Greg Miller's drive to the top of family business had some detours

As fate would have it, Greg Miller was there when it all began. He was there the very moment his father, Larry H. Miller, the former stock boy and car-parts manager, unwittingly took the first step in building what would become a multibillion-dollar business empire.

He and his father were stuck at his grandmother's Salt Lake home with nothing to do one April day in 1979 while visiting from Denver. Larry and Greg decided to kill the afternoon by going for a drive. Eventually, they wound up at the Toyota of Murray dealership to visit a longtime business acquaintance named Hugh Gardner.

Larry took Gardner and his partner, Tony Hernandez, to lunch at a small Mexican restaurant, and Greg tagged along. After they finished eating, they stood up to leave when Larry asked, half in jest, "When are you going to sell me your dealership?" It was an old gag between them, a ritual they had practiced for years. Gardner always turned him down, and they laughed. But this time Miller was stunned when Gardner replied, "How about today?"

They sat back down at the table, and Greg watched as they began negotiations right there in the restaurant. He heard them haggle over the value of the assets and real estate. He saw them write the terms of the deal on the bottom half of a check stub.

Just like that, the 35-year-old Miller, who had worked for car dealers most of his adult professional life, became a car dealer himself, for $3.5 million.

Greg was 12 years old that day.

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Now fast forward to 2008. Greg is 42 years old, his father 64. Weakened by a heart attack and other health issues, Larry handed his oldest son the keys to the empire this summer, naming him CEO of the Larry H. Miller Group. At a press conference announcing the transition, Greg mentioned to the media that he had been working for his father for 30 years. His father did the math when he heard this, and smiled.

"I guess he figures his clock started that day when he was 12," the elder Miller says. "And I wouldn't dispute that."

So here is Greg, sitting in his office on the 10th floor of the Jordan Commons office tower in Sandy. He has been charged with overseeing a collection of 74 businesses that do more than $3 billion in sales annually. This includes an NBA franchise, radio and TV stations, restaurants, car dealerships, movie theaters, advertising and finance firms, sports arenas, a race track, a movie production company, ranches, a real estate development company and a professional baseball team.