Andy Jones, the Gerald Jones Auto Groups owner, sits down with TheBEAZ and shares his leadership, risk management, people management philosophy, and more. 

Andy shares, With TheBEAZ, the importance of having staying power and describes why staying power is essential to growing your business. They discuss why community involvement is critical to the company and why community service is integral to his success. 

TheBEAZ and Andy talk about Andy's decision to offer TheBEAZ the opportunity to lead Gerald Jones Subaru and Gerald Jones Volvo Cars.

#leadership #leadershipdevelopment #success 

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Speaker 1 (00:04):

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Do you feel like it's time to begin a new period of productivity, growth and success in your life? It happens and we just need the right motivation and the right teacher. Welcome to the TheBEAZ Presents Epoch Visionary. No matter where you are in life, if you've made it or on the way up the ladder, this is for you. We're here to enlighten, discuss, inform, and question established points of view so that we can begin a period of new discovery and achieve those life altering amazing results. This is TheBEAZ Presents Epoch Visionary.

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Charles Beasley (00:50):

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to TheBEAZ Presents Epoch Visionary. And as usual, we will always be respectful of your time because we know time is the new currency. What I would also challenge you to do is make sure that you listen or try to listen for the get down. And the get down is the sweet spot or the part of the story or the conversation that if you take heed, we can play over and over and over again in our lives and help us make another step forward.

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Charles Beasley (01:19):

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As always again, remember that before you can connect the dots, you must first collect the dots. So hopefully we could leave some information that makes sense to you, that you want to collect and put it back together to help you again, make another step forward at some point in time.

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Charles Beasley (01:35):

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And today's conversation is going to be, how does one see the invisible? And to help us in that journey today we have Mr. Andy Jones. He's the owner of Gerald Jones Auto Group. And first of all, give him a big welcome. Thank you for Andy for coming on and sharing with us today.

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Speaker 1 (01:58):

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Thank you Charles. I appreciate you having me. I'm looking forward to being with you today.

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Charles Beasley (02:02):

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Awesome. I'm excited because he's very near and dear to my heart and he's taught me a whole lot. So I get really excited about this. So what I'm going to do at this particular point is what I call set the atmosphere. We're going to talk just a little bit about him, so you can feel like you really, really know him.

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Charles Beasley (02:19):

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Well, first of all, he has eight stores. He has eight franchises that he's involved in and that he owns. He has a Ford store, a Lincoln, VW, Audi, Mazda, Honda, Volvo, and Subaru. And those last two are definitely near and dear to my heart because he's given me the opportunity to lead his ship there. And again, I will be forever grateful for that. As we move forward here, he's got about 38 years or so of experience of owning and operating automobile dealerships. The business has been around, I believe it's been family owned since 1974. His father, Mr. Gerald Jones is the founder of the dealerships.

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Charles Beasley (03:02):

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With that being said, if I'm not mistaken, he became a partner pretty much as a junior at the University of Georgia. Now, with that being said, he's a big time UGA fan, which he will talk about that all day and all night long. As we move forward, we do know that football season's around the corner, so he might even go off on a tangent on that, who knows? But nonetheless, I'm a game cub, but he'll be all right.

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Charles Beasley (03:27):

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So, as we look at it, the part of this that really, really works out for me is he has what I call a servant's heart. And there's so much that he has done and that he is doing right now that I can't get it all. But nonetheless, there was a story about he and a group of friends or business partners at some particular point in time were talking, I guess, they had conversations. They saw a need to start the Armed Forces Day.

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Charles Beasley (03:54):

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And with that being said, after they got together, they decided that... they came up with Thunder Over Augusta, and that was born. Now, the coolest thing about that is that all these events that they have out there on that weekend is free to the public. It doesn't cost the public, anything. They actually bus in people from... what you call wounded warriors to come in. Veterans and service members are able to get served complimentary meals all day. And it has gotten so big that they had to move from downtown to now is held at the Evans Town Center Park.

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Charles Beasley (04:35):

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The other cool thing about that is that the end of the night, there's a massive, massive, massive firework show. If you've never been, you need to go check it out. I believe is probably the largest or one of the largest on the Southeast, on the East Coast. So they put a lot of time and effort into that.

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Charles Beasley (04:51):

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Now the coolest thing about Andy is that the auto group and the family, it's just not the auto group, but his family, invest a whole lot of time. They've donated millions and millions of dollars to nonprofits and service organizations in the CSRA in our area. He's a big supporter of the Salvation Army. The Jones family also supports and feeds children in a school in La Source, Haiti. Now, the ministry is actually known as Knitting Our Hearts Together, which is organized by Connie Jones, who is Andy's wife.

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Charles Beasley (05:26):

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Now, with that being said, his community involvement is endless, but nonetheless, I'm going to try to hit a few things anyway. He's with the children's hospital advisory board, he's on the Honda dealer product advisory board, the Capital One Finance advisory board. He's also been the vice chairman and the chairman of the Salvation Army.

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Charles Beasley (05:50):

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There are countless nominations that he's had through the Chamber of Commerce and he spends a whole lot of time, invests a whole lot of money and resources also with the Columbia Sheriff's office. Now, that's just the name a few. I've got a whole list over here, but to me, he's a great leader, mentor, and he's a friend that saw enough in me to give me an opportunity. And we'll talk about that a little bit later.

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Charles Beasley (06:18):

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But what also comes about is, specifically in my Subaru store, Subaru has which cars? A Subaru loves promise, and his servant heart aligns with Subarus and all of them values. But nonetheless, I specifically talking about Subaru at this particular point, and that is to show love and respect that all interactions with everyone with Subaru.

