Mike "McGavel" Jones on 50 Years in the Auction Business
In this episode of the No Reserve Podcast, host Tim Peters sits down with Mike "McGavel" Jones. Mike is the owner and driving force behind the Auction Academy Network, which includes three schools: America's Auction Academy, the Worldwide College of Auctioneering, and the Nashville Auction School. He's the 1998 International Auctioneer Champion, served as the 56th president of the National Auctioneers Association, and was inducted into both the NAA Hall of Fame (2012) and the Texas Auctioneers Hall of Fame, making him the first person ever to complete the NAA Triple Crown.
Mike walks Tim through his entire career arc, starting an auction gig his junior year of high school, working nights in radio to pay the bills, and landing his big break liquidating hundreds of Western Auto and Montgomery Ward retail stores throughout the '80s. From there he moved into industrial and manufacturing asset sales in the '90s, spent over a decade running the auction division at United Country Real Estate, and eventually built out his own network of auction schools.
The conversation closes on where the industry is headed: Mike's hybrid education model, a mix of in-person intensives and online instruction from some of the biggest names in auctioneering, and his belief that the combination of live and online simulcast auctions delivers the best results for sellers.
Links
- America's Auction Academy (Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX)
- World Wide College of Auctioneering (Des Moines, IA)
- Nashville Auction School (Nashville, TN)
