Page 6 - Volume 13 Number 4

Chris and Jennifer Miller are raising five daughters between the ages of 4 and 12 in San Diego. They use their 1981 King Air F90 to handle commercial real estate and private equity investments and to pursue active vacations with their family.
Miller and his wife Jennifer are raising five daughters between the ages of 4 and 12 in San Diego while running a family office that invests in commercial real estate and private equity. Until a few years ago, Miller was traveling frequently between homes and business interests in California and Florida. They still have homes in both states, but the trips are less often and the work schedule less demanding.
Miller grew his career and cap- ital beginning with multi-family apartments in Texas in the 1990s. The financial crisis in 2007-2008 was devastating to the housing industry and he came out of that storm with a single self-storage property in Jacksonville, Florida.
“We humbly made every mistake in the world and then we figured the business out,” he said. “We were at a moment in time with the talent to scale that company from one property to one of the largest self- storage companies in the world.”
iStorage was founded in 2008 and in 2016 sold its 66-facility portfolio in 24 markets across 12 states for $630 million.
“I’ve worked since I was 14 years old and after we sold that company, I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with my family,” he said. “I can help raise these girls, be a good husband and I’m living a good, balanced life instead of working all the time.”
The winding path to his dream airplane
Miller grew up in Fallbrook, an area north of San Diego known for its avocado groves that some say make it the “Avocado Capital of the World.” He enjoyed watching airplanes take off and land from the local airport but it wasn’t until he went to college at Southern Methodist University in Dallas that he got a chance to be around airplanes and meet people who could afford to own them.
He called moving from Fallbrook to Dallas to attend SMU, a private
4 • KING AIR MAGAZINE
APRIL 2019