Michael Miller and His Brother Bought a $2.3 Million Sales Insurance Business and Grew it to $700 Million in Less than 5 Years

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Today’s guest is Michael Miller.  Michael Miller co-founded Brightway Insurance in 2008 with his brother, David Miller. As President and CEO of Brightway, Michael’s day-to-day focus is setting the strategic agenda for the company, helping Brightway continue to innovate in ways that help everyone associated with the business grow and prosper.  You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it! How did Michael find success in his industry? (0:44) Initially, they were a very small nationwide captive insurance agency in Jacksonville, Florida. They bought the business from a man named Ray Jennings and he actually had the business for 42 years. It took Ray 42 years to grow the business to annual sales of $2.3 million, which in their industry is a very average size.  Now, Michael and his brother managed to grow the business to about $715 Million in annual sales.  Right now Michael and his older brother David are the sole owners of the business. They had no outside capital on it so they did not start with a lot of money.  The initial buy-in was something like $300,000, they then added and invested more money to start growing the business. They decided to go for a high risk, high reward approach and pushed everything they had into the business, not know if it would succeed or fail.  How much of a risk did they take and how did it pay off? (2:46) People look at Brightway today and say that it was an overnight success. Michael however says there were many moments where they had t do a gut check.  Giving an example, When they started they had about $2.3 million on the books and they hoped that in 10 years they would be at a $10 million agency.  Obviously, they passed that a while ago, but going into it they didn’t have a franchise model and now Brightway is a franchise.  They had to change from, what they were to become what they are now which is a franchise.  They also changed their legal structure in the process and that was also when they changed their name to Brightway insurance. The reason they changed to a franchise was because of how rapidly they were growing.  They were growing so rapidly that they outgrew their financial resources. They had to pause and say wow they were running out of money.  So in 2007, the brothers had a gut check where they had to decide if they were going to continue or pull out of the business.  Michael and his brother decided to continue with the business, they maxed out their credit cards and scraped together every penny they could find under their family.  Doubling down, they said they worked this hard to grow this quickly and quitting then was not an option. So instead of focusing on growth, the Miller brothers decided to start focusing on changing the business model to a franchise company.  They took the gamble, even though they only have enough money left for 3 more months of functioning and they ended up selling their first franchise shortly after.  Where does Michael see himself in 3-5 years, what goals has he set for himself? (13:29) Their goal as a company is to be the dominant insurance distributor in the country.  So they are trying to push out as many Brightway stores, really focusing on developing the franchise across the country because of it being one way to distribute their insurance.  They are also looking at doing some vertical integrations. They have already grown their affinity partnerships to help feed the business and to partner with other companies. They are looking at leveraging their systems and client bases to create some synergies within them. They are mostly just working on innovation which is extremely important in the times of COVID-19. The pandemic has made multiple changes across the business world but Michael believes that the best opportunities come in the worst of times.  COVID has created this opportunity for them to leverage the technology that they had built. Starting to come out of COVID now they created another franchise model.  They removed the barriers to business ownership and they have never grown faster.  So just continuing to focus on the business and where they can grow and innovate is what Michael and his brother will be focusing on for the next few years.  Brightway Insurance Brightway Insurance is a national property/casualty insurance distribution company. It is one of the largest Personal Lines agencies in the U.S. Brightway focuses on creating win/win situations for consumers by offering customized insurance solutions and for people wishing to sell insurance by providing business opportunities that span from a single agent to multi-unit enterprises. Regardless of the path taken, Brightway provides the support necessary to consistently outsell other insurance agents. Resources Connect with Michael: LinkedIn Brightway insurance: Website Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn