Meet Andrew Miller

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrew Miller. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrew below.

Andrew, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

I get my resilience from a combination of confidence born of what I’ve already overcome and the expectation my courage and enthusiasm will move me towards those solutions that will mean the most to me.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

My story is really about building what I’ve been looking for professionally instead of just looking for it. After careers in the military (intelligence officer) and in tech (Expedia and Amazon) I moved back to the town I grew up in to raise my six kids, Along the way I identified some iconic businesses in our community that were looking to transition and I built a business and strategy to keep those businesses relevant AND elevate their impact. After that I identified a critical gap in the experience space for the largest tulip festival in North America–u-pick tulips. No one was doing it so in a year that 15,000 farms failed we launched Tulip Valley Farms. We’ve grown 30% year over year for our first three seasons and notwithstanding all of our challenges are now the largest u-pick farm on the west coast and second largest in the country and were recently voted the World’ Most Scenic You-Pick Tulip Farm” by the World Tulip Society. I’m also the CEO of the United Way of Skagit County where I lead the various pro-social partnerships and initiatives and I’m an elected official (Water Commissioner).

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

The three elements most impactful for my journey have been 1) perspective 2) curiosity 3) empathy.
Perspective is for me (self-leadership), curiosity is for both me and the orgs I lead/work with because I’m always trying to look into the future and fill the knowledge gaps that searching creates for me and empathy because its the single greatest factor in successful leadership and peaceful living.
My advice for folks in their early journeys is to be intentional about WHY they are putting the hours and effort into the things they find on their calendars. Be constantly solving for the algebra of WHY and WHO and trust but verify with whom you rely upon for your forward progress.

What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?

The number one challenge I’m currently facing is executive-based isolation. I am at the top of the org chart in three different and important verticals and I don’t have a whole lot of peers in similar situations that I can bounce ideas off of or seek guidance from. It’s not that its “lonely at the top” its just that in the storm everyone looks to the captain and when I have multiple storms on several different ships its tough. I working on this by improving my self-care, meditating more, trying to build teams that I can delegate to that will deliver what the situation needs. I also am working on transition plans so I can focus more on one thing.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.tulipvalley.com
• Instagram: @tulipvalleyfarms
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-miller-actual

Image Credits

Andrew Miller, Tulip Valley Farms