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Poolboy of Alice 107.7 FM

Poolboy is a graduate of Little Rock’s Catholic High and the University of Arkansas. Poolboy has been a part of mornings on Alice 107.7 since 2005.

Poolboy said, “My alarm goes off at 3:20 I get to the radio station at 4:15, then I plan for the day’s show. At 6:00, the ‘Heather and Poolboy’ show begins, and we go from there. Most people listen for about 10 to 15 minutes during their commute. My job is to make you laugh and get listeners into a good mood for work.”

He has been a Little Rock ‘celebrity’ since he was just an intern on Alice 107.7 where he earned the nickname Poolboy. His life has played out on the air since then, going from being a single guy against marriage and children to married with a young son.

Co-host Heather Brown said, “He is a hard worker and a busy bee. He is always running to the next gig. He always has something he is doing on the side, whether it’s a project or fundraiser.”

November 3rd, Poolboy will co-host the 8th Annual Dancing into Dreamland fundraiser with Craig O’Neill. This will be his 3rd year co-hosting the event.

Up In Your Business is a Radio Show by FlagandBanner.com

 

 

 

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EPISODE 59

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:06.7] CC: Welcome to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, be sure to stay tuned at the end of the show to hear how you can get a copy of this program and other helpful documents.

Now, it's time for Kerry McCoy to get all up in your business.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:00:21.4] KM: Thank you, Tim. Like Tim said, I’m Kerry McCoy and it’s time for me to get up in your business. Get ready to have some listening fun today, because Poolboy is in the house.

[0:00:32.2] AD: What’s up?

[0:00:33.3] KM: Yes. My guest is local celebrity Poolboy from the Heather –

[0:00:38.0] AD: You’re using the term celebrity real fast and loose there. Celebrity, I am not. Celebrities don’t have two and three and four jobs.

[0:00:46.9] KM: They have two names, which you have.

[0:00:49.1] AD: Some do, unless you’re Sheree or Madonna.

[0:00:51.9] KM: Don’t start critiquing, because they actually have two names probably. Don’t start critiquing me already. He’s already on me, because you know he’s a radio show host. He’s going to come in here and tell me everything I’m doing right and everything I’m doing wrong.

[0:01:03.4] AD: Absolutely not. You do it the way you want to do it. That’s what I’ve learned.

[0:01:08.1] KM: I’m going to get advice from you today, because this is a business advice show. You are in the business.

[0:01:13.6] AD: I can tell you what not to do. I can definitely do that.

[0:01:17.6] KM: Uh-oh, that's going to be everything I do. You're going to go, “Don't do that. Kerry, don’t do that. Don’t do that.” Anyway, my not celebrity Poolboy from the Heather and Poolboy radio show is on today.

[0:01:30.3] AD: Thank you so much for having me.

[0:01:31.5] KM: You’re welcome.

[0:01:32.0] AD: This is fun. It's nice to be able to sit back and not be the guy pressing the buttons and just getting to sit back and talk. This is great.

[0:01:37.8] KM: You are going to have fun. I cannot be as good as Heather though, but I'm going to try. She's awesome. I listen to her, she's just charming.

[0:01:44.9] AD: She's great. She is an amazing co-host. We've been together, working together now for 13 years. She's been there 18 years, so I'm very blessed to get to work with her. We have a really good chemistry and it just – it makes my mornings fun. I mean, I look forward to going to work.

[0:02:03.6] KM: You should.

[0:02:04.3] AD: Yeah, you should. You should look forward to going to work. If you don't, quit.

[0:02:08.5] KM: Oh, that is so true. I had to recently put together a grant for the Dreamland Ballroom and you have to do all this reading and writing and research. I hired somebody to help me, because I just could not do it. It was so awful. I thought when it was finally over with and we mailed it off that night, I woke up the next day and thought, “This must be what it's like to go to work every day at a job you don't like, that you're not good at,” because I'm not good at writing grants, I was not good at doing the reading and the research and the writing of that grant. It was grueling.

[0:02:43.5] AD: I will say this, I know I said if you don't like your job, quit. Quit once you find another job. There has been multiple times in my life I've wanted to quit a job I was at, but I would not quit that job until I had the other job lined up. Then I would be ready to quit. When I got into radio, I was also bartending at the same time and I continued to do that for years after I got into radio, because I mean, radios – I mean, it can change. I mean, things can happen, or maybe I wouldn't like it or whatever. I was not able to let go of that one job until I felt secure in the next job. I've always had two and three jobs for as long as I can remember.

[0:03:24.1] KM: I think every great entrepreneur and successful person does.

[0:03:27.2] AD: I like to stay busy. That's a lot of it. Yeah.

[0:03:31.7] KM: Hard worker.

[0:03:34.0] AD: Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

[0:03:35.8] KM: I think successful – the lady was on last week, Robbi Davis from Robbi Davis Insurance agents. She said there's no great mystery to success. It's just working hard.

[0:03:45.3] AD: That's it. Yeah.

[0:03:46.7] KM: It really is. If you're laying on the couch, you're not going to get the job you may want.

[0:03:52.5] AD: That’s right.

[0:03:53.4] KM: It’s pretty simple. All right, let me introduce you a little bit and tell people a little bit about you.

[0:04:00.1] AD: Okay.

[0:04:01.0] KM: You are the person that we all know and love. You’re Poolboy from the Heather and Poolboy morning show on Alice 107.7 in Little Rock, Arkansas for those of you that aren't in Little Rock. You are so genuinely fun and infectious that both the Arkansas Times and the Arkansas Democrat Gazette has voted you the best personality radio.

[0:04:19.1] AD: That's right. That's awesome. That is amazing. You can read stats and whatever about how your radio station is performing, but it's awards like that that the public, the community votes on that lets how you're doing and how well you’re liked. To get those accolades means so much more than getting a rating from a rating book, or something like that, because people took the time to fill out that form to say, “Oh, Heather and Poolboy show is my favorite. I love listening to them. Thriller Thursday's. It's awesome.” Whatever that means, that means a lot. That is really, really, really cool.

[0:05:05.0] KM: You also boast that you can eat four and a half hot dogs in seven minutes that you once drank a half gallon of eggnog in 30 seconds and that you are a two-time winner of the Make-A-Wish Foundation lip-sync battle.

