Driven

Key Takeaways

Under Consideration — to be added.

Interconnections

Under Consideration — to be added.

Highlights

• I asked him once, “How do you get so much done in a day?” He responded, “Well, I just do it!”
• His story is a chapter out of a Horatio Alger book. After dropping out of college, he worked as a stock boy in an auto parts store and, through the sheer force of his personality, native intelligence, and work ethic, became the most successful entrepreneur in the history of Utah.
• On May 1, 1979, he began operating Toyota of Murray in Murray, Utah, and he couldn’t know what he was beginning. Upon his death nearly 30 years later, he owned movie theaters, auto dealerships, a motorsports park with a world-class racetrack, a movie production company, an advertising agency, ranches, restaurants, TV and radio stations, a real-estate development company, an NBA franchise, a professional baseball team, an NBA arena, sports apparel stores—nearly 90 companies in all, in six states, with 7,000 employees, all under the umbrella of The Larry H. Miller Group, which produces $3.2 billion in sales annually, ranking it among the 200 largest privately owned companies in the United States.
• Gail heard a common refrain from those who attended Miller’s funeral and heard speakers reveal the many layers of Miller’s life: “I had no idea he did all those things.”
• Miller was often asked why he didn’t take his bridge-building skills to political office. His answer was simple: “I absolutely believe that I can be more effective in the private sector. If I were at the lowest-level political office for either party, it would negate substantially my ability to navigate society and do what I do. Half of the people wouldn’t trust me.”
• Did you know that he worked six days a week, dawn to bedtime, for 20 years and missed his children’s youth, and that it was his greatest regret?
• He began hand-writing essays about his life on legal paper as early as 1980. After his death, stacks of these essays were found on his desk. He even wrote letters to Gail, though they shared the same house—not love letters (well, there were those, too), but letters about work, projects he was involved with at the time, family matters, and so forth. He used letters as a vehicle to track his history.
• As part of the transition of the company leadership to Greg, Larry created an advisory board and participated in the first meeting via speakerphone. He ended the meeting by saying, “You collectively are representing my life’s work, so don’t screw it up.”
• You could say Miller worked himself to death. He labored maniacally for most of his adult life—80 to 90 hours a week for decades—because he thought the way he could succeed was simply to outwork everyone. But it was more than that. He was passionate about everything he undertook. When he was involved in a project, he immersed himself in it; it dominated his thoughts around the clock. When he began to build the arena, he told Gail, “Basically, I’ll be gone for three years.” The pace he maintained at such times—and throughout most of his career—would have been physically and emotionally taxing for anyone, but especially for a man with Type 2 diabetes. There were days when he would rush out the door without eating breakfast, tossing a candy bar in the car; at the end of the day the candy bar would still be there because the thought of eating hadn’t crossed his mind—he was just too busy.
• President Kimball said, “Waste is unjustified, and especially the waste of time… . One must live, not only exist; he must do, not merely be; he must grow, not just vegetate” (The Miracle of Forgiveness [Bookcraft, 1969], 91).
• Miller was defined by his work ethic; his sense of wanting to achieve, contribute, and build; and the pure enjoyment he derived from a variety of projects to those ends. “Putting the company on autopilot and just running it the best it can isn’t bad,” he once wrote, “it just isn’t any fun because you just do the same thing every day.”
• Another note from the summer of 2008: “I was lying in the hospital when, for some reason, these words came to me. ‘Go about doing good until there’s too much good in the world.’ I decided right then I was going to use it as one of our company slogans. It’s excellence for the sake of excellence. It just feels good being excellent, doing your best, learning everything you can about anything to which you apply yourself and then doing that thing well.”
• Seeing him on his deathbed, I was reminded of the movie Amadeus, in which Mozart worked so hard to squeeze all the music out of his soul that he died utterly exhausted and spent.
• Miller considered John Adams a kindred spirit after reading David McCullough’s biography of the man. In Larry’s copy of the book he marked a quote that Adams made late in his life: “I sleep well, appetite is good, work hard, conscience is neat and easy. Content to live and willing to die. Hoping to do a ‘little good.’” That perfectly described Miller near the end. He also marked this passage written by McCullough: “Through all his life Adams would be happiest when there was clear purpose to his days.” This was Miller, too, content only when he could work hard and accomplish things and be satisfied at the end, though wanting to do more.
• He was a great listener. You know how some people aren’t really listening so much as they’re waiting to say what they want to say? Larry listened intensely and sympathetically, trying to understand and get to know the person. It was the foundation on which he developed relationships. He made people feel like they were interesting and important; days or months later, he would remember something they had told him—a name, an event, something about their family—and he would ask about it. He was kind and interested, and he drew people in that way.
• He wanted to learn about everything that crossed his path and sought books and experts to teach him about everything from architecture to trees to sculpture to concrete. He knew something about everything, probably because he listened and made a conscious effort to learn.
• I decided I had to be extremely good at something, and the thing I was best at was being a Toyota parts manager. That night I worked until 10:00. It was the start of my 90-hour-a-week work schedule. From that moment on, I began working from 7:30 in the morning until 9, 10, or 11 at night, six days a week. I did this for 20 years.
