P. Allen Smith, Horticulturist and Designer | Ep 108 | October 5, 2018
P. Allen Smith Horticulturist and Designer
Paul Allen Smith Jr is the oldest of four children, was born on March 12, 1960, in Little Rock, Arkansas. He grew up in McMinnville, Tennessee, in the Cumberland Mountains, where his father’s family had farmed for several generations and also operated an ornamental plant business. Smith calls himself a fourth-generation nurseryman and horticulturist.
The family moved back to Little Rock when Smith was twelve due to a career opportunity for his father, who unexpectedly died just three months later. To cope with his grief, Smith planted a small garden in the backyard and began raising chickens.
After graduating from Little Rock’s McClellan High School in 1979, he attended Hendrix College in Conway to major in biology, with plans of becoming a veterinarian. After graduation in 1983, he earned a Rotary International scholarship to study ornamental horticulture, garden design, and history during an eighteen-month stay at the University of Manchester in England. After returning home to Little Rock, Smith entered the nursery and garden design business with his family. He also became a private tour guide to European gardens and began teaching gardening workshops at the nursery.
Regular appearances on local radio led to a weekly gardening segment on Little Rock television station KATV’s Daybreak show in 1989. It soon led to a syndicated program starting in 2000, P. Allen Smith’s Gardens, which was largely shot at Smith’s historic home in Little Rock’s Quapaw Quarter. The original Garden Home is a 1904 Colonial Revival cottage surrounded by a series of garden rooms designed by Smith. He purchased the house for one dollar and relocated it to a 15,000-square-foot vacant lot. Smith divides his time between that home and his 650-acre Garden Home Retreat at Moss Mountain Farm in Roland, Arkansas, which overlooks the Arkansas River Valley.
At Moss Mountain Farm, Smith promotes the local-food movement, organic gardening, and the preservation of heritage poultry breeds. Smith founded the Heritage Poultry Conservancy in 2009.
Smith is a Certified Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society and a board member of the Royal Oak Foundation, the U.S. affiliate of the National Trust of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. His awards and recognitions include the 2009 Arkansas Cultural Enrichment Award from the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, the 2011 4-H Celebration of Excellence Award, the Medal of Honor from the Garden Club of America, Garden Communicator Award from the American Nursery and Landscape Association (ANLA), Horticultural Communicator Award from the American Horticultural Society (AHS), and the Odyssey Award from the Hendrix College Board of Trustees honoring the achievements of Hendrix College alumni.
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[0:00:07.9] CC: 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 into 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 can 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]
[0:00:43.5] KM: Thank you Chris. Like Chris said, I’m Kerry McCoy and it’s time for me to get up in your business. Before we start, I want to introduce the people at the table, we have, who you just heard from. Chris Canon, my cohost who will be managing the board and taking your calls, say hello Chris.
[0:00:57.5] CC: I will say hello. Hello.
[0:00:58.8] KM: And, recording this show to make a podcast available next week is our technician Jason Malik from Arise studios in Conway Arkansas. If you’re sitting at your computer, you might want to watch us live on FlagandBanner.com’s Facebook page, it’s kind of fun to see what goes on behind the scenes, I’m waving to the camera right now and between the breaks, it’s reality radio.
If for some reason you miss any part of this, of today’s show or want to hear it again, there’s a way and Chris is going to tell you how.
[0:01:26.1] CC: Listen to all UIYB past and present interviews by going to FlagandBanner.com and then clicking on radio show. Also, by joining our email list or liking us on Facebook, you’ll get a reminder notification the day of the show with a sneak peak of that day’s guest.
Back to you Kerry.
[0:01:44.9] KM: Last week Chris, we had technical problems here at the studio.
[0:01:49.1] CC: We did.
[0:01:50.2] KM: It wasn’t really at the studio, it was out at
[inaudible], out at the towers, I think the – I don’t know.
[0:01:55.9] CC: Transmitter.
[0:01:56.9] KM: Transmitter got struck by lightning or something so the show is not aired but my guest and I came anyway, we were on the air, we recorded the show, it was Ryan Harris from Oxford American Magazine and he talked about South on Maine and all the music he has there and I do want to mention that November the 6th I believe it is Arlo Guthrie is going to be coming to town in the Ron Robinson theater. It’s a very small venue, comfortable chairs, you can watch Arlo Guthrie do his thing. I think November 6th. Go to Oxford American website and check it out to find out the exact date. Don’t trust me exactly on that but it is the first of November and find out the price of the tickets.
Up in your business with me Kerry McCoy began as a platform. A small business owner, like me, and a guest to pay forward our experiential knowledge in a conversational way. Originally, my team and I thought it would appeal to entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs but it seems to have a wider audience appeal because after all, who isn’t inspired by everyday people American-made stories.
To see people in their totality is humanizing. We all thirst to connect to make sense of an over complicated world and on this show, we have the luxury of time to go deeper than a soundbite or a 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. My guest today’s name is P. Allen Smith and lifestyle are synonymous with creativity. Everyone wants to be him or at least live like him. He is nationally recognized as a gardener, cook, author and chicken farmer because for over 20 years, he has come into our homes on his PBS TV show or should I say, shows. P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home and P. Allen Smith’s Garden to Table.
To support his passion for poultry, in 2009, he founded the heritage poultry conservancy where he works to educate the public and protect endangered species at his farm, Moss Mountain, high above the Arkansas River. If you haven’t gone to one of his spring or fall events on the mountain, I recommend you put it on your bucket list. People come from all over the world to see what Mr. P. Allen Smith Jr. is showing, serving and saying about this cottage industry.
Today, we’re going to hear the whole story and get tips on raising backyard chickens and urban gardening, it is a pleasure to welcome to the table, my longtime friend, Mr. P. Allen Smith.
[0:04:31.5] PAS: Kerry, it’s a pleasure to be here.
[0:04:33.4] KM: Someone tell everybody that I’ve been trying to pin you down for two years and that you are so busy just like we said, hardworking, creative and your lifestyle is really complicated because you’re outside, you know, gardening, that’s where your job is and then you have to go inside and do the stuff that we all have to do at the desks, write books, do all that stuff. You’re very busy.
[0:04:58.2] PAS: I wear lots of hats. Los of different hats.
[0:05:00.8] KM: You sure do. We’re going to talk about all of them today. You were born in Arkansas but raised in Tennessee for a little while and then you moved back to Arkansas, you call yourself, I read this about you, a fourth generation nursery man and horticultural – say that for me?
[0:05:17.2] PAS: Horticulturist.
[0:05:18.8] KM: Horticulturist.
[0:05:19.6] PAS: It’s a tough word.
