Oh, you know. Paste all those arrows in the back then, then You don’t need to take it because, well, you’ve already taken most of them

So that kind of brings the whole timeline up to today. The podcast was designed to really be a tool to help business owners designed to really be a tool to help business owners. We’re basically making a record of business struggles that other CEOs have had and so on and so forth, and just great stories. And those are the things people want to resonate with today. And hopefully, that one simple thing that we do—that podcast—will change a lot of people’s lives so I could go on and on and on, but I won’t.

No, I totally. There’s so much to learn over here. How long have you been in the entrepreneurial field? How long have you been doing entrepreneurship?

1999. That’s when I first started. So, it’s been a hot minute.

So what? What is your overall arching vision and goal when it comes to entrepreneurship and how did, and how did you view everything? What is your strategy overall? 

The biggest thing is a footprint, right? I mean, I really consider myself a very humble servant. Right, and we have the opportunity today to change a lot of things tomorrow, right? It’s up to us to do it. That and the fact that this probably isn’t the exact number, but it’s probably pretty close… There are 17 million-ish small businesses in the United States, which make up over half of the revenue generated in the United States by small businesses, the backbone of this country (and, I would argue, the backbone of almost every country), it is up to us to make sure that we forward that vision on and help other people. It’s all about the footprint Man, we’ve got to leave a footprint, not a legacy. A footprint.

I love it. How would you differentiate between a legacy and a footprint over here if you don’t Mind me asking?

A legacy is local, right? You know, I leave my legacy to my kids, my spouse, and my family. A footprint is across the whole world.

Love it, Jason. What was the driving factor that motivated you to succeed in your field and  Just pushed you and kept you… Push you to do things even when things would.

Well, it’s always about people, right? And I get up every morning and get jazzed about people. Everything is about people. Everything is about service. The more you serve, the better. The more you win. And that it’s just maybe that sounds a little woo. But it’s just the truth. And that’s what gets me out of bed every day. That’s what excites me. It’s like, whom can I help change?” Their path to a more successful future today Right? And help them. Shape their lives and leave them something. It’s that simple. There’s no more to it.

So what was the biggest lesson you learned during all the years of doing these multiple businesses?

Never give up. Ever. Always, always keep putting one foot in front of the other, no matter what the circumstances are, no matter how hard it is, and no matter how much financial burden. It is if you believe in it. Keep going. Just keep going.

So, what was the biggest challenge You had to Face during all these years that you did all of these businesses and how did you overcome it?

Gosh, I don’t even know which one to reach into that truckload and talk about.

Whichever was the toughest challenge.

Well, well, I think scaling is always the toughest challenge for every single business, right? It’s not a mindset. It’s none of that stuff. Always be able to scale the business to the next because, at some point in every business, you reach a limit and need capital, right? And I think that is a big part of what stops most entrepreneurs or business owners: they hit a ceiling and need to actually scale to the next level you have. To go get funding. Right. And people are just terrified. People are just terrified of taking on debt, right? It’s like that’s a preprogrammed thing in people’s heads: “Oh my God, I don’t want any debt. Everything needs to be paid for”, you can leverage debt if you do it. Correctly and leveraged debt correctly. It’s an asset; it’s not a debt, right? You’ve probably heard the term OPM  “other people’s money, right? You use other people’s money. But if you leverage it correctly, that’s what pushes you to the next scale, right, it’s…

I was interviewing another person and he called the same thing that you’re saying, strategic debt, so yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And you know if You have to get past that fear the very first time you do it and just embrace it and just go right. And how do you overcome it? Well, that’s the easy part. You know you go seek funding; you go to people, and hopefully, they’ll bet on you as a horse. Right. In the race, and then that takes you to the next level, but then, guess what? Now you’ve hit the next ceiling. Guess what you’re doing now? You’re not going through that million in funding now. It’s 20/30 million, 50 million. So, you actually can Scale and grow the company.

So well, since we’re talking about debts over here, right, there’s like a misconception amongst like, most Americans, like whenever they hear the word debt, they get really scared and everything of that. But I think that they’re what they’re thinking about consumer debt. But like what you’re talking about, like a leverage-based debt or Strategic, could you tell the audience a little bit more about how you see debt and how you can use it to help them Start a business? 

