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How a Memphis Kid Became AutoZone’s Chairman and CEO

Our American Stories / Lee Habeeb
The Truth Network Radio
November 17, 2025 3:00 am

How a Memphis Kid Became AutoZone’s Chairman and CEO

Our American Stories / Lee Habeeb

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November 17, 2025 3:00 am

Bill Rhodes, the president and CEO of AutoZone, shares his life story and the journey that led him to his current role. He talks about his father's influence on his leadership style, his struggles with accounting, and how he found success through his golfing skills and a chance internship at Ernst & Young.

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U.S. only. See store online for details. This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. And by the way, we'd love to hear your stories.

Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. They're some of our favorites. Bill Rhodes, a Memphis, Tennessee native, has been the president and CEO of AutoZone since 2005. Today, Bill joins us to tell his life story and the journey that led him to AutoZone.

So my father in the early years was with Orkin Pest Control. And my mother and father moved nine times in ten years. And one of the stops was Greenville, which is where I was born. After I was six weeks old, we moved to Meridian, Mississippi. And after about another year, we moved to Dallas, Texas.

In 1969, April of 1969, our family moved from Dallas, Texas to Memphis, Tennessee. The reason we moved to Memphis, Tennessee was my mother and father didn't want to keep moving every year. He was a branch manager with Orkin, and so they kept moving year after year after year. There was a new startup company in Memphis, Tennessee called Terminex at the time. Terminex had just a handful of branches, and they hired my father to be the first ever multi-store manager.

So he came to Memphis in April 1969 as the regional manager for Terminex, the only one that they had. And I lost him a couple of years ago, so I can't hardly talk about him without getting a little choked up. But the vast majority of the lessons I learned about leadership came from my mother and my father. People want to talk about leadership and how sophisticated it is and which books do you read. I think leadership starts with caring, truly caring about people and living your values out every day.

My father used to go to work every Saturday. And many of those Saturdays he'd allow me to come along with him and I'd sit in his office and I'd listen to the conversations that he'd have and I'd watch him roll off these reports off these antiquated printers and he'd sit there and study those reports and then he'd pull me around on the side of his desk and he'd say, so here's where we're doing well and here's where we're not doing well and here's what I need to do to help incentivize or encourage this person. And my dad, my dad is my hero. My father loved sports. I in junior high and so played basketball and football and I wasn't good enough to progress to the high school level so I pivoted and turned my attention to golf.

So I end up going to the University of Tennessee at Martin, and it's about two and a half hours, two hours and 15 minutes northeast of Memphis, Tennessee. It's about eight miles from the Kentucky border in Martin, Tennessee. At the time, a very small town, and certainly for a kid coming from Memphis, Tennessee, it was a town of 5,000 people that at the time had about 5,500 students. I got to Martin because I played golf. I wanted to play collegiate golf and I had the opportunity to be recruited by quite a few schools in the Mid-South and ultimately the golf coach at University of Tennessee, Martin Grover Page, offered me a compelling scholarship to come and play golf at UT Martin.

So I went to UT Martin. My fraternity my first year was the golf team and I loved the golf team. We had a very good golf team and we played Division II golf and were always on the verge of being able to go to the NCAA championships or not. My first three years we got to go. Unfortunately I wasn't good enough to make those trips the first three years but golf was a big part of my existence in school.

I studied accounting while I was at the University of Tennessee at Martin. And I can remember talking to my mom and dad. People these days wouldn't remember these phone calls, but back then, we didn't carry a phone with us. We didn't have a phone in our dorm room. We had to go downstairs and wait in line for one of the two or three phone booths that were in the blobby level of the dormitory.

And I would call home two or three times a week, and my mother and father, this is something people wouldn't realize today either, they would both jump on a landline at home and we would have a three-way conversation without having to merge a call. and I can remember one particular phone call my uh my freshman year my father as I mentioned was big into management and I knew I wanted to go into business because I wanted to be my father and I can remember this phone call he said son have you decided on a um a major and I said yes Dad, I have. And he said, okay, what is it? And I said, I'm going to be an accounting major. He said, what?

You're going to be an accounting major. You know, those people, they kind of sit in the corner, they wear a green eye shade and a green armband, and all they do is count the numbers. He said, son, why do you want to be an accountant? And I said, Dad, it's my understanding that accounting is the most difficult business degree that they have here at UT Martin. And so that's why I chose it.

He said, that's good enough for me. That's good enough for me. It would have been good enough for my dad, too. He had a very similar philosophy about life. And his father finally moves to Memphis for one reason, to not move anymore.