[0:05:18.9] AD: Correct. Yeah. Look, you guys asked for this stuff, so I gave it to you. I just try to come up with things that I have done. Yeah, I entered a hotdog eating contest one year in honor of the 4th of July, Nathan's hotdog eating contest they do in Coney Island. Because I thought that I could do something, but no. I mean, but four and a half I thought was a pretty dang good. I mean, that's –

[0:05:40.9] KM: You are not kidding. Can you eat them still? Or you’re sick of hotdogs?

[0:05:44.8] AD: I’m sick of – I very rarely touch eggnog again after that within like – I'm not live within 15 minutes of doing that.

[0:05:52.6] KM: You threw up?

[0:05:53.5] AD: Yes. From both ends. I mean, it was – Not just once. I mean, it was an all-day thing. I mean, I ruined myself.

[0:06:03.7] KM: All night long.

[0:06:04.6] AD: Yeah, Lionel Richie style. All night long. It was awful. It was a rough two days after that.

[0:06:11.1] KM: Ah, there's just some things that aren't worth it. Let's say, you're an Arkansan through and through, having graduated from Catholic High in Little Rock, University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, with a BA in communications and then tell me if I'm right, fresh out of college you applied for an internship at Alice 107 it was hard?

[0:06:27.7] AD: It was after that. I did KXUA Radio in Fayetteville. Then I didn't really do anything with radio after that. I got out. I was a kid with $27,000 worth of student debt and which by the way, I'm $3,000 from paying this thing off.

[0:06:45.7] KM: Everybody give him a round of applause. That’s a big deal.

[0:06:48.2] AD: Hold up, I graduated in 2001. That's how –

[0:06:52.3] KM: How old are you? In your late 30s?

[0:06:53.2] AD: I'm 38-years-old.

[0:06:54.4] KM: That's exactly when my husband paid off his, late 30s.

[0:06:57.7] AD: I'm almost there, but I paid them the bare minimum I could pay them every month for this long. I'm almost there. It's pretty exciting. Yeah, so graduated from there, I didn't do anything with radio, went into property management and some real estate there for a while, then I figured out that that's not really what I wanted to do. I wasn't loving it. I wasn't happy. I came to a buddy of mine who opened a bar and I was like, “I need a job,” and so I started bartending. The girl I bartended with had a roommate and she sent my application into the radio station.

[0:07:34.8] KM: To 107?

[0:07:35.7] AD: Yeah. She obviously wanted better for me than to be a bartender. No, it was good.

[0:07:42.4] KM: It is good.

[0:07:43.2] AD: That’s good. No, absolutely. It’s really cool. They ended up hiring me and it was or a part-time producer position. That's how I got my start. I worked year after year, I did anything that anybody would ever ask of me. I accepted those jobs here and there around the radio station that weren't necessarily in my wheelhouse, but I learned to do them. I was always willing to learn from somebody else. It was around that I make myself more valuable. The more skills that I could pick up around the radio station, I felt the better; from running the board to work in the front desk to going on a sales call, to whatever it was, I was willing to learn, because I just felt that the more knowledge I had, the more valuable I became to the to the company. Harder for them to fire me if I knew more stuff.

[0:08:33.7] KM: I hate it when someone says that's not in my job description. I'm like, “Well, you're about to not even have a job.”

[0:08:39.2] AD: Exactly. I just – I hung around, I hung around, I hung around.

[0:08:44.9] KM: Made yourself invaluable.

[0:08:45.9] AD: I did and I got – it was probably three years down the road when I got my first real contract. It wasn't much, but it was a contract and I just – I kept at it, I kept at it and here it is 13 years later and I have my name on the morning show with a wonderful co-host and we're having an amazing time.

[0:09:08.6] KM: I remember actually when you first went on Alice. I remember when you were just a part-time guy who come on sometimes and they do live remotes with you from places. Frankly, I just thought, “Wow, that guy is such a playboy.” I think you were maybe back then. You're a married man now and we'll talk about that.

[0:09:25.8] AD: Yeah, sure.

[0:09:28.3] KM: DC left. It was the Heather and DC show.

[0:09:30.8] AD: Mm-hmm, originally.

[0:09:32.0] KM: Then you had just made yourself so invaluable that DC left and they were like, “Come on. Move on up the ladder. Keep moving.”

[0:09:40.3] AD: Yeah. I mean, talk about right place, the right time. Me being familiar with the audience, I think helped and of course played a role in that. It was a real blow, but –

[0:09:55.0] KM: What was a blow?

[0:09:56.8] AD: Just the mix-up, the change up for whatever that was going on and then everything just – it changed and we were in limbo of what was going to happen next. I was able to jump in and fill the shoes for the time being and luckily, it worked out. Heather and I have a chemistry, and so –

[0:10:15.6] KM: Oh, you just went in to fill the shoes while they looked for somebody else?

[0:10:19.2] AD: Yeah. That was the –

[0:10:21.3] KM: They’re like, “Why are we looking for somebody else? He's so good. Let's just keep him.”

[0:10:24.2] AD: Sure. Yeah. I guess. Yeah. I was willing to do it for peanuts.

[0:10:29.7] KM: Sometimes you have to start there, but you're not willing to do it for peanuts anymore.

[0:10:33.1] AD: That’s right. That’s right.

[0:10:34.8] KM: That's the way you have to start out sometimes though. Sometimes I hear people say, “Well, I'm not taking that job, because I'm a college graduate and I should be making more than that. I'm not going to take that job.” I think get your foot in the door. Always just get your foot in the door. Who's the man that owns Brooke House? Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett gave this speech to Harvard. I was watching it one time and it was a bunch of MBA students from Harvard and they said, “How should we get jobs after we graduate from Harvard?”

He said, “I would recommend finding the company you want to work for, rather than going out and finding the job that pays you that much money, but find the company that fits your personality, go to that company, get a job.” He said, “Even if it means sweeping the floors at that company and start working really, really hard until they find out what a star you are and you will move up the ladder there.”

[0:11:30.4] AD: Agreed.

[0:11:31.2] KM: I thought that was great advice. I don't think that always people do it that way. They come out and they let their ego get in the way and they're like, “I'm going to take a $8 an hour job. I’m more than that.”

