October 9 Breakfast Meeting with Ben Miller

"EVERY DAY, WE HAVE TO SOLVE A PROBLEM, FIGURE SOMETHING OUT, CREATE SOMETHING NEW—AND I LOVE IT."

Ben Miller learned the benefit of grit and tenacity early in life. Though at the time, he spoke no Spanish and had little experience outside of his Tallahassee, Florida hometown, he signed up to do mission work in El Salvador, fresh out of high school.  Those two years taught him volumes.  Upon his return, he earned his B.S. in civil engineering from Florida State University and got a job on the operations side of a design-build firm that specialized in heavy civil projects. However, it was his next job with a start-up construction company, that ignited Ben’s entrepreneurial fire.

After helping that company grow from $10M to $15M and 150 employees in one short year, Ben knew the start-up route was the career path he wanted to pursue. So, he set out to learn everything he could about running a new business.  He enrolled at Brigham Young University, earning an MBA in Entrepreneurship. During that time, he interned with a variety of start-ups, as well as working on his own venture to license a new bacteriophage technology.  But, everything changed when he got an email from a business mentor who told him about Matt Hansen. At the time, Matt had just made SimpleNexus his full-time business—and needed a businessperson to help scale the growing company. One meeting was all it took to see that this was the right fit. Ben joined SimpleNexus in 2014 as one of its original employees.

Today, as COO, Ben runs the operations side of the house, which ranges from setting up strategic partnerships to managing implementations, to developing employee benefits programs.   His mission is keeping the company efficient as it scales, expanding partnerships and bringing the right mix of people onboard.  Just seeing the impact that SimpleNexus is making on the industry is his motivator to constantly do more.