He doesn't want to move his kids around from place to place to place. The majority of the lessons about leadership I learn from my mom and dad. And it all starts Bill Rhodes says from truly caring about people and watching his father and mother do that and have that be the anchor of their life My dad was my hero Bill said And then of course that line about accounting I understand it the hardest major at the University of Tennessee at Martin And, of course, that was it for his dad and his mom. When we come back, more of this storytelling, Bill Rhodes story. By the way, we're looking for your stories, too.

I mention it at the beginning of every show, but father and mother stories. We love them for Father's Day. We love them for Mother's Day. We love them all year long. Send your mother and father's stories to OurAmericanStories.com.

When we return, more of Bill Rhodes' story here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, the host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we're bringing inspiring stories from across this great country. Stories from our big cities and small towns. But we truly can't do this show without you.

Our stories are free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and click the donate button. Give a little, give a lot. Go to OurAmericanStories.com and give. Save over $200 when you book weekly stays with Vrbo this winter.

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And we're back with Our American Stories and Bill Rhodes' story. Bill has been the president and CEO of AutoZone since 2005. We just heard how much his father meant to him. In fact, Bill chose to study accounting at the University of Tennessee at Martin because it was the most challenging business degree they offered. And he figured it would train him to be at least half the professional that his father was.

Back to Bill. As I was pursuing my accounting degree, I learned two things. One, I didn't particularly like accounting. More importantly, it didn't like me. And so in my senior year, I was progressing.

I was a pretty good student, and I'd made pretty good grades, but I really had to work at it. And I was taking this one class. It was called auditing. and Dr. Rilda Barron, the head of the accounting department at the University of Tennessee, was the professor and she's very talented.

And we kept going through this class and I was really working hard. I was close to graduating, really excited about graduating. I decided I was not going to be an accountant and I was therefore going to go straight to the University of Memphis to pursue an MBA. But this auditing class really I was struggling in and I was going to see Dr. Barron on a regular basis and I'd say Dr.

Barron you know I'm trying this I just don't get the concepts. And I worked it and she coached me and tutored me and ultimately came down to the end and I said after the final exam I said Dr. Barron I'm sorry I did not do well in this class and I know that I'm on the verge of an F or a D and I plead with you to give me and I know it would be a gift to give me my first ever D in any class at UT Martin because if you don't you're going to have to deal with me again next fall and I don't think it's going to go any better and I promise you I promise you, I will never be in auditing.

So I go on to the University of Memphis, and I'm going to grad school. I'm living with my parents, and I come home one day. My senior year at UT Martin, I had a good golf season.

So I made Academic All-American, despite my D, and I made Honorable Mention All-American. I got a chance to, our team didn't make it to the NCAAs that year, but I was invited as an individual to play in the Division II National Championships down in Columbus, Georgia. And it was, you know, kind of the pinnacle of my career in golf. But there was a write-up in the Commercial Appeal about me. And after that write-up in the Commercial Appeal, a little article, I came home one day from school.

And back then, you used to write notes on the refrigerators. and there's a note from my mom said Mike Hopper called from Ernst & Winnie. He'd like for you to call him.

So I picked up the phone and I called him and said, Hi, this is Bill Rhodes. She said, Hi, Bill, this is Mike Hopper. I'm in charge of the audit practice at Ernst & Winnie. Ernst & Winnie was at the time one of eight large public accounting firms and this portion was in Memphis, Tennessee, my hometown. and Mike said, I'd like to, I read about you in the commercial appeal.

I'd like to talk to you. And so back then, public accounting, you wore dark suits, you wore white shirts, you wore a tie. There was nobody in public accounting that had facial hair.

So I've gone to this interview with Mike Hopper, the head of the audit practice of Ernst & Winnie in Memphis, Tennessee, and I put on my best. I put on my duckhead khakis, my navy blazer. I borrowed a tie from my dad. My dad's three inches taller than I am, so he has extra long ties that hung down too long. Put on my penny loafers, and I had a full beard.

Then I went to Ernst & Winnie to interview with Mike Hopper. I looked way out of place. I sat in his corner office, and Mike started interviewing me. Where'd you go? How'd you do in school?

That's that. We're about three minutes in. He said, stop. Let me tell you why you're here. Ernst & Winnie in Memphis, Tennessee has three different departments, organizations.

We've got a consulting division in the bond consulting business. We've got a tax division. We've got an audit division. Mike said, I believe, I've been at the time, he'd been there 20 some odd years. He was in the audit practice and charged the audit practice.

And he said, every summer, we have a golf competition between tax, audit, and consulting. He said, Bill, every year I've been here, not only has audit never won, we've finished last every time. I want to hire you. I want to hire you as an intern. It's May of 1988.

