Mindy Jones
A dynamic leader with a proven track record of success in both the public and private sectors. A native of Arizona, she is the owner of the Amy Jones Group, a residential real estate team serving the Valley. She is a hustler with heart who sets goals to one-up herself while leading herself, her son, and her team to greatness.
Episode Transcription
Guiding Growth. Conversations with Community Leaders in this podcast will explore the human journey of leaders, their stories of humility, triumph, roadblocks and lessons learned. Come join us as we journey together and uncover the questions you've always wanted to know. Yeah. Mhm This podcast is brought to you by the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce providing resources, connections and belonging for business professionals and rocket space an event and meeting venue in the heart of the East Valley with a full service for person podcast studio. All right, we've got another episode today, Sarah, we have with us today today we have a dynamic leader with a proven track record of success in both public and private sectors.
A native of Arizona native, she's the owner of Amy jones group, a residential real estate team serving the valley. Here's my favorite part. Here's my favorite part. She's a hustler with heart who sets goals to one up herself while leading herself her son and her team to greatness. Today we have mindy jones, Mindy jones in your house. How are you doing so good. Thank you so much. I am a native and that means that I get truly star struck by local leaders. So sitting in front of you, I'm trying to remain not tongue tied but this is all my jams.
Yeah, Sarah usually gives people sweats but that's for different reasons. All right, well with that I feel like we should kick things off with rapid fire round here we go. Okay, here we go. First question where is the most beautiful place you have been squaw, peak spender or saver saver describe yourself in three words gritty, hard working serving beautiful best room in your house. My sons play area. Date night or night in night in. How long does it take for you to get ready in the morning?
45 minutes. Unless my son is there and then 90 plus you stopwatch that you really know. I do. I know exactly what's going on every morning. Okay, so beach or mountains beach besides your son name one thing you can't live without coffee. Favorite sports team, nope. You know, I need to give them the standard response of the chiefs. I'm sorry. I mean I'm a native so I'll give you local only. Right, so sons are cardinals. We are growing up here. I had season tickets when the sun is played at the coliseum.
So we were that and we also had roadrunners seats. So if you're here long enough to remember the hockey team, did you have the starter jacket? The sun's starter jacket? We had paraphernalia but not the starter jacket, socks. She had the socks for sure he did us everybody had socks because they came away for free. Okay, last question glass half full or half empty. Always half full full. I like that. I fall into that camp. I don't know about you sir. Were you can I can I go by the day.
Yeah, today's helpful. I love I love listening to these journeys and mindy's got a great journey to share. Thank you to phoenix mesa Gateway Airport for their support with nonstop service to 60 plus cities. Gateway Airport makes traveling just plain easy visit Gateway airport dot com for more information. Mhm. So let's start that off. You got the first question for Well I just want to explore a little bit. So you say you're an Arizona native tell us where you grew up, what childhood looked like for you. Yeah, for sure.
So I am from phoenix originally I was born at doctors hospital, which doesn't exist anymore, but it's the first permanent home, a phoenix Children's hospital at 20th and thomas and my parents, my mom is a nurse, so she was a banner employee for 35 plus years. My dad was the vice president of Ikon office Solutions, which if you remember in pink on the deadly do right, right, eventually turned into icon. And um, so I always kind of grew up with corporate back to parents and uh found my own way and journey through the corporate space at a very young age and so started working full time at my dad's company in the later years of high school and in summer after high school went to U of a.
So I started my journey there and I'm getting, I usually, it's very polarizing to mention, I gave your state schools. So I started at U. Of A and it was hard for me honestly to acclimated to the school because I had been working full time and I was around kids or young adults who hadn't yet worked. And so the environment just wasn't the right fit for me. So I moved to san Francisco, I was there for a few years. I loved it, continued my corporate journey there and then had an opportunity to return back to the valley through a year of AmeriCorps.
