My name is Brian, and I'm an entrepreneur

Meet the Sober Founder

I’m Brian Miller, a founder and writer who has built, grown, and sold companies, written books with Simon & Schuster, and learned firsthand what clarity looks like when alcohol is no longer part of the equation.

I’ve founded and exited two businesses. The first, MillerSmith, started with a blank page and grew through years of client work, hiring, and hard-earned lessons about leadership. The second, Seir Hill, was born from something more personal. After I stopped drinking, I went looking for non-alcoholic spirits that felt intentional, adult, and worth choosing. When I couldn’t find what I wanted, I built it. What began as a personal solution became a nationally recognized non-alcoholic spirits brand and was eventually acquired.

Both companies were built slowly and deliberately. Both required focus, discipline, and a tolerance for uncertainty. And both taught me that the quality of what you build is inseparable from the clarity you bring to the work.

I’ve been sober since May 16, 2022. Sobriety didn’t shrink my ambition. It sharpened it. When I stopped drinking, mornings came back. Focus deepened. Decisions became cleaner. Work improved. Relationships strengthened. The noise fell away. Sobriety didn’t take anything from my career. It gave me the ability to build without distraction.

Alongside entrepreneurship, teaching has been a constant. I’m an adjunct professor at Sacred Heart University and a mentor to students and early-stage founders at Fairfield University. After more than two decades in higher education, I’ve learned that teaching is less about expertise and more about helping people see what’s possible, then giving them the structure and confidence to pursue it.

As an author, I’ve written Above the Fold and Principles of Web Design, both published by Simon & Schuster and used in classrooms and studios across the country. More recently, my writing has turned inward. Essays like The View from a Windowless Basement explore the quieter moments of work, ambition, sobriety, and reinvention. The space where success is no longer performative, but earned.

SoberFounder is where those threads come together. It’s a place to write honestly about building companies, making clear decisions, and choosing not to dull the edge that made you want to build in the first place. It’s for founders, operators, and creatives who are questioning whether alcohol is helping or hurting their ambition, and who want proof that success doesn’t require numbing.

Outside of work, I’m a husband, a father of two daughters, and someone who lives in a 1744 barn in Wilton, Connecticut with six cats and more ideas than spare time. Most of my best thinking happens early in the morning, before the house wakes up, when the coffee is hot and the world is still.

Thanks for being here.

If you’re building something, rebuilding something, or quietly reconsidering the role alcohol plays in your work and your life, I hope what I share here offers clarity, perspective, and a sense that you’re not alone in choosing a different way forward.