• Reasoning that other dealers had the same parts and roughly the same prices to offer, I believed service and hustle were the things that would set me apart. I would simply outwork them. I would become so good that I could not be denied. I was obsessed with doing everything I could do and accomplishing as much as I could. It was difficult for me to go home with work undone. I wanted it to be done for the next day.
• I begin my story this way because it is a useful backdrop for any discussion of my life. It colors so much of what I did and so much of what happened to me. It was central to everything, whether it was working as a deliveryman or building a private business or growing into an entrepreneur or buying the Jazz or, I’m sorry to say, neglecting my family to do all of the above.
• I was driven to succeed, and the way I did that was the way I do everything—I overpower problems with work.
• Both times she asked my mother why I was kicked out of the house. She could never adequately answer the question to my satisfaction. It’s still an issue for me today. I think about it more than I should.
• My parents—Mom, really—were convinced that I had done something criminal in building that phone line and that I had stolen the materials to make it. I was taken again to the juvenile detention center for several days. I don’t believe I broke a law, and I was never charged with doing so. I have been bitter about it ever since. Whose parents call the police on them for something like that? Since then, Mom has bragged about how bright I must have been to build that phone system.
• I have wondered if the things I’ve accomplished over the years in my typically maniacal and driven style didn’t come about as a result of my not wanting ever to lose control of my own destiny again.
• There have been many times in my life when I refused to leave any deal undone so that I would never again have to be subject to the whims of others, whether it was parents who wanted to jail me or a boss who wanted to fire me. I had experienced vulnerability, and I didn’t like it.
• I have wracked my brain for 40 years trying to understand why my parents called the cops on me.
• Talk about a dysfunctional family. It all comes from Mom’s anger and the mind games she played with her kids.
• “I think one of the reasons he worked so much was so he didn’t have to deal with close personal relationships because they were too hard for him.
• He became married to his work. When he had children, he wanted to give them the best of everything. He believed his role was to provide what they needed. He didn’t realize how important he was as a father and role model because he hadn’t had parents who did that for him.”
• I remember he would only buy gas from Phillips. “They pay my salary,” he would say. That’s where I learned about loyalty.
• She was the dominant personality in her marriage and in our house. She was the one who sent me packing and eventually to juvenile hall (it was not long after she left the Church that she threw me out of the house for the first time). It is revealing that my father, who had a mild disposition, never once discussed with me the decision to leave the Church.
• In the evenings, as I made my newspaper deliveries on Ensign Downs, I liked to study the valley below, especially in the fall when I could see the big flocks of geese way off in the distance, flying against the sunset.
• I knew if she said something, it was what she believed and she wasn’t trying to manipulate me. At that age, a lot of kids feel like they have to be something they’re not. She was very comfortable with herself, a calming and serene presence, which is exactly what I needed.
• Even after we were married my mother-in-law didn’t like me much, which was ironic because after we became successful she would sometimes introduce Gail as “Larry Miller’s wife.”
• Gail finally took matters in her own hands. “I’ve got a vacation coming on March 25th,” she said one day. “It would be a good time to get married if you want to; if you don’t, then we should split up.” I said yes in about two seconds.
• I always use the term we when I refer to the things that I—we—have accomplished in business. Gail has had a difficult time with that. For a long time, she couldn’t accept that this was a partnership in business as well as in marriage and that she had played a major role. She enabled me to do so much of what I did and never complained. I worked from 6:30 in the morning until about 10 at night for 20 years of our marriage to build our business. Other than the annual vacation we took, I had little interaction with the kids. They were asleep when I left and asleep when I got home. Gail was basically a single parent. She did the dishes, laundry, and shopping. She cleaned the house, cooked the meals, mowed the lawn, weeded the yard, fixed the broken screen door, repaired toys, planted flowers, painted the house, put up wallpaper, attended school events, disciplined the kids, met with their teachers, helped them with their homework, and drove them to their Little League games, which meant rushing four of our children to four different ballparks on the same day. I played league softball on Sunday, if not the entire weekend, and Gail brought the kids to the games just to be supportive, but it was a lot of work for her. She spent most of each game chasing our small children around the park.
• “He always said ‘Gail and I’ when he talked about the business, and that’s the way it really was,” says Gail. “Everything he does in business is in joint custody. I am his partner. This is an unusual arrangement in business, but he set it up this way because he had seen too many husbands use money as a weapon and a way to control their wives. We both own 100 percent of everything—if he dies, I own everything, and vice versa. That’s just how he is. When we set up our first checking account he handed me the checkbook and said, ‘Here it is; it’s yours.’ I had total control of the money. He never wrote a check on it. He had total faith and trust in me and knew I’d take care of things.”
• He was insecure. He was just so intense in everything he did. He used to say, ‘You are such a good conversationalist.’ I didn’t talk much; what I really did was listen. He wasn’t getting that sort of attention at home.
• Even now, I’ll be driving down a highway and see highway marker 105 and tell myself I want to see marker 106 and then miss it. I can’t concentrate for that long. My mind is teeming with ideas or projects or better ways to do things.
• I didn’t have anyone telling me, “Here’s where you need to go, here’s what you need to do.” And I feared walking into the unknown. So I hung back and missed a lot of things, including high school sports. I guess I didn’t feel inclined or was too overwhelmed by my home life or lacked confidence to figure things out on my own.
