Eric Herget, HUB International and Heights Corner Market | Episode 118 | 12-14-2018
Eric Herget was born in Paragould and attended Catholic High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Eric has a bachelor's degree in marketing from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Eric's father may have taught him the most important lesson of business. "You have to give to the community," Herget said. You have to work hard for the community you live in." That philosophy led him to success in business - such as when he finally nailed down the account for a Fortune 200 utility company after seven years.
Herget joined Ramsey Krug Farrell & Lensing in 1999 after working at Sedgwick North American from 1995-99 and Entergy from 1987-95. He became chair of the Workforce Investment Board in July, has been on the board of the Cathedral School and recently joined the vestry of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.
Herget said working with the community on civic issues instills confidence in people that as a businessman he has integrity and their interests at heart. He also was part of the Vision Team for Little Rock, setting goals for the city's future.
Arkansas Business honors 40 intriguing business and political leaders under 40 years old who bear watching. In 2003, Eric was one of those named for that year nominated by readers and Arkansas Business editors.
As a more than 20 year veteran of the insurance industry, in 2011 Eric lead the effort of bringing HUB International, a leading global insurance broker, to the state of Arkansas.
HUB is headquartered in Chicago, Illinois and is an international insurance brokerage firm that provides property and casualty, life and health, employee benefits, investment and risk management products and services through offices located in North America.
Last year Herget purchased Terry's Finer Foods and recently renamed it Heights Corner Market.
Up In Your Business is a Radio Show by FlagandBanner.com
Share this Page
EPISODE 118
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:08.8] JM: Welcome to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. Through storytelling and conversational interviews, this weekly radio show offers listeners first-hand insight in starting and running a business, the ups and downs of risk-taking and the commonalities of successful people. Connect with Kerry through her candid, often funny and informative weekly blog where you'll read and comment on life as a wife, mother, daughter and entrepreneur.
Now, it's time for Kerry McCoy to get all up in your business.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:42.1] KM: Thank you, Jayson. Listen to my guest over there giggling. Like Jayson said, I’m Kerry McCoy and it’s time for me to get all up in your business. Before we start, I want to introduce my newest co-host, who you just heard from, Jayson Malik from Arise Studio in Conway, Arkansas.
Hey, Jayson.
[0:01:00.6] JM: Hello.
[0:01:02.4] KM: If right now you’re sitting at your computer, you might want to watch us live on flagandbanner.com’s Facebook page. We’ve already been on for three minutes. It’s fun to see what goes on behind the scenes, before the scenes and at the commercial breaks. It’s like real-time reality radio.
If for some reason, you missed any part of today’s show, or want to hear it again, or share it, there is a way and Jayson is here to tell you how.
[0:01:28.8] JM: Listen to all UIYB past and present interviews by going to flagandbanner.com and clicking on Radio Show. Also by joining our e-mail list, or liking us on Facebook, you’ll get a reminder notification that day of the show with a sneak peak of that day’s guest. Back to you, Kerry.
Okay, you want to read it? Listen to UIYB past and interviews by going to flagandbanner.com and clicking on Radio Show. Also, if you want to join our e-mail list, or liking us on Facebook, you’ll get a reminder notification of that day of the show with a sneak peak of that day’s guest. Back to you, Kerry.
[0:02:08.3] KM: What’s going on?
[0:02:09.6] JM: I don’t know. Something on the board.
[0:02:11.5] KM: I can hear that in my headset. Could the people not hear it?
[0:02:15.0] EH: I’m not getting anything.
[0:02:16.5] KM: Oh, so we don’t know.
[0:02:17.7] M: I heard it.
[0:02:18.6] KM: According to me, you were talking over a recording in my headset, but you didn’t hear that?
[0:02:23.9] JM: No. It wasn’t mixing through the board on my end.
[0:02:26.7] KM: Well, there you go. All right, no big deal. That’s why it’s reality radio show. I like that actually. I love that though. I love it when things aren’t perfect, because that’s when you know it’s for real.
We used to screen print back in the old days and customers would call you up and they’d say, “This isn’t exactly lined up. The colors are not just perfectly lined up.” I’d say, “It’s screen printing. It’s an art form. The irregularities are beautiful.” They’re like, “No.” Now, everything is digital and it’s perfect. To me, it’s not as lovely.
Anyway, this show Up In your Business with Kerry McCoy began as a platform for me, as a small business and a guest to pay forward our experiential knowledge in a conversational way. I always learn something new. Originally, my team and I thought it would speak to entrepreneurs and want to be entrepreneurs, but it seems to have a wider audience appeal, because after all, who isn't inspired by everyday people's American-made stories?
To see people in their totality is humanizing. We all thirst to connect to make sense an overcomplicated world. On this show, we have the luxury of time to go deeper than a mere sum by our headline. It's no secret that successful people work hard, but other common traits found in many of my guests are the heart of a teacher, belief in a higher power and creativity, because business in of itself is creative.
Today, we have Mr. Eric Herget, an insurance aficionado. I had to look that word up. I love that word. Not very long ago, made a big career change. He sold his insurance brokerage business to –
[0:04:06.8] EH: Hub International.
[0:04:07.8] KM: Hub International and purchased Terry's Finer Foods, a specialty grocery store in an upscale neighborhood in Little Rock, Arkansas. He promptly changed the name of this store to the Heights Corner Market and more recently, has placed a coming soon banner in the window next door for Walter’s Coffee and Speakeasy.
Eric is a returning guest. It was 2016 when he and his son Ryan were on the show talking about son Ryan's very successful delivery business shuttle. Since then, Ryan has sold that business and moved on, right?
[0:04:39.8] EH: That's correct.
[0:04:41.4] KM: I suppose did another business venture, which we just verified. I can't wait to find out what he's doing, because I haven't asked Eric, because I wanted to find out fresh and be exactly impromptu, new fresh on the air. Eric, after more than 20 years in the insurance business has jumped feet first into this life of a small business entrepreneur. It is a pleasure to welcome to the table, or this is my – Did you all know this is our 118th show? A man who was on my 14th show.
[0:05:13.6] EH: I didn’t know. Was that our –
[0:05:15.5] KM: I know. I lived at it – I listened to it today, I was like, “Whoa, it’s exactly two years ago.” December 2016 that you were on the show. My hard-working friend, Mr. Eric Herget, who I think now knows the real meaning of hard work. Welcome to the table, Eric.
[0:05:32.7] EH: Thank you very much.
[0:05:35.5] KM: You're from Paragould. Your father was an insurance man. You're in it, weren't it? You still are an insurance man.
[0:05:41.1] EH: Correct.
[0:05:41.6] KM: Now you own a small grocery store with perishables. I can't think of it a harder thing to do than that, except for maybe flowers that are also perishable. Yeah, you got to deliver –
[0:05:51.4] EH: We got flowers too.
[0:05:52.9] KM: Oh, yeah. You do? That’s beautiful.
[0:05:54.1] EH: We do have flowers.
[0:05:55.1] KM: Okay. Tell us how all that came to be.
