Explore Brandon Miller's journey in the Sports Industry

I was born in Toledo, Ohio and I lived there for about six years. Most of my family is still there. I consider myself from Ohio but I spent most of my years in Charlotte, North Carolina. My father passed away when I was about six years old and that was the main reason we left Ohio. My sister, I and mum moved to Charlotte. That’s where I grew up and spent my formative years. I grew up in a single parent household. My mum had a fulltime job and ran her own business as well. Seeing her success and how she was motivated to push herself to reach certain goals is part of the reason I’ve been inspired to have my own business. So I credit her for a lot of my success, I credit my family for supporting me. I am a native Charlottean living in Charlotte right now still playing soccer and building my business. – Brandon Miller

I started playing soccer when I was about five years old. My dad was the one who got me into the game. We used to play soccer back in Ohio. After he passed away, I continued playing and I guess part of me kind of wanted to stay connected to him. I realized I was pretty good and kept playing through my middle school and high school years. I tried other sports and I was a decent player but always found myself being better at soccer. I always felt more connected to soccer and it seemed like something I could do in the long-term. – Brandon Miller

I think the game has changed a lot these last few years. Players may have to make that decision at a much younger age than I did. For me, I probably realized I was good enough to play professionally or play in a good division in university when I was around 15, 16 years old. That’s when I decided to take the game more seriously but these days 14 year olds are signing professional contracts. It’s a much quicker decision these days. However, one should know that it’s more so a decision to be committed to your craft and do the work necessary to excel and exceed the expectations that everyone else has for you. If you can develop a professional mindset where you train an hour or two every day, get extra touches, focus on your fitness, etc., then you’re setting yourself up for success later on. – Brandon Miller

I would say that there are certain things that each person has to earn by sacrificing some other things. However, you have to look at what aspects of your life you are willing to put on the back burner in order for you to fully focus on becoming a professional soccer player. Inevitably, you’ll have to put in the extra work because talent only takes you so far. That’s true about soccer and any other sport as well. You have to have other intangibles that are going to help you succeed. In order to build those intangibles, it’s going to take extra work. If this is something that you love, you’ll have to make those sacrifices. I don’t want people to think that you literally can’t do anything else. You don’t wake up, play soccer, eat breakfast and play soccer etc., it’s not that intense. However, it’s a different level compared to playing soccer as a hobby, going to games and practicing maybe two or three times a week. – Brandon Miller

It is definitely an easier path getting into an MLS academy here in the U.S or overseas. There are certain clubs that have better academies and more opportunities for youth players. However it’s never going to be easy regardless of the path. If you don’t go to an academy, you can still find your way in a professional club or division I, II or III University. A lot of it is up to you. If you’re willing to put in the extra work to showcase your talent, gamble on yourself to put yourself out there and reach out to certain people. If you’re not willing to fully focus on the field and outside it as well, it’s going to be tough regardless if you’re in an MLS academy, top professional academy or not. Although, I would like to add that the academy process makes it an easier pathway for thirteen years olds to get to play for a professional team. It’s a lot more difficult to not be in an academy. You’ll have to do extra work to showcase your skills while if you’re in a MLS academy you’ll automatically be acknowledged. – Brandon Miller

I think everybody has got to know their role. There’s a role out there for everyone to play. If you feel like the professional level is the level you want to get to then go for it. It is certainly attainable. It may take a little more work on your end compared to a kid that has a lot of talent. However, you can look at the top leagues all around the world, in the US, England or Spain, there are these players who are technically not as good as the other players around them but bring something else to the table. That’s been my mentality both in soccer and in the business world. There’s talent all over the place but that doesn’t mean that the less talented don’t have the opportunity to get to the higher level. You just have to figure out your role. It may not me scoring 10 goals every season, your role may be to clean the messes after the offense turns it all over. There are pretty great defensive midfielders out there who score two goals per season but are the stars of the games because they do the other things that maybe the talented players aren’t willing to do. Everyone has their role so you’ve got to find your niche and be great at it. – Brandon Miller