[0:05:21.9] KM: Tell our listeners about your father, your namesake and how you followed, not only in his footsteps but generations before you, because you’re four generations.
[0:05:30.9] PAS: Well, it goes back to the Cumberland Plateau where my father’s family comes from. They came there, they actually came to this country in the 1680s through Charleston, the Port of Charleston and they made their way west like so many Europeans, they were English and they were greedy for land and made their way to middle Tennessee by the 1790s and they’ve been there ever since.
After the civil war, there was a great deal of economic instability and the old crops that were raised by our family were difficult for them to make money with, principally cut tobacco and cotton and so they began to produce fruit trees and by the 1880’s, a fellow by the name of Mr. Boyd who’s farm was next to the Smith farm, began a nursery.
It was – they were side by side and legend has it that he began providing trees for a rather large property that was being built over in North Carolina called Build More. The family just really used the growing of trees and things like that, it’s kind of a cash crop in the beginning and then over the generations, they did more and more with nursery stock and it became less on fruit, less about fruit trees and those kinds of things and more about ornamentals.
By the time I came along, I had a keen interest in botany and learned a lot about farming and horticulture, very practical level and just carried that through my career and I went to Hendricks and studied biology with an emphasis on botany. I just kind of knew a lot about plants and it made it easy, those courses were easy for me to take I think.
[0:07:35.6] KM: Well, you grew up on a farm, right?
[0:07:36.6] PAS: Right. Then, went to England and studied garden history and design, master’s program there and then came back and we – for a long time, had a nursery and had a design build company and then in ’93, I began a media company and began talking about the things I was doing every day.
And helping answer questions about you know, what’s going on with my tomatoes and then that sort of, you know, went in to other aspects of life and helping people make better choices to improve their lives through using no chemicals or being very careful and using only organic methodologies and practices.
Then over time, about 12 years ago, we bought moss mountain farm which goes back to the 1840s, as you mentioned, it’s high above the Arkansas River Valley and there, we used that as really, kind of a studio set that enables us to help people understand how to grow things, we have kitchens there as a studio where we prepare healthy meals, we show how to – I like very simple meals, we have a rule that only five ingredients, we try to bring everything out of the garden.
It’s very much a show about healthy living really because I think that connectivity to nature that growing something is good for our souls and I think that the good food that we eat that isn’t – I mean, when it’s locally grown, when you know where it’s coming from.
[0:09:18.4] KM: It’s like the old days.
[0:09:19.7] PAS: It’s a reassurance for me at least and I know a lot of people feel this way today with industrial agriculture that you know, when you can buy it locally and you can know the farmer, not only are you getting something that you know how it was grown, where it was grown but you build a relationship with someone and that’s so important.
Socialization is so important. That leads me to the fact that we open the farm about seven years go to these two where we invite people from around the country who followed the show now for – I can’t believe we’re already producing – we’re in the throes of our 20th season on PBS.
[0:09:54.3] KM: Congratulations.
[0:09:55.0] PAS: Thank you. These folks are coming in, you know, to see the farm and we had a big group this morning and I have lunch with them before coming in to see you.
[0:10:04.4] KM: See how busy he is? That’s sweet of you to come.
[0:10:06.9] PAS: Then we have another big group tomorrow and then next week, we have Thursday and Friday’s book and we have 1,500 master gardeners coming on Saturday with Janet Carson who is a big leader in master gardening here in Arkansas and so, we’re just – we really enjoy sharing the farm and that social component, that interaction. This virtual stuff has its place but you know, you just can’t be meeting people and having that one on one time with them.
[0:10:39.4] KM: I know it. Do you still have the farm in Tennessee?
[0:10:45.1] PAS: Well, with their multiple farms.
[0:10:46.8] KM: It’s the one that you grew up on?
[0:10:48.9] PAS: No, we don’t, the one I grew up on is in a place called daylight and my great grandparents lived at dark hallow. All of my brothers and my father’s brothers and sisters.
[0:11:02.3] KM: Are still there?
[0:11:02.9] PAS: Yeah, except for one.
[0:11:04.5] KM: You moved to Arkansas when you were 12.
[0:11:06.6] PAS: Right, yes.
[0:11:07.4] KM: Your dad got a job offer?
[0:11:09.5] PAS: Yes, he moved, we moved from the farm back to Arkansas.
[0:11:12.8] KM: What was he going to do? Is he not going to farm anymore?
[0:11:15.2] PAS: Well, he actually never really embraced farming completely.
[0:11:20.3] KM: Skipped that generation?
[0:11:21.9] PAS: Well, this is what happens you see, I mean, this happened in the 70s, what happened is the small family farm began to change. It became difficult for people to make a living on the farm and so, what you had are these folks who would farm on weekends and that’s what my dad – he had about a hundred acres and he had cattle and you know, we had a big garden and we had road crops and this kind of thing and poultry and swine and all of it, you know?
It was really something he wanted to kind of go back to because he grew up that way. He got a job offer, wanted to come here and find a farm for us but sadly, what happened is he had back surgery and then had a blood clot from back surgery and had a pulmonary embolism and died when he was 37.
[0:12:10.0] KM: Wow.
[0:12:10.2] PAS: My mother raised us, all four of us children here in Little Rock and as I mentioned, I went on to Hendricks after graduating high school.
[0:12:21.2] KM: How old were you when he died?
[0:12:22.7] PAS: 13.
[0:12:23.6] KM: Isn’t that how you kind of decide, didn’t I read somewhere that you kind of as therapy, decided you were going to put chickens in your backyard?
[0:12:30.8] PAS: Well, that’s true. I mean, we just come from a farm and the idea was to find a farm but there was, you know, that takes a while and so my parents bought a house in the suburbs and I was just adamant that I was going to bring some of my animals with me, I wasn’t going to give them all up so I brought some chickens and a pair of turkeys and we brought our dogs and a cat and a parakeet. I started a farm and in the backyard.
I made a garden and built coops for my chickens and my neighbors were extremely generous and kind in allowing me to have this little agri hood.
[0:13:14.7] KM: Agri hood, that’s a coin phrase right there .
[0:13:18.9] PAS: In our midst and it was wonderful and it was really a way for me to stay connected to that life I’d had before losing my father.
[0:13:28.9] KM: It’s therapeutic.
[0:13:30.3] PAS: Absolutely, yeah. That’s why I’m a big believer in being in the garden and having that time to really think about the creator and think about your place in the world and to watch these amazing things grow and bloom. I mean, it’s just a miracle every day.
[0:13:49.0] KM: It’s hard work though, let’s just be honest. It’s hard work.
[0:13:51.5] PAS: Well yeah but there’s nothing wrong with hard work.
[0:13:53.9] KM: That’s true.