[0:05:58.9] EH: When I met my wife about 20 years ago, we were on our first date, blind date. We were driving by the old Terry's Finer Foods. I looked over at her and said, “If that ever becomes available, then I want that store.” It was between – and I told her it'd be Kraftco, or Terry's Finer Foods. If either one of them came available. It’s first date and then lo and behold, we were on vacation in Florida early 2017. I get a phone call that the opportunity may be there. I left her in Key West. She said, “I'm staying here. You go do what you got to do.” I flew home and started working on the deal and we had it put together by March 1st of 2017.
[0:06:40.3] KM: What a romantic story.
[0:06:42.0] JM: Another blind date.
[0:06:44.3] EH: She was so happy. When I left that door, she was so happy.
[0:06:47.4] KM: That went on a blind date?
[0:06:48.6] EH: We were a blind date.
[0:06:49.3] JM:
[Inaudible 0:06:50.3].
[0:06:51.3] KM: Yeah, who wasn’t – it was some – Oh, it was last – yeah, who was it? Somebody.
[0:06:59.5] EH: That’s another blind date that – stories of that.
[0:07:01.0] KM: Oh, that’s really good. Oh, Harold Joiner.
[0:07:02.7] JM: Harold, there you go.
[0:07:03.3] KM: There you go. I do, I think of –
[0:07:04.4] EH: The Fitz man. Fitzwork.
[0:07:05.4] KM: The Fitz man. Fitzwork.
[0:07:06.9] JM: Yeah, that’s it. He got us to tune into. The same thing.
[0:07:09.7] KM: What a great story. Well, has it worked out?
[0:07:13.3] EH: Yes. All in all, I'd say it's gone very, very well. We've made little mistakes. We've not made any big mistakes, and so that's been very helpful. It's 6 a.m. to midnight most days. I still do insurance all day. Hub International is the largest private broker in the country, so we work on large deals all over the place. I have those customers, those prospects I have to deal with, and then my wife runs the day-to-day of the store. Then about 5:00 if I'm in town and not at another meeting, then I head to the store till we close up at night.
It's fun. Dinner in the green room, it's fun to go talk to folks and see who's sitting there. They have so many choices for restaurants in this town and they're great local spots to go, that it really means a lot when you see them sitting in your place.
[0:08:06.3] KM: You're not disappointed you bought it?
[0:08:07.5] EH: Not at all. I’m 54. I don't want to do insurance forever. I'm not retiring from that anytime soon, but I have a place to go and that's – I can't go sit on the park bench somewhere. I had to have something to do.
[0:08:21.3] KM: Well, let's catch everybody up with what you – from the last show from two years ago, you started your own brokerage firm when – 20 something years ago, right?
[0:08:31.7] EH: Oh, I've been at several around town, two or three. Then in 2010, I left Regions Insurance at the time. Then with some guys in Tulsa, we started the operation The Holmes Organization of Arkansas. We started that here. Then Hub bought us in 2015.
[0:08:52.9] KM: You are still with Hub?
[0:08:55.3] EH: Correct. Yeah, I run the Arkansas operations.
[0:08:57.3] KM: How long do you plan to do that?
[0:09:00.0] EH: Like I said, I’m 54, so 65 at the latest. I don't want to say too much with my competitors all pouncing on my accounts that they’re, “Said he's retiring in two years.”
[0:09:10.4] KM: I thought when you sold it, you actually were planning on retiring.
[0:09:13.0] EH: No, no. They're a good firm. I wanted to stay with them and that brought a lot to the table for four of my clients.
[0:09:20.1] KM: I understand. I thought you wanted to retire and that's why you were selling it and that you were going to stay on for two more years and then you were going to retire and move to the Little Red River.
[0:09:30.5] EH: We still have our house there that we are selling now, because we just don't get up there anymore. The store is a living, breathing thing. In the morning at 8:000, those doors open. Well actually, starting tomorrow morning the door is open at 6:30. Then it goes all day long. The grocery is a seven-day a week operation now at Heights Corner Market, and then the Green Room Restaurant is Tuesday through Sunday. Sunday brunch. We shut down that at 2:00 on Sunday.
Then now we have Walter’s coming on. That will be 6:30. When they announced Starbucks is closing up in the Heights, that was about, two or three weeks ago – Walter’s started two or three weeks ago and the idea of it. I just thought, “Heck, if they're pulling out of coffee up there, somebody's going to do it.” We stepped in.
[0:10:24.3] KM: One of the reasons they're pulling out, I think is because they don't have a drive-through.
[0:10:26.9] EH: That's what I hear. Yes.
[0:10:28.4] KM: You're not going to have a drive-through.
[0:10:30.2] EH: No, but I've got a lot of parking. The businesses around us are not open in the morning, so you've got a parking spot you can pull in. It's not parallel parking like down on that end of the Cavanaugh. I think the ease of that will be better.
[0:10:44.1] KM: The fact that for our listeners who don't know where you're located, all three of these businesses that we just talked about are in one – I guess, you'd say mini-mall strip. It's not like you're having to have three different rents. You got one –
[0:10:59.9] EH: It's one company; the market and then what we just call the rooms.
[0:11:04.1] KM: Because you own the property too, right?
[0:11:05.6] EH: No. We’re leasing. We’re leasing.
[0:11:06.6] KM: Oh, you do.
[0:11:07.4] EH: We got a long-term leasing.
[0:11:08.6] KM: Do you lease all of that property across there?
[0:11:10.5] EH: Mm-hmm.
[0:11:12.0] KM: Did that come with Terry's, are you just leasing it?
[0:11:15.6] EH: The whole building, the lease became available. That's what we took was that lease.
[0:11:19.9] KM: I got you.
[0:11:20.4] EH: Then once you control that, you control the business.
[0:11:22.5] KM: It’s good for you to put businesses in each one of those, because you've got the whole piece of property being leased.
[0:11:26.8] EH: Correct. Because I don't want any partners in the building. I like getting along with me and not having to worry about –
[0:11:34.0] KM: Neighbors can be tough.
[0:11:35.2] EH: Yes.
[0:11:36.4] KM: Yes, neighbors can be tough. You first went in – Let's talk about each one of these. You first went in and bought Terry's Finer Food and it's a labor of love. I feel like almost all small businesses are labor of love. You went in there, what was the first thing you did?
[0:11:51.5] EH: Yeah. I had shopped there for 40 years. I charged on my parents charge account forever. Whenever they go to the lake, we'd eat the best steaks you've ever had. Day one was just to go in and clean and freshen the place up and paint and move some things around and buy new equipment. I still have a picture of Lou Anne on the produce case way up in the air up there with a dry vac, cleaning up there. We just –
[0:12:21.6] KM: Lou Anne is your wife?
[0:12:22.7] EH: Yes. We just reset the whole store. We tried to bring in – not tried, we did bring in organic non-GMO, all these terms you hear. People like that, but we've learned that our old customers, the old Terry's customers they just want the old groceries they used to have. We've had to go back and blend that back in.
[0:12:46.7] KM: They want the garlic cheese roll.
[0:12:49.5] EH: Exactly.
