Miller brothers open business
CODY THORN/DAILY FORUM
The Maryville Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon cutting ceremony on Tuesday morning for Steve Miller Insurance and the Miller Financial Group, businesses owned by brothers at 309 E. Summit.
Brothers Steve and Dan Miller have been talking about having their own business together for five years.
That dream started taking hold near the end of 2015 and on Tuesday the duo took a giant pair of scissors to cut a red ribbon during an official ceremony held at 309 E. Summit.
The building will house the Steve Miller Insurance Agency and the Miller Financial Group run by Daniel Miller, a certified financial planner.
The brothers, from Graham, had spent the past five years looking for the right building. When this one came up for sale, they purchased it in November of 2015, but didn’t take possession of the building until last May. After some manual labor, they wrapped up the remodel of the building around Labor Day.
“We weren’t really ready but it seemed like a good opportunity to spur me into action,” Steve Miller said.
Dan Miller, who has the same business in Red Oak, Iowa, offers all manners of investments for retirement planning. He and associate advisor Kaleb Roebuck and Miller’s wife, Denise, co-owner and Vice President, were at the ribbon cutting.
Steve Miller has been selling insurance for more than 20 years, continuing a family business that his grandfather, Floyd, started in 1936. Steve’s father, Max, sold insurance as well.
“When I took over it was not to mess it up,” Steve Miller said of selling insurance. “I’ve been exposed to it our whole life and it has been good to our family. We have tried to take care of people and I look at my career that way, to service people. You help people, people put trust in you. If you got the good moral standards, you will do right by people.”
Steve Miller, who has been a farmer for decades, focuses on personal lines in insurance — cars, home, farms and crops. He currently contracts with eight different companies.
His experience as a farmer helps him relate to those that buy crop and crop hail insurance coverage.
The business will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., but will adjust this spring after newly-hired Alyssa Stiens, a Maryville High School graduate, concludes her degree at Northwest Missouri State.
Steve Miller and his wife, Rita, who works at SSM Health St. Francis, moved to Maryville in 2015. He joked about his country background and moving to the city during the ceremony, but he still has some of the country side left in his blood.
Just hours after the ceremony, he was at the family farm in Graham that his son runs, helping birth a calf. The family business on the farm primarily involves breeding Angus cows, but also various crops. Steve Miller is partner in both of his sons’ farming operations, the one in Graham and the other in Macon.
“I do better being busy than sitting around,” Steve Miller said.
