Miller dropped out of college after just six weeks. He worked at several odd jobs, including book binding, framing houses, carrying and mixing mortar, driving delivery trucks and picking strawberries.

The young man who liked to drag-race cars finally found a niche when he was hired to work the counter of American Auto Parts in 1963. Within a year, he was doing the hiring, firing and scheduling and ordering of parts, and he liked it.

He worked for five years at various parts stores before he was recruited by a Denver softball team (Miller's pitching would eventually take him to the softball hall of fame) with the promise of a job as a Toyota parts manager. Miller moved there in 1970.

Miller worked 96-hour weeks and became the highest-volume Toyota parts manager in North America. After four years, he became general manager of that Toyota dealership and then operations manager over its five-dealership network.

When the owner wanted to reassign him to make room for family members, Miller decided to return to Utah. In 1979 he used all of the $88,000 he had managed to save as a down payment on a $1 million deal to buy Toyota of Murray.

Early expansion

"In May of 1979, my hands were so full with that first dealership that I never thought a second about buying a second one. But three months later, I got a phone call from a guy who asks if I would be interested in buying another. . . . He said it was a unique opportunity. I went up (to Spokane) and looked, and bought it," he says.

"I had to cut, paste and glue the deal together. I don't know how I pulled that off, without ever having had formal (business) training, and with as little as I had in a resource base. But I did. . . . I would replicate that about every six months for years."

That is an example of one key that Miller attributes to his success. He says Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, described that key best when he also was asked why he was so successful. "He said, 'We got after it and stayed after it,' " Miller says. "That's what we have done, too."

Miller "stayed after it" by buying two more dealerships in 1980, and he also formed a service contract company. In 1981, he bought two more dealerships and sold one. He formed a leasing company in 1982. In 1983, he bought another dealership and built new facilities for others. In 1984, he bought two more dealerships.

Jazz time

In 1985, Miller made his most famous deal — buying the Utah Jazz as the franchise was on the verge of leaving the state.

"It was unusual to have an NBA team in a market our size. Since it was here, I figured we ought to do what we could to keep it. . . . Others in the community had had four years to step up and do something. No one else did. So I did," he says.