• I took the test again and produced the same score. I was admitted to the University of Utah. I dropped out six weeks later, proving two things: I had poor study habits and a short attention span. Actually, I don’t even think I withdrew from school—I just quit going.
• People ask me how I learned to crunch numbers in the business world if I never had a business class and went to college for only a few weeks. The answer is: No one ever told me. I never learned math above addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I never had a financial statement explained to me. When you look at it, it looks complex; it’s not. It’s a series of hundreds of numbers, maybe thousands. We produce it monthly. They all tell you something. You just need to understand what it is, how it fits in year-to-date and month-to-date. If there’s a complexity there, it’s in the mass of numbers; it’s not that difficult to understand what each number means.
• I discovered that I had a knack for creating work systems that produced stunning results, and this has served me well throughout my professional career.
• As I look back now, I realize I was practicing time and motion studies, although I didn’t know it at the time. It was simply a manifestation of my personality, and it would become the hallmark of my labor style. I was making efficient use of my time.
• In the summer of ’64, I worked for Aarons Coverall and Towel Service, driving a truck, making deliveries and pickups. I was paid $15 a day and drove my route six days a week. Usually a driver would start at 8:00 in the morning and return at 6:00 in the evening. I looked for ways to improve my speed so I could finish early, but without cutting corners—in other words, if I was supposed to pick up ten coveralls and only eight were there, I would take the time to find the other two; or if I was supposed to place my delivery at a certain location and something was in the way, I would take the time to move things and put the delivery where it was supposed to be. And the other thing I was determined to do was to be friendly and develop good relations with my customers. I learned all the shortcuts and side streets to increase my speed. The other thing I did was to get in and get out—I went straight to work and straight back out. I was always in motion. I didn’t take breaks, and I didn’t stand around shooting the breeze. I maintained customer relations while on the move. I became so efficient that, instead of finishing at 6:00 or 6:30, I was finishing before noon, which was my goal because that’s when customers would lock up for their lunch break. My boss thought I was skipping customers or not courting good customer relations, so he visited customers on my route and they told him, “He’s the best you’ve ever had.” Then he followed me around for a couple of days to see what I was doing. It was another time and motion study.
• After I was denied the raise, he picked me up for dinner and immediately asked, “What’s wrong?” I told him, “Nothing,” but he persisted. “Yes, there is; I can tell,” he said. I told him about being rejected for the raise and how much work I was doing for the store. He sat silent for a long time thinking about this before he replied, “So what do you intend to do about it?”
• “You could do exactly that and still perform at such a high level that you would outperform your coworkers. So they would never know you were giving less than you had. But you would know, and frankly, you would be the only guy to be hurt by your underperformance. So, as your grandpa, I am going to promise you that as long as you continue to take their paycheck, if you work as hard as you can and learn all that you can in that business, someday it will pay off many times over.”
• I was cheated by five different employers, just to make sure I was paying attention. The lesson was this: Treat your employees well, and it will pay off in many ways.
• Any employer with any brains should have treated me fairly and helped me to do my job—after all, I was making money for them—but that wasn’t the case. As I discovered so often early in my career, businesses often don’t take care of their employees or provide them proper support.
• I didn’t really learn much the first couple of times I was mistreated by employers, but the third and fourth time it happened, it really sank in. I remember thinking that if I ever got my shot at being a general manager or owner, I would treat my employees better than that, because I know how it feels to work hard and do a good job and then have my employer fail to live up to promises, even though I had helped make him profitable.
• I like to tell our employees, “Once you get in here, it’s hard to get out.” We take care of them. That’s why we don’t lose many people.
• You can learn something in every meeting if you’re teachable and have the right attitude and are humble.
• God does not care if you were a millionaire or a janitor or a CEO or a street sweeper; what He cares about is how you conducted yourself and how you fared as a father, husband, and friend.
• “The one thing Larry always did is live by the Spirit,” says Gail. “He’d get out of bed and get on his knees and have long silent prayers. He would tell me about them. The burden he was carrying was so heavy that he felt he couldn’t do it alone. And he felt a great responsibility about his role in the community and toward all those people who worked for him and their families. He prayed for guidance as to what he should do and what decisions he should make.”
• Sometimes we must take a step back before we can move forward in a way we never would have imagined.
• I was 35 years old, and I had worked for car dealers most of my adult professional life, and just like that, on April 6, 1979, I bought a car dealership for $3.5 million.
• “What would you say if I told you I spent a million dollars today?” I told Gail that night. “I didn’t know we had a million,” she said. Actually, we had only $88,000 in the bank. It’s ironic now, but no banks would loan me money.
• We were leveraged to our eyeballs. If you go by the book, you’re not supposed to be leveraged more than 1:1 (debt to cash), although banks and manufacturers might go 2:1. I was about 40:1!
• Consider this: On January 5, I paid tithing for the first time. On February 17, I was demoted. On April 6, I bought a car dealership. By May 31, I had sold 172 cars and was off and running in the car business. People might say this was a coincidence, but how many coincidences need to occur before they’re not considered coincidences? When I began paying my tithing, that was absolutely the beginning. Then I was demoted and it forced me out of a situation where I thought I would be indefinitely. There were forces at work that sent me back to Utah.