[0:11:42.9] AD: Yeah. I knew that going into the situation. I was not seasoned. I never hosted a full morning show before. I was rather relatively new to everything. I was willing to do whatever I had to do to do the job. I was willing to prove myself. I knew that I had it in me. I knew that I could do good things with the opportunity, and so I did. I just took it and took it and run with it.

[0:12:15.4] KM: You’re one of the few people I know that actually went to school and got a degree in something that they're doing as a career later.

[0:12:21.5] AD: Well, I didn't start out doing it that way. I chose communications, because it was easy. Look –

[0:12:27.6] KM: He’s so honest. I love it.

[0:12:29.1] AD: I went to college to party. I'm not going to lie. I was looking forward – I mean, I'd been a Catholic. I had my hair cut a certain way, wore the khakis and ties for four years, hadn't seen a girl in four years. I was ready to go to college and just live it up. I mean, of course I was interested in radio and television and acting and things like that and communications seemed like a natural fit for me. I figured, “Hey, this is going to be great. This is going to be a lot of me standing in front of classes and talking at and doing oral presentations and not writing and doing research and stuff like that.” It was and that was perfect for me. I can do that all day long. I could stand up in a class and half hungover and give you an exam where they answer. It worked out. It worked out for me.

[0:13:19.3] KM: I love you. All right, I love your honesty. All right, let's take a quick break. When we come back, Poolboy is going to tell us how he got his name and maybe he'll reveal his real name. We’ll also get his take on married life, parenting and what it's like to live in the public eye.

[BREAK]

[0:13:36.4] TB: You're listening to Up In your Business with Kerry McCoy. If you missed any part of the show, a podcast will be made available next week at flagandbanner.com’s website. If you prefer to listen on iTunes or YouTube, you'll also find those links there. Lots of listening options.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]

[0:14:18.5] KM: You’re listening to Up In your Business with me, Kerry McCoy. I'm speaking today with okay, I can't say local celebrity. How about radio personality, Poolboy from the morning show Heather and Poolboy on Alice 107.7 in Little Rock, Arkansas.

[0:14:32.6] AD: Let's get up in my biz.

[0:14:34.0] KM: Okay, here you go.

[0:14:35.0] AD: My biz is cold. The temperature dropped the time out there.

[0:14:40.1] KM: It did. You said my alarm goes off at 3:20. I get to the radio station at 4:15, then I planned for the day’s show. At 6:00, the Heather and Poolboy show begins and we go from there. Most people listen for about 10 or 15 minutes during their commute, my job is to make you laugh, get listeners into a good mood for work. You prepped for two hours before the show?

[0:15:02.2] AD: Mm-hmm.

[0:15:03.7] KM: About what?

[0:15:04.3] AD: Well, I mean, all kinds of stuff.

[0:15:06.7] KM: You have a lot of content.

[0:15:08.1] AD: So much goes on between the hours we get off at 10:00 a.m. till the time we go back on at 6:00 a.m. I mean, everything happens. Everything happens in Hollywood, in sports, just in your own community. To try to condense all that into four hours, but you're really not four hours with music and stuff in that. I mean, you've got to condense it down and find the best stuff to talk about for that day.

I get up. First of all, I have to wake up. Getting there – I mean, that's all part of it. It's not like I’d sit down at 4:15 and then I'm just doing nothing but research. It's talking with the other jocks that are there in the stage, because we're a part of – we've got eight other radio stations in our building, and so there's other people that are there. We're talking and we use them as sounding boards for topics, or something that might have happened to them. I'll use anything. I'll scour websites. I'll find delicious audio to use.

[0:16:09.0] KM: The one yesterday that Heather used was gross.

[0:16:12.0] AD: What would she use yesterday?

[0:16:14.7] KM: I did like the ones about the facial recognition for smiling for cancer patients. That was good. They've got facial recognition for cancer patients, because if you smile you might get well and I loved that. That was a good one. The one about which way do you wipe, I mean, come on. I was like, “I got to turn it off. I didn’t even want to know.”

[0:16:34.4] AD: That's a real deal though.

[0:16:35.8] KM: Oh, I know. I was like, “Where do y'all come up with that stuff?”

[0:16:38.6] AD: These are real stats. Yeah, so I get there. The alarm clock goes off at 3:20. It's really 3:10. I just fast forward it 10 minutes, so I really got a built-in 10 minutes. Yeah, so I get there at 4 and then it's just talking, waking up, drinking a Mountain Dew and getting ready for today’s show.

[0:16:56.2] KM: Yeah, can't believe you don't drink coffee.

[0:17:00.0] AD: Heather and I are rare breeds. I think we're the only –

[0:17:01.5] KM: Heather doesn't either?

[0:17:02.2] AD: No. I think we're the only two in the building that do not drink coffee. I mean, there are guys there that crush it all day long. I mean, 3:00, 4:00 in the afternoon they're still hitting cups of coffee.

[0:17:13.9] KM: It's probably why you don't have bad breath.

[0:17:16.2] AD: Yeah, I can't stand bad breath.

[0:17:18.8] KM: No. A good plug for Mountain Dew. It's got a lot of caffeine in it.

[0:17:22.6] AD: I allow myself one. That's my one thing I do in the morning and then it's water usually for the rest of the initiative.

[0:17:28.8] KM: Well, that's really, really good. Some of the things you do this morning, I heard backstage Betty, I love how you give all these names for everything. Backstage Betty, last day Linda, the Miami Vice drink for cruise ships.

[0:17:44.9] AD: Yeah. Our topics range from –

[0:17:47.8] KM: Heather is a spirit animal, she said.

[0:17:51.2] AD: Our topics can go anywhere and everywhere. That's the fun part about the show is that while I do try to come up with – while the both of us try to come up with things to talk about for the day, it can change at the drop of a hat from a caller calling in and asking a question to something to my text into the show, or e-mails into the show. I mean, a comment can just steer the conversation in a totally different way. That's what’s fun that it's not so scripted and that we can be spontaneous and can have fun with it. I think the audience really appreciates that.

You mentioned there that typically, somebody that's on their morning commute only has about 15 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes to listen to the show, because everybody's busy and everybody's got a different routine and it's getting up and it's getting the kids ready, or maybe it's not. Maybe it's just getting yourself ready, or you and your husband get out the door or something, and so you get in your car and that's your time. We just want somebody to get to their destination in the morning with a laugh. We very rarely will talk about politics, or religion, or anything like that.