And so I always talk about this in my journey because I don't know that everybody's familiar with AmeriCorps. Yeah, so most people know Peace corps, Right? So it's the domestic peace corps, so it's taking people in placing them at nonprofit and public organizations throughout the valley. Um, and across the country really to do good work. And so I had always been passionate about service and community but had never found my way. I got kind of caught up in the corporate space at such a young age, I just never really knew how to get there.
And America was my way to make that transition. So that's how I came back to the valley in 2003, Go back a bit, go back further. So what high school do you go to hear? Central, centralized, What was that like then? So you could still leave campus for the first couple of years of being there and then it was a little rough, we had some violence issues and so the campus became gated and I think really went through a lot of transition now. It's such a thriving part of the phoenix union high school district and really leads in a lot of ways.
Um, I have a very close friend and past client who does a lot of work with the students there being on the school board and it's really cool to be a part of something that really helped to build, you know, the beauty of the phoenix area, I think at the core, a lot of the development that happens in the state, you know, comes out of that sort of central location and then every city kind of puts their own spin on, you know, what they're going to do and what their focus is our and so growing up here as a phoenix native, it was, it was always so important to me that connection.
Um, but I was not super popular uh, when I was in second grade I started a peer mediation group. So that gives you any insight. Honestly, I'm so glad you went there because I need to know the story if this does not surprise me. I mean, you are, you are forced to be reckoned with. And so I can only imagine second grade mindy this is just, I just use this story because it's a good description when you ask, how was your high school experience? I mean it was great.
I was the yearbook editor in a younger grade than most. I started a literary magazine. I started a suicide prevention group. I you know, was engaged in those types of ways, but I wasn't super popular and um so I used this peer mediation story to kind of explain to you the kind of person that I am. But and second grade I think I just thought that there was a way that I could help people who didn't really know how to communicate with themselves or each other. And so I trained my peers to talk other students through problems on the playground.
And I created puffy paint, um aging myself puffy paint shirts and posted up on the playground in the corners. And we told students if they ever needed anything, they had fights or problems that they could come talk to us. So I get you call up your mediation day, but there's no way you call it that in second grade, I mean in my recollection it was a pure mediation Yeah, my son is super super verbal, he's not even 2. 5 and the vocabulary that he has on him, I just find to be totally immense and I credit that so much to talking to him and my mom was the same way with me, Everything was a learning opportunity.
And so I just think that's how I look at things today, but I really think it impacts your vocabulary at a young age if you're around people where they just trying to constantly explain to you and explore with you. And so it probably was called that who would have influenced you to create such a group because it came somewhere right? Where do you think he got that from? You know, I think that I've always sought out who my community was and I don't think that I ever felt that I truly fit in anywhere and I think I really empathized with other people who might feel that same way.
And so I think it just came out of a maybe a projected need to be a part of something and to feel that maybe if people could just communicate better with each other and really understand that if they just try to help somebody who needed something that they could really make such a big difference. And I just have always operated that way. And you have, you come from two households with four hardworking parents who have really invested in you as well? Yeah, absolutely. So my parents have been married a few times and so, you know, I think with that you see all different walks of life and you say to see different ways of communicating and you see, you know, different challenges and everybody was always extremely supportive of me and I think my journey was always, where do I fit in, what are my strengths, where can I achieve, who are the people that I'm supposed to be on this path with?
And I think I've always had you asked glass half empty or half full. I've always had this belief that everything will work out. I just have always had this innate if I could try hard enough and work hard enough, that it would always work out. And then I think being in the corporate space solidified that kind of work harder mentality. And so that felt like the natural fit for me. But as I got older, it became more about how can I embrace authentically who I am. It's not just working hard, it's grit getting up, but it's about finding your own journey.