• Before the ceremony, the temple sealer said, “I feel impressed to tell you that your name will be known in this valley by thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.” As Gail tells it, “We had been in business one year. We owned only three dealerships at the time, and Larry didn’t do his own advertising then so his face was not recognizable to the public.
• I would own more than 40 of them, along with many other businesses. Such things never occurred to me. I was not thinking big in those days, but I discovered I was a natural at putting together deals and finding a way to make things work.
• In retrospect, my skills in those early years as an entrepreneur were—if you’ll excuse the boast—incredible. I didn’t think in terms of “if I could”; it was “I will.” I’d just keep trying ways till I got it done,
• This transaction taught me a principle I’ve employed many times since then—establish what something is worth to you, whether you’re buying a hubcap or a large dealership, and then stick with it. If you get in a bidding situation you can let emotion carry you way past limits of good sense. I made what I thought was a fair offer for both the buyer and the seller, and I didn’t let the guy pressure me into inflating what value I put on it.
• I loved those early years of my entrepreneurial career. I miss them. I had to be creative to put together deals to finance our many ventures simply because I couldn’t get traditional financing in those days. Today, it’s not nearly as much fun. By the 1990s my reputation made financing and borrowing money as easy as a phone call. It was almost too easy. It was boring. The early days demanded all my energy and skills as an entrepreneur.
• In the mid-’90s, with the company growing so big, I divided our business in half—one side was sports and entertainment and the other side was automotive. I put a chief operating officer over each division. This took a huge load from my shoulders. I was able to do the things I enjoy and that I believe I am good at—expansion, land acquisition, the entrepreneurial. This is the way my entrepreneurial mind works. It is very flighty. My attention span is short. I can concentrate on a project and write something that will take a half hour. I have all these things I get involved with that are floating around in my head, little bubbles or balloons. There are lots of them, and once I put something in there it stays and it’s floating and moving and it will stay until I deal with it. If I follow up on it, I can snip it and it’s gone and it stays gone.
• In my experience, an entrepreneur is someone who understands certain principles: 1. Hard work. 2. Risk and reward. 3. Supply and demand. 4. How to feel a marketplace. 5. Overcoming fear of failure. Risk may cause failure, but success cannot come without it. 6. The principle of goal setting. 7. Having a vision of a project and being willing to go forward with it even when no one else shares the vision. 8. Knowing it can indeed be lonely at the top, but going there anyway. 9. The relationship between freedom and free enterprise. 10. The place he lives and works should be better when he left than when he came because he was there.
• The Work and the Glory movies lost millions,
• Larry acted on a simple romantic notion of the past to build the old-fashioned gas station—“Wouldn’t it be fun to go back to the olden days?” he said to Gail.
• “He was a creator,” says Gail. “That’s what he did. It was much more fun for him to create than to run a business.”
• Most fans don’t realize how close they came to losing the team that has become such an intregal part of Utah. The answer is, they were within minutes, and this is no exaggeration.
• I told Checketts I would take away the debt, which meant I would buy the team for $6.25 million, but Checketts, under orders, held firm on the price. It was only later that I learned that they needed $1.75 million to recapitalize the operational side of the franchise. It proved to be a good thing for me that they held firm on the full price, because I would have had to come up with that money anyway after I bought the team. But I didn’t know this and I stuck to my offer of $6.25 million, not understanding why they wouldn’t budge from their price. I should have looked at the operational side of the business and realized they needed the $1.75 million just to get back to zero.
• “With all the history the Jazz have had as a losing proposition on one hand, and your success as a businessman in your ventures on the other hand, we have two different perceptions—one of a successful Larry Miller and one of a crazy Larry Miller for attempting this. Which perception is right?” “Only history will tell,” I replied. I felt like it was a simple reply, perhaps too simple, but it was the first thing that came to my mind.
• “Fellas, I don’t want to run your meeting, but I’m going to tell you something. I’ve been paying my own bills since I was 12 years old, and I’ve never missed a payment on anything in my life. If you can find a delinquent payment, turn me down. If you can’t, make this loan. I’ve got to make an announcement at the Salt Palace in 18 minutes and make a commitment to Sam Battistone.”
• On May 10, 1985, some three months after receiving the Jazz’s letter, I officially became part owner of an NBA franchise.
• How much did Larry love the Jazz? After he was diagnosed with calciphylaxis, a doctor was explaining the options: He could either continue care, which would prolong his life a few months, or discontinue care, leaving him only days. Larry interrupted and asked, “How did the Jazz do last night?”
• Now I was faced with the prospect of building an NBA arena. I decided that if I could find a way to do it, I would do it. I was confident I could pull it off, and I didn’t think much about not doing it; if I had dwelled on the risks, I might have lost my nerve. I believed we could cover our maintenance, operations, and debt service with a new arena.
• As I got ready to leave, Jon offered me a final word of advice. “In case I haven’t made my position clear, as a friend I would try to dissuade you from building this arena. You have no obligation to the community to risk your livelihood again, a third time.” He said this twice, as if to emphasize the point.