[0:13:55.3] PAS: Yeah. You know, I like it.
[0:13:57.4] KM: You do, yeah. You went to college like you said at Hendricks and then when you graduated, you decided to jump on the opportunity to study abroad but there was no internet back then.
[0:14:11.5] PAS: No.
[0:14:12.1] KM: How did you figure out where to go and what to do?
[0:14:15.2] PAS: Well, there was, you know, in those days, you wrote letters and it was really through a series of phone calls and in calling universities and you know, working out the time difference and calling these places and everyone was very kind.
[0:14:32.8] KM: Didn’t you apply somewhere and didn’t get in and ended up getting accepted. I think I remember this form coming out to one of your tours when you were telling everybody that you applied at one place for a college.
[0:14:45.6] PAS: Yes.
[0:14:46.4] KM: Didn’t get it.
[0:14:47.8] PAS: Well, what I wanted, I wanted to study landscape design and I had hoped to go to a school in Chatham which was in the southern part of England and they didn’t really have a design course, it was more of an ad school which really interested me. Then, a friend in England who became a friend, recommended the university of Manchester that in the school of architecture, in the department of town and country planning, they did landscape architecture and garden history. That’s how it came about.
[0:15:22.8] KM: Perfect fit for you.
[0:15:24.1] PAS: Yeah. It worked out that way.
[0:15:27.3] KM: They just sent you a little tri-folded pamphlet and said come here and you said, okay, you filled out the form and mailed it off and said, I’ll see you all later, I don’t even really know where I’m going.
[0:15:35.6] PAS: That’s the way it work then.
[0:15:36.8] KM: That’s the way it worked back then, that was a leap of faith.
[0:15:38.6] PAS: Yeah, you just do it.
[0:15:40.1] KM: You didn’t get to go online and Google and look around at the dorm room.
[0:15:43.4] PAS: Had no idea.
[0:15:45.0] KM: Yeah, you just got on –
[0:15:46.2] PAS: Yeah, that’s what you do.
[0:15:47.5] KM: Did you get on a boat or did they have airplanes invented back then?
[0:15:52.7] PAS: That’s really dating me.
[0:15:56.3] KM: You were there for 18 months?
[0:15:57.9] PAS: Yes, almost two years, yes.
[0:15:59.7] KM: Did you do private tour guides? Were you tour guide there or did you do private tours there or you just study?
[0:16:06.9] PAS: Just studied, yeah. It was really going around and looking at big part of what I did was to look at gardens of the 18th century, I was particularly interested in gardens that Jefferson and Adam had seen. English garden tour, they’d taken in 1786. They decided, while they waited on an appointment with King George to go on this tour of gardens.
Jefferson had capped a book called Observations on Modern Mardening by Whately in his library, he had a 1771 copy and it was sort of the latest and greatest gardens of England. He took that as a guide and they went around and looked at these gardens within a certain distance of London, probably the furthest away they went to near Birmingham and saw a great place called Hagley, another garden called, it was William Shinston, he was a poet at the time to see his garden.
[0:17:04.7] KM: If I wanted to go on that tour, I could still google it up and find out what the tour is the Jefferson tour?
[0:17:09.4] PAS: Well, I don’t know. I mean, maybe you could but a lot of the places are no longer there, I mean, like Shinston’s garden, the Liso’s is a lovely municipal golf course. Some of the great houses are still there like Zion House in London which is owned by the Duke of North Cumberland. Two set cows which is a beautiful house, it was – they’re at Burlington. Richard III or Burlington house.
[0:17:34.8] KM: How did all this change you?
[0:17:38.2] PAS: Well.
[0:17:38.2] KM: From a country boy in the south?
[0:17:41.5] PAS: I think travel changes everyone. You know, it was an opportunity to just see a different place, a different world, a way in which you know, people view things, it’s different and –
[0:17:51.9] KM: I’m surprised you didn’t stay.
[0:17:54.7] PAS: Then you know, I went abroad and went to Italy and France while I was there and Belgium and tried to see as many places that I could and now go back frequently.
[0:18:06.1] KM: Because you met some really high effluent friends over there, haven’t you?
[0:18:10.2] PAS: Well, I guess so, yeah.
[0:18:11.9] KM: You have, haven’t you?
[0:18:12.7] PAS: Well, I have, yeah, they’ve been great influence in my career tremendously.
[0:18:19.2] KM: I think this is a great place for us to take a break. When we come back, we’re going to continue our conversation with Mr. Paul Allen Smith Jr. of the PBS TV show, P. Allen Smith’s garden home and P. Allen Smith’s garden to table.
In this next segment, we’ll have him tell us about his road to fame. From a local ornamental nursery on stage coach road in Little Rock, Arkansas to nationally recognized expert on heritage chickens, gardening and farm to table cooking.
If you want to meet and learn from Allen, there’s a way, he is going to tell us about some upcoming tours on his farm, Moss Mountain, overlooking the Arkansas river. Here, he hosts people. I’m telling you, from all ilk’s and all over and doles out tips on urban gardening, cooking and raising backyard chickens. The rest of the story after the break.
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You’re listening to Up in your Business with me, Kerry McCoy. A production of FlagandBanner.com. Over 40 years ago, with only 400 hours, Kerry 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. Now, a third of their sales come through the internet and 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 her knowledge in her week weekly blog and then in 2009, she founded a nonprofit, friends of dreamland ballroom and then in 2004, starting an in-house publication called Brave Magazine, who’s next issue is slated for October 2018.
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[CONTINUED]
[0:21:03.2] KM: You’re listening to up in your business with me, Kerry McCoy and I’m speaking today with Mr. Paul Allen Smith Jr. Author of not one but five lifestyle books. I meant to bring one today that I have of yours just to remind you that I have one. Founder of Heritage Poultry Conservancy and producer, star of the P. Allen Smith Gardens, P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home and P. Allen Smith’s Garden to Table broadcast on PBS.
Before the break, we talked about Allen’s life growing up on a farm, being in Tennessee, your family for four generations of farmers and ornamental horticulturalist.
[0:21:45.8] PAS: Horticulturalist.
[0:21:47.5] KM: Horticulturalist.
[0:21:48.7] PAS: There you go.
[0:21:49.5] KM: I do this a lot on this show, this very much, there’s a few words I’m just not very good at. Now, you’ve come back home from England and we also talked about how you went to school in England. Now, you’ve come back home from England and this is when I met you. You had just opened Barnum woods and you came into Arkansas flag and banner and wanted to do a swap for – I don’t know if you remember this, for some banners to hang in your nursery and you said, you’d come out and putt some ornamental plants and stuff in my backyard and I was like.
