Mi chae l Bu t l e r Taking A Swing At first, Michael Butler didn’t know what he wanted to do with his career, so he decided to go to Tulane University in New Orleans. “I went to the best golf school in the south that had a golf team I could qualify for. I thought, ‘Let’s do this for a while,’” Butler says. “But then, I realized I wasn’t going to be a professional golfer.” Originally from Cleveland, Butler left the green for business school at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “I wanted to run a small business that allowed me to be entrepreneurial. That was important to me,” Butler says. After graduating, Butler went back home to Cleveland and worked for a developer. Two years later, he left to work for a property and casualty insurance brokerage firm. Butler says, “I developed sales skills and became a partner in that firm. Eventually, we sold the agency, and I began a search for a small business to buy where I could use my skills.” Butler says he was always preparing himself to become a business owner one day. “That was more important to me than how much money I made,” he says. “It was really [about] getting the experience and picking the brains of people who I thought were really smart.” After a two-year search, he found his business. “I found it in the business opportunity section of The Wall Street Journal on a Thursday. That was before the internet,” says Butler. There was a small distributorship for sale in Arizona, and—wouldn’t you know it—they were manufacturing and selling goldplated golf putters. “I said to myself, ‘With my background in the golf world, I should be able to sell gold‐plated golf putters to companies for promotional purposes,” Butler says. Since 1990, Butler has led Sutter’s Mill Specialties, which was acquired by distributor BAMKO in December. Keeping its distinct company name and brand through the acquisition, When he went off for college, Michael Butler, now CEO of Tempe, Arizona, distributor Sutter’s Mill Specialties Inc., had dreams of becoming a pro golfer. Ultimately, Butler took a swing at something else: running a promotional products business. by Kristina Valdez 84 | MARCH 2022 | CONNECT
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