[0:18:55.5] KM: Those three – yeah. Stay off those topics.

[0:18:58.6] AD: Because we're all in it together. We're all on this morning commute together and it's just like we're all friends riding in a car together and we're just trying to make the best of it and just want to laugh and just – Before you have to go to work and your grind. We just want to get you there in a good mood.

[0:19:15.2] KM: That's a great way to say it. We're best friends in the car. We're all in the car together and we're best friends chit-chatting it up. That's a great way to think about it. You talked this morning about the ghost of girlfriend’s past. I thought that was so funny, because my girlfriends and I all got together and we all sat around and said of all the people that you used to date, who would you go out with still? I’m like, “Nobody.” Most of mine are dead.

[0:19:38.7] AD: That's why they’re exes. You left them for a reason.

[0:19:41.6] KM: I grew up in the 70s. Most of my male boyfriends are all dead. You're going to tell us how you got your name? I got two versions; one from you and one from Heather.

[0:19:53.0] AD: Well, I mean, it's no secret that growing up going to Catholic, I had a job, every day after school I worked in an apartment complex and I did clean pools. When I went off to college, again I cleaned pools and why not? Why would you not clean pools at an apartment complex full of sorority girls? I mean, it was just –

[0:20:12.7] KM: Oh, he’s no stupid guy.

[0:20:14.2] AD: Right. It made sense. That was my job. That was on my resume, because that's all I had at that point. There wasn't much on my resume coming out of college and being a bartender and working some time and property management. When I first got to the station, like I said, I was willing to do anything and everything. I was a gofer. I'd go do this, I'd go do that, somebody asked me to do something, I'd go. People I think fondly referred to me as Station B word.

[0:20:43.7] KM: Station. Which with the B.

[0:20:47.8] AD: It was that for a moment. Then I as Heather and I worked together more and more, she was snapping her fingers ordering me to do this and that for her. I'd feed her grapes or fan her with a palm leaf, or something like that. Then it was just – it was just, “Oh, Poolboy come in here.” She'd snap her fingers and I'd get up and jump and go do whatever. That's how and it’s –

[0:21:12.3] KM: I thought she said, one day a lady who used to work with us heard me ask him to get something for me and she yelled, “Oh, Poolboy.”

[0:21:19.2] AD: Yeah, yeah. Someone else started, but she took it on –

[0:21:22.5] KM: Then she just ran with it.

[0:21:24.6] AD: Yeah, yeah. The more and more she would snap her fingers and say, “Oh, Poolboy,” I mean, it just stuck.

[0:21:31.7] KM: I love nicknames. You can tell everybody what your real name is, or is that a secret?

[0:21:35.2] AD: My name is Adam.

[0:21:37.0] KM: That's right. Like the first man.

[0:21:38.8] AD: Yeah, the first man. Yeah.

[0:21:40.8] KM: First man on radio. Because you've been called Poolboy so much, everybody thinks of you as Poolboy.

[0:21:49.5] AD: Yeah. It's really stuck. People call me PB, Pool, Mr. Boy. I mean –

[0:21:57.5] KM: You had to change your checking account.

[0:21:59.3] AD: I did. Checking account has changed, credit cards say Poolboy and –

[0:22:04.1] KM: Because you couldn’t cash checks.

[0:22:05.2] AD: Couldn't cash checks, that's right. I have a DJ business on the side called Sweet Beat Productions.

[0:22:09.9] KM: Do you still have that?

[0:22:10.7] AD: Uh-huh. Sure do.

[0:22:12.4] KM: You haven't updated your Facebook page and it’s July.

[0:22:16.0] AD: Mark Zuckerberg took my Facebook page away from me.

[0:22:18.2] KM: What for?

[0:22:19.2] AD: Because he didn't believe that I was Poolboy and they wanted my driver's license, social security card and I was like, “I'm not doing this.” I can't access my Facebook page. Whatever you're seeing on my Facebook page is just what's there. I have nothing to do with it.

[0:22:34.8] KM: Are you kidding me?

[0:22:35.8] AD: No, I'm not kidding you.

[0:22:37.3] KM: I have never had anybody say that to me ever.

[0:22:39.6] AD: Yeah. Yanked it away from me, or I can't get access to it unless I give them social security number and my photo on the –

[0:22:46.0] KM: What were you doing that was out of line?

[0:22:47.5] AD: I don't know. No clue. Just because it's in Poolboy's name.

[0:22:52.7] KM: What's wrong with Poolboy?

[0:22:53.7] AD: I don't know. I don't know. Why some band can be named Pull this head –

[0:22:58.4] KM: Fight the machine, or –

[0:22:59.6] AD: - or whatever and I can't be Poolboy. I don't know. I'm not worried about it.

[0:23:04.5] KM: Well I am. I'm dying to know why now. I’m going to have to do some research and figure that out. That’s bizarre.

[0:23:10.8] AD: I know. Really it is.

[0:23:11.9] KM: What does your business do?

[0:23:14.7] AD: I mean, I'm just a DJ. I'll DJ. I have a partner, Johnny Jackson, he's on the air right after Heather and I in the morning and we'll do weddings, parties, fundraisers.

[0:23:23.0] KM: How can you do that and go to work at 3:30 in the morning?

[0:23:25.1] AD: Well, I typically don't do anything during the week. I'll do weekend stuff, Friday, Saturday nights if I've got the time, or need, or want.

[0:23:34.2] KM: You are such a hard worker.

[0:23:36.7] AD: Well, I mean, it's – I’ll tell you this, it's – I feel it's a privilege to be invited to be a part of somebody's wedding.

[0:23:45.4] KM: It is.

[0:23:46.0] AD: I've been at so many weddings where the DJ, well just plain sucked. Can I say that? I’m bad. Okay.

[0:23:53.1] KM: No, you can.

[0:23:54.2] AD: It was just horrible. That's a bride, this is the day that she's thought about her entire life and this day's got to be perfect. If you want it to be a party, well I want you to make it a party and I want to help make it a party and I want to help make it great. I want to give everybody what they want and I want people – I want to get butts out of the seats, I want people dancing, throwing drinks back. If you don't do that, that's cool too, whatever. It's fun and I enjoy it and I like to make that day be amazing.

