I was recently interviewed by the Birmingham Business Journal on my dealership purchase. The full interview is available here, and the press release is below.

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BIRMINGHAM, Ala., January 13, 2023 – John Paul Strong, owner of Strong Automotive Merchandising, has recently become an owner of Hunter Ford in Marion, Indiana. 

Originally known as Southworth Ford, the dealership is now under new ownership and has been rebranded as Hunter Ford. The deal came into effect on January 1, 2023, when John Paul partnered with Jed and Meghan Hunter on the purchase. 

The dealership generates an average of $40 million in annual revenue, making it a top tax contributor to both Grant County and the City of Marion. 

John Paul’s new role as an owner of Hunter Ford will combine his decades of automotive acumen with the strength of his Birmingham-based advertising agency. He will continue to serve as Strong Automotive Merchandising’s top executive and put his team’s resources behind Hunter Ford’s rebrand and growth. 

“From the beginning, I knew that Hunter Ford’s strength was its people,” John Paul said. “I want to build on that strength and reinvent the customer experience at the dealership. We will continue to grow and evolve the family atmosphere while pushing the business into the future.” 

Hunter Ford offers the people of Central Indiana a complete line of new and pre-owned vehicles, along with a Ford-certified parts and service center. 

There are many things that I don’t track or care about in my life, as time just goes by too fast. But one thing in business that I have kept my sights on every month for the last 10 years is the number of TV & radio commercials that my company produces. While I have been in business for 18 years, it was really something that never crossed my mind to start counting until 2012. But, once I did, it almost became an addiction to watch and monitor how it ebbed and flowed over time. It is not meant to be a scorecard, but rather something that I use for motivation and a reason to always keep pushing forward.

The count is clearly dominated by TV/web-based videos, with over 15,000 being of this genre. But why this number of 22,683 ads produced is important to me is because of the ability to continue pumping out great work and showing continuous improvement in the sight and sound aspects of what we create. There are moments of exhaustion and fatigue along the way, but they are far surpassed by the moments of elation when you turn out great work day after day and your customers love the work that you are able to produce.

Where is the business going or what is next? Nobody knows. But the power of video is driving more and more of what we do and consume as viewers. The smartphone has become the largest tool for online video consumption, which means there will be an endless need for the content that is created and what people want to watch.

The ability to conceptualize, create, and produce great content is both a talent and an unrelenting mental process that, to me, never gets old. In fact, it is one of the most desirable things about my chosen profession.