I’m not even sure I would say it’s an even split. The mental aspect of the game is something that is extremely overlooked especially in the younger years. It’s not something I ever thought about until a few years ago. I am thirty-one years old and I recently started to realize how much my mental aspect of fame affects my performance and the performance of my team and ultimately how I feel in the day-to-day. However, the mental aspect of the game is huge and people have started to raise more awareness about it. We’ve seen a couple of instances of players who have unfortunately committed suicide. That happened to someone who was released from the Manchester City academy. It’s a tough journey. It’s going to challenge you mentally. If you’re not mentally strong enough to endure failure and bounce back, respond and keep going, it doesn’t matter how much talent you have. Failure is inevitable in both sports and business. You’re going to have obstacles and if you can’t overcome those obstacles because your brain is focused more so on the failure than the positive aspects of the situation, it’s going to be very tough to succeed on a professional level. – Brandon Miller

I think you kind of just have to find people either in your circle or kind of branch out of your circle to find those people who are going to be there to support you. Doesn’t necessarily have to be a professional, a psychiatrist or something like that. A professional strength coach is someone who supports you, understands what you’re going through and can talk to because it’s a challenge every single day. Once you hit the professional level it is not just for fun anymore, it’s a job to pay your bills. When you have a bad performance, the doubts start to creep in your head. You may question whether you’re good enough, whether you’ll play next week because you didn’t have a good performance last week, whether it is going to affect your contract next year and if you’ll be able to pay your bills after six months. It’s a job and just like in other jobs, you’re doing something you love and have been doing for a long time. There are people you can reach out to. Hopefully you’ll build a stable core of people who support you and can help you work through these problems and take your mind off them too and decompress from them. – Brandon Miller

I was fortunate enough to have a couple good coaches in the club who always looked out for me and put me in situations to help me grow. From 15, 16 years old I was training with professional goalkeepers at different levels. They put me in environments that were definitely uncomfortable. I wasn’t as good as the rest of the people in the group but that helped me grow. If you’re in a youth club, you have to reach out to coaches around you. Hopefully, there are going to be good coaches who can put you in great situations whether it’s one-on-one training, training with an older team who may have more talented players to push you, etc. Those are different ways to get out of your comfort zone and help you grow as a soccer player. Even if you’re not in a youth club, then you need to take on a bit of responsibility, improve yourself and look at areas you’re no good at. You’ll see plenty of college players 18, 19 who can’t use their weak food because they’ve always shone away from it since they were a young kid. I was the same way. Now I force all the goalkeepers and field players I train with to work on their weak foot. That’s something you can work on your own, take a ball on your backyard and do touches with your weak foot for twenty minutes. You can find a brick wall and work by passing the ball at the wall. These are little things that can be done, you just got to be creative and be willing to take responsibility for your own growth. – Brandon Miller

It depends on when and who. For me personally, I went through the college process, I went from ULS soccer to a Division 1 college Soccer and then I played there for three and a half years. I did pretty well and I was presented a good opportunity through connections (my head coach knew the head coach of a team up in Rochester, New York). He had seen me play a couple of times and was interested in signing me. I don’t think that people can deny the power of connections. It’s funny, there are plenty of USL coaches who know college coaches who know professional coaches who vouch for the skills, talent, ability a player has. Hopefully that can help you get opportunities in tryouts or the offer of a contract. The best thing I can say is to just take advantage of the opportunities that you have. Every game is an opportunity, every training is an opportunity because they are eyes watching you. How to get discovered? You perform well when the lights are on you. The lights are basically always on you unless you’re alone. It’s about not taking for granted the practice on a Wednesday night when it’s raining, still taking the opportunity to perform well, get better, to grow. Those things are always being watched. Your club coach can be the coach to guide you towards a professional contract. – Brandon Miller