Yeah, I see you as you're chasing something more always in all walks of life, you're you're okay not settling and actually opening doors and taking risks and going for it. I sort of feel like it's my job just to open the door. Like, I don't know where it'll lead, I don't know what's behind it. It's just my job to open it and just see what happens and how it feels and I know ultimately it'll work out, I've been so fortunate to lead several careers, so for my lifetime already and I think part of what happens is I go in, I give it my all, I master it, I understand it, I move up the rings if you will and I'm very happy and then I just think, and there are so many other things that I could do out there.
So I just kind of run now that I'm self employed and abuse this, build this beautiful team, as I add new things that I want to see in the world. I don't have to cut and run right, I have the opportunity to build that, allow it to continue to grow and to thrive and add to my world with new ventures, what's your view on failure? And I ask this because when you're an entrepreneur, when you're a risk taker like you are, that has to be part of your makeup because you know, you're not going to win them all.
So what's your view on that? It's a necessary part of life? I don't think that there's anything wrong or bad about failing and I don't really use words like failing because to me it has this connotation that you made a wrong turn versus I feel like every opportunity as a learning opportunity and so from each scenario that I've experienced or every relationship that I've experienced, I feel like I've learned something from it and the thing that I've learned from it has allowed me to take the next path.
So I really think that everything happens exactly how it's supposed to as difficult as the things are when you're going through them, it's all about understanding what can you take from it and then when you go into the next phase, how is that impacted by what happens, those learning moments that you get from those situations and for me, failure's not an option most the time. So I don't even think about it. I think when you're saying these things that you just said, I'm resonating there going, yeah, I feel that same way about how our businesses are run.
So I think there's some truth to that for sure. And I can relate to that. I think I struggle sometimes not to internalize failure. I need to flip that script a little bit. Yeah, it doesn't mean that I'm happier positive all of the time. I think so much back to the vocabulary thing. It's really important. The words that we use so that I lead a real estate team and so the words that they use can literally impact people's lives, right? So we're not trying to sell somebody something.
I mean we're all adults here. When was the last time someone convinced you to spend $700,000 right? That's not what we do. What we do is we find out what your goals are and then we help you achieve them. And a lot of times you get in your own way because you just your emotional and you don't know the next step. So my agents have to really use their words to help empower people. And so I just believe in the power of the word choices that we have things are hard and I definitely have screwed up many times along the way and building a team, I have ptsd from all of the ups and downs, it's a real thing, right?
Because what happens is when you make decisions out of fear because of the experiences that you've had and you make leadership decisions out of fear, which is awful place to be. But I think that if you can focus on the words that you use, you can change your experiences to better lead you into the future. And so I tend to go to the anxious place. That's how I deal with fear or failure if you will. Um it makes me very anxious inside. But what that adrenaline does to me is it puts me in almost like this manic state of having to figure out what the next step is.
So it's almost like fuel to figure out what do I learn, what do I go next? What, what is the next step? And my observation is that your son grounds us full 100%. My mom says this all the time. She's like, I've never seen you as calm in your entire life then when you're around him and I think it's this sense of um, I don't have its purpose or it's uh, the importance and of the role that I play in his world and how much I want to do, the best that I can to help shape his grounding.
He's going to have his own personality and he already does and it's very big and I don't know what direction it's going to go in like which side of the law we're going to be on here because whatever it is, it's going to be huge, right? But I feel like I have this opportunity to teach him how to process his feelings. I want him to be fiercely independent because I was that way. So I understand that. But I also want him to have a healthy level of attachment.
And I think maybe I didn't, I didn't always have that and it wasn't by any wrongdoing of my parents. I just felt this internal need to be on my own. And I want him to feel that. And also know that he always has this safe space because I think attachment is such a foundation for all of your future relationships and and certainly your ability to lead in a really vulnerable way. How old son, he's 2.5. Almost two and I can relate to that age. All right. He's so smart and so sweet and so amazing.