[0:12:50.2] KM: To make garlic cheese grits.
[0:12:51.4] EH: Exactly.
[0:12:52.4] KM: Because you can't find that garlic cheese roll anywhere. If you're from Little Rock, Arkansas, you know what I'm talking about.
[0:12:58.2] EH: That's right. Our produce, we buy as much local as we can, as fresh as we can. This time of year your options are limited. Our suppliers for that or excellent, best in the business, and then we're getting into prepared foods where we're doing a lot of cooking all day and soups and chicken spaghettis and those kinds of things. Ribs. Nathan's doing some great ribs up there.
Then you come around to the deli case and then the seafood case. Seafood comes in every other day, so it's very fresh. Then our meat case is the best in the state. I know there's some good meat cutters out there and they might not like that comment, so I'll say it's the best in town. From prime meats to wagyu meats, to duck and quail and rabbit.
[0:13:41.4] KM: Have you changed any of your vendors?
[0:13:43.8] EH: A few. A few. Terry's had good suppliers as well. When the old affiliated foods went out of business, that hurt the small grocer in the state. That's where you went to to get a can of green beans. We've had to find new vendors for that and get a little more creative for that.
[0:14:03.8] KM: All right, this is a great place to take a break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Mr. Eric Herget, owner of Heights Corner Market, formerly Terry's Finer Food in the upscale Heights neighborhood in Little Rock, Arkansas. We'll talk about the challenges facing small grocery stores today, what Eric's plans are for the future and find out what his son Ryan is up to now. We'll be back after the break.
[BREAK]
[0:14:31.1] JM: You're listening to Up In your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. Over 40 years ago with only $400, Kerry McCoy founded Arkansas Flag and Banner. During the last four decades, the business has grown and changed, starting with door-to-door sales, then telemarketing, to mail order and catalog sales, and now a third of their sales come through the internet. This past year, Flag and Banner added another internet feature, live chatting.
Over time, Kerry’s business and leadership knowledge grew. As early as 2004, she began sharing this knowledge in her weekly blog. In 2009, she founded the nonprofit Friends of Dreamland Ballroom, and in 2014, Brave Magazine. Today, she has branched out unto the radio with this very production, podcast and live stream on Facebook.
Each week on this show, you'll hear candid conversations between her and her guests about real-world experiences on a variety of businesses and topics that we hope you'll find interesting and inspiring. If you like to ask Kerry a question, or share your story, send her an e-mail to questions@upinyourbusiness.org. That's questions@upinyourbusiness.org, or send her a message on flagandbanner.com’s Facebook page.
Back to you, Kerry.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:15:55.3] KM: You're listening to Up In your Business with me, Kerry McCoy. I'm speaking today with Mr. Eric Herget, owner of Heights Corner Market, formerly Terry's Finer Food in Little Rock, Arkansas. Before the break, we talked about – if you didn't hear this, you need to hear this. Before the break, we talked about how Eric went on a blind date 20, how many years ago?
[0:16:14.3] EH: It’s really 19.
[0:16:15.9] KM: Oh, you really know exactly. You’re romantic. I didn’t know that about you, but –
[0:16:19.1] JM: Don’t push it.
[0:16:22.0] KM: 20 years ago, he went on a blind date with his wife Lou Anne, who said – and as he drove past this grocery store he said, “I would love to buy that little grocery store, Terry's Finer Food, or Kraftco’s Hardware Store. These are two iconic small businesses in Little Rock, if they ever come available.”
Last year in 2017, he's on vacation in Key West. He gets a phone call that Terry’s Finer Food is available. He flies home and buys this dream of his to own this small business. I had no idea of that story. That is really adorable. Now we're here to talk about how hard that business is. Eric said that he's still working selling insurance, going to do it forever, because that's –
[0:17:05.1] EH: That’s right.
[0:17:05.7] KM: That's what the real money is.
[0:17:08.1] EH: Right now it is. Right now it is.
[0:17:09.9] KM: Small businesses don't – they may sell a lot, but the profit margin on a business that has a cost of goods is a lot different than a service business, or I don't know, any type of business that doesn't actually have a product that you buy and then you turn around and you sell it. That cost of goods eats in to your profit like nothing else. The consumers today want everything cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. You're lucky. That's not your customer.
[0:17:45.1] EH: No. I mean, we are a – Lou Anne may cringe if she's listening to this, but we are a convenience store.
[0:17:51.0] KM: That’s exactly right.
[0:17:53.4] EH: We are going to be higher than our competitors, than the box stores. I can't get the quantity deals they get, but –
[0:18:00.5] KM: A quality store.
[0:18:01.7] EH: Oh, yeah. I've put our quality against anybody.
[0:18:04.6] KM: Yes. I think it's a convenience store. I was telling – in the earlier, I was telling by that I listened to your son's interview that you and him did in 2016, in December of 2016, and your son said this. He's 23-years-old. He's already owned three businesses and sold three businesses for a good profit. He said there was a time that consumers wanted service. He said consumers don't want service anymore. He said consumers want convenience, and that’s what you're talking about.
[0:18:33.4] EH: Yeah. I don't recall him saying that, but that's interesting that he and I have that same thought. That's what the story is. You pull up out front, you walk in, we know your name. What can we help you with? If we see somebody walking out of the store empty-handed, we go track them down and say, “What did we miss? What were you looking for?” Nine times out of 10 they say, “Well, I was looking for this.” We say, “It was right over here.” We take them back in. If it's pouring down rain, we carry your bags out for you.
[0:19:01.2] KM: You all still deliver?
[0:19:02.7] EH: We will deliver. We will deliver. We don't get a lot of requests for it, but bottom line if Little Miss Smith says, “I'm not feeling well.” We'll get her some chicken soup over there. We'll take care of her.
[0:19:15.5] KM: I've actually had to do that before.
[0:19:17.6] EH: Yeah. That neighborhood, we've got a lot of friends up there. There's some older folks up there that still shop with us quite a bit, and we take care of them. If anybody needs anything, we'll do it.
[0:19:29.1] KM: What's the biggest difference between insurance and grocery store business? What would you say is the – I mean, that's two completely different careers you're in.
[0:19:38.7] EH: Oh, it's the risk of this. If this didn't go well, then we're in a world of hurt. We've got some personal guarantees out there, so –
[0:19:50.3] KM: Not many people do that at 50-years-old.
[0:19:52.5] EH: No, no. My age is not when you normally bet the nest egg. You're thinking of golf and go and moving to Florida and all that stuff. I want something to do as I get older. I every day get to that store early off and I'm the one there that's turning on the lights and turning everything on before I head downtown to my real office down there. I love great folks when they come in in the morning and talking to –
[0:20:20.2] KM: It’s very social.
[0:20:21.2] EH: Oh, it's a very social place.
[0:20:23.5] KM: I hope I can say Arkansas Flag and Banner is my firstborn.
[0:20:26.4] EH: Oh, yeah.
[0:20:27.6] KM: Now this would be your fourth born, because you have three sons.