That’s a tough one. If there is a lot of money on the long term deal and it’s somewhere that makes you happy, go ahead. It depends on who you are and what position you want to be in, where you want to be long term. I was more so in a long term situation when I first started out and it’s more so a gamble, me gambling on myself. I’m going to perform in the next few years and hopefully get a bigger contract somewhere else. There are pros and cons for both. You can sign a long term deal that doesn’t pay you very well and you can be stuck on a deal where you’re outperforming your contract and you’re unhappy. It’s all about focusing on your happiness. If you can be happy with where you are, what you achieve and what you sign, then you’ve made your decision. – Brandon Miller

It depends on what professional level you’re playing. There are three different professional levels in the U.S. MLS is the highest level and they make the most money. The USL Championship is the second level and it goes down from there. Where I am in the USL Championship, the average is lower than in the MLS. It just depends on where you are. If you go overseas, the average there could be much higher than in the MLS. Salaries are different over there, you have marketing and sponsorships, and they are different over there. It’s honestly a hard question to answer because it depends. – Brandon Miller

I just finished up my ninth year professionally in the US and I feel like I’ve experienced everything in the USL. I’ve been in the third string, as a goalkeeper that didn’t play any games during the season, played one or two games as a backup and I’ve been a starter. I’ve won Championships, I’ve been named First Team All-Leagues, have won Goalkeeper of the year. This past year, in 2020, I was named Second Team All-Leagues and got into the finals for goalkeeper of the year. It’s been an up and down journey. I’ve experienced great highs and unfortunate lows. Those are all part of the process which has gotten me where I am right now. Heading to my tenth season, I’m planning to exceed expectations even more and take my bar even higher. So, I don’t have any plans to stop playing any time soon. For goalkeepers it’s a bit different, we hit our prime a little bit later than field players. Where I am right now and the mentality I have in terms of growth and getting better every single day will help me to continue to succeed in this sport. – Brandon Miller

I can think back to the end of my second year. I hurt my shoulder down the season and ended up having to have surgery in December of that year. Shoulder surgery recovery takes about three to four months and pre-season typically began in March back then. Just by doing the math, I realized I didn’t have a lot of time to recover and happened to be out of contract, I was a free agent. I hadn’t played a lot in the previous two years and didn’t have many options or teams interested in me. Right after the surgery I was mentally lost and didn’t know what the next step was. I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to continue my career because I didn’t know where I was going to be. It was one of those situations where I could put my head down and go to work and trust that the opportunity was going to come. That’s what I did for the next two, three months. I spent January and February working out, training, rehabbing, just hoping that an opportunity was going to come and sure enough, it did. I took advantage of it, signed my second professional contract and a year and a half later I was lifting championship trophies. I went from the verge of retirement to basically the top of my league and that happened in the span of sixteen months. If it’s something you love, one or two obstacles shouldn’t stop you. Life’s about how you respond and I felt like at that moment, if I didn’t respond in a way that was going to help me persevere, it was going to be how I responded the rest of my life to adversity. That’s not what I wanted. – Brandon Miller

It’s a really interesting question. I am currently reading a book about making an impact beyond the field. Basically, it gives tips to athletes on how to build their brand and social media presence. I personally think it’s huge just to want to showcase yourself as something more than just an athlete because inevitably you have other interests. You’re not just an athlete, there are other things about you that make you who you are. Being able to share that with people gives you an opportunity to connect with fans and makes you more valuable as an asset to the organization. There’s been a number of stories where guys have been looked at on social media and have been given an opportunity at tryouts, a contract, etc. Being able to showcase yourself off the field and build up that following, can help spur you to other opportunities. It’s definitely important, especially in this era of social media. – Brandon Miller

