Winning Spirit Magazine July-August 2019 | Page 8

Miller Family Message Our Business Is a Means to an End Giving Back Is a Lifelong Endeavor for the Miller Family and the Company T he Miller family believes in giving back. This is a basic fundamental belief that for us almost feels like a requirement of our lives. As parents, Larry and I always taught our children, “Where much is given, much is required.” We believe those words with even more conviction today. For the first part of our career, as we were building our business, there were many ups and downs in the economy and in the challenges of managing and 6 growing a strong company. For us, it meant putting every spare dollar back into the business to make sure we had enough working capital to be financially stable. I took care of the home finances, and Larry took care of the business finances. Each paycheck, he would ask me how much money I needed for the current month’s bills. After paying all the bills, what was left over was given back to him to use for building the business. We followed that scenario each payday for about thirty years. One day he brought his paycheck home and said, “Because we have been so careful with our money and secured the business financially all these years, we can now start to do some philanthropic things on a much bigger scale.” In 2007, we created the Larry H. and Gail Miller Family Foundation. It was an exciting time in our lives. One of the reasons we had grown from a small one-dealership enterprise LHM Winning Spirit July/August 2019 to a collection of many businesses was to create quality jobs for our employees. Now, by establishing this foundation, we were creating another way to enrich lives by “giving back.” “With your help, our philanthropy will be a lifelong and very rewarding endeavor.” Gail Miller According to Merriam Webster, “a philanthropist is someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes. A philanthropist is also someone who cares for someone else’s needs instead of their own.” We started out to create quality jobs for our employees, and in return, our employees created quality opportunities for us and countless others. It is because of what you do so well every day that we are able to use the resources you create to help save lives, educate students, support medical research, contribute to Boys & Girls Clubs, help injured veterans rehabilitate, give the homeless a place to access resources to change their lives, support the arts for all to enjoy, and help many, many other worthwhile endeavors. We know there are many more problems to solve and much more work to be done. With your help, our philanthropy will be a lifelong and very rewarding endeavor. Being a philanthropist comes from the heart. It is truly a lifestyle where it becomes a part of you and everything you do. It is our hope that you can feel the reward of knowing you make a difference in someone’s life every day. Thank you for your support, your strength, and your goodness. You are changing lives for the better. ◆