And also completely wild. It's such a beautiful stage. It really is. It goes so quickly. I'm sure everyone says that, but I've got one right at that age. You've surely seen the show Dennis the Menace. Yes. I have Dennis at my house for sure. So we have that going on. But it is great. It's amazing. Yeah. The energy's amazing thoughts they have that's just completely and it's even really cool stuff. I am a total word person. So, you know, his body trained now. So when he puts his pants up there always crooked and so I'll say Niko, your pants are crooked and he jumps and it took me a while to figure out he thought I was saying cricket.
And so it's just like at that age, I just think it's so cool to dissect where their brain is going, whether it's just that they only have a limited vocabulary. So they think you're saying one thing, you know, but this gives you like a little bit of an insight to just how I see the world in general. I just think there's a lot going on in people's brains and I think if we just take a moment to pause and kind of figure out where they're coming from, we can do so much in this world.
Just, it's endless. So go back again. I want to go back. I keep going back. I know, because really the root of this show is finding out where you found the inspiration for the growth that you've been on. So we loosely hit your parents, but maybe you go back to that a bit more and explain to us the influences they had on you, where you are today. Like if you reflect back, how do you see that in nurturing you and do you think you pulled some strength from either one of them in that way. Sure. Yeah.
So my mom, she's always been in health care, even after she retired, she was leading a board position and she is definitely we joke. Um she's got your plan B C D E and F. If you ever need a solution to something, my mom is player, whether you want it or not, She will give you the 20 different ways to solve the problem. But the beauty of being raised by someone like that is you really always believe that there are other options and that you won't hit a dead end because you'll be tenacious and curious and right.
And so I really credit her quite a bit to the way that I view the world. My dad always hard working, always worked in the corporate space. And so I think for me the foundation of showing up somewhere on time and being a professional and having people look up to you and being able to strategize and to lead and those were always qualities that I always looked up to. And my parents, what about extended family, grandparents in the area, that kind of stuff, any influence there? No, there wasn't much.
So my mother's parents passed away when I was pretty young and my dad's parents, they did live here locally in casa grande, but we didn't have a lot of exposure to extended family. We've always had a very small family, that was one of the things really that attracted me to my now ex husband has such a big family um spread out all over. But I really, when I brought my son into this world, you know, one of the things that I think is that family comes in a bunch of different ways and we have the ones that were born to and related with and then we have the ones that become our family by way of life.
You know, the ones that help me take care of my son now my ex husband's family, that I'm the relationships that we built through my team and the nonprofit that we just created like to me that all those people are my family. So you are a dynamic leader and it's true that you're a hustler. I mean you work hard in your professional realm, but you do so much with a servant's heart as well. And I know that even just through what you give to the chamber and how you dedicate so much time, but you have always had that heart to serve.
Can you share a little bit about how you've done that over the years. Yeah. So as a kid, I think a lot of it was me trying to be intuitive about what my kids community right wanted or needed. So I did when it was politics time, we would do, I would organize poles on the playground about what people thought about certain issues and I mean this was all based on whatever I have gleaned off of the television. My mom used to call me ralph Nader when I was a kid because you know that two ton truck or 10 ton truck commercial, whatever it is.
So I was like, are you sure you can really put that much into the truck? It was very important to me that they were not misleading the consumer, you know, I just have always had this like advocacy piece right in my world, which is just who, who has a story that hasn't been told and who needs someone to stand up for them. It's like always kind of about the underdog. And so in school it showed up in ways like that. Um, as I got older and I was in high school, it showed up through my literary work that I did with the literary magazine and the newspaper and the yearbook and really just trying to tell people stories and then, um, anywhere I've ever been, I've always organized some type of give back opportunity.
So whether it was service through my school, certainly moving back to Arizona and doing the year of service through AmeriCorps with make a difference, which is now hands on greater phoenix. Um, gave me exposure to the nonprofit world in general. And one of the things that I'm really passionate about is that I think that often in service you're kind of in or you're out and once you are on the other side of the service wall, if you will you understand how it works, you understand the organizations, you get really connected with the people and it becomes almost second nature to bring people into service.