You know, I don’t know this guy but you and I hit it off so good that I was like, okay. Then, when he came out and decorated my garden, I was like, my gosh, I think I got the best deal out of this whole thing. It was off the chart and you have not stopped since.
When you opened this nursery, did you ever think that it was going to lead to where it led to now? Did you have this in mind at all?
[0:22:41.9] PAS: Not really, you know, you never know how things are going to make a turn in the road. Life, that is. I love to create a back garden for you in the back, that was great fun and we deployed some I think, creative ideas there and turned it into a fun place. That’s really what we do is we try to create beautiful spaces for people where they can enjoy and connect and that’s very important.
But we did have a nursery and I had no idea at the time that I would be entering in to media at some point but really, how that started, Kerry. Was out of my interest in sharing this knowledge that I’d learned in England.
[0:23:26.9] KM: The heart of a teacher.
[0:23:27.2] PAS: I had had the good fortune to connect with the RHS. The Royal Horticultural Society, there’s that word again. They had a series of exams that you took to become a certified fellow at the time and I did that with the RHS.
I remain a member of the royal horticultural society and a life member of the rare breed survival trust in England and so, I just really wanted to share information and started doing this workshops that are nursery on Saturdays. They just grew in popularity.
[0:24:05.4] KM: I think you trained everybody in town because nobody’s gardens looked at the way they do today. You could spot your gardens a mile away and pretty soon, a lot of nurseries were following your lead.
[0:24:17.2] PAS: Well, I think that we did make an impact in the market and in a lot of ways, or in a few ways at least. I mean, one was sort of thinking about gardens in a different way and then also bring back a lot of great plants that we had sort of forgotten. If you went into a nursery in the early 80s, if you were looking for perennials, you might find daily lease and hostess and that would be it. Of course, being in England, it had opened my eyes to these amazing gardens and the variety of plants were being used and that reason, a lot of native plants.
Plants that grew right here on our roadside.
[0:24:52.4] KM: Really?
[0:24:53.0] PAS: Yeah. It was quite a moment for me to recognize that. I began doing teaching and then there was a host of a radio show, Sharon Lee on KREN who came, she was very interested in gardens and gardening. She and her husband and she said look, we should do a radio show together.
We started doing a radio show.
[0:25:15.8] KM: Once a week?
[0:25:16.6] PAS: We did for a couple of years for yeah, once a week for a couple of years and then we got our, our gut month when Rush Limbaugh went form one hour to two hours and at that very time, I got a very day actually, got a phone call from KATV, channel seven and they said, we’re looking for someone to come in and talk about country western music, automotive repair and gardening. I said, well, if it’s not all the same person, I might be able to help you but I’d be at a loss talking about country western music or automotive repair. But I could give gardening a go. I went in and –
[0:25:57.7] KM: Is it hard to prepare?
[0:25:58.5] PAS: Well, I didn’t prepare, I didn’t know what to – how to prepare. I’ve never been in front of a television camera in my life. I just went in and auditioned. I thought I was absolutely awful and you know, being basically an introvert, it was a harrowing experience and – but they called me back and said, we want you to come in and I would just come in and talk about what I was going on in the garden.
[0:26:23.1] KM: Do you have to bring props with you?
[0:26:24.3] PAS: Well, yeah, a few things. You know, tomato hornworm or something like that to show people.
[0:26:30.3] KM: You mean, a real worm?
[0:26:31.1] PAS: Yeah, roses that were blooming, things that were dead or dying and explain why and the great things –
[0:26:39.1] KM: Opposite of what other people would do. Well, it was, yeah, I mean, it was really sort of get right to it in two minutes, help people solve a problem. So, I just over time, these became very popular with channel seven and I had the idea of maybe syndicating these. Moving into syndication with these little short 90 second spots. That’s how we got started, we formed a production company in 1993 and that with some friends who were very supportive and they helped me get started with that –
[0:27:17.8] PAS: You had partners? Yup, then we grew from there, we did the segments, the little 90 second reports for about eight years and grew their popularity and our coverage over, about 250 stations around the country and then those stations started asking or a 30 minute show because I was showing up in the local news, you know, at noon or the morning show, it was considered soft, what was so interesting early on, the news directors had to decide whether they want it or not because it was a 90 second report and it was in the news.
[0:27:56.0] KM: Nobody was doing that, were they?
[0:27:58.0] PAS: Well, there was a fellow that was underway with a food focused 90 second insert, they were called. Initial and his name was Mr. Food and he would talk about you know, different kinds of recipes and foods and things like that. I sort of took that model at 90 seconds and developed it, focused on organic principles, gardening, things that you can use around the house that are without, that allowed you to do the kinds of things you need to do without using hard chemicals. Things that were good for your pets and that sort of thing.
[0:28:35.4] KM: Like tobacco, epsom salt.
[0:28:37.6] PAS: Well, tobacco, yeah, you want to keep your dogs from smoking it.
[0:28:40.5] KM: No, but – but tobacco around your bottom of your plant or it can be, you can put it in your water and spray your plants with tobacco, right?
[0:28:49.3] PAS: You can, right.
[0:28:50.9] KM: And, Epsom salt’s a great fertilizer.
[0:28:52.0] PAS: It is, those kinds of things, yup, right, using dishwashing liquid, you know, to help use that as an insecticide, those kinds of things. Then, we started doing simple recipes with food that people could do.
[0:29:05.7] KM: Every week, you gave a new 90 second commercial and you put it out to your – to 250 radio or TV stations for about eight years, was it hard to keep coming up with stuff or did you just repeat the same material over and over because the year cycle through and kind of the same problems over and over?
[0:29:21.3] PAS: No, we did one per day.
[0:29:23.1] KM: One per day?
[0:29:25.3] PAS: Each station got five a week. Every week day, there was a new one that aired and so we did.
[0:29:32.8] KM: How long before you started making money because that’s a lot of people to record and edit and put up and –
[0:29:38.8] PAS: It was a huge amount of content for eight years.
[0:29:42.2] KM: Yes, for 90 seconds, how much do you have to shoot? How long do you have to shoot a commercial or a spot to get 90 good seconds?
[0:29:48.6] PAS: Well, it got shorter over time but in the beginning, it took a long time.
[0:29:54.1] KM: Yeah, because I had no idea what I was doing. How long before your investors and you started making a profit?
[0:30:01.0] PAS: Well, it really took about six, about five years and we began to talk to sponsors and be public gain interest. The weather channel picked it up and the segments.
[0:30:12.7] KM: Were you giving it for free?
[0:30:14.7] PAS: Well, that’s what we did in the beginning.
[0:30:16.3] KM: You just gave it away for free, thinking someday, somebody’s going to start advertising with me.
[0:30:21.1] PAS: Yeah, that’s the way we started and we had to convince that this was a good.