In 2016, I was playing in California. During the previous year, I had had my breakthrough as a professional, I had won a championship and a few different awards. After that season, I signed a sponsorship deal with a pretty large goalkeeping brand here in the US. I was really excited about it, they took very good care of me, sent me all the clothes I needed.  However, something was missing. I wanted to talk about brand, expand my brand and didn’t feel like they were marketing me the way I wanted to be marketed. I was one of fifty goalkeepers whereas I wanted to be one of one. I had graduated with a degree in Marketing in a Business College. In 2016, I was sitting there thinking no one was going to market me better than me. No one was going to know what I wanted better than me. As I mentioned earlier, my mum was running a business when I was a kid so I had business acumen and interest. I thought: “Why don’t I start my own brand?” Beyond just starting a business, I wanted to give young goalkeepers an opportunity to bridge the financial gap. I remember when I was younger, Adidas and Nike gloves were expensive. I grew up with a single mum who has two kids and we weren’t the wealthiest family out there. I always had to decide whether to have one pair of Adidas gloves or two gloves for $40 who were not as good. I remember having to make those decisions at 13, 14, and 15 years old. I don’t want kids nor parents to make that decision. So, my mission was to start a business that could bridge that gap, provide quality with an affordable price. With all that in mind, I just wanted to launch my brand. I decided on a logo and a name and sourced the products. It took about nine months in total to get everything together for the official opening in July 2017 but ever since then I’ve been running the business and playing soccer. – Brandon Miller

That’s essentially what it was. I used the brand that I had started to develop. I was a championship-winning goalkeeper coming off a really great year. I tried to use that momentum to also launch my business because I was thinking no one knows goalkeeper gloves better than a professional goalkeeper. We wear them every single day, know what goalkeepers need at every level and that was the thought behind that. That was the mission. It took maybe six, seven months to test out different gloves and figure out what the best one would be. We wanted to provide both the quality and quantity needed to present a great glove. I think that’s what we’ve done. – Brandon Miller

We’re mainly online. The client feedback is huge. I think that’s one thing that people get scared of when they’re starting a business or put out content: the reaction that people are going to have. Nonetheless, I think as a business, especially a small one, you have to really relish that feedback. We’ve had both positive and negative feedback, we‘ve taken it in and adjusted it with our products. I’m a professional goalkeeper so I know what I need and have an idea on what other people need but I can’t show you what you need until you tell me. I can’t provide you the best products for you because they may not be the same for me. That feedback is key to developing a product that is more inclusive and it reaches more people. – Brandon Miller

The one thing I learned when I was starting out is that you can’t do everything yourself. I remember it took me a while to learn that. I can’t take care of the finances. I have a marketing degree so I understand marketing but I have assigned design and marketing design to someone else, that’s not my niche. What I’ve learned over the years is that being able to contract out that work to specialists has been really key for us to continue to grow our brand in a professional manner. In terms of employees, I am heavily involved with the team. I’ve had some help on the financial aspect of the business but a lot of the work that I don’t get done, I contract it out to people who can get it done and do it at a much higher level than I would be able to do it. That’s part of the biggest thing that’s helped us transition from a hobby to a serious business. – Brandon Miller

I think we’ll always stay in the goalkeeper’s space. We plan to expand our line but right now I just want to be very good at what we do, which is goalkeeper gloves. Once we nail that down, we’ll start expanding out to more apparel or other accessories that goalkeepers need to perform. Another thing I’ve learned is that I shouldn’t try to do too much when I haven’t mastered that one thing that I’m good at. So we have to master selling goalkeeper gloves first. It doesn’t matter if we sell one or ten gloves, we have to excel at it before trying to do three or four different other things because it takes away time from selling qualitative goalkeeper gloves. At some point, we will venture out to a wider product net, but right now I enjoy focusing on where we’re at. – Brandon Miller