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Charles Beasley (06:39):

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So the reason why he's here today though, is specifically to talk about his ability to lead people, to take risk and his ability to see things that others were unable to see. And we will peel that onion back here in a little bit. Again, how does one see the invisible? And that's what we're going to talk about. So, to get the conversation started, Andy, my question for you is how did you decide that the car buying business or the car business was what you wanted to do?

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Andy Jones (07:14):

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Well, I was raised up in it. My father was in it literally before I was born. My first memories really are sitting on his lap at an auction when I was two or three, three or four. He worked two jobs at the time. So I didn't see him a whole lot, but I will always love the hustle and bustle and people associated with the car business. I love people anyway. And it just absolutely is my personality.

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Charles Beasley (07:37):

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Okay. Well, when you talk about your personality and that's something that I would simply say is you are a very genuine and authentic person. Ever since I met you from day one, it was never like, "This guy thinks he's too big for anybody." You're just natural and it comes across that way. And I think that, that helps set the stage for everybody else.

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Charles Beasley (07:59):

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So as I look at you and been around you, you've been very successful in the car business in a lot of different ways. How do you just stay grounded and don't get the big head, I guess?

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Andy Jones (08:12):

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One of the things my family told me early on was be humble. We come from very, very humble beginnings. My grandparents worked in a mill. I mean, we did not come from money, didn't start with money and they got there. And one of the things that I watched my father and liked simple little things. You go out and get in a car with four people, get in the backseat. Hold the door for people, take the seat, that's maybe at a restaurant or something that's not the optimum seat.

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Andy Jones (08:39):

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And if you keep yourself grounded in those small things, I think it leads forward. One of the philosophies I have is that whoever I'm talking to is smarter than I am and may know more than I do. So if you go into the situation in a business negotiation or a thought process or whatever and that you're not the smartest guy in the room, but you're pretty knowledgeable about it, I think you make less mistakes because ego can get you to write a check you can't cash.

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Charles Beasley (09:07):

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Okay. You mentioned being around other people. How do you identify? Because everybody has something to say generally, but there are certain people that you'll be like, "This might be somebody I want in my circle. This may be somebody I don't." Is there a particular process or how do you navigate that?

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Andy Jones (09:26):

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I like positive people. I don't really... I won't say that I won't be friends with them, but I don't spend a great deal of time if somebody is always very negative. They don't have to be as enthusiastic as I am about things, they don't have to be gregarious or something, but there's just some people that bring you down. They're not happy with anything.

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Andy Jones (09:43):

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And I'm not talking about a period in your life when you're dealing with a health issue or something. I'm talking about just day in, day out, nothing suits, nothing's good, the French fries are always cold, he just does it. And I just don't really put people like that in that. Now, sometimes you find, it takes you a little bit to know that.

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Andy Jones (09:59):

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You might meet someone at a golf course or just your daily life and something happens. And you say, "Well he's interesting. And he has a little bit in common. He likes what I like or whatever," but then you'd find out later that you just... I think the term today is ghosting. Just quietly and politely you just don't get into it with them. You just spend a little less time there.

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Charles Beasley (10:23):

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Okay. So you read their body language get a feel for them and then you just figured that out. I get it. I've been around you for a while and I know that you are very... you take a lot of notes and you get very engaged in everything that goes on, but are there a couple of books that you've read over the course of time that stand out to you that might be beneficial to Beaz nation as they think about moving forward? Is there any books that... two books per se.

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Andy Jones (10:54):

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Yeah, probably my favorite, a friend of mine has been a very successful guy has sent me, it's about Abrashov. He was a captain in the Navy. It's called It's Your Ship. And in there he basically used one-on-ones and stuff. And I bought several, several loads of books and I've given them out many times. The one I had that was highlighted and everything I loaned to someone, and I've actually lost it, but I would highlight certain things.

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Andy Jones (11:20):

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Now, some of the things either reinforced what I already believed or articulated what it was. A lot of times when you listen to a podcast like this, or you read a book or whatever, you might go, "Well, I know that." But can you repeat it? And can you stay focused on it? So he's one of them.

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Andy Jones (11:36):

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And then Ken Blanchard wrote one that says, Who Moved My Cheese? that I read years and years ago. And it basically just says that what made you successful today will not necessarily make you successful tomorrow. So as the things change and we all know in the past 18 months, things have radically changed. If you're stuck in ways you could be in serious trouble, man.

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Charles Beasley (11:57):

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Okay. So the, the question that I have for you now is as you look around, back as a junior, when you were thinking about, "I want to get in the car business, I want to own a dealership you're already in the car business." So what did success look like to you then? Because there's gotta be a driving force that I want to do something. Did you have an idea of what success looked to you at that time? Or what was success to you then?

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Andy Jones (12:27):

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Well, number one would have been following in my father's footsteps and then working with him. Because growing up, I didn't see him much because he worked much. So then once I was partners, it was constant growth. We bought a store right after I graduated Georgia and the summer of '85, I bought the Subaru store in '86. We built a store, we've constantly tried to improve our locations, our facilities, our systems, whether we added computer systems, we added... also when the internet came along, we jumped on all that. And it's always to me opportunities.

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Andy Jones (13:02):

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I've been in construction business and I never left the car business, but I've also been in construction. We started a bank, we started some land, I've done developments and I'm always interested in opportunities. And one of the things I would say is if someone's listening to this, they're trying to grow.

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Andy Jones (13:18):

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I asked my kids the other day at dinner. I said, "Do, you like business?" And meaning that is, do you read the Wall Street Journal or hear someone bought a piece of property and they've made money and that excites you and that, "How did they know that? How did I miss that?" And then if not, it's like, "Oh, they got lucky." You're probably not going to be successful, but if it excites you to a point that you're trying to figure out how to get to that point then you'll keep moving.

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Charles Beasley (13:46):