The golf challenge is in July. You can work one hour a week you can work 60 hours a week I don care You can work through July and after the golf challenge you can quit or you can work through December when you graduate but we won hire you full because you don have the grades from your college to be a full-time person here. And he said, what do you think? I said, so I can write that I can work for Ernst & Winnie on my resume, why in the world would I not do that? And so I did.

And it was right when personal computers were becoming somewhat mobile, we called them luggables, Ernst & Winnie National come out with this new scheduling software.

So they put me in charge of figuring out how to use this new scheduling software. And I was pretty effective at it. It went well. July came along and we won by a long shot, the golf challenge. And it was the last year they ever had the Golf Challenge, never had it again.

So fast forward to December of 1988, I'm graduating from University of Memphis with an MBA. I've gone through a year of testing with Terminex, my father's company. And I'm going to be a manager in training for my father's company. And they had told me all along, my father was a regional manager from St. Louis to Knox, to Jackson, Mississippi, and they said, you know, you can do your manager and training program for a year, year and a half in Memphis, but beyond that, you're going to have to move outside of your father's territory to become a branch manager.

So we've decided you're going to have to move to Philadelphia. And it was not Philadelphia, Mississippi. It was Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, within two or three weeks.

So it was a shock for a southern boy from Memphis, Tennessee that, you know, never really been that far away except when I went to UT Martin two hours and 15 minutes away. And remember, Ernst & Young had told me that I would not be able to go to work there full time. The same day that I was told I had to move to Philadelphia, I got a letter in the mail from Ernst & Winning saying that they wanted me to come on the audit practice as an auditor. They were paying me about $4,000 more than I was going to make living in Philadelphia working for Terminex. And so much against what I promised Dr.

Barron and much against what my dad really didn't want, I became an accountant. And I joined Ernst & Winnie at the time, full time in January of 1989. There's no question my time at Ernst & Young was incredibly beneficial for me in my career. I talk to kids all the time. In fact, I talked to one of my nephews yesterday who's considering going to work for Ernst & Young.

And I think it's an incredible place to go get an education. How many other kids, 23, 24, 25 young adults, have the opportunity to go in and see 7, 8, 9, 10 businesses over the course of a year and see which businesses and business models work, which ones don't work and why. See which leaders are very successful and what kind of traits do they have that lead to that success. See which kind of leaders fail and where they lose their support from their teams. Probably in my case, as much as anything, see which cultures work and which cultures don't work.

So I call it one of the greatest MBA programs in the world. And you've been listening to Bill Rhodes tell one heck of an unlikely story. Accounting didn't like me, and I didn't like accounting. And it turned out, well, not so much to be true. He gets that gig because of his golfing expertise.

I love what that hiring partner said. You can work an hour a week. You can work 60 hours a week. I don't care. but we won't hire you full time.

And of course, that turned out to not quite be true. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the unlikely story of Bill Rhodes' journey to chairman, CEO, and president of AutoZone here on Our American Story. Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean and cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold. Butter?

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Abercrombie has the holiday season lineup. Shop new arrivals in the app, online, and in store. And we're back with our American stories in the final portion of Bill Rhodes' story. When we last left off, Bill had secured a job at Ernst & Young, formerly Ernst & Winnie, despite being told that after his internship, there would be no job for him. We return to Bill.

I was offered a job to come to AutoZone from Ernst & Young. I was doing really well at E&Y and enjoying what I was doing, but here was this chance to go to work for AutoZone. What a fortuitous decision for me. I'm not sure it's worked out very well for AutoZone, but it's worked out extremely well for me.

So I joined AutoZone on December 5th, 1994, and I was the manager of inventory accounting. Quickly, I moved into some other parts of the organization and probably the most fortunate thing for me was the leadership team at AutoZone moved me into a lot of different parts of the company over time.

So I started in inventory accounting. They asked me to start an internal audit program, the first ever for AutoZone. Then I was moved into our store operations team as the store operations support person, helping support our divisional vice presidents. I was then moved back to finance. I guess I got promoted to vice president while I was in store operations support.

I got moved back to finance in my early 30s because they wanted, our CFO was considering retiring and I was moved back because they wanted me to be the potential successor to the CFO. Four months into that, I was promoted to senior vice president and controller at a very, very young age and was really excited and doing great things, I thought, and the company was doing well. Came in one day and the president of the company, another one of my mentors, Tim Vargo, called me into his office and said hey Bill we decided you not going to be this is four Four months after I got promoted to senior vice president Tim Vargo calls me in and says Bill we decided you not going to be the next CFO In fact we hired him and he starting on Monday He's going to take your job. You're going to be demoted back to a vice president. And we don't know what you're going to do, but we like you.

And I said, wait a minute. I was tracking with everything until you said, but we like you. And so I went a week without a job. The following Thursday, Tim Vargo called me back in his office and he said, All right, we've decided what you're going to do. We're going to make you a divisional vice president.