Some people don't grow up with that and don't have that thing inside of them to go out and find it. And it doesn't mean that they're bad people. It just means that they don't have any idea how to navigate that. And so the amy jones group, for example, we do a ton of volunteer work and my agents have said to me, this is the first time in my life that I've ever volunteered like this. This is an organization. I never heard about. This is something I've never done before.
And to me it seems like second nature, right? So, but when people say stuff like that, it reminds you of how important it is to help people connect with service because a lot of times they just don't know how it's not that they don't want to or that they can't, they just don't know how that goes back to the power of asking people. That's amazing. How does that feed you? I mean, so I get it and it's amazing, but what's it do for you? Because everybody has intrinsic motivation.
Where is it feeding you? Well, you can't see my face, but I get a big smile and people have said that to me before that we could be talking about something else and then when we get talking about service, like my hands get going and I get louder and I get vocal and smile and it really, it is at the core of who I am, The belief that I can change the world and I don't know how, I don't know what it's meant to look like. I only know that if every day I get out there and I keep trying to make an impact, it energizes me and that energy is what makes me feel excited and happy about continuing to push forward.
And then on the days that are really hard, we talk about this a lot with my team to you, you, we talked about balance, right? And there's all these cups you have to fill in life. And the truth of balance is it doesn't really exist. Some days you'll fill up one cup more than the other cup. And the goal is that you have a cup that overflows and the overflow is what you then used to fuel you on the days where your other cup is empty, right?
It's the backup. Right? And so it's like if I just get out there every day and try to make some type of impact, I'm filling up this cup. And then on those hard days I have so much to pull from to be grateful for. I will never stop organizing and serving and creating and hoping that through my efforts I can inspire others to make some change. Well you do. So thank you. Talk about community on purpose. What is that? So this was a baby that was birthed after like a two week manic episode of me having, you know, you ever have that feeling inside of you where you're like, I'm supposed to be doing something, something supposed to be happening, supposed to be creating something and everyone around you is like, yeah, yeah, you already do all this stuff like, I don't know what you're talking, everything's fine.
No, no, there's a thing like something, there's a thing. And so I went through this two week period and I reached out to Sarah, I reached out to a lot of women that were in my world and I was just like, I don't know what this is, but this is something is happening. And after two weeks I realized it was the birth of this nonprofit called Community on purpose and Community on purpose is founded to support women in leadership and business. It's there to support organizations who serve Children and families coming from the nonprofit sector.
Originally, it's very important to me that we're not duplicating efforts. There are so many organizations out there that are serving and sometimes it's just supporting those who are already doing the work right. Um, and then also direct giving through the needs that we uncover through my real estate team, whether it's directly to individuals or two communities. So for right now it's really the philanthropic arm of what we do. We've done a lot over the last five years that I've owned the team. But I see it really revolving into a much bigger part of my life that sort of stands alone as its own organization.
That's beautiful. Yeah. Final question for me, Who's inspiring you today? Who is guiding mindy and who are you looking to help you have mentors out there, everybody being on? What do you think? It's a great question. So I tell my team, we talk a lot about accountability and I tell them that they are my accountability there. Why I show up every day I have salaries to make sure that get paid. I have women who look to me as an inspiration and a mentor to lead bigger lives than they ever thought were possible.
And so I've really taken it to heart that they are my greatest mentor as a collective unit right now. They teach me what's important to women and to families and how I can help create a greater sense of purpose for them and help them find that greater sense of purpose. And then really my focus now is looking at other women who are making amazing strides in the world. Sara certainly is one of them. We look at the work that the chamber has been doing. Yeah, he's all right.
He's never going to, he's never going to agree. It's okay. I said she's all right, That's pretty good, isn't it will give her more than okay. Um, and then, you know, I have to say this about mentors because I think one of the things that's really important about connecting for me with, with other women who are doing great things in our community is then the connections that they can give you. So that's one of the things that I love about Sarah's. I look at her as a connector and she's introduced me to other people and I really believe in the power of those conversations.