[0:30:24.2] KM: People always think, entrepreneurs just are born with it, the way it is and that they were just born successful.
[0:30:30.5] PAS: No, you have to grow it from really nothing. From tiny little seeds of ideas and big productive plans.
[0:30:38.7] KM: Five years.
[0:30:39.7] PAS: Yeah, you have to also be patient I think and I think quality is also very important, keep the quality up and that was something that was always a hallmark of what we try to do. The thing that about these stations that was so interesting is that the news directors in the beginning, they said, no, we really want used, that is you know, a little more dramatic, maybe something that will raise, boost ratings and they’d use phrases like well, if it bleeds, it leads, you know?
That’s the kind of thing they want. Well, wait a minute, I think there are people out there, particularly in the morning and maybe on the noon show, why don’t we think about news you can use?
[0:31:24.3] KM: I like it, news you can use.
[0:31:26.7] PAS: That was sort of our motto.
[0:31:28.6] KM: I love that.
[0:31:29.6] PAS: We develop that and began helping people with these kinds of things that would make their life a little better and healthier.
[0:31:41.0] KM: When you first go to talk to people and tell them you want to give them this 90 second spot, do you go to each station or do you go to, is there a way you can go and reach all of it at one time to give your pitch? I mean, you have to go and sell every station.
[0:31:54.0] PAS: Well, the internet, you know, Al Gore just invented the internet. It was just getting started and so it was just getting started and so what we – yeah, I mean we were online and we were sending emails and things like that but it wasn’t nearly as developed of course as it is today but really, it was through a network of stations. For instance they were owned by one group and there might be seven or eight stations in those days and we were on channel seven and they were so helpful at channel seven. Dale Nicholson was fantastic and he was a big supporter or what we were doing.
And Bob Doubleday was amazing, he was the former executive, the manager of channel seven and you know Dale was fantastic and so he knew people, he knew stations they were at that time owned by I think Old Britain. Old Britain had other properties, other stations around the country and so they shared the idea and then we put together a news director advisory board where we could bring them together and on a phone call and just give us advise and they –
[0:33:05.9] KM: News directory adviser board.
[0:33:08.8] PAS: Well we just picked seven of the top news directors and brought them together. These were influencers, they knew a lot of people and we ask them to come and be a part of just –
[0:33:20.3] KM: And they just said okay? Because successful people love to teach.
[0:33:23.8] PAS: Yeah and so we wanted to understand better that landscape, that news landscape and they were so helpful all the way along.
[0:33:33.4] KM: And they were local?
[0:33:34.7] PAS: No they came from different places some –
[0:33:36.9] KM: So you just did a conference call.
[0:33:39.1] PAS: Well we do conference calls but in some cases many of them came to see us and then we’ve kept in touch with those news directors. Many of them have retired now but that goes way back to 1994, ’95.
[0:33:54.2] KM: When did you just went out – you started off as just Allen Smith’s Gardens and you put the P. in there after a little while, why did you decide to do that?
[0:34:01.7] PAS: No that’s not true.
[0:34:03.0] KM: It’s not true, that’s what I thought I remembered.
[0:34:04.9] PAS: I went to Hendrix and they gave me, they made the announcement but there was another Allen Smith and so that was the president of the student body and the year that I was president, they put the P. in for as a way to distinguish me from others and Bob Doubleday really liked the idea of the initial P. in front and you know, when you’ve got a vanilla name like Allen Smith, you’ve got to spice it up a little bit and so the P. stuck.
[0:34:31.7] KM: Well I think that is wise.
[0:34:32.3] PAS: But it has always been P. Allen Smith when we started the production, yeah.
[0:34:36.7] KM: Always. So you in the very beginning I think you started producing not at Moss Mountain. You are producing at your cottage in downtown Little Rock.
[0:34:45.9] PAS: Well we did and then my then partners had a beautiful kitchen and we used the kitchen and we used the gardens. We’d go and knock on doors and say you have a beautiful garden or my clients who had been so good to me and we’ve made gardens for them, we use those or we would tape in my garden downtown in which we still have. It’s that same studio set and we kept that until, still keep it but we do tape there probably every other week.
Some pieces from that garden, it is so handy to our offices and studio and then 12 years ago, we moved out to Moss Mountain with a lot of our production because of the – well just the construction of the farm and the fact that there’s an opportunity there with such diversity to find good content and demonstrate good practices of stewardship and taking care of plans and growing things and doing it organically.
[0:35:50.8] KM: It is wonderful to walk around that place. It is absolutely wonderful. You bought that house in downtown Little Rock for a thousand dollars. You bought the lot then you bought the house for a dollar.
[0:36:02.3] PAS: No, no but yes, I traded a landscape project for the lot and I bought the house for a dollar and had it moved onto the side and restored it.
[0:36:11.9] KM: There’s creativity. I mean the guy cannot stop.
[0:36:16.7] PAS: Yeah that is –
[0:36:17.3] KM: You are pretty modest about everything too. I have to drag everything out of you, when I started talking about that cottage house if it would have been me the first thing I would have said was, “You know I bought that for a dollar.”
[0:36:26.4] PAS: Well what I always say is it’s amazing what you can do people that you show before and after pictures and their jaw drops but you know, it is incredible what you could do with a coat of paint and $300,000 you know? So –
[0:36:39.4] KM: Where did you get $300,000?
[0:36:40.8] PAS: Well I don’t know. Well it’s over time, I am just making a point about so many of these reality shows, you know it’s right, well anybody can do that.
[0:36:51.6] KM: Well anybody can do that yeah. Your production company keeps you so busy all the time I guess. It sounds like you video every day on those.
[0:37:04.3] PAS: Well not every day but they are doing production every day. So I am not always in every piece we shoot. So it maybe that I do an intro to it and they will go visit an interesting place or get a story where maybe I can’t go but that gets integrated into the show and then I will do the opens and the wraps and that kind of thing and then I will do segments within the show and just like today, they’ve got we were doing this piece for just talk about heritage turkeys.
These great breeds or colors of turkeys that we’re a part of our heritage and our agricultural legacy and so this show is about that. We had Frank Reese from Kansas as a guest who came down to the farm. We interviewed Frankie. He’ considered the father of the heritage poultry. There’s been documentary out that you saw called Eating Animals where Frank is featured there. He is sort of the hero farmer and that documentary –
[0:38:02.5] KM: Hero farmer, I like that.
[0:38:04.3] PAS: Yeah ain’t that good and so we are doing this 30 minute show on the importance of the conservation of genetics. You know people say, well you love chickens and I really do but it’s the genetics that I find so interesting and important and the poultry too is just stunning for people to walk into and see our poultry collection and I’ve been around this my whole life and so I’m like, “Okay,” but what I love about it is that it is opening up a world that people didn’t really knew existed.