• I met with the Republicans first. They said they didn’t think any money was available to help build an arena but suggested there might be other ways. They were going to get back to me. Then I went to the Democrats. They said, “Whatever you want, we’ll give it to you.” I explained what I wanted. “Well, we can’t give you that,” they said. The city, county, and state people all told me the same thing.
• I thought this process must have been difficult if those brokers were able to command such fees. But I applied one of the fundamental tenets I follow in all aspects of my life—the only stupid question is an unasked question. I decided that before I spent that much money just to find a lender, I would make calls myself and ask questions to build a storehouse of knowledge about loans for projects like the arena. I wanted to find out what was involved in getting those loans and why it was so difficult.
• We made presentations to 40 prospective lenders and each presentation lasted three to four hours, if not all day. It was exhausting. The three of us became very knowledgeable about the pro forma and how to present it. We learned what information bankers wanted to hear. The bottom line was that we brokered the deal ourselves.
• It had been a year since we had secured the $20 million bond from the city, and we still didn’t have financing for the arena. I was depressed. We had built up to this crescendo and done a lot of good work, and they cut the heart out of it. The problem was that in narrowing our prospective lenders to one, we had been stuck on them for two months, so there was a big enough gap from where had we left off with everyone else that the thought of starting over was more than I could handle. I was emotionally drained.
• The Delta Center was completed on October 4, 1991. We built the arena in 15 months and 24 days—by far the fastest construction of a major arena in the United States—and that included the two-week shutdown for cold weather. It took longer to finance the building than to build it.
• I was steeped in the car business and thought that was where I would spend the rest of my professional life. Yet within six years almost to the day after I bought my first car dealership, I owned half of an NBA franchise, and a year later I owned all of it. Even when I wasn’t certain how I was going to accomplish something—such as pay off all that debt—I had developed enough confidence in my abilities to know that I would find a way.
• When David Stern came to town for the arena topping-off party, he asked me, “How long are you going to keep playing for table stakes? You put more than your net worth on the line when you bought the first half, then you put way more than your net worth on the line for the second half, and now you’re building an arena by yourself and putting it all on the line again.” I’ve never had to do it again.
• I became swept up with the team like everyone else. If you can’t enjoy it, you shouldn’t be doing it; there are easier and better ways to make money.
• Every now and then I would scold the team for a poor effort. I can’t tolerate anything less than a full effort. That’s what I built my career on.
• One of the best things we have done was hire Jerry Sloan as coach. At the time, he said, “I am only going to ask you for one thing—if I get fired, let me get fired for my own decisions.” I’ve always honored that. Too often management makes decisions that affect the team and the coach, and the coach takes the fall for it.
• We try to pick good people and then let them do their jobs, and we stick with them and maintain our faith in them even through trying times.
• I don’t think players appreciate the capital outlay and the risks that owners undertake; owners don’t get in this business to make money. There are a lot better ways to do that. You can make money with an NBA team as an appreciating asset, but in terms of annual profit, it basically just pays for itself. Greg pointed this out: If the Jazz were a Toyota car dealership, they would have been only our fourth-largest Toyota store in terms of annual revenue in 2008.
• I got Dad in a headlock. ‘There are cameras everywhere,’ I told him. ‘You don’t want to do this.’ That’s what got him to relax. Later, one of the TV guys told me, ‘We got all that on audio. That was wise counsel you gave your dad.’”
• “If the Jazz lost,” says Gail, “you couldn’t talk to him at home. He had to learn that he couldn’t let things like that affect his whole life. I had to learn that it wasn’t me he was mad at. It really affected our relationship for a long time. It was hard for him when the team played poorly because he felt that the fans weren’t getting their money’s worth, and he felt responsible to make that happen. There were many times we’d be at a Jazz game and he would say, ‘I am so embarrassed that people paid money to see this product tonight.’ I’d say, ‘But look at them; they’re having a great time.’ He could not handle it if players were not giving their best effort all the time. He told the players, ‘I’ll never ask you to win, but I will ask you to put your best effort on the floor every night.’”
• “Pro sports is unique,” says Frank Layden. “There’s nothing like it. In how many businesses do the employees make more than the bosses? Larry was very good about listening. He didn’t jump on it like a fan or someone who knew everything. He listened and developed a philosophy. In the early days we would sit down and put our feet up and chat—Larry, Checketts, and I—and talk about the league. He was learning. After a game he would ask, ‘Why do you do this, and why do you do that?’ We’d come back from a road trip and he’d want to know what was going on. He was interested in the draft. The one thing about Larry is, he didn’t want to sound like a fool. He was going to be questioned about the Jazz, and he wanted solid information.
• For some reason we became friends. It’s probably his single-mindedness—he’s like me in that way.
• The players have a saying: “One autograph is for you, two is to sell.”
• That’s how John is. More important, he did things for the right reasons. He wasn’t doing it for attention—in fact, he wouldn’t have done it if the media were there. He was doing it for the girl. He didn’t want anyone to know.
• How does a guy that busy get a phone call asking for something like that, and how does he pick it out as real and unique and take the step to do it? He must’ve gotten thousands of calls like that, but he made time and told someone he would do it and he did it.”
