Jay Freeman

Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast with Paul Casey

Jay is a financial advisor with Edward Jones and is the president of the Historic Downtown Kennewick Partnership. A funny thing about Jay is that when he was a child traveling in the car with his parents, his mother would call him Jabberwocky!

What Jay loves about his position is that you put your foot on the gas and make things happen or not. It’s really all up to you. He really enjoys being responsible for the successes and failures. He looks back and wishes he had become an entrepreneur sooner. There were two pivotal moments in his career that led him to where he is today. One of those experiences was when he was promoted from Controller to CFO. They were in acquisition mode and they were going from having three companies to four. At the time his mentor was retiring as well. The other time was when he accepted a role with a Chamber of Commerce. He ultimately became the president and organized an economic summit.

The people that have the greatest influence on him were his former CEO, Dwayne, who had a very can-do attitude. Kevin Heartwick also had an impact on Jay. Both men had the same end goal: take ownership and build champions.

Jay does his best work in the morning or early evenings. He is reading a great book called, Organize your Tomorrow Today. We must map out our objectives, and Jay measures his productivity in metrics. If an activity isn’t producing results, it’s time to end that activity and do something else.

As president of the Historic Downtown Kennewick Partnership they are vision-casting strategies on how to drive more traffic to the businesses downtown: creating an atmosphere that makes people want to come to the downtown area. Keeping everyone on the bus is part of vision-casting. For Edward Jones the vision is continuing to build the branch and continue being a person of influence.

Jay’s biggest challenge right now is time management and making sure he and his team are working on the right goals. Jay manages his time between his day job and volunteer work by never allowing his volunteering to interfere with providing for his family. Most non-profits need someone with a financial background and that is where he can really be of service to the organization that he is volunteering for. You must track the numbers to be sure to stay on track, keeping the metrics in front of you so you be sure to not be taken off track.

What brings Jay joy about being in the role of leadership is seeing the tangible results: seeing people get engaged due to excitement of where they are going. Creating an open dialogue with volunteers is essential.

Jay believes in identifying your passion and getting involved in the community.