And we’re now three and four generations away from the farm and people have no idea how wonderful these animals are and how they populated our ancestors farms and I am not talking just about poultry. I am talking about sheep and swine and so I am a life member of the American Livestock Conservancy. The Livestock Conservancy as it’s called.
[0:39:03.9] KM: So would you say that Moss Mountain, when you purchased Moss Mountain I think you said 12 years ago, would you say that was a labor of love or a business decision?
[0:39:10.7] PAS: Well I think it was a labor of love. Yeah, it takes a lot to run a farm and it takes a lot to develop it in a way that you feel like –
[0:39:21.0] KM: And you don’t really sell anything off that farm do you?
[0:39:23.6] PAS: Well we have a gift shop and we have lots of tours and we don’t really produce anything except content.
[0:39:33.1] KM: Interesting. That is so 21st century.
[0:39:36.3] PAS: We are a content farm.
[0:39:38.7] KM: A real farm full of content, yeah but do you sell your chickens at all?
[0:39:44.5] PAS: We have a sale twice a year for our genetics. People are very interested in it because they are very – we’ve worked hard trying to bring a lot of these breeds back and then we have them or on the precipitous of extinction and so we’ve really worked to bring them not only back but also to bring them up to standards, the standards that they were in the say late 19th century.
[0:40:08.7] KM: Yeah, do you think somebody today could start the way you started 90 seconds.
[0:40:15.0] PAS: Well I think they are doing it all over with the internet, I mean with YouTube and things like that, I think it carries on. I think there’s opportunities out there. It may very well be, yeah.
[0:40:26.5] KM: But there is more noise, there is more competition.
[0:40:29.1] PAS: Well everybody that has a cellphone is a content producer now.
[0:40:33.6] KM: Well that’s true. All right that is a great place to take a break. When we come back we’ll continue our conversation with Mr. Paul Allen Smith Jr. of the PBS TV show’s P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home and P. Allen Smith’s Garden to Table. In this next segment, we are going to talk chickens, best practices for starting your own backyard breed. He is an export on breeds as you have been hearing and the exotic chicks that are still available to purchase and raise.
And last, we’ll get some tips on urban gardening and talk about the benefits of the current farm to table lifestyle movement but first, I want to remind everyone we are broadcasting live every Friday afternoon at 2 PM central time on both KABF 88.3 FM the voice of the people and FlagandBanner.com’s Facebook page and that after one week of every show’s airing a podcast is made available on all popular listening sites and YouTube.
We’ll be back after the break.
[BREAK]
[0:41:25.8] 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 own 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.
[0:41:58.1] CC: FlagandBanner.com is proud to underwrite Up In Your Business with Kerry McCoy, where listeners are offered first hand 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 by annual magazine called Brave.
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[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:42:42.5] KM: You are listening to Up In Your Business with me, Kerry McCoy and I am speaking today with the creative entrepreneur, Mr. P. Allen Smith Jr. author or writer or cook, founder of heritage poultry conservancy and producer star and I think director of the P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home and P. Allen Smith’s Garden to Table TV shows on PBS. If you’ve got a question, make a comment on FlagandBanner.com’s Facebook page or write this number down and call –
[0:43:05.1] CC: 501-433-0088.
[0:43:08.4] KM: One more time Chris.
[0:43:09.1] CC: 501-433-0088.
[0:43:12.2] KM: And if you are shy, you can just creep on my weekly blog about life as a small business owner at FlagandBanner.com or as I said earlier, listen to our podcast. I want to take this opportunity to give a big shout out and a thank you to Centennial Bank for partnering with the friends of dreamland ballroom and sponsoring this year’s dancing into dreamland which is Friday, November the 2nd. Tickets and a few tables are available online.
We sold some more tables last night but I think there is still some left. Before the break, we talked about Allen’s Life and how we ended up being a farmer and then we talked about how you ended up being this mass media multi-media person. It is just a fascinating story and just everything that you talked about harkens back to the very beginning of the show that we talked about everybody that comes to the show works hard, has the heart of a teacher and is creative.
I mean Allen has hit every one of those on the head. So let us talk about the Heritage Poultry Conservancy that you found and I think not very – maybe eight years ago.
[0:44:11.1] PAS: Yeah that is about right. Yeah it really sprung out of the fact that when we talked about my early childhood and my life moving from the farm into the city and the changes that occurred at that point in my family with my father passing away and me hanging onto that farm just in a small way in the backyard, well I began to show poultry. I couldn’t keep a cow, I couldn’t chose swine but I could keep a few chickens.
[0:44:39.3] KM: In the suburbs.
[0:44:41.2] PAS: In the suburbs and so here I had my mom who was raising four kids by herself and you know she really didn’t have a lot of mine share to give to me doing all sorts of things. So anything I could do in the backyard or with poultry was something that I could really do myself and I learned a lot from mentors and self-work. Well fast forward to about 10 years ago, I went to the state fair and was talking to the supervisor at the poultry show and I was making my rounds and looking at all the livestock which I like to do.
And then I went into the building at the time and it was not that many grey birds and I just told the supervisor, you know this looks different than it did when we’re shown what happened to the – that we had the great old breeders that we were bringing in these amazing sort of examples of the breeds and he said, “Well we just don’t have a lot of kids involved, you know the numbers are really dropping” and I said, “What can we do about that?”
So we had a meeting with the fair board which I am a member of the state fair board now and I said, “Let’s see what we can do to raise some money” and I said, “Give me an example of what a champion rooster might win?” And it was $12 or something like that and I said, “Yeah we need to work on that” and so I said, “Tell me, what does the champion stir get?” Well you know, those could be sold at that time for $1,200 or something like that.
I said, “We really need to bolster this with the poultry and the poultry kids.” Because the way I felt about it Kerry was that there were a lot of kids out there that don’t have the resources to be able to keep dairy cattle or beef cattle or horses or this sort of thing and it takes a certain amount of economic resources to be able to make that kind of thing happen.
[0:46:43.5] KM: And no hooved animals in the city.
[0:46:44.7] PAS: Well no. That is right unfortunately. I would have had those if I could but anyway, I just felt like the rabbits and poultry were a way to really let kids get involve and raise something and participate in the show world and that kind of thing. So we raised the money, we bought new cages and you know kind of spruced up space and got what they needed and I said, “I want this ribbons that these kids get to be bigger than the beef cattle.”
I want it to be the biggest ribbons given and so now these ribbons are absolutely outrageous. They’re huge rosettes bigger than the kids.
[0:47:24.3] KM: And they love that.