So I went from being the controller of the organization with about 200 people in my organization, most of which sat on the same floor I did in the building downtown Memphis, All of a sudden, I was responsible for 525 stores in 11 states and 8,000 people. And I said, and you call that a demotion? And it was one of those. It's probably the luckiest demotion that's ever happened. And I had a wonderful opportunity to go and spend time with the people that are the most important in our business, the people that are on the front lines, that are dealing with our customers and providing WOW customer service every day.

I was only in that role for about 11 months. We had a new CEO that came in, and when that happens, many times leadership teams get shaken up a little bit, and ours did as well. A few people left, and our new CEO, Steve Odlin, promoted me back to a senior vice president, but this time in charge of our supply chain.

Now here's this accountant from Ernst & Young that tried to be an operator for 11 months that's now trying to be a supply chain expert. It was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the time in both store operations and supply chain. I was in the supply chain role for about six months and our CFO transition actually happened. Our CEO at the time, he asked me to be responsible for information technology and the supply chain.

And just really learned in both my operations and supply chain years, empathy for what we ask people to do every day. And the commitment that they have for the success of this organization. And frankly, the success of their families. People work awfully hard. And I get to see that firsthand.

Our CEO called a board meeting on a Friday afternoon and announced that he was leaving and he was going to take on the chairman and CEO role of Office Depot. It was the week of spring break is when he called the meeting. I was in Colorado with my family and I had a skiing accident on Wednesday and had a severe concussion and was not cleared to drive an automobile for a week. That was on Wednesday and I got a call on Sunday afternoon. I knew something was up because I'd had some conversations with our general counsel, but I didn't know that our CEO was leaving or anything.

And I got a phone call at four o'clock on Sunday afternoon from our founder, and he said, Bill, I want to let you know, Steve resigned on Friday. The board's met all weekend, and we've made you the president and CEO. I'm coming back on Tuesday. We have a board meeting on Tuesday at noon. I'll see you in your office at 11 o'clock.

And I said, Pitt, did anybody tell you that I had a skiing accident? And he said, yeah, get to work.

So I went to work.

So today, AutoZone is about a $16 billion sales organization. We have nearly 7,000 stores in the United States, Mexico, and Brazil. We have 105,000 people. 105,000 people that we don't call employees. we call AutoZoners.

They have a passion, they have a dedication to drive customer service. You think about a significant part of our organization is in the retail business.

Well, most of the times when you go see a retailer, you're excited about what you can buy. You're buying some new glasses or a new shirt or whatever. You're really excited, right? That's not the case when you come to AutoZone. You woke up, you're trying to go to work, the car didn't start.

You got to go to AutoZone and find out that maybe I've got to spend $150 on a new battery. You know what? That $150 wasn't in my budget, but I've got to do it anyway because I got to get to work. Our people are our secret sauce. AutoZoners are a special breed.

They have to be problem solvers.

So another one of my quotes that I often say is, AutoZone isn't for everybody and everybody isn't for AutoZone. And that's okay. Because we have to have somebody with a servant heart. When somebody walks into that store and they're having a bad day, their car won't start. We have to have somebody that is empathetic for the customer's situation and is willing to help that customer solve that problem.

We have lots of different practices. One of them is called gotcha. Go out to the customer's automobile.

So if a customer walks in and says, my car is doing X, Y, or Z, our people stop what they're doing. They go out to the car and they look, listen, smell what's going on with the car to help try to diagnose the problem. Our people are problem solvers and they do it every single day. Many times our people go out and solve a problem for free. And we love that.

So if you go out and the car won't start, well, all of a sudden, the auto's owner sees it's a corroded battery cable. They clean it up, get rid of the corrosion, tighten down the clamp, and guess what? The car starts. And the customer says, oh, what do I owe you? Nothing.

Well, okay, well, here's $10 a tip. No, ma'am, I can't take that. We're here to serve you. That's what service is about. That's what our team excels at.

And a great job on the production by Robbie Davis. And a special thanks to Bill Rhodes for sharing his story. 7,000 stores, 105,000 auto's owners. And they do have a servant heart. If you've ever gone, you know what gotcha means.

Because they come out to that car and they try to solve problems. And it's the heart of their business is their servant hearts. And by the way, there are 270 million cars on the road. Most of them are used. the average age, 12 years old.

So we all know what it's like to wake up and that battery doesn't work. Bill Rhodes' story, AutoZone's story, here on Our American Stories. Maybe it's your first or 101st time reading through the Bible. Either way, God has something to say to you through His Word. A one-year Bible can help you navigate through Scripture in a new and vivid way.

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