It all begins with an idea. James Ronald Jones, having just suffered through another oil and gas crisis in the Houston area, decided it was time for a radical career change. He knew construction, he knew roofing, and his idea was to go door to door and sell roofing services. Okay, maybe that isn’t too groundbreaking. So how could he be different?

Ron, as he was affectionately called by his friends, knew people and — more importantly — loved people. He said, “The best way to give people a better roof is by being a better person. That’s the difference.” He wanted to combine his love of people with his cherished values of honesty, integrity, and transparency to create meaningful relationships that lasted far beyond any project’s completion. His idea? A roofing company where people were not customers or sales figures but humans, friends, and partners.

In 1980, J.R. Jones Roofing was born, founded on the simple principle of doing good.

By 1981, Ron transitioned his fledgling company into a strictly commercial roofing and waterproofing organization. One of his residential customers, who was a project manager for a large general contractor, asked him, “Why can’t I find a person like you doing roofing on the commercial side?”

While he loved helping out homeowners, he learned that there was a notable void in the commercial marketplace where the exceptional customer experience that had become synonymous with his name was lacking. Ron ended up asking that very same customer what was it that made him different. He replied, “You always choose good.”

Ron loved that. He loved that his values showed in his work. He took that “choose good” approach, his core values, and people-first mentality and applied it to the commercial construction industry.

In 1984, J.R. Jones Roofing became a corporation in Texas.

In 1987, after performing a couple of projects in the Houston area for a major national property owner, Ron was asked if his teams could travel the country for work. Evidently, this owner could not find contractors that performed quite like J.R. Jones Roofing, Inc. Ron said, “Yup.”

Ron knew that “choosing good” was a quality that translated no matter where you performed work. He quickly figured out safe travel logistics for his team, and, within just a few days, at the end of 1987, J.R. Jones Roofing, Inc. became a national organization.

The year 1994 brought about more change. Ron had been searching for ways to grow the business but had trouble finding the right fit culturally. Enter Earl Thomas. Earl had been serving as an executive vice president for a Fortune 100 organization. His background was in construction and his specialty was strategic process operationalization. However, to Earl, operations simply did not work without human capital. And human capital could not exist without treating people well.

In Earl, Ron had found a kindred spirit and business partner. Together they invested in their people, training, and development. Within four years, their growth had quadrupled. When asked what the secret to the growth was, Ron replied, “No secret. Treat people good, both the people you work with and the people you work for. Pretty simple.”

By 2008, the organization had grown over eight times from that moment in 1994, but Earl and Ron knew they needed something new. That year, Tommy Thomas joined the company, bringing a robust education and 8 years of commercial real estate, marketing, and business development experience. At that point in time, the injection of youth helped the organization shift into integrating emerging industry technologies while holding true to the values, vision, and mission that was always the foundation of the J.R. Jones Roofing name.

Ron, Earl, and Tommy all believed in the same core values of “aggressive goodness,” as Ron once put it. The three were determined to never compromise their beliefs, values, and decision to treat people well. Together they formed an unmatched team of technical knowledge, industry experience, and cutting-edge innovation.

In just five years together, the organization tripled in size from that point in 2008. The key? Tommy said, “What we learned from Ron is that we can never lose sight of one thing; this business is based all around how we treat people.”

And as the organization welcomed a new generation of managers, this longstanding tradition continued to thrive. Jenny Smith, Matt Ewton, and Jared Stephenson comprise the management team and direct all company activities alongside Earl and Tommy, and they continue to amplify the transformative impact of doing good.