Timing is everything

Photos by Tanya Goehring

Bryson Milley, CFP, CIM, never liked asking for referrals. Two things he loved, though, were a good breakfast and good conversation.

With that in mind — plus wisdom gleaned during 2001 at his first MDRT Annual Meeting in Toronto, Ontario, Canada — Milley started eating breakfast with a different top client every other Thursday at the same restaurant. There, the now-24-year MDRT member with 10 Top of the Table qualifications simply expressed how much he liked working with them and asked each client to make a list of people they spend time with who might find value in his work too.

“Now I haven’t had a breakfast meeting for 15 years,” said Milley, the new Global Council Member for the Top of the Table Division. “The clientele was trained early that I was open to meeting more good people like them, and the organic referral system took charge.”

Like many of the highlights in Milley’s career, what sometimes seems effortless or even lucky is actually informed by hard work, persistence, and the ability to create and capitalize on opportunities at the right time.

Getting started

Growing up, financial services was merely the profession of his father (former 24-year MDRT member Paul S. Milley, CLU, ChFC). Milley wanted to get into the shipping industry and was set to sign paperwork for a job ensuring that fuel barges would be there when cruise ships arrived and dentists were available if crews needed one. But when he arrived at his final interview, Milley learned that the company had been bought hours earlier and everyone soon would be out of a job. Milley’s open position no longer existed.

Fifteen minutes later though?

“Funny you should come in today with this situation,” Milley’s dad told him when he showed up for a planned celebratory lunch. “At today’s 8 a.m. advisors’ meeting, we realized we need an intern to take on projects this summer; I think it’s work you’d do quite well.”

Dad was right; the younger Milley enjoyed what he calls the “infancy of planning as a holistic service” and had new appreciation for memories of his youth soccer games when parents of kids on the opposing teams would tell Milley how much they valued working with his dad.

“There’s the saying about the sins of the father being heaped upon his children,” Milley said, “but the opposite is true too for the blessings of the father.”

Digging in

In his first nine years, Milley split his affiliations between the large insurance company where his dad started, time on his own and finally with a smaller planning firm. The breakthrough during that period came in 1998, when a friend called to ask for guidance about managing her finances after she graduated from law school. Milley met her to create a plan and discuss her goals and aspirations, and within weeks he received calls and emails from other new lawyers who his friend referred.

“I swear, by the end of the calendar year, I had half of her graduating class as clients,” Milley said. “And it ballooned from there.”

The same thing happened a few years later with a friend graduating from medical school, and referrals resulted. Milley’s business was growing, but he began to see a rift growing in his small firm. One night in 2003, he told his wife, Barbie, about the impending split he saw coming for the two senior partners and that he should look for “a new place to land.”

The next morning, by sheer coincidence, 52-year MDRT member and 2008 MDRT President James E. Rogers, CLU, CFP, called to say it had been a while since they had talked, and Rogers would love to discuss Milley’s future.

“I remember having one of those ‘Huh?’ moments, like, ‘Were you sitting in my kitchen last night?’” Milley remembers, aligning this surreal timing with the internship that followed after the shipping job fell through. “When I think back on my career, those two moments were pivotal.”

In December 2003, Milley joined Rogers’ company. The decade-plus it took Milley to first qualify for Top of the Table isn’t a result of any major change in habits or process; rather, it was a steady accumulation of referrals and business growth, with Milley narrowly missing Top of the Table qualification three years in a row due to elevated requirements.

“It was frustrating in the sense of, ‘What do I have to do to get over that bar?’ but my income and practice were growing quite happily,” he said. “I knew if I just kept doing what I was doing, I’d find my way eventually, and that once I was in, I wouldn’t worry about falling backward because of the way my practice was structured. Once I got there, the snowball was big enough to carry the momentum on its own.”

Today Milley’s business is 85% investments and 15% insurance for more than 300 doctors, lawyers, small-business owners and retirees from those groups. His team consists of three other advisors and his wife, who works as a part-time administrative assistant.

Looking ahead

Indeed, Milley has been so involved in Top of the Table during the last 10 years that he proudly feels like a Swiss Army knife, helping wherever and however he can and especially valuing the business-owner mentality of many Top of the Table members. In his Global Council Member role, Milley feels “a real strong need to pay it forward,” aiming to emulate the spirit of mentorship that helped him reach this level. That includes a focus on overseeing the Court of the Table Committee, where Top of the Table members provide guidance to Court of the Table members striving to reach the next level.

“I love that we’ve got the infrastructure to create that support, and the people with knowledge and expertise to facilitate it and share,” Milley said.

It reminds him both of senior leadership who helped younger generations when he joined their firm and of the wisdom his father shared many years ago during Sunday night dinners: that advisors get to see and hear things from their clients that most people won’t share with their friends, that emotions, health and money can be a volatile mix, and that his role was simply to be supportive and do right by people.

“I’m paraphrasing of course,” Milley said, “but he wasn’t wrong.”