[0:20:31.0] EH: Three sons and daughter Cameron. Then Lou Anne’s two steps – two sons.
[0:20:36.0] KM: I didn't realize you had four children.
[0:20:38.5] EH: Well, Cameron I adopted several years ago.
[0:20:42.3] KM: I did not realize that.
[0:20:43.9] EH: She is an official fourth. She's doing well. She's at University of Tennessee.
[0:20:48.0] KM: Well, good for you. What would you say – When I think about your stuff, I think that the hardest thing would be inventory. What would you say is the hardest thing about the grocery business? Did you have to do a lot of technology upgrades when you bought it?
[0:21:03.7] EH: Inventories is definitely tough. For the reason that we do not have a back stock area. Really what you see is what you're getting. We don't have anything in a back room somewhere to resupply if it's the last box of J&M chocolate chip cells. That's a challenge. We're constantly bringing things in, so it's real-time. The food on our shelves hadn't been there long, because it turns and we're not pulling out of somewhere else.
[0:21:30.6] KM: Do you use an inventory to control it? Have you looked at your inventory every day and restock based off of a printout?
[0:21:36.4] EH: We just installed a new system that even on my phone I can look and see what's sold today, what hasn't sold today. We have a new rule. If it's been there for 30 days and it hasn't moved and then that's – we want to be the store that has that theme that everybody's looking for, but no one else has and they always think of us, where they were probably the ones that will have it.
We like to be that guy. You can't have inventory sit there all year either, that's sitting there tied up. You got that game of the things that are selling and you definitely want those on the shelf. If it's sitting too long, then that's your money, that's your capital, that’s your money to go buy new stuff sitting right there.
[0:22:18.0] KM: I always have a problem figuring out what my average turnover is.
[0:22:22.9] EH: See, I can pretty much compute it live right now with our new system. We're still learning it and its capabilities. It's a cloud-based system. The old system we have is servers and towers and could collapse at any time, so it's time to move on to the new deal.
[0:22:42.2] KM: Do you advertise?
[0:22:43.5] EH: We do.
[0:22:44.1] KM: Where? I've never seen your advertisements.
[0:22:45.6] EH: There's a couple of magazines that we advertise. Obviously, any business today is social media. You have to be.
[0:22:55.0] KM: Who do you think your clients are? I know it's the people in the neighborhood. They’re coming by for convenience, they're coming by for quality. Do you try to go outside of that area, or do you just try to focus on just your neighborhood right there? If you were going to go outside that area, what would be your advertising – what would be your niche? The same thing I just said, quality, convenience?
[0:23:13.2] EH: Yeah. The first thing we wanted to do was keep the old Terry’s customer. That’s the base of the store. I think, we've pretty well done that now. Yeah, and then hence, it's that's why we talked about going to organic and other things was to try to get to the younger crowd that really cares more about what they are eating and drinking.
[0:23:34.7] KM: If you can't make a go of it, who can?
[0:23:38.8] EH: I would say nobody can put more hours in and survive than we are right now.
[0:23:44.1] KM: Whole Food.
[0:23:45.0] EH: I’d challenge anybody to keep the hours we are.
[0:23:47.6] KM: If you can’t do it, then is it just got to go to Whole Foods? I mean, Amazon bought Whole Foods. I would say that's your biggest competitor. Is it just going to be all the Mom & Pop grocery stores are absolutely just going to be gone?
[0:24:00.0] EH: They're closing. No doubt.
[0:24:01.8] KM: Terry's Finer Food is 40 years older.
[0:24:04.7] EH: How old? We’re probably 70 something years old. Nobody could really get me the date. Not Mr. Terry, then the Llewellyn's, then the Goldens and now us.
[0:24:12.5] KM: Why'd you decide to change the name? It had such longevity with that name.
[0:24:15.7] EH: Oh, it came down to the store was closing and you wanted to be very careful with was the name associated in a positive way? Which I by no means slamming the prior owners at all. They did a fine job with Terry's, but we just decided to take it a different direction. That was a name that we didn't – we really didn't owned that name. I didn't want to start down that road with that name and find out that it was trademarked or anything like that, or some prior owner still controlled that, so we decided to just go with a new name.
[0:24:52.1] KM: You’re such an insurance person. That's such an insurance thing to do.
[0:24:55.4] EH: Oh, Lou Anne she gets so mad at me, because she's an interior designer and she looks like the new Walter’s Coffee and Speakeasy. It's a beautiful room of sofas and lamps and rugs and wing-backs, not – very few tables. She wants it to look good. What I tell the staff is and suggest to her, I don't tell her, is –
[0:25:15.1] JM: Of course not.
[0:25:16.8] EH: That it’s risk management first, it's safety first. Is what you're wanting to do safe? Then logistically, is it going to work? Can somebody push their grocery cart down that aisle and down through there? Does it feasibly work for somebody to come in and do business with us? Then it's how does it look and how do we dress it up? It's always, I start with risk management and everything and it drives them crazy. It’s just what I do. She put a new sign out front that was really going to hang down too low and I said, “The first thing that's going to happen is somebody's going to walk under this and bang their head on it.”
[0:25:51.7] KM: You’re going to get sued.
[0:25:52.8] JM: You’re going to get sued.
[0:25:53.4] EH: The sign is 30 inches higher now.
[0:25:56.7] KM: Good for you. You all make a great team.
[0:25:58.4] JM: Well, it makes sense too, because you’re thinking ahead. Just make sure that is safe, so you won’t have problems.
[0:26:02.5] EH: Exactly. I mean, there's an old bathroom in the Walter space that has about an 8-inch drop in and out of there. I don't want to use that room and we don't use that room for the public. I understand there were some people that fell out of that bathroom, time to time. It's not a safe thing. That made ADA requirements for sure. We use the bathrooms that are in the green room over on that side and they're all compliant.
[0:26:30.0] KM: Okay. Let's tell everybody that’s listening, you have Terry's Finer Food, or Heights Corner Market in the middle. When you walk in the front door, or if you didn't walk in the front door and you went around the corner to the right, you would find your –
[0:26:43.2] EH: That's the green room restaurant. As you're looking at the building, on the right side and that's the old pizzeria and then the old Terry's restaurant was in there too.
[0:26:50.9] KM: What does it sell? What are its hours and what does it sell?
[0:26:53.9] EH: Oh, I brought a menu right there.
[0:26:55.2] KM: You sure did. I’ll show the people on Facebook. There it is people.
[0:26:57.7] EH: We’re open from 11:00 – I think it's 11:30, maybe 11:00.
[0:27:03.7] KM: I’ll look in your book.
[0:27:04.7] EH: To 2:00 and then it opens again at 5:30 to 9 or 10.
[0:27:08.2] KM: Oh, okay.
[0:27:09.4] EH: The food in there – and our chef is doing a fantastic job.
[0:27:13.1] KM: It's American food.
[0:27:14.8] EH: Yeah. The meat, the seafood, all of that comes out of the market. He shops in the market –
[0:27:20.4] KM: In your store. I love that. That's a full circle business right there.
