The Real Boone Podcast

Carson and Mindy Coatney are the founders of Stick Boy Bread Company, a Boone, NC institution that started in 2001 with seven maxed-out credit cards, a thousand square feet next to a laundromat, and two people who had no formal training in baking. Carson was a Duke pre-med who never went to med school. Mindy was a Boone native who brought him here. Together, they built a business that now includes...

Pressley Laton is a singer-songwriter and bandleader based in Boone, NC, who traded a six-year career in higher education at App State to bet on music full time. She grew up singing in church in Stanley County, taught herself guitar in high school, and spent years thinking about pursuing music before finally diving in during 2022. What started as random cover gigs at Booneshine with Ray Edmonds tu...

Lisa Cooper is the CEO of Mast General Store, a fifth-generation family business that has become a cornerstone of mountain retail across the High Country of North Carolina and beyond. Lisa didn't choose this path at first—when her parents sold everything they had in Florida to buy a shuttered 100-year-old general store in Valle Crucis in 1980, 11-year-old Lisa cried herself to sleep on the third f...

Steve Marks is the Executive Director of Watauga Long-Term Recovery Group and the Fire Chief of Cove Creek Fire Department. With over 40 years in firefighting, a Master's in Emergency Management, a Master's in Divinity, and a background in storm chasing and meteorology, Steve has spent his life responding to crisis. But two years after Hurricane Helene devastated the High Country of North Carolina...

David Ray is the Executive Director of Blue Ridge Conservancy, a Boone-based land trust working to permanently protect natural resources across seven counties in the High Country of North Carolina. With a law degree from the University of Georgia and over two decades in conservation work, David made the leap from environmental law to land protection—a career shift that finally aligned his work wit...

Watauga County Schools has nine schools, and Dr. Leslie Alexander knows every one of them. She's the superintendent here in Boone, NC — an App State alum who came up through the classroom as a high school English teacher, spent nine years as a principal, and took the top job in the High Country of North Carolina in 2023 because it was the only opening she wanted. In this episode she talks about he...

In Boone, NC, nobody checks the weather app — they check Ray’s Weather. Dr. Ray Russell is the founder of RaysWeather. Com, the most trusted forecast in the High Country of North Carolina, and he's entirely self-taught. He spent three decades teaching computer science at Appalachian State University while a backyard weather station and a few snow forecasts posted to his faculty page quietly grew i...

Gray Shipley of Shipley Farms joins us to talk about why real food has gotten so hard to find — and so hard to eat. Gray runs sales, marketing, and finance for his family's fifth-generation cattle operation in Vilas, just outside Boone, NC, where the Shipleys have raised pasture-raised, hormone-free beef since 1872. We get into the state of the American food system, what changes when you eat food...

Eric Woolridge  is the President of Destination by Design, a Boone-based planning and design firm that helps small towns across the U.S. plan, build, and market themselves as destination-quality communities. With over 20 years of experience and work across 150+ local government jurisdictions, Eric and his team blend land use planning, civil engineering, landscape architecture, and place branding i...

Amy Lowrey  is the owner of Tiny Hands Pottery, a handcrafted ceramics studio based in Boone, NC. Amy calls herself an accidental potter — she spent her adult life in the nonprofit world, building homes in Mexico, traveling to 40+ countries, and helping underserved students access college funding. Then in 2015 she took a pottery class, fell completely in love, and eventually made the leap to full-...

Singer/songwriter John Lucas has built the kind of career most musicians only imagine—over 40 million Spotify streams, songs licensed by Google, MTV, and Freeform, and a loyal following grown over more than a dozen years. Now putting down roots in Boone, NC, he joins us in the High Country of North Carolina for a honest conversation about what success in music actually looks like from the inside....

Carrington Doolittle Pertalion is a Certified Nurse Midwife at AppHealthCare in Boone, NC, and has been caring for women across the High Country of North Carolina for more than 25 years. In this episode, Carrington walks us through her unlikely path to midwifery — dropping out of high school at 16, working in commercial fishing, and finally discovering her calling the day her daughter was delivere...