[0:24:29.3] KM: You are like a man with a uterus. He is the most sensitive guy there now. You are really sensitive. Right now, I want you to tell us your on-air contest for your tattoo and how it happened.

[0:24:41.3] AD: Which one?

[0:24:42.0] KM: Which one? How many you’ve got?

[0:24:43.6] AD: There’s 12.

[0:24:44.6] KM: What? You have to run a contest every six months then?

[0:24:46.9] AD: No. They’re all actually results from lost bets.

[0:24:51.8] KM: Every time you get drunk and make a bet with somebody, it's about a tattoo?

[0:24:55.5] AD: Somehow it turns into that. It's been a while since I've gotten one. I mean, it's been probably – it's probably been three years since I lost my last bet.

[0:25:04.2] KM: Oh, you're growing up.

[0:25:05.9] AD: I guess. I mean, I'm always I guess willing, I guess.

[0:25:11.1] KM: Okay. Tell us your favorite tattoo story. The Catholic High one?

[0:25:18.0] AD: The Catholic High one, I bet the principal of Catholic High that I would beat him in the Rocket 5K. If I lost that I would get a rocket tattooed on my arm as drawn by a girl from Mount Saint Mary's. Shown off, the older principal beat me and I ended up having to get a rocket tattoo and it's now on my forearm, or my bicep.

[0:25:49.1] KM: You like it?

[0:25:51.1] AD: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I love Catholic High. It doesn't bother me. The one that bothers my mom is the unicorn in rays of sunshine dancing on a cloud that is on my right butt cheek.

[0:26:03.9] KM: I was about to say on your ass, I bet.

[0:26:05.4] AD: Yeah, yeah. That's not her favorite. My favorite I think is Little Caesar that I have on the inside of my arm. That's probably my favorite.

[0:26:13.8] KM: How'd you lose that one?

[0:26:14.4] AD: Well, that one was I had a weight loss team and we called ourselves the Hot and Readys. We were losing in this. It’s like a Biggest Loser type of competition and when we weighted ourselves every week and I said, “We got to get it in gear guys.” I said, “Every week, you guys come in underweight, I will get a new piece of the Little Caesar guy tattooed on me.” They came in, they did their work, they put their time in the gym and they showed up and they lost weight, they didn't gain any and I'd go back to my guy at the Nomads Tattoos and he would give me a new piece of the Little Caesar guy.

[0:26:49.9] KM: Little Caesar pizza?

[0:26:50.4] AD: Yeah. Pizza, pizza guy. He’s in a little toga, he's got the spear and with two pizzas on it and every week, he'd come back and fill in a little bit more, draw the arm –

[0:26:58.6] KM: You could be on their commercial.

[0:27:02.1] AD: You think it would give me more free pizzas.

[0:27:03.8] KM: You would think so.

[0:27:05.2] AD: It doesn't. I mean, I've gone into the restaurant wearing tank tops and everything and just flexing, but nothing, nothing. Not even a crazy bread, right?

[0:27:16.6] KM: All right, now we're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Poolboy. He's going to tell us some of those favorite stories. One of which is the story of your first date with your wife and how you asked your wife to marry you and then we'll hear a little bit about being a dad and your son and we'll get DJ tips on how to get started in the business.

[BREAK]

[0:27:39.8] TB: You're listening to Up In your Business with Kerry McCoy. If you missed any part of the show, a podcast will be made available next week on flagandbanner.com’s website.

If you prefer to listen on iTunes or YouTube, you'll find those links there as well. Lots of listening options. We'll be right back.

[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]

[0:28:24.0] KM: You are listening to Up In your Business with me, Kerry McCoy. I'm speaking today with radio personality Poolboy from the morning show Heather and Poolboy on Alice 107.7 Little Rock, Arkansas.

All right, when I first met you I called you and asked you if you would be a DJ for Dancing into Dreamland, our fundraiser to try and get an elevator for the Dreamland Ballroom and you said, “Oh, yes. I would just love to. I love dancing.” You told me the story of the first date with your wife.

[0:28:51.0] AD: My wife and I actually met, we were both on a committee for the Children's Protection Center. That's how we met. At first, I thought she had a little RBF.

[0:29:06.2] KM: What’s that mean?

[0:29:08.7] AD: Resting bee face.

[0:29:12.2] KM: I got to get up on the lingo, okay.

[0:29:16.1] AD: I thought she was standoffish. Then I don't know, the more and more we worked together and worked on this committee together, we got to know each other. Then I asked her out and she said no, or had something come up. I asked her out again and she said no and something would come up. I gave it one last one last-ditch effort. There was other powers working against me. I think she heard stories about who I was and things like that.

With good reason, I thought she was probably a little standoffish. I wasn't willing to give up quite yet. I knew that if I could – it’s going to sound weird, but I knew if I could get her alone and let her see me, I knew that we might hit it off. I wanted to do have a fun date for us, for her to get to know me and get to see a different side of me than what she had probably heard on the radio.

I had some friends at Fred Astaire Dance Studio where I had taken some dance lessons in the past for a competition, which resulted in me getting a pink unicorn tattooed on my butt. Lost that competition to Meredith Mitchell from channel 11, and so that's why I've got that. I found out that Jenny, that's my wife's name, her favorite song at the time was a song called Like a G6, which is – you remember that song. Y'all remember that song, Like a G6.

[0:30:52.8] KM: Everybody is nodding their head.

[0:30:54.0] AD: Yeah, yeah. It was just one of those – it was just at the moment that’s her song. I go to my friends at Fred Astaire Dance Studio, Chris and Malia and I said what dance would you do to – because you can ballroom dance to just about anything. These dancers know what beat that is. If you've watched Dancing with the Stars, you know that they dance to anything and everything. They worked up a dance for that song. I took Jenny to the dance studio for a dance lesson for our first date. We got in there and I think they put some shoes on her, some dance heels or something. Then they put Like a G6 and she was like, “What?” It was just funny.