[0:27:25.7] EH: The chef and the afternoons got a grocery cart walking around and he's buying the things that he needs for that night.
[0:27:31.1] KM: That feels really New Yorkish.
[0:27:33.0] JM: Who is the chef?
[0:27:33.9] EH: Robert Scott. He's doing a great job, great job for us.
[0:27:37.9] KM: To me, there's not enough American food restaurants. They're all themed. Matthew and I were talking about this the other day. They're either Italian, or Mexican, or chicken, or – seems like there's a lot of things going on. There's more Mexican restaurant, taco Mexican restaurants. I mean, if you want to go eat something else, you can't really find anything else to eat. Then there's a lot of Italian restaurants. I like seeing American food done well.
[0:28:05.8] EH: That menu is very simple.
[0:28:08.0] KM: I like it.
[0:28:09.6] EH: There is a special every day. You have to look on our website for that.
[0:28:13.2] KM: That’s nice.
[0:28:13.9] EH: Heightscornermarket.com. That's a brand new –
[0:28:17.0] KM: You look on heightscornermarket.com to find out what the green room restaurant has on there.
[0:28:22.0] EH: That's right. The market page is there, then there's a tab for Walter’s that says opening tomorrow. Then a tab for the green room. The menus are all there. We do private events. We had a big event – we've had several in the last few weeks. If you ask me what's the hardest thing we've done, those private events are hard. I mean, you get 60 people in a room and you're moving tables for that and chairs for that and setting for that. You've got 65 people that may want a steak a different temperature. It’s tricky.
[0:28:55.4] KM: All at the same time.
[0:28:56.4] EH: Yeah, it's very tricky.
[0:28:57.7] KM: All at the same time. I can imagine that that would be hard. I was going to ask you, 60 people. That's your max in there?
[0:29:04.4] EH: Well, that used to be. With Walter’s, that room is not going to be set anymore like that. It's sofas, rugs and –
[0:29:10.3] KM: What’s going to be it?
[0:29:11.7] EH: That room probably won't change much. It would be a big deal to move it around. We can put people out in the grocery store.
[0:29:16.9] KM: Now wait, is the green room is going to stay the green room. Walter’s is going to be on the other side of your restaurant, isn’t it?
[0:29:21.8] EH: The old Foster Cochrane space.
[0:29:23.6] KM: Yeah. The green room will stay there. Is that the place that you're doing the catering, or was it in the old Walter’s that you’re – or in the new Walter’s?
[0:29:29.4] EH: The old Walter’s. Not the old Walter’s. The Walter’s is where our private event space was.
[0:29:35.1] KM: You weren't actually renting out the green room restaurant for private events? I misunderstood. I get you. It's always a restaurant for lunch and dinner six days a week.
[0:29:47.0] EH: An occasional private party in there, we will do.
[0:29:51.4] KM: How many does it do?
[0:29:52.2] EH: 40. We will, if somebody uses that room, like it was used the night before last time for a Christmas party, but we set tables out in the grocery store. You'll have people sitting by the tide, or sitting by the –
[0:30:05.9] KM: Ain’t that fun?
[0:30:07.0] EH: Occasionally, you'll walk by and you'll see them grab a cookie.
[0:30:11.3] KM: I have to tell you though, when I see all that going on, I think about people stealing stuff. They’ve got their purses and I’m like, “Oh, look at those chocolate chips right in the handbag.”
[0:30:21.2] EH: So far, everybody's been honest about it. I've had phone calls the next day of wives saying my husband grabbed some cookies last night.
[0:30:27.1] KM: Put on our charge account.
[0:30:28.2] EH: Yeah.
[0:30:29.4] KM: That's pretty sweet. Okay, now so you've got the restaurant in the mid – I mean, you got the grocery store in the middle that both your restaurant, the green room and your new restaurant Walter’s corner. Walter’s –
[0:30:40.9] EH: Walter’s Coffee and Speakeasy.
[0:30:41.8] KM: Walter’s Coffee and Speakeasy all peeled for off the products out of your grocery store. Then you're going to open with the coffee shop now. On the other side of – so when you're facing your front – facing the front door, the right’s got the green room, the left is going to have the coffee shop.
[0:30:58.9] EH: Right.
[0:31:00.0] KM: Tell us how that came to be.
[0:31:02.6] EH: Well, some of it was the – when I learned that Starbucks was closing up there.
[0:31:07.1] KM: Oh, yeah. That's right.
[0:31:09.1] EH: We were booked in there quite a bit through the rest of the year. You get into January, February, March.
[0:31:18.7] EH: You mean for private events?
[0:31:19.4] EH: For private events.
[0:31:20.6] KM: Because it was a private event room prior to that.
[0:31:22.1] EH: That’s right. When you watch 2,000 feet of the best retail space in the city sitting there during the day, that's when I pulled a few – I try to eat dinner at other restaurants and talk to their owners as often as I can. I pulled a few of them. What would you do? All the answers were bar, something bar, with good light food. Then when Starbucks said they're closing, that's when I – that's where it became coffee and speakeasy.
[0:31:52.3] KM: Are you going to be open like at 6:00 in the morning for coffee and then to midnight at night?
[0:31:57.0] EH: 6:30 in the morning it'll open. We try to be a good neighbor, and so 9:00 to 10:00. If there's a reason to stay open later, then sure. We're not going to just run people out the door, but we are always aware at night of how we impact any of the homes that are near us. I would not want midnight people rolling out of there. Of course, we don't over serve.
[0:32:23.3] KM: Oh, whatever.
[0:32:25.5] EH: You got lots of that. I’m a former –
[0:32:27.1] KM: Yeah, insurance. I forgot.
[0:32:28.6] EH: I’m a former ABC commissioner.
[0:32:30.4] KM: You are?
[0:32:31.2] EH: I was. I was a temporary for them.
[0:32:32.8] KM: I just got to tell over on the radio that I have known you since you're 18. I cannot believe that. I’ve known him since he was in single. What were you? Sigma something?
[0:32:41.2] EH: Sigma Chi.
[0:32:42.4] KM: There you go. I knew it. Yeah.
[0:32:43.2] EH:
[Inaudible 0:32:43.2].
[0:32:44.3] KM: Okay, good. My, how people change. No, just kidding.
[0:32:48.1] EH: I was a temporary on the ABC and I enjoyed that. If a commissioner couldn't show up, I would step in.
[0:32:54.3] KM: Do you remember this about your interview with your son and he was giving you kudos and he said it's not always easy to do the right thing, he said. “My grandfather and my father, if one thing they taught me was always do the right thing.” He must have said it five times in a row talking about you. Always do the right thing, always do the right thing and how it wasn't always the easiest thing for him to do. It sounds like that's what you're saying. Sure, you could stay up and serve alcohol forever, but it's better to do the right thing.
[0:33:26.9] EH: Yeah. We want to be a just a local place to go enjoy yourself, have light fare in there, have a cocktail and then head home and go to bed.
[0:33:34.9] KM: Well Speakeasy is illegal alcohol.
[0:33:39.2] EH: Yeah, that's an old New York prohibition term, I guess.
