SAN DIEGO — Half a year and more had come and gone since Greg Miller stepped down as CEO of the Larry H. Miller Group of Companies, when he had a simple question for his wife, Heidi.
They were on an airplane, flying back home to Utah after a short getaway. To this point, Greg had kept reasonably busy transitioning into his new life. Thirty days after he resigned as CEO in March 2015, he’d made his way to the North Pole, flying most of the way on a Russian cargo plane and covering the last 20 miles on a Russian military helicopter.
When he stood on top of the world at 90 degrees north, he completed a circle that began with a trip to the South Pole in 2014, prompting him to quip, “That means I’m certifiably bipolar.”
After that, he cleaned out his shed, did some traveling, whipped his cargo trailer into shape, fixed all the stuff that needed fixing around the house, organized his office and did some more traveling.
Which brings us to the question he had for Heidi: “What do you want to do tomorrow?”
His wife answered, “Uh, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a life.”
At that point he “realized I wasn’t going to be very good at doing nothing.”
So what to do when you’re 49 years old and no longer in charge of the company your dad started when you were 13 years old — the one you spent your entire adolescence and adult life working for, the one you took over as CEO as your father's heir apparent in 2008 just months before he died in 2009, the one you left in terrific shape after seven years at the helm (just last month, Forbes named Greg’s mom, Gail Miller, the state’s richest person with a net worth of $1.6 billion)?
What do you do after that?
Greg first thought he might get involved in private equity. He talked to any number of entrepreneurs, including, based on the theory of might-as-well-start-at-the-top, Jon Huntsman Sr., who Greg says, “treated me like a son.”
But the pull of his late father was stronger.
Before the Utah Jazz, before the TV station, before the advertising agency, the sports apparel stores, the movie theaters and the restaurants, Larry H. Miller started out in the car business.
Greg decided that’s where he’d start as well. Or, rather, where he'd start over.
“The car business,” says Greg, “is my briar patch.”
He let it be known among his friends in the industry that he was looking to buy a dealership, preferably a Toyota dealership, since that’s how his dad began the empire in 1979 when he purchased a Toyota dealership in Murray.
But because he retains ownership in the dozens of Larry H. Miller Group auto dealerships in Utah and surrounding states, Greg couldn’t buy a dealership in the Intermountain West due to noncompete rules.
California, however, was fair game, and when a friend from Toyota called last December and told him Bob Baker Toyota in Lemon Grove, a suburb of San Diego, was on the market, Greg was on a plane to California the next day.
He sat down to breakfast with 84-year-old Bob Baker, who was as eager to sell as Greg was to buy.
The dealership was everything Greg wanted: underperforming with plenty of upside.
On April 20, Bob Baker Toyota became Greg Miller Toyota.
Greg plans to spend the foreseeable future flying back and forth from San Diego while juggling duties with LHM (he still has his corner office at company headquarters in Sandy and, among other assignments, interactions with other NBA owners), church callings (he was recently called to be a bishop’s counselor at his LDS ward in Sandy) and spending time with his family.
“I want to run the dealership until we get it turned around,” explains Greg.
Will he run it like his dad?
“I’m not as much of a micromanager; I manage from the conference table, my dad managed from his desk,” says Greg. “I like to surround myself with the best people I can find and provide them with the resources they need to be successful.
“I don’t consider myself to be the businessman he was, but I spent decades learning from him. I like to think some of it rubbed off. He loved challenges and turnarounds, and so do I. I would say I feel him with me in California.”
The man who is his father’s son points to a framed note he keeps on his desk. The writing has faded to the point that it is practically unreadable, but not to Greg.
He translates: “Thank you for being such a good son. You’ve taken on some challenges, but you’ll be able to handle them. You have it within you.”
It was written by his dad.
“I look at that,” says Greg. “I look at that all the time.”
Lee Benson's About Utah column runs Mondays. Email: benson@deseretnews.com