In 1980, as a young, single mother on a part-time income, Janice Miller took a friend’s advice and tried selling real estate. The national economic climate was miserable, and mortgage rates were astronomical. Miller sold one house all year and bowed out. “It didn’t work out too well,” she says now.
Three years later, the same friend approached Miller again, explaining that she was starting her own company and wanted Miller on the team.
“I told her no, I hated real estate,” Miller recalls. “People lie … they would tell me they were going to buy from me, then they’d buy from somebody else. It was an awful job. And she said, ‘Oh, please come for just a little while.’”
She got different results the second time around. “I went for three months, and in three months I’d sold a million dollars in real estate,” she says. “By 1995, I had sold $18 million that year.”
Miller was on the move. She had left a bad marriage, and she wanted to keep growing professionally. But when the firm she had worked with for several years changed ownership, she faced another big decision.
“The broker there told me he didn’t want me,” she remembers. “He said, I’m going to take everyone else, but I don’t want you … you do things differently. You have billboards and you have assistants. I’m like, OK, well, I guess I’ll just have my own company. So that’s what I did. I bought a franchise in 1995; it’ll be 30 years June 1.”
ERA First Advantage Realty quickly established itself and has had quite a run — Miller also owns First Advantage Insurance and First Advantage Title Services. At 72, she leads an enterprise with 47 staff and 140 agents. Community involvement also is close to her heart: She serves on the Warrick Parks Foundation board of directors and supports nonprofits such as Albion Fellows Bacon Center, Warrick County CASA, and Historic Newburgh, Inc.
Hard work is one pillar of Miller’s success — she met an Evansville Business photographer and writer on a recent Friday afternoon at her home near Victoria National Golf Club. Immediately after the interview and pictures were complete, she retrieved her phone and headed back to her Newburgh, Indiana, office. The weekend would have to wait.
Miller says within two to three years after getting ERA First Advantage Realty off the ground, “We were in the No. 1 spot. … People say, oh, you’re so lucky. I’m not lucky. I work. I have kind of a motto: fun first. If you’re having fun, you love to go to work. Even today, I love to get up and go to work.”
Miller also brings empathy to that work. When she meets with a family or individual looking for a home, she has plenty of life experience to draw from. Miller is widowed from her second husband, Marc, who passed away in February 2024. In May 2023, she lost her 48-year-old son, Shane “Buc” Labhart.
“I’ve been through divorce, I’ve been through death, I’ve been through elderly parents, and that’s probably been a huge help to me because I can put myself in (potential homebuyers’) shoes,” Miller says. “In 1980, I made $5,600 total raising two kids. They qualified for free lunches. My dad was principal of the school, so he paid for their lunches, but I know what that’s like.”
It was Miller’s father’s career that brought her to the Evansville area. Wayne Guerin became a principal in Boonville, Indiana at Clarke and Loge schools when Miller was 2 years old. The family moved from Murray, Kentucky, and went back often to visit. But over time, Boonville became home.
“It was a great place to grow up in and a great place to raise my children,” Miller says of Boonville. “They supported me for years. I loved high school, grade school, I loved it all. … My father passed away at 95 and my mother at 90. I think a lot of it was the good life in Boonville. They lived clean, wholesome lives.”
Miller has made a point throughout her career of giving back to area nonprofits; it’s a passion that fuels her just as real estate does. She learned a lot about that from the late Howard Nevins, a businessman and philanthropist who founded the Warrick Trails initiative and was a key figure in creating Friedman Park.
The 180-acre park was built in 2017, near Miller’s home. “He (Nevins) came to me when they were going to put that park in, because I was totally against it,” Miller recalls. “I said the county couldn’t keep the park — it would overgrow, it would catch on fire. I said to Howard, ‘if they put this $5 million park here, who’s going to take care of it?’ He looked at me and said, ‘you and I are going to take care of it … we’re going to organize a foundation.’”
Miller was swayed. But in 2021, Nevins passed away. Miller has carried his legacy forward as president of the Warrick Parks Foundation, pouring energy into that cause as well as others in the region.
“You have to give back,” Miller says. “The Evansville community has been fantastic to myself and to my company. So, I believe in giving back constantly.”
Those who know Miller in personal and professional capacities say she will not ask others to perform tasks she’s unwilling to take on herself. Laurel Meny says that Miller “is always thinking of others, and giving is always threaded into everything she does.”
“If ERA sponsors an event, she doesn’t just write a check, she volunteers to help set up, parks cars during the event, and is the last person there cleaning up trash,” says Meny, executive director of the Warrick Parks Foundation. “She has the ability to make people excited about what she’s working on. She regularly encourages her team, friends, family, and even competitors to get involved because she knows that a successful event or project for our community is a win for all.”
Julie Bosma says her career as a real estate agent with ERA happened largely because Miller believed in her. Bosma worked for a loan company in Evansville that shut down; she accepted an administrative job with ERA. At Miller’s urging, she became a realtor. She’s been with Miller’s team in that capacity for more than 20 years.
“She’s willing to help everyone, and that she does,” Bosma says.
Driven by work and community causes, Miller is also passionate about family. She dotes on her three grandchildren — two in Warrick County and one in Raleigh, North Carolina — and loves to travel with them. One favorite destination is the Greek island of Santorini. The family also maintains a Florida home, but Miller has no plans to permanently depart Southwestern Indiana.
“I love the Evansville area and the four seasons we have,” she says.
Miller notes that Nevins’ approach to life was to “leave everything better than you found it,” and in her business, family, and community activities, she embraces that philosophy. She says she’s proud to have received the Warrick Parks Foundation’s 2025 Leave It Better Award, which is presented annually in Nevins’ honor. “If we all live by that model,” Miller says, “the world’s just a better place.”