• Malone said. “In life, we always wait until it’s too late to apologize or tell someone how we feel. It was on my mind for a year or two, and one day I thought, What if something happened to Larry and I showed up at his bedside and told him all these mushy feelings? He’d appreciate it, but he’s going to think I’m just saying it to cheer him up. What if something happened to Larry, and I hadn’t said what I needed to say?
• You know that conversation every young man wants to have with his dad in which he tells him how he feels? I had that with him. He was like a father to me. We told each other how we felt. It was funny. We were both trying to say the same things and beating each other to the punch in saying them. It was gratitude and tears for both of us. Of all the neat things I have done in my life, that has to be the best—those four days. I would come there some days, and he’d ask, ‘Do you feel like talking about business?’ And we’d talk about it, and two hours later he’d fall asleep.
• “I was looking for someone in a double-breasted suit and tie, and out walked this guy in a polo shirt, jeans, and sneakers,” says Malone. “He said, ‘Let’s go get something to eat,’ and we went to Wendy’s. I thought, I’m going to like this guy.”
• Cars do so much to reflect our history as a society.
• Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen. It became one of my favorite books. I refer to it frequently while speaking to my em- ployees and in the many speeches I give each year. My renewed interest in our country led me to read other books on America’s origins, including 1776 and John Adams, both by David McCullough, the Pulitzer prize-winning historian. He made John Adams and history come alive for me. John Adams is one of my heroes. His story is my story.
• David was saddened that many students were no longer choosing a liberal arts education and that history was no longer required for graduation from many universities and colleges. Well, as fate would have it, President Hinckley and David began talking about their educations. President Hinckley had earned a degree from the University of Utah and David had studied at Yale. David asked his host what he had studied, and when President Hinckley replied that he had studied liberal arts, David stretched his hand across the table and said, “Put ’er there, pal!” President Hinckley eventually presented David with a leather-bound copy of the Book of Mormon, and he also brought out his copy of 1776. They each signed the other’s book—signatures only, with no salutations, because true collectors know a book is worth more with only a signature and nothing more.
• He saw a lot of himself in John Adams—his attitude, his way of life, his thought processes, the things he was passionate about, his hard work and sacrifices.”
• Spurred by the epiphany I had as a young man, I worked nearly every waking hour. Initially, it was fear that drove me to work those 90 hours a week for 20 years—this overwhelming feeling of being responsible for the needs of my wife and children and not having a college degree to fall back on. My solution was my ability to outwork everyone else. I worked when other people were home watching TV or sleeping or eating breakfast. I was getting the next day’s work done a day early. I was sleeping about six hours a night. It made me successful. It made me a failure, too.
• Gail says that if there was a family problem I would get really angry and make it worse, so she just didn’t tell me about it unless it got so bad that she had no choice. By the time a problem reached me, it had already spiraled out of control, and I would step in and overreact. I was the bad cop to Gail’s good cop.
• The great irony of my life is that I originally began working those long hours to benefit my wife and kids, but wound up hurting them. The children suffered without a father figure in the home. Most of them were strong-willed and angry; some caused trouble and did poorly in school. Four of our five children did not graduate in the traditional way.
• The only thing I can conclude—and I have given this much thought—is that I didn’t know how to be a father. As I achieved success in my career, I felt safe and confident in that environment. I knew what I was doing. As a husband and father, I viewed myself much more as a breadwinner than as an emotional leader. As long as I provided for my family financially, I fulfilled my role, or so I thought. I didn’t realize, until my late 40s, that not only did my kids and wife have an emotional need for a father and husband, but it was my responsibility. I had grown up in a family in which we didn’t talk about emotions or feelings; we talked about work and achievement. I didn’t have much interaction with my father. He was a breadwinner and that was pretty much it. For me, things got worse as I got older. It was a case of moving to higher planes (as the world sees it), and of those worldly things demanding more time, and of me allowing myself to cater to those demands. I was repeating my father’s life, the life that had left me emotionally wanting.
• So I am often asked these questions: Would I do it differently if I had it to do all over again? And, if so, would I have been as successful if I had worked fewer hours and spent more time with my family? If there is one thing I’d do differently—only one—it’s this: I would have been there for the Little League games and the scraped knees and the back-to-school nights. Would we have accomplished as much? There’s no way to know. Fifteen years ago I would have said no. Today I think I would say I probably could still do it. Instead of working 90-hour weeks and missing all that stuff, I’d work a more balanced schedule, 55 or 60 hours, and the important things would still get done. Perhaps I wouldn’t have accomplished as much back then with fewer hours, but today I could because I know how to delegate.
• I try to pass these painful lessons to others who might be tempted by the allure of professional success. Mine is a cautionary tale. For years I taught a weekly three-hour entrepreneurial class for MBA students at BYU. Near the end of each semester Gail was invited to speak with me to the students and their spouses about the trappings of the business world. I tell the students that success, as the world defines it, is very intoxicating. I tell them they should understand that it’s important to be home with their families and be more than breadwinners. When we agreed to do this class, Gail and I decided there would be no value in it if we didn’t tell them the truth, and so Gail was brutally honest. I mean brutal. She talked about how much I was gone and how hard it was. Gail says these lectures became therapy for her and for our marriage, and I agree. She says she found a safe place in front of the class to let it all out, and I had to listen. Then we would talk about it on the way home. I began to take notes in class when she spoke. Gail says the first time she did it, she was really angry afterward, because she was reliving the emotions and because she had just laid her soul bare in front of a roomful of strangers. Each time, Gail got a little braver in what she told the class. It seems every time she talked she remembered something else she hadn’t thought of previously. She never used notes; she just talked from the heart.