You don't ever again know where they're going to take you or lead you or what your purpose was. But you may find that that might be the right that you turned in the journey or the left and you turned in the journey. And I'm always looking for those signs that just say, yeah, you're going the right direction. Just like this tiny little validation of, you might not know where you're headed, but yep, you were meant to do that. And honestly, the chamber has been a huge part of this path and I think has allowed me to escalate my community on purpose journey and sort of just sort of figure out where my next steps will leave me All right, five years from now.
Where are you? So my son will be seven and hopefully so well behaved. I just, I wouldn't put money on that, but that's okay. I know everyone's like, you should bring that back to life, like I do every day in my home with my child, um five years. So I anticipate that my real estate team will be thriving. I think that that's certainly a core component of what I do, um, community on purpose. I anticipate that we'll be spending more time with that and that that will potentially have staff for at least a greater awareness in the community around the organizations that we support.
And I still don't feel like I'm done. I feel like there's something else, you know, what makes me feel afraid is the lack of choices in life. I've been in places in my life where I had to make decisions based on finances or by family or by need or necessity. And it's always scary to make choices when you're in that place in life. And so for me, the ultimate freedom if you will, is being able to make whatever choices that I want to make And to pivot quickly.
So my son, seven could be seven second grade and I may want to spend time in his classroom and so whatever life I've created, I want to be able to make that choice in the moment, not in six months. I can come in your classroom or next year. I'll set things up so that I can come in your classroom, I want someone to ask me do you want to do this and I want to be able to say yes and I want to be able to do it right away.
That's good, freedom. You know, I have one final question, that's a deep one. God with all the choices you had, you have a, so you want to explain what you're going to make me pick a sports team and I was going to still say no why you, but you know, I look at it now, I think I was so eager to grow up and then I don't know what that means or what that meant for me at the time, but it just, I was just eager to go and so to me it was something I could afford, it was close enough but not too close now.
I'm like why didn't I go even to any enemy, it's cooler. So you know, being from Arizona like a little cool now, but I, it was really that and I honestly look at so many of the decisions that I made in the first half of my life, I just turned 40 this past weekend and I really don't think it was until I was in my thirties where I started to figure out what I needed for me and certainly my leadership journey evolved in my thirties significantly. You know, I had to shed a lot of what I learned in the corporate space that a leader was supposed to look like or show up like and learned to lead through my own experiences and through the things that made me feel good and the things I needed as a mom and it was a wife not recently divorced and as my life evolved right, my leadership journey evolved and so I think when I was making decisions when I was so young, going to school it wasn't, it didn't come from that place yet, I can understand that and also brace yourself because magic happens in your 40th year.
I am just be ready. I am always excited for joy. I It's a fair we shouldn't, we should be trying that I would have you know, but for my 40s. Yes, awesome, thank you for joining us today. This has been a great conversation mandy. Thanks for being with us, learned a lot about you today because I didn't even know you really. So this is really cool. Now you can be another connection through the chamber. That's right and spend more time with her because you've only scratched the surface.
That's right cool. Hey, so if you like this episode and you want to learn more subscribe to our tribe and join us on guiding growth. So you get these episodes right to you every time they come out right sara. Yes, please subscribe today, guiding growth conversations with community leaders. Ben, let me ask you a question. How do you see other community members being involved in this podcast. This is going to be a great opportunity for so many people in the community to have a chance to be heard if they want to tell their story, or if they just want to be part of this journey with us and help sponsor in a way that helps bring more people to the table with us.
So I think there's many opportunities at hand, whether you want to again be on the show, reach out to us, let us know what your story is and how you think you could be part of it. We'd love to hear from you, reach out, let us know and we'll see if we can make that connection.
