NWA Founders

In this episode of the Northwest Arkansas Founders podcast, hosts Cameron Clark and Nick Beyer sit down with Jim Smith and Rebecca Hurst, the co-founders of Smith Hurst law firm and Emeraude (a multifamily office and business services platform). Jim and Rebecca share their parallel journeys — both with accounting degrees, both with tax LLMs from NYU — and trace the arc of their careers from the Fr...

This episode of the Northwest Arkansas Founders Podcast features the team behind Duncan & Stone Paper Co. — Garrett Peters, Stephanie Peters, and Sarah Autry — discussing how they built a keepsake journal and gift business that now does e-commerce across Amazon, Etsy, and their own Shopify store. They trace the origin story back to Sarah quietly hand-making pregnancy prayer cards from her livi...

Steve Graves joins the NWA Founders Podcast to talk about his four-decade career coaching CEOs, founders, and business owners through his firm, Cornerstone Coaching. He shares his philosophy of working with individuals rather than companies directly, on the belief that as the leader grows, so does the organization. He explains how he and his original partner, Tom Addington, start the business on f...

David Harris is a fifth-generation Rogers, Arkansas native and founder of David Harris Construction, one of Northwest Arkansas's most respected custom and luxury home builders. In this conversation, David takes us through his unlikely path into homebuilding — starting with spec homes on the side while working for his father's real estate company, dabbling briefly in the llama business, and slowly...

Allisha Watkins is the founder and CEO of Paradox Audio — a Rogers-native-turned-NWA-entrepreneur who spent 20 years in the corporate CPG world, including stints at Procter & Gamble and Mars Wrigley, before going out on her own. She launched Paradox in 2019 after watching the traditional holding-company agency model fail the brands it was supposed to serve — with opaque fee structures consumin...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners Summary Alex and Lauren Blass are the husband-and-wife team behind the Blass family office in Northwest Arkansas — a fourth-generation operation that spans Blue Ribbon Industries, commercial real estate, and master-planned development. Alex grew up in Little Rock and came to NWA for college, eventually j...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What if a clothing company focused less on clothes and more on experiences? In this episode, Donny Hubbard shares the remarkable story of going from a self-described poor kid who struggled in school to becoming one of Northwest Arkansas’ most connected entrepreneurs and the founder of one of the region’s...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What would it look like for your company's message to actually connect with it's biggest stakeholder? The local public. AM Group founders Andrea Ritchie and Mary Mickel have built one of Northwest Arkansas’ most respected communications and public relations firms by helping organizations tell their stori...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What does it actually look like to scale a business through uncertainty without losing your people, your values, or your long-term vision? In this episode, Taylor Faught , CEO of TRS Healthcare , shares the story behind building and scaling a healthcare staffing company from a regional family business in...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What does it look like to build a software company in a highly regulated industry while remaining innovative? In this episode, Joe Ehrhardt , founder and CEO of Teslar Software , shares the story behind building one of the fastest-growing fintech companies serving community banks across the country. From...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What if one of the biggest business opportunities in the world was hiding inside a problem most people never think about? In this episode, Are Traasdahl , founder of Crisp and Arkade , shares the story behind building a company aimed at solving one of the most overlooked global challenges: food waste. Wi...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What if the real edge in your business is leaning into A.I.? In this episode, Eric Howerton , co-founder & CGO of AdFury.ai , pulls back the curtain on how AI is reshaping the future of retail, advertising, and entrepreneurship in Northwest Arkansas. This isn’t a hype conversation about AI; it’s a gr...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What would happen if more of the capital shaping your area actually came from the people who live there? In this episode, Brad Henry of Natural Capital shares a behind-the-scenes look at building a private investment firm designed to do exactly that: keep opportunity local, empower founders, and give fam...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What does it look like to take a small, family-run manufacturing shop and turn it into a diversified, innovation-driven company competing on a national level? In this episode, Chris Chandler of Chandler Capital Group shares the real story behind building, losing, rebuilding, and ultimately redefining wha...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What if one project completely changed the trajectory of your business? In this episode of NWA Founders, Jeremy Hudson , CEO of Specialized Real Estate Group , shares the story behind some of Northwest Arkansas’ most meaningful developments and the philosophy that drives them. From Eco Modern Flats to So...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What if your company made the Inc. 500 and then almost went out of business? In this episode of NWA Founders , we sit down with Thomas Addington and Allen Befort , co-founders of Givingtons , to unpack how they built a fast-growing book company and how it almost got away from them. Today, they've built a...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What does it take to lead a 70+ year old family-owned company into the future without losing sight of what made it successful in the first place? In this episode, we’re joined by Todd Simmons of Simmons Foods for an in-depth conversation on leadership, legacy, and building a company with a long-term visi...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What happens when you combine blue-collar grit with high-tech precision and build a company from the ground up without taking on a dime of debt? In this episode, we sit down with John Musser , president of Custom Electronics , to explore how a regional integrator went from a borrowed truck and a box of c...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What started as a side hustle is now a multi-employee business with customers across the country... In this episode, we sit down with Kendall and Bailey Beykirch , the married co-founders of KenzKustomz , to talk about how they built a thriving custom accessories brand rooted in hustle, resilience, and a...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What does it look like to step out of a successful brokerage career and build your own investment firm from scratch? In this episode, we sit down with TJ Lefler , founder of Lefler Capital , to talk about entrepreneurship, capital allocation, and what it really takes to build something sustainable in Nor...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What does it take to not only build a thriving company but to buy it back after it fails and make it stronger than ever? In this episode, we sit down with Mark Zweig , founder of Zweig Group , a nationally recognized consulting firm for architects and engineers. Mark opens up about his multi-decade entre...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners In a region growing as fast as Northwest Arkansas, who helps guide the pace of progress? In this episode, we sit down with Marshall Saviers , CEO & President of Cushman & Wakefield | Sage Partners , one of the most influential commercial real estate firms in the region. With nearly two decades of...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What happens when a broke college student trades potpourri for a secondhand stove and ends up running one of the most productive candle factories in the country?   In this episode, we sit down with Burt Hanna, founder of Hanna’s Candle Company, to talk about building a business brick by brick in Northwes...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What does it take to grow a local HVAC company into a multi-state home services powerhouse? In this episode of NWA Founders , we sit down with Charley Boyce , CEO of Paschal Air, Plumbing, & Electric , to talk about legacy, leadership, and how he’s scaled one of Northwest Arkansas’s most trusted bran...

→ Learn more about Greenwood Gearhart → Learn more about Cushman & Wakefield Sage Partners What does it take to serve an entire area through good food and world-class experience? In this episode of NWA Founders , we sit down with Carl Garrett , founder of Table Mesa Restaurant Group, whose name has become synonymous with Bentonville’s food scene. From launching his first concept with a simple...