[0:47:25.8] PAS: Yeah, they do and then we’ve got this big gorgeous trophies that were their name goes on if they win best of show and so that’s been going on now and it is a pair of big silver pieces that my mother had and so we had those made into trophies. So now the kids get their names put on them or the winner and then we have prize money. So that champion –
[0:47:52.4] KM: It is not $12 anymore.
[0:47:54.6] PAS: It is not $12. It can be anywhere from a 150 to 250.
[0:47:59.5] KM: That is a lot of money for a kid.
[0:48:00.5] PAS: It is and a lot of these kids, I mean I am telling you some of them are so good at raising the poultry now, they are taking home $1,000.
[0:48:10.7] KM: Wow are they in the city?
[0:48:12.5] PAS: A lot of them are, yeah or in smaller maybe they come from – some come from Selene Country, Bryant, Benton, it is the state fair, they come from all over the state, yeah. But we do have some kids from North Little Rock and Little Rock.
[0:48:25.6] KM: There is something about taking care of an animal that teaches kids about responsibility and you want to dog but they are a lot of work, they are very needy, they are very social, you have to be home, you have to do things with them but a chicken.
[0:48:39.6] PAS: And their eggs aren’t as good as chickens.
[0:48:41.2] KM: And their eggs aren’t as good but the chickens or the poultry, you can lock them up at night and you better, yeah that is right but you can lock them up, you go on vacation for a while. They are not as needy.
[0:48:57.2] PAS: Yeah, there are automatic feeders and waters that kind of thing. They’re easy to take care of.
[0:49:01.2] KM: But you have that responsibility that you’d better lock them up at night or the raccoon is going to come and get them even in the city.
[0:49:05.5] PAS: Right. That is exactly right.
[0:49:07.5] KM: And you get one of them eaten which we raise chickens in our yard in the Hill Crest neighborhood and if you get one of them eaten, that kid feels pretty badly the next day.
[0:49:16.4] PAS: This whole backyard poultry phenomena has been interesting. It can –
[0:49:20.7] KM: I think you are part of it. You are part of the reason I think.
[0:49:23.0] PAS: Oh I don’t know about that. I feel like that we really took a trend, something that I knew something about and we’ve amplified it. We have certainly raised the awareness and we raised the awareness of these heritage breeds and so what we are not trying to do is tie in these breeds. We have breeds with needs with this kids that are interested and so they are raising these breeds that need to be – the population needs to come up and for us to sustain them.
[0:49:50.9] KM: So why do you think they need to be saved?
[0:49:52.6] PAS: Well I think the main reason for me is just genetic diversity. You know if you go down a very narrow path, genetically with any food source for a food system, it becomes more and more precarious and so we have these great seed banks where we are saving cereal grains, we are saving legumes and we have the world’s wheat and all of it, we have these seed banks in New Orleans. We have this seed banks in Norway and Colorado and England and various places where –
[0:50:25.5] KM: Are you saving your poultry’s DNA?
[0:50:27.6] PAS: Well that is part of the conservancy, yes.
[0:50:30.3] KM: Can you actually save the DNA?
[0:50:32.0] PAS: Well there is some work being done to cryogenically attempt to do this where the ovum, the egg, the sperm is safe. They are doing this with mammalian genetics and there is a place called Swiss Village Farm in Rhode Island and is funded by Dorrance Hamilton who is the Campbell Soup heir and so she gathered together for a period of almost 15 years lots of these great herds of swine, goats, sheep, cattle both beef and dairy and even to some degree horses and so forth.
And they cryogenically have conserved the sperm and eggs of these mammalian species or varieties of heritage animals so that they could be put into a surrogate at some point 400 years into the future and that variety say it’s a Beltway Cow or Belted Gateway cow, they would be able to.
[0:51:38.5] KM: All you have to really do – I guess chickens have sperm, I don’t know, all you have to do is save sperm and then like you said put it into a surrogate and you started it off again.
[0:51:48.2] PAS: Well I think it is a little more complicated than that.
[0:51:50.2] KM: You know there is a guy who own a polo – there is a polo star, he’s real hot. I saw him on 60 Minutes and he saved a sperm from his horse that they had to put down and he had started a whole line of polo horses using his horse that is so good.
[0:52:09.4] PAS: Well that is commonly done. It has been done for a long time with AI, artificial insemination but to cryogenically try to conserve the ovum, an egg, the egg, freeze it and the sperm is challenging with fowl with avian genetics and so that’s not to say they are not doing it now because I am not on the cutting edge of that personally but I know there are attempting to do that. Now that would be a great break for it.
So in the interim what we do is we hatch every year, we reproduce them. We pick out the best ones. So we are conserving them. That is the only way we know to do it.
[0:52:49.9] KM: How many breeds do you have on your farm?
[0:52:52.0] PAS: We have about of chickens, duck, geese and turkeys. We have probably 60 varieties.
[0:53:02.4] KM: That’s a lot.
[0:53:04.5] PAS: Yeah, there is a lot of need, there are a lot of these birds need conservation.
[0:53:10.4] CC: So the eggs are they different from the eggs you would eat from different breeds or is it kind of all the same?
[0:53:16.2] PAS: No, the flavor of an egg is largely dictated by what the animal is consuming and you know if you feed it pizza, it is going to taste like pizza. No I am just kidding. But you know, if they are eating a lot of onion and that kind of thing or garlic, there may be a little hint of that that comes through but just a little bit but by and large it is really what they’re fed that is what colors the yolk, you see this really dark rich colored yolks, it’s them from eating corn or pumpkins. At the end of our season we feed our pumpkins to them.
[0:53:52.5] KM: Well I want to tell people – so we are running out of time but I really want to quickly say that I am talking P. Allen Smith on Up In Your Business with me and he is the author and he is also the producer and star of his show P. Allen Smith’s Garden Home and P. Allen Smith’s Garden to Table TV shows on PBS. So if I wanted to start a chicken farm or not a chicken farm but if I wanted to start backyard chickens in my backyard, would you buy the chickens on that, would you buy the chicks on the internet and what time of year would you start?
[0:54:21.3] PAS: Well sure, you could do that. I mean the fall is a good time as long as you live in a place where you don’t have a harsh winter. The spring is an obvious time but what we find is that when we have our visitors, we’re open now until Christmas every Thursday and Friday and so we have –
[0:54:38.2] KM: You could just come out there every Thursday and Friday?
[0:54:39.9] PAS: No. You make an appointment. Can you come for lunch or a tour and the tour of the house and the tour of the heritage poultry and a tour of the cottage and the farm and you learn about it and so there are opportunities. They are to get some ideas on how we house them and that kind of thing and so I encourage people to do research and go and have a look around and we’d love for you to.