I would say it is essential to narrow your focus, not get too distracted by other opportunities. There’s going to be plenty of them. I’ve had a number of different other opportunities throughout the past four years. Some of them have distracted me from my focus of building my brand of goalkeeping. That’s why for the past year and a half I’ve basically buckled down in my soccer career and a business that I want to run. That is my everyday focus as opposed to allowing those other things to distract me. If everything’s getting attention then nothing’s getting attention. – Brandon Miller

For me, it’s always been an underdog mentality, that’s the best way to describe it. From a young age, I never played for the best youth club. We were good but we weren’t the best. When I started the recruiting process there were some top schools that wanted to recruit me but weren’t a lot of interest. I ended up going to a mid-level division at university. We were good but we weren’t the best. Signing in the second division in US soccer, I was assigned as backup at first, the second best to another goalkeeper. It’s always been that mentality where I’m trying to prove that I’m better than the perception of me is, that I’m not just a backup, I’m a talented goalkeeper. You can succeed at this level. That’s how I tackle things in business as well. We’re not the biggest goalkeeping brand out there and are not close to that yet but we are a quality brand that provides goalkeeper gloves just like any other brand. We just have to work a little bit harder to get our brand out there. So, that underdog mentality is what’s really spurred me on since I was younger. – Brandon Miller

The mistake of thinking I could do everything myself. I would add another mistake is not doing the proper research to be prepared. I came up with the idea and I just kind of went with it and while I learned a lot in the way, I also lost a little bit of money. You can definitely save yourself a lot of time, stress and money if you do the proper research and get the proper help needed, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help. There are plenty of people out there that have been successful and want to help, you just have to be willing to ask for it. In order to avoid a lot of the pitfalls, you have to be able to ask for help and get the information that you need in order to fully jump into the journey. – Brandon Miller

Right off the bat, I could think of a thousand bad goalkeeping advice. There’s more than just one way to become a goalkeeper. You’ll see videos and posts in YouTube, Instagram from accounts that have hundreds of thousands of followers and put content out. That’s not necessarily what goalkeeping is. I guess this is similar to being an entrepreneur. Goalkeeping is repetition, doing the same thing over and over again where till you get to the point you feel so confident, you step into a game and it comes naturally. One misconception about being an entrepreneur is the myth that it literally has to be the only thing that you do. It takes a lot of time commitment, which is true but it doesn’t mean that is the end of your life as you know it. It’s not the only thing you’re going to focus on 24 hours in a day. It definitely is a time consuming venture but learning to manage your time and be efficient with it, is something you need to learn as an athlete and in the business world. – Brandon Miller

I would say there are a couple things I would do differently but one thing I would definitely change is gambling on myself a bit earlier. This applies both in soccer and business. Being an entrepreneur is a gamble and I didn’t start my journey till 2016 while I’ve been a professional since 2012. When I came out of college I signed my first contract, two weeks after my college season finished. That was because I didn’t think I had many opportunities and when an opportunity came my way, I just took it. Does that mean I regret it? No, I wouldn’t say that. It spurred me to a successful 9 year career. However, looking back, I think I could’ve gambled on myself a bit more. Maybe I had more opportunities than I thought and my career could’ve been a bit more differently. Gamble on yourself! Don’t be afraid to take risks! It’s better to take the risk even if it doesn’t work out than to never take the risk and twelve years down the line wonder what could’ve happened. – Brandon Miller

I would say for anyone listening to go out and do what you aspire to do, don’t let anyone else tell you what you can and can’t do. Set your goals high. You may not reach every single goal right when you want to but you’re going to eventually grow into a space where you can. In the beginning of 2020, I had a white board in my office and wrote 5 lofty goals for the year both for my soccer and business career. I didn’t reach all of them but I ended up in a much better place than I would have if I didn’t set those goals. I wanted to be goalkeeper of the year and I ended up being second. I didn’t reach my goal but ended up exceeding expectations for myself. Shoot for the stars and if you end up in the clouds, you’re a lot higher than other people. Don’t be afraid to go out, gamble on yourself and take that step towards success – Brandon Miller