There was a laugh there. I got to touch her, not at a creepy way at all, but you know how it is, like when you went out on that first date and you, or maybe it was a second date and you ushered the lady in with your hand on the small of her back, or it was you held hands or you put your arm. You had that moment. I knew that if I could just – I knew that I wanted to touch her, but again – I know it sounds like a creepy way, but I wanted to dance with her. I wanted to hold her. That's what that – That dance lesson just took down all the walls, I guess between us and we were just able to be Poolboy and Jenny, Adam and Jenny. It was a moment that we had and it was awesome.

[0:32:28.1] KM: The rest is history.

[0:32:29.0] AD: Rest is history. We've been together ever since, ever since that day. We very rarely dance anymore, but –

[0:32:36.9] KM: I was going to say do you all still take dance lessons?

[0:32:38.7] AD: We don't. Every now and again, we'll try to remember our dance to Like a G6.

[0:32:44.6] KM: You need to do that for your anniversary.

[0:32:46.3] AD: I know. When we got married, we went back to Chris Emily at Fred Astaire and they choreographed our first dance song. It was to John Lennon's Woman. We danced that song to a guy performing it live. Y’all had him here on KABF, Brian Holland. He does a lot of great music here around Central Arkansas. We never danced to it with him performing it live and we had only done it to a CD. He learned the song. He knew the song, but he did it spot on the day of and we did it flawlessly at our wedding. It was beautiful. It worked out.

[0:33:31.8] KM: That's your wedding dance. You have two dances; your first date dance and your wedding dance.

[0:33:36.6] AD: Yeah. Yeah. We have two dances. Neither of which we can remember.

[0:33:40.3] KM: How long have you been married now?

[0:33:41.9] AD: It will be four – it’s going on four years.

[0:33:45.9] KM: Tell everybody, I read this online, you didn't tell me this personally, but I read online about your proposal.

[0:33:53.1] AD: I knew I wanted to marry her. I was just waiting for the right time and it worked out. We had a trip plan to Florida and my family was going to be down there with us as that's who we were going with. I'd saved up all this money and I'd gone to sissy's and I found the perfect ring and my mom helped me. I took my mom. I took my mom. I knew my four Cs now. I mean, I had researched it. I knew about –

[0:34:24.3] KM: Your what?

[0:34:25.0] AD: Four Cs; cut, clarity, what is the other ones? Come dude.

[0:34:29.4] KM: Uh-oh. He used to know his four Cs. I don’t even know one.

[0:34:32.8] AD: At the time, I did my research. I mean, I knew everything. Yeah, look up, look up the four Cs.

[0:34:43.9] TB: Look up the four Cs, make it –

[0:34:46.2] KM: Yeah, everybody’s got their phone out. I’m like, “What are the four Cs?” Cut, clarity, carat.

[0:34:53.0] AD: Carat, good one. It maybe cost, I don't know. Or cloudiness, I don't know. Anyway.

[0:34:59.3] KM: Clarity would be – cloudiness.

[0:35:01.2] AD: Yeah, so I did that. I didn’t –

[0:35:05.4] KM: Cs of the diamond.

[0:35:06.9] AD: I started feeling a little – it shouldn't just be my family that gets to be in on this. I contacted her family and it just worked out that they were able to come down there as well, unbeknownst to my wife. We went out to have dinner and then we had dinner and we came back to the condo and I said, “Hey, let's ditch the rest of the family and let's go walk on the beach and go down to the bar down there and get a drink or something.”

We're walking and I was looking for a place to do it. There was just so many people around catching, saying crabs at night, stuff like that, kids running off. Oh, man. I don't want an audience when I do this. Luckily, there was a house that was being remodeled right there on the beach, and so there was nobody of course at that house at the time. That beach space in front of that house was empty. We walked up there and I was like, “Hey, look at this house. I mean, living this, we need if we owned this, blah, blah, blah.”

Then she looked off in the distance at something at the waves and then when she turned around I was on one knee holding the diamond and thinking, “God. Don't drop this in the sand.”

She said yes. Then she said, “Well, let's go back and tell your family. Did they know?” I was like, “No, they don't know anything.” Of course, they knew it all. Then so we get back to the condo and then we come up the stairs and there's her family and my family and it was just – it was awesome. I mean, couldn't have asked for a better turnout. It was great.

[0:36:43.7] KM: Will you marry me?

[0:36:45.6] AD: Sure.

[0:36:46.1] KM: There you go.

[0:36:47.8] TB: I got the four C's. It is carat, color, clarity and cut.

[0:36:53.5] AD: Color. Dang.

[0:36:54.6] KM: Cut, not cost? You are such a romantic. I see why everybody loves Poolboy. I mean, they love it. You share all this on the radio I'm sure.

[0:37:03.3] AD: Every bit of it. My life is an open book and I share – I probably share too much, but that's – I mean, like I said, we're all in this together. If I'm experiencing it, chances are somebody else out there is experiencing it. I just think it's important to share our stories and to connect with our listeners in that way and share everything. If you want to ask me a question, ask me a question. I'm not going to shy away from it. I feel if my story can help you in any way, then that's awesome, then that's what I'm here to do.

[0:37:38.8] KM: That's really what this show is about is paying it forward. I think a lot of people – men are shy about talking about stuff like that. I think men is as sensitive as women, but I think they're just a little more guarded about showing that sensitivity. You're just wonderful. All right, now you don't really have to marry me. You're already married. That's against the law actually. I'm married, you're married and you're way too young for me. I think I might – We could go to Utah and you could get a lot of wives.

[0:38:11.2] AD: Sister wives.

[0:38:12.5] KM: Sister wives.

[0:38:13.2] AD: That’s the show.

[0:38:15.2] KM: Tell us about fatherhood and Henry. Born December 5th,2015, Henry Samuel.

[0:38:21.5] AD: Never wanted kids. In fact, I mean, that was –

[0:38:25.4] KM: Well, you are a confirmed bachelor.

[0:38:26.5] AD: I was.

[0:38:27.3] KM: Now you're married to a girl, the most romantic man on the planet, now you’re a father.

[0:38:35.4] AD: Yeah. I didn't. I mean, when I started out in radio, I mean, that was one of the things that I had to eat crow in this from a lot of our listeners, but I didn't. I mean, I never wanted kids. The thought of them scared me. I didn't want anything to do with them. I hated them. All they do is – I mean, they break stuff. I had friends that had kids and they weren't as spontaneous as I was. They were stuck at home, or dealing with this or that and everything about it just scared me. I was just like, “Oh.”