[0:33:41.4] KM: That’s exactly right.
[0:33:43.0] EH: Yeah, Chicago. What else?
[0:33:44.5] KM: I was confused when I was like that. I was like, “What did it mean Speakeasy?”
[0:33:48.6] EH: Do you call it Walter’s Bar, or Walter’s Lounge, Walter’s this? I just thought, I hadn't seen Speakeasy, so we went down that road. No, it's just a come in, hang out place, most people in there will know everybody in the room.
[0:34:01.6] KM: Yeah, sure.
[0:34:04.1] EH: Before you're going to an event and we love back – you mentioned this, Hillcrest. I'd love to get some Hillcrest folks, and then we do and down in Riverdale in that area. We love it when West Little Rock folks come. They'll cross Mississippi. That's what Heights people say, “I don't go past Mississippi.” The West Little Rock people, we got to get them on this side.
[0:34:24.6] KM: They don’t come past Mississippi either.
[0:34:26.5] EH: Right. We want folks from all over town to come and join us. You got Uber today. Just get out and have some fun in the city.
[0:34:34.6] KM: I love Uber.
[0:34:35.3] EH: Yeah.
[0:34:36.0] KM: All right, this is a great place to take a break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Mr. Eric Herget, owner of Heights Corner Market, the green room and starting tomorrow, Walter’s Coffee and Speakeasy. We're going to continue talking with him about his businesses and we're going to find out what his entrepreneurial son Ryan is up to now. I can't wait to hear it. We'll be right back.
[BREAK]
[0:35:03.2] JM: Flag and Banner is proud to underwrite Up In your Business with Kerry McCoy, where listeners are offered firsthand insight into the humanity and commonalities of successful people shared in a conversational interview with Kerry.
Along with this radio show, flagandbanner.com publishes a free bi-annual magazine called Brave. First published in October 2014, Brave Magazine harnesses the power of storytelling and human empowerment. The Department of Arkansas Heritage recognize Brave magazine’s documentation of American life and micro-fishes all editions for the Arkansas State Archives. Subscribe to this free periodical by going to flagandbanner.com and selecting Magazine.
Back to you, Kerry.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:35:52.3] EH: Lounge, just the neighborhood might not like the word lounge.
[0:35:55.3] KM: They like Speakeasy. Just calling it Speakeasy.
[0:35:58.3] M: Speakeasy is
[inaudible 0:35:58.7]. Just move past the break.
[0:36:02.0] JM: We do that. Let this under you.
[0:36:03.1] KM: Are we ready? Are we back on?
[0:36:05.0] JM: You’re live.
[0:36:05.9] KM: Oh, hey you all. You're listening to – I was talking to Facebook. You are listening to Up In your Business with me, Kerry McCoy. I'm speaking today with Mr. Eric Herget, owner of the Heights Corner Market, formerly Terry's Finer Food in Little Rock, Arkansas. If you've got a question, want to make a comment, you can make a comment on flagandbanner.com’s Facebook page, or you can write this number down and call and Jayson will give you the number.
[0:36:29.2] JM: 501-433-0088.
[0:36:34.3] KM: See there, you can call in. Do it again, Jayson. What's the number?
[0:36:36.8] JM: 501-433-0088.
[0:36:41.1] KM: You can call and ask Eric a question about being an entrepreneur. He's just jumped into the entrepreneurial ship when he bought a upscale small grocery store in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Also, I want to tell you that if you're shy, you can just creep on my weekly blog about life as a small business owner at flagandbanner.com, or as I said earlier, you can listen to all of these podcasts by going to flagandbanner.com and clicking on Radio Show.
Before the break, we talked about how Eric ended up in the business of Terry's Finer Food, now the Heights Corner Market, how it was a romantic endeavor, a labor of love, which I think a lot of small businesses are. Then we went on to talk about how he's going to work forever at his HUD, H-U-D? It’s HUD? Hub. H-U-B, at his Hub International brokerage firm, that how he's just 55-years-old and he's just got more interesting, he knows what to do with.
Now, we also talked about how in December of 2016 he and his son Ryan were on, because his son Ryan at last two years ago was 23, so I guess he's 25 now.
[0:37:49.0] EH: No, no. He's 27, 28.
[0:37:52.2] KM: What?
[0:37:53.7] EH: Yeah.
[0:37:55.6] KM: I think I called him 23-years-old.
[0:37:56.8] EH: Oh, I was thrilled when he turned 26. I didn't have to provide insurance anymore, so –
[0:38:02.4] KM: Tough love dad. Actually, you said that on the radio show. We’re going to find out. I’m going to get everybody that’s listening.
[0:38:07.8] JM: Got cut off. That’s it.
[0:38:09.7] KM: I’m going to get everybody that’s listening a little background on Ryan Herget. This is your middle son?
[0:38:15.0] EH: Yeah. Can I say one thing?
[0:38:16.3] KM: Sure.
[0:38:17.2] EH: At the break, talk about opening Walter's tomorrow. I just looked at my phone and my wife has texted me, “I'm stressed.” I’m anxious to say here, what’s gone wrong now for opening a business by tomorrow morning? Anyway.
[0:38:30.8] KM: Let’s tell everybody, when you walked in here today I said, “Oh, you're opening your business. When is it opening?” You said, “Tomorrow and my barista just walked out.” I was like, “Oh, welcome to small businesses.” I think employees are the biggest challenge of all small businesses.
[0:38:45.0] EH: Oh, without a doubt.
[0:38:46.1] KM: Personalities.
[0:38:47.5] EH: We have got personalities in our store, but I mean that in a good way. I think it all meshes together very well. I'm probably the quirkiest of all of them.
[0:38:55.5] KM: Oh, I don’t know about that Eric. You're pretty down to earth.
[0:38:57.6] EH: I might tell you otherwise.
[0:39:01.2] KM: I do think employee personalities are important. You got to get the right mesh. When you're starting a new business like you have and you've only been through a year, it takes a little while to find out who your core people are to get the – they have personalities. I think businesses all have personalities. It takes a little while to get your personalities lined out. I know that I started 10 departments. Every time I'd start a new department in Arkansas Flag and Banner, which the most recent one was the marketing department. We've really expanded that. It takes a while to get the feel of how that department is going to be. It takes on its own personality. The people do it and sometimes it takes a while of hiring and firing and learning as you go.
Anyway, we're going to talk about Ryan. Let me tell everybody little bit about Ryan. Ryan came on and I highly – I've said this three times, the third time I’m saying that. I highly recommend you go to flagandbanner.com, click on Radio Show and go to Ryan Herget’s interview from December of 2016. I listened to it again today. That is the smartest kid. I made notes from the stuff he said. I wrote some of them down.
Let's just give you some background. When he was 15-years-old, he started – he saw a need for a power washing service in the neighborhood. He noticed his neighbors had dark driveways and fences and he started selling his power washing. Within three months, he made $20,000.
[0:40:23.3] JM: Wow.
[0:40:25.0] EH: When he went to college, he confessed that he had $80,000 in the bank when he left high school. Of course, that infuriated me because
[inaudible 0:40:32.9], “I’m not giving you money for it.”