I mean, there’s a big difference between, like, personal debt and, you know, like, business debt. But a lot of times when you’re starting over, they’re one and the same. Right, because you’re bootstrapping. You’re putting funding in; you’re doing all these things, right? And you have to see the longer-term vision, right? Of where you’re going. There’s a reason why everybody doesn’t own a business. That’s because everybody doesn’t have They don’t have the guts for it, right? It’s just the truth. Like it or not, not everybody is built to take that kind of risk.

So when we’re talking about debt, I know that the very first, very first small little company I started, I drained all of our accounts. It cost $110,000 to kick that little business off, and it turned out to be a really great business. But it was a huge, huge risk.

And then we did some debt-related things along the way with borrowed money to be able to pay them off. But you have to have a vision. And know where you’re going to do that. It’s not just about saying, “Well, I’m just going to take on debt and throw it in the pot and see what happens”. You have to have a strategy for what? You’re going to do it. And how are you going to leverage That cash flow to scale it? And if it’s a debt solution, you could have interest-free credit for six months, right?

So you want to have a smart and strategic plan to pay it back. And it’s free, right? So. There are a lot of solutions to strategically plan that money to pay it back. And it’s free, right? So. There are a lot of solutions. Do those kinds of things.

But consumer debt is different, right? That’s a different mindset because you know, and I actually think that mindsets changed a lot because you look at my parents and they grew up, if we don’t have the money, we don’t buy it. Right. Well, now you can go buy whatever you want and just slide your card in. Maybe you’ll get to it later. It seems to kind of be our economic area now.

So, but not leveraging debt. No, you, you shouldn’t be Scared to leverage debt. It’s just you have to use it. Correctly in the process and know where you’re going. To put it before you put it somewhere. And know what it’s going to create.

I see. So basically, you’re very nice. You’re talking about risk, right? I’m talking about a lot of people. They want to start businesses, but they’re really afraid that if they fail, they’ll be either financially strapped or doing something like a job or something, and they’re trying to take a risk, but they have, let’s say, family commitments or a lot of mental barriers of, “What if I fail?” What advice would you give to these people? Who wants to start a business? They have all these financial fears and fears of failure and all that.

If you’re not willing to fail. Don’t get into business. Because you’re going to fail constantly, I still fail all the time, all the time. Because I live. I always tell people I live on the bleeding edge of business, right? Because that’s where innovation is, right? And in order to grow not just as a business but as a human. We have to live on the bleeding edge. Right. We have to push ourselves. And that’s why not everybody’s cut out to be a businessman. If everybody was, everybody would be doing it. At the end of the day, if you can’t get past that fear, you’ve already failed. Stay as an employee. Keep doing that. Because that’s probably what you’re good at.

So, Jason, what is the one thing you wish you knew before you started like you started your alternate path and what would you advise somebody that wants to start on this journey and this path and is just starting off? 

I wish I would have had the formula for success right, which I don’t know if that’s a common thing really. And I think most businesses are different. But if I were to tell a young up-and-coming want to be in business Owner or, gosh, even somebody that’s older. That person would want to be in business, you know. They have a piece of advice. It would just be you know, know what you want to Follow your gut. And in business, you’ve got to leap off the edge. You have to leap off the edge and start building wings on the way down. It’s the only way. 

Or you bring somebody in. They know exactly what they’re doing. And you have them help you through them. But all those things cost money. That being the problem for most people, I’m a startup. I’ve got this great idea, but I don’t have any money, right? So that’s a failed business model already. It takes capital to start a business, right? And you have to have that. 

I see it all the time with the people I work with. I have a startup group here in Boulder that I work with. And they. A lot of them don’t ever get anywhere in years, I’ve been working with some of them for 2-3 years, right? And they’re in no different place now than they were two or three years ago. Ago because they Won’t fund it. So, if you’re going to do it, you either dive into It or jump off the cliff. And get it done. Or go back and be an employee. There are your options out there.