• One of Miller’s favorite stories—and everyone close to him will tell you this because they heard him talk about it—is the famous “starfish story.” A woman sees a girl dancing along the beach tossing starfish into the ocean. The woman asks her why she is doing this. The girl explains that she is trying to save the starfish. The woman scoffs. “There are thousands of starfish washed up on the beach. How can you possibly make a difference?” The girl picks up another starfish and tosses it into the ocean, then tells the woman, “It made a difference to that one.”
• When I was managing five dealerships in Colorado, some of the guys asked me if they could dress casually because of the hot weather. I asked my boss if that would be all right, and he looked me right in the eye and said, “A white shirt and tie is as casual as we’re going to get.” I thought, If I ever get on my own, I’m not going to impose that on myself. You work better if you’re comfortable. Well, my casual dress became my trademark with the media. If I ever wore a suit or a tie, people were wondering, What’s up with Larry? Some of my employees have to dress up because they’re out making business contacts, but I can get away with the casual look because of my persona.
• As Lee Benson wrote in the Deseret News, he was the kind of man you hoped you’d be if you had money.
• Larry wrote this in his notes: “The worry I have with having nice things is getting dependent on them and not having the toughness to survive without them.”
• The story goes that during a company meeting Larry was informed that he had lost $18 million on the Work and the Glory movies. During that same meeting, a letter was read aloud from a woman who thanked Larry for the movies. She explained that she had been inactive in the Church, but the movies had caused her to return to full activity. “Now we know what the worth of a soul is,” Larry quipped. Those close to Miller love to tell this story.
• I disagree with your lifestyle, but I don’t tell you you can’t live it.’
• There’s a story called “The Five-Dollar Job” that describes me exactly. (The story is reprinted in the back of this book.) It’s about doing a job so meticulously and so in-depth that you really do control the outcome. It’s about doing your best work and discovering your own capacities. That passion or intensity drove me to work the long hours. It drove me to find better time-management systems, even as a kid working in a book bindery. It drove me to learn everything I could about whatever I was doing,
• A lot of people simply don’t bring this intensity to work, although they don’t realize it. I try to describe it this way: Let’s say there’s an intensity level of 10. Some people can work to a certain intensity level and think they worked hard and achieve a 9½. Another person can work at it and do a bad job and believe he or she worked at a 9 or 10, but it would actually be a 4. So many people work at the minimums rather than the maximums. They’re going to do as little as they can to get by and get it done; someone else will do a great job and pull together all the loose ends. A bunch of people say, “I wanna have …” and “I wanna be …” but they’re not willing to pay the price. The price is time and effort and being a student of what you’re doing.
• Here’s a classic trap: A businessman is successful with one business, so he thinks two or three or four would be even better. This changes the equation dramatically. With one operation, you can be there yourself and use the sheer force of your personality to drive it, but as soon as you get two you’re dividing your time; you need someone who is strong and good enough to run the other business. It’s going to be more difficult to make a profit. Other people don’t care about it as much as you do. There are some who work hard, but they are few.
• Some business owners try to expand too fast. They grow into a second and third operation before the first one is solid. The first one is almost holy. Protect the base. Hand off to someone you trust, and then you can move on.
• The following is a list of suggestions and principles—common sense, really—I would offer to anyone who asked for general advice about succeeding in the business world: • The only stupid question is an unasked question. • Even more important than the will to win is the will to prepare to win. • You don’t have to blow out the other person’s candle to let your own shine. • Don’t make a bad deal just to make a deal. • Keep money in perspective. • Be patient. • Life is a journey, not a destination. • Play to your own strengths. • Trust your instincts. You have within you abilities to deal with everything you will need to. • Manage business at the level of business you’re actually doing, not the level you wish you were doing. • Learn not to confuse the elements of motion and progress. Progress always requires motion, but motion isn’t always progress. • I’d rather be doing stuff than reading reports. • There is no limit to what a person can accomplish if he doesn’t care who gets the credit. • Risk may cause failure, but success cannot come without it. • The words “can’t be done” are only for the faint of heart. • If you want extraordinary results, put in extraordinary effort. • Never assume your people see the problems as clearly as you do. • More important than the action is the philosophy behind it. • Let the fires burn all around you and fix one problem at a time. • The market speaks. • Always boil things down to their lowest common denominator and then look at the extremes. • You can’t do it if you’re not there.
• “A Message to Garcia,” by Elbert Hubbard, which was reprinted in a pamphlet and a book and sold a reported 40 million copies, was a favorite of Larry’s.
• That day I learned that it is possible to be a small minority and still be right, and I learned the value of having confidence in your own abilities. Sometimes you have to take risks and follow your convictions.
• Sometimes everybody else is wrong.