What it was is I wasn't ready. I was young. I was trying to start my career. I wasn't looking to have kids and I hadn't met the right person. I just –

[0:39:19.1] KM: That’s really it.

[0:39:21.3] AD: I just want to – I couldn't see myself with kids. Then I met Jenny and she wanted kids. I thought if she's the one to do it with if I'm going to have it. I love her and I know that it may be difficult to have a child, but with her we'll do it. We'll do this together. It wasn't so scary anymore. We did. We had Henry and he is awesome. I mean, he is the coolest little boy I mean, ever. My wife is one of three girls. Then her sister has two girls, her other sister has three girls, my sister had one child, she's a girl. I mean, there was nothing but girls and then here comes miracle baby Henry along.

[0:40:20.0] KM: Oh, he’s spoiled rotten.

[0:40:20.8] AD: Spoiled rotten. It's great. He gets to carry on my name, the cousins have a little boy to play with. I mean, it's awesome. I mean, it is – he is a blessing. He's changed my mind about kids.

[0:40:36.2] KM: When's the next one? Dead silence. That's the first dead silence we've gotten the whole hour.

[0:40:47.0] AD: I'll tell you this, two weeks ago my wife and I had a miscarriage.

[0:40:54.4] KM: Oh, I'm sorry.

[0:40:59.1] AD: We’ll talk about it. We found out that we were pregnant with twin boys. We suffered a miscarriage two weeks ago. It's been difficult as you can imagine. We're getting through it with other people's stories of having a miscarriage. When it happens to you, at first you think you're alone and you're like, “Why is this happening to me? God, why'd you do this?” Then your friends and your family start reaching out to you and you start hearing their stories and you learn that it happens to one in four women. It's sad.

People's stories help and it's therapeutic, because otherwise, you're just stuck with your own thoughts. I was having thoughts about it, or my doubts what caused this to happen, because I was worrying that my wife and I couldn’t handle having two twin babies with a toddler at home. Am I at fault for this? Did I add stress on to my wife? I mean, these are all thoughts and emotions that I was dealing with. If it weren't for family and friends and I mean, I even had listeners reach out to me with their stories. Those are getting us through this difficult time right now. If you are going through this, know that you are not alone and that this happens. It's okay to grieve and it is okay to be sad, but know that it'll get better. All is not lost.

[0:43:05.7] KM: Two weeks ago we had a psychiatrist on. That's the accuser voice in your head, that's accusing you of all these things that aren't true. It's hard to get that voice to stop talking sometimes.

[0:43:19.4] AD: It really is. It really is.

[0:43:22.7] KM: Well and it's good advice to realize that there are other people going through it, for anybody out there that's also going through it, because it does happen to a lot of women.

[0:43:33.1] AD: It does and it's not your fault. I mean, unless you're smoking crack, I mean, then straight up it is your fault.

[0:43:38.3] KM: A lot of those babies are born anyway.

[0:43:40.0] AD: Right. I mean –

[0:43:41.2] KM: Go figure that out.

[0:43:42.3] AD: For the most part I mean, it is not your fault ladies. It’s not your fault lads.

[0:43:47.4] KM: I also think, I just read this this morning, that when you are going through pain like you just talked about, it's better to just let yourself feel it and accept it and grieve with it, instead of having these accuser voices, just go ahead and put those voices aside and just go ahead and grieve. Like you said, just grieve for the baby, grieve for the pain, let it wash over you, accept it, live in the moment and then you'll just grow and learn so much about it. You shared all this on the radio?

[0:44:18.3] AD: Yeah, briefly. Yeah, because I was absent from my job. I felt I owed the audience an explanation of why I was gone. I mean, I'm a part of their life, they're a part of mine. I felt it was only fitting. Again, because I know that somebody else out there was going through it and maybe they didn't have anybody, and so maybe my story helped them a little bit. They might not have had a mother who had gone through it or a sister or a friend and they've got nobody. Not even a co-worker. Maybe they were listening to my story and maybe that cheered them up a little bit, if just for that moment, just on their way to work.

[0:45:09.2] KM: Excellent. Are you recognized off the air sometimes and people always say about you that you sound?

[0:45:15.1] AD: Like a bigger person. That's one of the first things they'll say to me. My voice is –

[0:45:21.3] KM: I thought you’d be fatter.

[0:45:23.2] AD: My voice has always gotten me in trouble growing up, and –

[0:45:26.2] KM: Just go ahead and say it, you sound fat on the radio.

[0:45:28.1] AD: I have fat voice is what I’ve got. I’ve got fat voice. People say – they’d be like, that's one of the first things they'll say, they’re like, “I thought you were bigger.” No, I'm 5’9”, a 155 pounds, but my voice weighs 300.

[0:45:44.1] KM: Let me tell everybody that they’re – we're not going to take a break, but I just want to tell everybody that you're listening to Up In your Business with me, Kerry McCoy and I'm speaking today with radio personality Poolboy from the morning show Heather and Poolboy on Alice 107.7 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Tell us about how you came to be on the board of the Children's Protection Center.

[0:46:03.2] AD: My buddy was on the committee first and he brought me in. He just thought that I would be a good fit. He knew that I knew marketing and promotions and things like that and he just felt that I would be a good fit for this. I got to give it up to my friend Gareth Hughes who brought me in on this. I wasn't always on the board. I started out in the committee and I just – I loved what they were doing.

The Children's Protection Center is an agency and it's a nonprofit that helps victims and their families heal and move on from physical and sexual child abuse. How this works is let's start here; in 2016, there were over a thousand cases of reported child abuse in Pulaski County alone.

[0:46:59.4] KM: How many?

[0:47:00.6] AD: Over a thousand.

[0:47:01.9] KM: That’s just what’s reported.

[0:47:03.7] AD: That’s just reported in Pulaski County. The Children's Protection Center was able to see about 254 of those cases. Where the other cases go? There's no telling.

[0:47:17.0] KM: 25% of the cases are seen?

[0:47:20.3] AD: Well, they're seen but maybe through a different agency, or maybe it's just handled by police, or another child advocacy agency. What the Children's Protection Center does, it's a complete place for a child to get help. It's a center for where a child can come and they can tell their story one time and have their interview recorded and done by a professional child investigator who knows what questions to ask and can help get the full story told.