I mean, it’s kind of like the blood sugar, but like, yeah, I think I think a lot of people, they want to do it, but they’re just. They’re just afraid. But like, yeah. 

And if you’re afraid of going into it, it’s probably not for You; probably just isn’t the right choice if you’re afraid, because I wasn’t afraid of going into business at all, fear was not part of it for me. 

If you don’t mind me asking, what made you fearless? Where so many others would be afraid.

I just knew in my gut it was the right thing to do. So, what was there to be afraid of? Right. I had confidence in myself. I had confidence in, you know, taking advice from my family that was business owners and just took the leap, right? And had I never done that, I wouldn’t be here. Today. So. My life would look far different today. For sure. 

So, Jason, they say that America is the land of the free and the place where dreams are made. Do you agree or disagree with that?

I 100% agree. I defended this great nation for a great chunk of my life, and it is absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, the best place. In the world. To live. No doubt about it. You can do what you want to do here legally, of course. But somebody can walk up to a soldier and say, I hate soldiers, right? I hate the military, right? And they gave you everything you have the right to be able to Say that. And I’ve had that happen to me before. And I would always just say thank you. Right. And move on, right?

So, this is the greatest. Without a doubt, the world’s best place to live. We have a free economy. We have the right to speak. The right to think—you know, we don’t have all the shackles and things on us that a lot of other countries do. We can do it. Endless possibilities. You just have to. You have to be the one to go. Get it? It’s not. Going to come. You just have to go get it yourself. The opportunity is off. You just have to take the opportunity and run.

Totally! So according to. What do you think? The biggest hurdle that Americans face when it comes to realizing the American dream. And how did they overcome it?

There are a lot of dynamics To that question, you could run with for sure.

You know. The American Dream is there for anybody to achieve. We’ve all heard the stories about, you know, Carnegie and Ford, and Ford came to this country broke with nothing in his pocket, right? And he realized he was coming to America. And there were endless possibilities. And what did he do? He found a place for himself. And he carved his way to what is now, gosh, look, it’s one of the major cars. Production companies in the world, right? And he let nothing get in his way. Was it easy? Absolutely not! All you have to do is listen to the story, and you would go wow. That’s a lot of failures, right?

But if you truly want it, you’ll get up. Dust yourself off and you’ll keep putting 1 foot in front of the other. And you’ll keep going and just as not even an American or a business owner living in America, just a person living in America. You know you have all the freedom to do everything you want to get educated. To which you look at some other countries and you can’t even do that. The simplest thing is getting educated, right? So here you can get educated. You can do all these things. You can be whatever you want to be. All you have to do is work hard to get it. That’s it.

Totally agree. Yeah, that’s true. So, Jason, you had the last two years, there’s been kind of like a deterioration. They caught him and not just her in that field, but also in the family unit and government. Where do you think America is headed and should we be optimistic about the future now?

We should always be optimistic about the future, right? Negativity solves nothing in the end, right? And as a community, right, it’s up to us as a community to make it better. You know, sure we’ve had economic troubles. We’ve had all these things, right? But let’s look at this from the perspective of this lens versus this big world lens. Right. And let’s start with a community. Right. Let’s start with a town. Let’s start with that town and those businesses supporting local charities. Let’s start with, you know, Bob’s Tire. He supplies tires to the Chevy dealer in town, and Jill’s Coffee Shop provides the coffee to Bob’s Tire and everybody else in town, building the local community back. Right.

And we start there, starting one community at a time because you can’t solve all the world’s problems in one day. Right. But what we can do is start Right here. We can start right here by having conversations. And start supporting each other locally. And bring back that passion and that love that we used to have.

Now you can have all the conversations. Was about the crisis over the last couple of years. It’s all irrelevant now. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what was said. This was real. That wasn’t. You can argue all those points make no difference. It’s about what we do today to affect tomorrow, and that’s it. There’s nothing else. And if we start doing more of that You’ll start to see the level of anger in this world come down. You’ll start seeing communities work together more, and you’ll see families bond back together more, and we’ll get back to that, you know… That great American dream, everybody Used to look at as being such.