[0:40:34.4] JM: A broken debt.
[0:40:36.1] EH: Yeah, he left that detail out.
[0:40:37.4] JM: What’s for dinner? You buy.
[0:40:40.2] KM: Okay. Then he sold that business and he got to Ole Miss, which is a drinking school, everybody knows that. That's what Ole Miss is known for. He decided to capitalize on that and started a discount card called The Daily Quench. It started off not – it started off where he's losing money. You have to listen to the show to find out why. He did a paradigm change. He started making money. He made $30,000 in the first night. Slept with a gun on his lap. He had $30,000 in cash.
[0:41:13.5] EH: I forgot about that.
[0:41:14.6] JM: Wow.
[0:41:15.7] KM: His story is great. He grew it into other states and then he left. He had a few regrets when he left, something that I'd never thought about. He gave some advice to people when they're selling businesses. I was like, “That's great advice.” Then he went to New York. On the plane up to New York, he told his dad that he didn't have a job. His dad thought he had a job forever and he had already quit the job three months before. He was scared to tell Eric, his dad. On the way up there, he says, “By the way dad, I've rented an apartment for a year, but I quit my job three months ago and I don't know what I'm going to do.”
[0:41:46.9] EH: The wheels were going out. The wheels were going out when he said, “I've already told them I don't want the job now.”
[0:41:53.8] KM: He gets up there and being an entrepreneur that he is, he notices that everything's being delivered and he decides to put together this delivery business called Chef Shuttles. He comes back to Little Rock a year later, starts this business, makes the money that he had projected to make in one year, he makes in the first 30, 60, or 90 days. In the first few months, he makes what he'd projected to making the whole year.
[0:42:17.2] JM: Wow.
[0:42:18.0] KM: He talks about how his goals were to just make startups and to sell them and make startups and to sell. He did not want to do like you and get a business and working it every day.
[0:42:28.4] EH: Hang on. Yeah.
[0:42:29.4] KM: No. Never like me. That he was going to sell it. At the time, he was getting a new round of funding and he sold it. What is your son doing now?
[0:42:39.0] EH: Well, I noticed today in the paper that a firm Waiter, just bought Bite Squad that bought his business Chef Shuttle.
[0:42:47.2] KM: Bite Squad and Chef Shuttle?
[0:42:49.0] EH: Yeah. That's what he sold Chef Shuttle to Bite Squad, he and some partners. Waiter is just purchased. Bite Squad was in the paper today, so my guess is he may be smiling a lot today, because I think he was a shareholder of Bite Squad.
[0:43:01.4] JM: You’re going to get another phone call, “I’m on another plane.”
[0:43:03.6] EH: Yeah. He is with a firm now that he's leading and they’re in Little Rock and Dallas and it's called Sniffle. Sniffle is it's telemedicine. Essentially they'll have an app that – and you’ll have to get him to tell you more. I'm probably giving you the very juvenile version here, but it's online, on your phone, talk to the doctor, doctor can tell you what you need to know and then the doctor I believe has the ability to bill for that time now, so it's a winner for them. Anyway, that's what he's doing. He's with the new company now called Sniffle.
[0:43:41.3] KM: It's called Sniffle. I've never heard of that. Let me see if I got this right. Chef Shuttle sold Bite Squad.
[0:43:47.5] EH: Right.
[0:43:48.9] KM: Your son kept some shares in Bite Squad and Bite Squad as of today, you just heard sold to who?
[0:43:53.8] EH: To Waiter.
[0:43:54.8] KM: Never heard of that. We're going to get a new –
[0:43:56.6] JM: Now it’s Waiter.
[0:43:58.0] KM: We’re going to get a new delivery service company called Waiter in Little Rock, Arkansas.
[0:44:02.5] EH: If what's accurate the paper I read today. Yeah, if it’s accurate.
[0:44:04.5] KM: Where is he living then?
[0:44:05.6] EH: He’s here and in Dallas.
[0:44:08.1] KM: He is working for a company called Sniffles that does online –
[0:44:12.8] EH: It’s telemedicine.
[0:44:14.9] KM: Telemedicine, meaning he's fulfilling prescriptions, or do you think it means that you’re touching your iPhone and it's taken your vitals and sending it off to someone who’s telling you – you’re fixed and have a heart attack.
[0:44:28.1] EH: I think you can consult with your doctor, with physicians about here are my symptoms, and they can help you through with what you need to do from there.
[0:44:37.3] KM: For all people that are out in the rural areas, that is a big, big deal.
[0:44:43.2] JM: The brainstorming.
[0:44:45.7] EH: There's several groups around the country, I'm sure trying to perfect it just like they are. I think they've come a long way in it. You can look up his website and see. I don't want to – I'm reluctant to say more, because I don't – I'm not sure really what I'm talking about with Sniffle totally. I do know, it's telemedicine-based, it’s technology.
[0:45:06.0] KM: It's the wave of the future. They're really talking. My sons, one of my son's wife's father works for a college who is really trying to coordinate this telemedicine and work on a technology for it. It's cutting-edge, it's complex, it's got to be managed. It's too big for me to even think about. One night I was having dinner with them and he was trying to explain it all to me and the technology that goes with it and the possibilities for it. It's a really wonderful –
[0:45:45.9] EH: Oh, yeah. I think you can use the camera on your phone to say, “Is this mole a problem?”
[0:45:51.6] KM: I think you can put your vitals on there. I think you could touch it and it'll send your vitals off to them. I just know a few things that your son said in the interview. He said about parenting. These are the subjects that he talked about that I learned from. He talked about parenting and how if you had given him more than you gave him that he would not be as ambitious as he is.
[0:46:15.2] KM: All right. I wanted him to earn it and I wanted him to understand the value of things. Yeah, that's an accurate story. Plus, the guy had 80 grand in his pocket he wasn't telling me about.
[0:46:29.1] KM: He talked about using his youth to his advantage, which I thought was interesting. I think, most young people don't realize that youth can be an advantage. Now sure, if you want to go borrow a bunch of money, they're not going to give a young person a lot of money. If you're in high school and you're hard-working and you go up to – you start trying to sell things, people are like, “Isn't that a nice hard-working young man?”
[0:46:52.4] EH: He sold Cutco knives, I mean, which are really good knives, but every friend we had for Cutco. They're not inexpensive. The power washing business, he worked hard at that and he had people working with him with that. He would go door-to-door leaving cards and mail boxes and then the postman got on him, because you can't put something in a mail box. It's not – had postage attached to it.
[0:47:19.2] KM: It’s a federal crime.
[0:47:21.0] EH: Yeah. He fixed that with them. Then so you had them start mailing out his things for him.
[0:47:26.7] KM: Yes. I learned from him every door direct mails, which I didn't know about EDD. EDD Every Door Direct. You can mail – if you take your letter or your post card to the post office, that they will put it without a stamp if you deliver it yourself to the post office and group it by zip codes. They will actually deliver – put it in everybody's mailbox for you for 15 cents.