[0:55:03.1] KM: Because they need light.
[0:55:03.8] PAS: Yes.
[0:55:05.3] KM: And they need heat.
[0:55:06.8] PAS: Well as chicks they do but I mean most of these are land raised breed that really our tough and we have Brahma’s from Tibet, from the Himalayas and so they are very, very cold tolerant. We have Minorca’s and white faced black Spanish from the Iberian Peninsula who can really take the heat you know? So the genetics of these things are amazing.
[0:55:31.2] KM: That is so exotic but they don’t buy chicks out of your place. So they come out there and they learn about it at your place.
[0:55:37.4] PAS: Well we have a workshop, throughout the season, through the fall we’ll do workshops. We just had a poultry workshop where we talk about these heritage breeds and then we’ll do one in the spring and so what people should do is go to our website, look at when we’re open and look at the lessons that we’ll teach. We’ll have classes on beekeeping. We’ll have goat soap making, we have lots of our farmer friends come and talk about some of the things they produce and we do that at lunch.
So it is a lunch and learn and we’ll do table-scaping or decorating and you know that kind of thing. We’ll have artist there painting. You know it is really a place to come and enjoy nature, enjoy a farm have a great meal, connect and meet some people of like mind and see something creative going on and go away with something new and fresh and hopefully that will inspire you.
[0:56:29.0] KM: And this is the time of year to do it.
[0:56:30.4] PAS: Yeah, I would suggest, October is one full month in Arkansas and so is November and then we have Holly Chapel coming for Christmas and she is a fantastic floral designer, parks, lawns who is coming from –
[0:56:44.0] KM: And her name is Holly, is that a real name?
[0:56:45.6] PAS: Well that is why we chose her for Christmas and she is going to be doing a flower, all the décor for the farm for Christmas this year.
[0:56:56.0] KM: Everybody wants your life Allen but it is hard.
[0:56:57.8] PAS: We have Jay Swanky last year. He does a wonderful job and he’s a great friend.
[0:57:01.6] KM: So what is your email address?
[0:57:03.2] PAS: It’s pallensmith.com, just go to the website and you can see, we also have a line of flowers. So if you are interested in anything that we grow at the farm, we produce it and ship it to you. So we have peonies for sale right now, all the tulip collections, the daffodils, everything you can go online and you can order those direct. We’ll ship them right to you.
[0:57:26.0] KM: Oh good, well we just ordered a bunch of – Greg just ordered a bunch of daffodils to put in our yard. We are going to come out there and get some of yours.
[0:57:31.2] PAS: Good, we’ll ship them to you.
[0:57:32.8] KM: Or ship it to me but the drive out is beautiful out to Moss Mountain you all. If you live in the area what do you want –
[0:57:39.3] PAS: Or not come see us from out of state.
[0:57:41.3] KM: Well when I was there you said how far is the farthest person here and somebody raised their hand and said Wisconsin.
[0:57:46.5] PAS: Yeah, well today it was Hawaii.
[0:57:49.8] KM: Really, ain’t that fun? I mean right here in our backyard we got you. I just love it. I love you but let me say, let me ask you this what do you want people to take away from this and review today because you are a teacher and you have told us so many things.
[0:58:02.9] PAS: Well I think that if you’re there in business and there are entrepreneurs, it is really just be yourself and to follow your dream and not give up. Be persistent, also if you’re – I think we are all in the service industry in some place – in some way I should say the idea of having a good team of people around you that is so important. I had lunch with Dan Cathy yesterday at Chic-fil-A headquarters. It is in Atlanta and so –
[0:58:37.8] KM: You just flew in?
[0:58:39.0] PAS: Yeah and so he is talking about the secret to his success and you know he said it’s very simple. He said, “You know we are not really selling chicken, we are selling hospitality,” and it was so important for me to hear yet again as something that I really believe in is that you start with a great team and that great team makes your customer feel good.
[0:59:00.4] KM: I love that. Thank you Allen, I really enjoyed talking with you.
[0:59:02.8] PAS: Thank you Kerry, congratulations with all of your success and best wishes going forward.
[0:59:07.7] KM: Thank you. Give me his gift right there. Look, we got you a garden flag and a garden stand because you’re –
[0:59:14.3] PAS: Oh my goodness look at this.
[0:59:16.1] KM: And the banner, for everybody on Facebook they could see it’s got chickens.
[0:59:19.0] PAS: Oh my of course it does. That is wonderful.
[0:59:22.0] KM: And the backside a little bit.
[0:59:23.1] PAS: And it is perfect for the holidays.
[0:59:24.2] KM: It is for Holly coming to town, what’s her name?
[0:59:26.7] PAS: It is, Holly Chapel, yes so come see the Christmas decorations at Moss Mountain Farm starting right after Thanksgiving.
[0:59:34.4] KM: I think I will. I think I am going to come out in October though. I just love this time of the year. Chris who is our guest next week?
[0:59:41.0] CC: Democratic nominee for House of Representative, Mr. Clark Tucker who’s running up against in combat representative French Hill.
[0:59:48.2] KM: You know what? I think that is the week after next. I just remembered I am out of town next week. My son Jack is getting – having a knee surgery in Ohio and I think I am going to go up and play nurse maid to him. So I think we are doing a rerun next week.
[1:00:01.8] PAS: What a mom.
[1:00:02.4] KM: I know right? I love it. Next week I think we’re going to replay Warwick Sabin because he is running for mayor and we had him on earlier this year. So I think we are going to replay Warwick Sabin and then we are going to have Clark Tucker on the week after that. I’d like to give another shout out to Centennial Bank for partnering with the Friends of Dreamland Ballroom and sponsoring this year’s Dancing into Dreamland on Friday, November the 2nd. Tickets and tables are still available online.
If you have a great entrepreneurial story that you would like to share, I would love to hear from you. Send a brief bio or your contact info to –
[1:00:34.5] CC: questions@upyourbusiness.org. That is questions@upyourbusiness.org.
[1:00:40.9] KM: And finally, to our listeners, thank you for spending time with us. My hope today is that you’ve heard or learned something that’s been inspiring or enlightening and I can’t believe it if you didn’t learn something today or hear something that is inspiring or enlightening because today was a great show 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]
[1:01:06.9] CC: You’ve been listening to Up in Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of FlagandBanner.com. If you missed 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 whenever you like or 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 and Kerry’s goal is to help you live the American Dream.
Paul Allen Smith Jr is the oldest of four children, was born on March 12, 1960, in Little Rock, Arkansas. He grew up in McMinnville, Tennessee, in the Cumberland Mountains, where his father’s family had farmed for several generations and also operated an ornamental plant business. Smith calls himself a fourth-generation nurseryman and horticulturist.