Yeah, totally. I mean, extraordinary America itself like this podcast, the greater objective is to create a little bit more positivity, you know, because. A lot of people have a lot of negativity these days, but it’s this mindset that you have that is especially necessary for a greater number of people. 

That’s it, you got it.

So, Jason, I know you’re doing this podcast called the War Room Round Table right? Can you tell us a little bit more about this? What prompted you to start a little bit more about it in general?

Well, business is war, right? I mean, there are just no bullets at all or weapons or computers or all kinds of other things right nowadays. But business is war. So, you know, my mentality is, I equate things in combat the same as I do in business, right? There are procedures, You don’t do certain things without, you know, a process in place. So the whole concept of the war and the round table Is to bring on business. Business owners should have them tell their story, their war, and business rights, and then share those struggles. And then those pieces of advice So other business owners, maybe new business owners or upcoming business owners, don’t make a lot of those same mistakes. That’s the whole point. To basically create this repository of struggles that somebody can start with on Episode 1. And now go all the way to where? We are now on episode 160. Something at this point will be like, “Wow, those are all those arrows. I don’t have to take it in the back, right? So that’s the point of the show, to really be able to feature that. Just help entrepreneurs and business owners around the world, for sure.

I would definitely recommend it. My audience is to watch your show because it’s all about entrepreneurship and business, and they could really do with that mindset, and like what to do. How to do it so yeah. Is there anything else You’re working on right now? That, like the audience to get a Glimpse into and also, Could you tell them about the books?

Yeah, I’m always working on something because I get bored really fast, and I have to keep my mind occupied. So, we just launched Pivot magazine last month, so Pivot magazine. So that just launched last month. We just kicked out the June Edition and the July edition is just now coming out. Now, so that’s been an initiative at the learning curve going through putting all that together and we’re featuring some really Cool, neat people. Those magazines, they’re definitely worth taking a minute to grab a copy and check out. 

I mean other than that it’s, it’s for me. It’s always about innovation. So, I’m always just trying to innovate and come up with new processes that will serve our clients the best. And that in itself is Always recreated all the time and that’s the way my brain is wired, and I love doing it. 

As far as the books go. There again, I just get bored, and I dump my brain into a book every once in a while, to share what’s in that what’s in my brain. And we’ve done several books as a team and others. Advisory Board the first two want the first ones, called the power of 10, and then we all have a chapter in that and then. The second one. Is the power of 10 reloaded, so that’s All the recommendations we got to put into the second book. And then the 3rd book was good, be brief, be gone. And those all three would be an international bestsellers. 

And it was a really, really cool experience and We love to give back. 

So, match all our book sales to a charitable organization. I love homes for heroes because they don’t just support the military they support. All the different service-related industries, firefighters, police, nurses, you know, there’s more to it. Those are all very important too. So, I’d like to support those organizations too.

So where can we go to Connect with you and also see connect with you and also see more of like what you’re doing and the work that you’re doing?

Yeah, so LinkedIn, I am really active on LinkedIn. You can look me up on LinkedIn through the strategic advisory board. 

NO Y

Strategic Advisor Board or go to strategicadvisorboard.com. I’m very accessible Jason@strategicadvisorbord.com very simple. It’s all over everything. I am not One of those CEOs that you can’t Ever get a Hold of or approach or something like that. We’re all very forward-facing and you know, we’re sure to help. That’s the whole point. How can you help If people can’t get a hold of them?

So that’s the whole point, so… Those are probably some of the best ways to get a hold of me. And all the information is on our website LinkedIn, and Facebook. We’re on all of them on Different platforms, but the best way is still the website. If you want to talk to any of us our email addresses are right there and any of us will definitely answer you back. 

Well, Jason, I Would like to Thank you for taking the time to come to this show. You definitely embody the American spirit, the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit. That’s what made America so extraordinary in the 1st place. 

And I do hope that our audience takes inspiration from this, and they start taking the steps to. Do so as well. Yeah, I would like to conclude by saying, well, my fellow extraordinary Americans, there’s an extraordinary within each and every one of us, and it’s up to us to basically unleash and empower that. That’s all I have to say for now. And Jason, I hope that you come to take the time to come to our show At some point in the future. 

Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate you having me and thank you very much.