[0:47:54.0] EH: Yeah, it's cheaper.
[0:47:55.1] KM: Arkansas Flag and Banner started doing that after your son – interview with your son. I had P. Allen Smith on the other day. I told him about it and he started doing it.
[0:48:04.2] EH: It actually came up at our place yesterday, because we have – Walter’s has a menu, because – we serve food. It'll be light or fair, but it's – We've got menus we'd like to get out, we'd like to get out, because we still hear quite a bit that the green room, what's the green room? We still get a lot of those type comments that people just are not aware.
[0:48:27.4] KM: You’re such a neighborhood market. You can easily do it by zip code. 72205, N07 and you're done.
[0:48:33.9] EH: 02. Yup. 082. No, I think we're getting ready to do the same thing.
[0:48:38.7] KM: I keep on in there. Because keep on seemed to work. Seems like all consumers are driven by coupons these days. I'm not a coupon a super shopper, but it seems like an awful lot of people are. What time you open in tomorrow at Walter’s Coffee Shop?
[0:48:52.2] EH: 6:30 a.m. We'll be there, I'm sure at 5:00, 5:30. We got quite a team coming in tomorrow.
[0:48:59.3] KM: There's going to be some big deals made in your coffee shop. You get to eavesdrop on them.
[0:49:02.7] EH: I hope so. I hear the group from Starbucks up in the Heights is moving down to our place, so we're excited to have that regular group of guys that goes in there that you can learn about anything in there and listening to them talk.
[0:49:16.4] KM: I brought you a gift, because when I was at your store the other day you said, “Kerry, I need a flag.” I delivered a flag next time I was in the grocery store, but I also noticed you needed something else besides a flag. Here it is.
[0:49:27.4] EH: Oh, lord.
[0:49:30.3] KM: It’s your flagpole.
[0:49:31.3] EH: The flagpole.
[0:49:32.0] KM: The flagpole looks
[inaudible 0:49:33.1].
[0:49:34.2] EH: Thank you. No, that flagpole I think is a piece of the water pipe. Not bad, aren’t they?
[0:49:40.1] JM: That’s a PVC.
[0:49:41.5] EH: Now what PVC. You’re right, our flag had gotten in pretty rough shape and I’m now –
[0:49:45.7] KM: I brought you a flag, now I brought you a flagpole.
[0:49:47.6] JM: Well, veterans and my wife, son is a captain in the army and –
[0:49:52.6] KM: Oh, congratulations.
[0:49:54.0] EH: - if your flag is fraying, you must perplex it.
[0:49:56.7] KM: Yes, you must. Thank you very much for that plug. Jayson, who is my guest next week?
[0:50:02.7] JM: I’m not sure.
[0:50:04.1] KM: That’s because he's so engrossed in the show.
[0:50:06.2] JM: In the conversation, yeah. Is it Joey Lauren Adams?
[0:50:11.0] EH: I have her penciled in. Now she's an actress from North Little Rock. I don't know if she's coming though, because I've texted her and she doesn't know if she’s going to be in town. She doesn't live here, but her family's from here, from North Little Rock. She comes in for the holiday. I penciled her in. If she doesn't come in, we'll replay some great show. I’d play Eric's son again, but I just had you on, I don’t want to do that.
[0:50:35.8] EH: If she don’t come in, I’ll come back. We’ll keep talking.
[0:50:38.0] KM: There you go. We could talk forever.
[0:50:39.9] JM: Do a Christmas show?
[0:50:41.5] EH: Yeah.
[0:50:42.0] KM: Thanks again Eric, for coming in.
[0:50:44.1] EH: Oh, I've enjoyed it. I love hamming it up like this, so it's fun to me.
[0:50:47.3] KM: Thank you. Jayson, will you tell our listeners how they can become a part of the show.
[0:50:52.4] JM: If you have a great entrepreneurial story and you like to share it with Kerry, you can send a brief bio to questions@upyourbusiness.org, message on flagandbanner.com’s Facebook, or make a comment on her blog.
[0:51:05.5] KM: Thank you. Last to our listeners, thank you for spending time with us. If you think this program has been about you, you're right, but it's also been for us. Thank you for letting us fulfill our destiny. Our hope today is that you've heard or learned something that's been 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 and keep it up.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:51:35.8] JM: You've been listening to up in your business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. If you miss any part of this show or want to learn more about UIYB, go to flagandbanner.com and click on Radio Show, or subscribe to her weekly podcast wherever you like to listen. All interviews are recorded and posted the following week with links to resources you heard discussed on today's show.
Kerry's goal is to help you live the American dream.
[0:52:12.8] AM: Arkansas Flag and Banner is proud to underwrite Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy. McCoy began this broadcast a year and a half ago with the intention of offering a mentoring platform for those with an entrepreneurial spirit. Through candid conversations and interesting interviews with business and community-minded Arkansans, listeners gained insight into starting and running a business, the ups and downs of risk-taking and the commonalities of successful people.
Kerry McCoy, Founder and President of Arkansas Flag and Banner believes in paying knowledge and experience forward and developed this radio show as a means of doing so. The biographies, life experiences and wisdom of her guests would likely go unheard if not for this venue. Rarely do people open up for an hour to an audience about their life, mistakes, triumphs and pitfalls. This unique radio show allows the listener intimate access into the stories of prominent leaders in our state.
I am Adrienne McNally, Manager of the Arkansas Flag and Banner Showroom and Gift Shop located on the first floor of the historic Taborian Hall on the corner of 9th and State Streets in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas. In business for 43 years, we offer an old school shopping experience with front door parking, clerks to help you and department store variety; open to the public Monday through Friday, 8 to 5:30 and Saturday 10 to 4.
[0:53:40.0] KM: Want to create excitement for your business or event? Do it with affordable advertisement from arkansasflagandbanner.com. We have tear drop banners, retractable banners and table drapes, we have street pole banners, museum and exhibit banners, we have custom flags, event tents, tailgating poles, auto graphics and window scrim. Don't forget, welcome home and sale banners. Consult the experts at arkansasflagandbanner.com. Go online for a free quote, or drop by our historic showroom at 800 West 9th Street in Little Rock.
[0:54:09.9] KM: Boost morale and patriotism with a new flag or flagpole from Arkansas’ flagandbanner.com. We have poles, hardware, accessories, maintenance support, installation and custom flags. We have flags of all kind; for the sports enthusiast, the world traveler, or history buff, we have them all. Bring in your old flag and get $5 off a new one. Consult the experts at Arkansas’ flagandbanner.com. Come shop at our historic location at 800 West 9th Street in Little Rock, or visit us online at flagandbanner.com.
[0:54:39.8] JM: Arise Studios is a full audio and video production studio located in the heart of Conway, Arkansas. Whether it’d be a band, solo artist, sound effects or voice-overs, or maybe you’re looking to get production done, from slideshows to full live performances, Arise Studios is the place to go. Check us out at www.arisestudios1.com.
[0:55:05.0] JM: I’m Jayson Malik from Arise Studios and you’re listening to 88.3 FM KABF Little Rock, The Voice of the People.