When a child does not get this type of help, the child could be asked to come back to a place and tell their story two, three, four, five times. Evidence gets lost, stories get changed. I mean, there could be – if there's time, family can get involved and coerce too. I mean, all kinds of different things can happen and stories can get convoluted and lost in translation. The Children's Protection Center is just an amazing organization that really helps the child and helps the family and can take some of the trauma out of it, and can help them find healing and hope.

[0:48:56.3] KM: The board is trying to get more of them seen.

[0:48:59.2] AD: Yes, to get the word out that we have a place like the Children's Protection Center.

[0:49:03.2] KM: Is it the Elizabeth Mitchell?

[0:49:04.6] AD: It is not. It’s not. It's simply the Children's Protection Center, the CPC. It's located in the Clarke building, which is a new building on the Arkansas Children's Hospital campus.

[0:49:14.7] KM: It's to record the interview one time by a professional to be used later in cases.

[0:49:18.4] AD: Yes. Also there are doctors on hand to do rape kits and do and check these children out immediately.

[0:49:27.6] KM: How do you not cry every time you do hear –

[0:49:29.2] AD: Here's the thing, that's not my job. You applaud the people that do that job day in and day out. We just had a partners picnic at the center. We invited other agencies that deal in this. We're talking about the detectives, the police officers, the people that take the phone calls and hear these stories. These guys are the heroes. These guys that this is what they do, they wake up and deal with the most scumbags of the earth.

When I go home, I talk to my wife about whatever dumb story I talked about on the air that morning. These people go home and can't even tell their family, because who wants to talk about child abuse and the stories that they had to hear and live through that day? It's awful. It's awful. The Children's Protection Center everybody together and houses them in this one place and gets everybody moving in the right direction and the Children's Protection Center is just amazing and I'm so happy to be a part of it.

Now being on the board, what I've brought in is to help with fundraising efforts and do things like that and of course, I help make other decisions about the center. Mainly, that's what I like to focus on. We have one really, really awesome fundraiser that we do every year and it's called the dragon boat races. We do them over in Maumelle at Lake Willastein. They are 46-foot long canoes that hold 22 people in them. We paddle them about the distance of three football fields.

It's an amazing day. I mean, if anything, Little Rock has got enough silent auctions and crawfish boils and four-man scramble golf tournaments. I mean, we are filled up on them and they are awesome and they do a lot of great things. We were looking for something different. We were looking for something different and fun to do that hadn't been done in Arkansas ever before and dragon boat racing had never been done. We bring a company called Dynamic Racing in and they bring the boats. They have the boats, they have the paddles, they had the life vests and you just get your team together, businesses, church organizations, neighborhoods, schools, whoever, put 22 people in a boat and you paddle them for like I said, three football fields and you race against –

[0:51:52.7] KM: The person that wins. You try to win?

[0:51:55.6] AD: Yeah. That’s it. The first one with the fastest time ends up winning. We had 46 teams last year.

[0:52:06.7] KM: Wow.

[0:52:07.9] AD: It was an amazing day. I mean, it goes from 8:00 in the morning to about 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

[0:52:11.3] KM: What time of year is that?

[0:52:13.1] AD: We do this in May.

[0:52:13.5] KM: Sounds wonderful.

[0:52:15.2] AD: It is awesome. You come out the night before. We have a big party, there's a stage out there, we have an amazing firework show. You come out and you basically set up a tailgate area, all right? Then you go home after it's over. It wraps up about 10:00. You come out the next morning, go to your tailgate spot and we get you out there and we start racing. It's just an awesome day and it raises a lot of money. We've raised over a $162,000 last year all for the Children's Protection Center. I can't tell you how much of a difference that money makes; that provides counseling for these children. I mean, it's an amazing –

[0:52:54.6] KM: It’s childrensprotectioncenter.com, I guess.

[0:52:58.1] AD: You’ve been an amazing sponsor of our disc golf tournament. We do two fundraisers a year; dragon boats and our rattle the chains disc golf tournament and you have sponsored for five years now. Flag and Banner sponsor the disc golf hole and we can't thank you enough.

[0:53:10.5] KM: You're welcome. It's the least I can do. You can go to flagandbanner.com and click on Radio Show and see the links to everything Poolboy is talking about. Who's our guest next week, Tim?

[0:53:20.1] TB: It’s going to be Ed Haddock from the Arkansas Small Business Administration.

[0:53:23.7] KM: Yeah, if you're an entrepreneur or you want to become an entrepreneur, he's going to give us tips and a roadmap on how to do that. Thank you Poolboy. I cannot thank you enough.

[0:53:31.4] AD: Thank you so much for having me. This is wonderful.

[0:53:33.4] KM: You are a dear – and I'm going to see you Friday night at Dancing into Dreamland and coming on the show. Look what you get, you get an Arkansas razorback. What is that? A floaty.

[0:53:46.3] AD: Floaty.

[0:53:46.5] TB: Because he’s a Poolboy.

[0:53:47.5] KM: A floaty. You’re a Poolboy.

[0:53:48.0] AD: Awesome. That works out perfect.

[0:53:50.4] KM: Flag and Banner has that huge razorback section and Tim just today said, “We've got to give him one of those razorback floaties.” He is the Poolboy.

[0:53:57.0] AD: I'll be telling people that if this is for the razorback basketball team and not that football team. That's a topic for another day.

[0:54:08.3] KM: We have three topics we could have talked about today that we did not get to. I want to tell my listeners, if you have a great entrepreneurial story you would like to share, I'd love to hear from you. Send a brief bio and your contact info to questions@upyourbusiness.org and someone will be in touch.

Finally, thank you for spending time with me. If you think this program has been about you, you're right, but it's also been for me. Thank you for letting me fulfill my destiny. My hope today is that you've heard or learned something that's inspiring or enlightening, and that it whatever it is, will help you up your business, your independence or your life.

I'm Kerry McCoy and I'll see you next time on Up In your Business. Until then, be brave in keep it up.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:54:51.2] TB: you've been listening to up in your business with Kerry McCoy. If you'd like to hear this program again, next week go to flagandbanner.com, click the tab labeled Radio Show and there you'll find a podcast with links to resources you heard discussed on today's show. Kerry’s goal, to help you live the American dream.

[END]