• Larry lived his life according to the quotation from President Theodore Roosevelt: “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered with failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the grey twilight that knows no victory nor defeat.”
• I can honestly say that in all the times I have bought a dealership, I have never had to avoid the previous owner when I see him. That’s not an accident. I keep that in mind when I’m making the deal. I make sure in a negotiation that the seller tells me that he has been treated fairly. I have bought close to 90 businesses, and I never had anyone say I took something away from them at the closing table. The reason I conduct myself with strict honesty and fairness is not to create business opportunities—I do it because it’s what I believe in—but it certainly seems to work out that way.
• Firmage’s lawyer pointed out that it was still cheaper than a partner, which would cost me 50 percent of the business. I agreed to the terms, but at the end of the meeting I told him, “This loan will never see a birthday.” I paid off the loan in 364 days by finding a cheaper loan. I did what I said I would do.
• If you treat everyone with dignity, respect, and fairness, you never have to worry about meeting them again.
• “Sometimes on deals we felt like Larry was in the huddle with us and then we’d go to the line of scrimmage and he was on the other side. He wanted to make sure everything was fair. He would almost negotiate against himself—he’d say to the guy on the other side of the table, ‘What do you need? That may not be enough.’ That kind of thing.
• If Larry had been in their position, he would have let it go. But if he was on the other side, he paid. The sword only cut one way.
• For years I didn’t even tell Gail that I had diabetes. I didn’t want to admit that I had a problem, so I resisted doing anything about it.
• The lesson, of course, is to take care of yourself, to make time to eat and sleep and exercise. I learned that lesson too late. Yes, I would do some things differently. Aside from regrets about not spending more time with family, I would enjoy life more. I would spend more time doing the things I love to do. I love the racetrack and the cabin in Idaho. I was so busy working and handling details. I’d get involved with people and relationships and details of situations and specs on buildings and how much steel was going in them and architects and builders. I had the opportunity to do a lot of neat things. There were a lot of events that other people would consider great, but I was so involved in them that I wasn’t able to sit back and enjoy them because there was so much demand and pressure to do them. It was the only way I knew. I took on such loads. I’d go to, say, certain dinners I had to go to, and I was just going to get it done, or maybe I was speaking or just needed to be there. I missed the races at the racetrack, and I rarely went on the road with the team because I felt like there were more important things to do here. It’s sad. I’m missing opportunities that other people would die for. I missed the greatest moment in the Jazz’s history: John Stockton’s last-second shot in Houston that sent us to our first NBA Finals in 1997. Each year, some advertisers take their top clients on an annual trip. It’s a nice international trip with good dinners and tours. I never go. Gail and the kids have gone, and I stayed home to work. The Jazz 100 Club takes a trip with the team each year to a selected city. I never go. The Jazz have an annual golf outing every year. I never go, even just to socialize. The point is, with me being so involved with details, there isn’t time to go. My mind is so full of things to do that I don’t even regret not going—at least, not at the time. I look back today and realize that’s where the fun stuff is. What I would enjoy is being with the people, talking to the 100 Club people, advertisers, sponsors, season ticket holders. I enjoy my work and get a lot of satisfaction out of it, and I just got caught up in it and was very good at it. But I would like to have enjoyed things more along the way. Gail doesn’t believe me. She thinks I’d do it all over again the same way. Maybe she is right.
• Larry realized he had to be so good at something that no one could deny him employment.
• I don’t think I would change a thing except for the hours apart. Time apart takes its toll on a marriage. Life is way too short to spend it all at work. When you are apart for great lengths of time you can’t build relationships with your children. You can’t have the same kinds of bonds with your family that you have when you live life together instead of just “reporting in.”
• Our life went on this way long enough that I wondered if it would ever change. I was always expecting that it would be different when he got over the current hurdle: Different when he got the parts department organized. Different when he got the next project finished. Different next month, next year, and so on. When he started to formulate five-year plans for his goals at work, I knew that it was never going to be different and that I had better learn to be happy planning my life around his. It was a good thing that I was so patient. It was good that I liked my role at home as wife and mother. It was good that I believed in him and shared his core values.
• Even though they didn’t have the close father-son or father-daughter relationship that they so desperately wanted in their childhood, they did get something I believe was every bit as important. They all got a good foundation of respect, ethics, hard work, selflessness, honor, patriotism, faith in God, and sheer drive. In other words, they have the same basic foundation of values that their dad and I have. I will be forever grateful that they chose to internalize the good in their father rather than rebel and become bitter.
• I have often said I am grateful that there was never an occasion when we both wanted a divorce at the same time.
• Along the way, Larry and I learned a lot from each other. I think I softened him and he made me stronger. I learned a lot about systems and organization from him and he learned to let go and relax from me. I learned to be interested in more people, to come out of my comfort zone, and he learned to cherish our family more. I learned a lot about business and business practices and he learned how to make wonderful soup. I learned to appreciate his Cobra cars and he learned to appreciate scrapbooking. He learned to listen better and I learned to express emotions better. Together we learned to communicate and our lives became richer. Life is a process, and we learned to enjoy the journey not by trying to change each other but by being willing to change ourselves.
• When a loved one dies, it is a stark reminder of what is really important in this life. It’s not what you have; it’s what you are that matters.