Coy Baker, Founder and CEO of Baker Forge & Tool, joins us to talk about building one of America's leading Damascus steel manufacturers in Boone, NC. Coy started his blacksmithing journey in the mountains of Western North Carolina in 2016, engineered his own 25-ton hydraulic forging press, and in 2020 developed a method for fusion welding copper to carbon steel — the breakthrough behind the br...

Description: Jacob and Melina Daniels are the husband-and-wife co-owners of Common Good Co., an artisan gallery and fine art space on King Street in Boone, NC. In this episode, you'll hear how two App State art students went from selling their work at traveling markets to owning and restoring a 100-year-old historic building in the heart of downtown — and what it actually took to build somethi...

Dalton George is the Mayor of Boone, NC and the youngest mayor in North Carolina. Before the title, he's a kid from Midway who came to App State and fell in love with the mountains. In this episode, we get to know Dalton — who he is outside of politics, what shaped him, and how he ended up running a town at 26. We also get into what the job actually looks like day to day, how Town Council works, a...

Chris Grasinger is the High Country Regional Manager for Mountain BizWorks and a co-founder of Center 45 Climbing and Fitness in Boone, NC. He's a Blowing Rock native, App State MBA grad, and has spent the last decade deep in the business development world — from co-founding Startup High Country to managing lending and coaching for small businesses across Western North Carolina. In this episod...

Tina Houston is the owner of Reid's Cafe & Catering, The Beacon Butcher Bar, Betty's Biscuits, and Pearl's Kitchen + Tiny Market — four restaurants across the High Country of North Carolina built over 25 years. In this episode, Tina shares how she went from launching a catering company in 1999 to becoming one of the most recognized names in Boone's food scene, what it means to...

Max Rünzel is the CEO and Co-Founder of HiveTracks , a Boone-based tech company using bees as biosensors to track hive health and biodiversity across 150+ countries. Originally from Germany, Max left a dream job at the United Nations in Rome when two beekeepers from the High Country convinced him to join them in building something new. In this episode, he shares the wild story of how HiveTracks ca...

After 38 episodes, 1,000+ listening hours, and 5.46 terabytes of footage, Paul and Evan sit down in their brand-new podcast studio in Venture Chocolate & Wine to reflect on the journey so far. They share favorite episodes, behind-the-scenes stats, and the story of how The Real Boone Podcast came to be. Plus, a look at what's next—including the studio rental space, upcoming guests like Ray...

Ella Triber and Evan Smith are members of the Association of Student Entrepreneurs at Appalachian State University and help lead Sweet Carolina, a canned water company—Ella as Executive Director and Evan as CFO. In this episode, they share how the club became a launchpad for building a real business in the High Country. We talk about branding, their value proposition, and how entrepreneurship is s...

Josiah Davis (founder of Local Lion and Venture Chocolate) and Jonathan Thornton have partnered up on Conquer Your Mountain, a venture that helps entrepreneurs find purpose and build businesses with intention. In this episode, they share how they got connected through a common interest in Mt. Sinai. For centuries, tradition placed it in Egypt, but the evidence tells a different story. They present...

Cat Roten is a business coach, fractional Chief Operating Officer, and podcaster based in Boone, NC. In this episode, she shares how she helps overwhelmed business owners get out of the weeds and build systems that scale. We talk about time management, marketing, and what it really takes to grow a business without sacrificing your sanity. A must-listen for entrepreneurs in the High Country ready t...

Don Cox, founder of Bald Guy Coffee in Boone, NC, shares his journey of faith, failure, and building something that lasts. From coming to Boone in the '80s "to fish" to a traumatic brain injury that ended his ministry career, Don talks about how coffee became both a calling and a lifeline. We cover roasting beans off the grid, losing everything in a fire, rebuilding from the ground u...

Grant Williams and Crystal Smith, co-owners of Summit Pickleball in Boone, NC, share the real story behind starting a pickleball space rooted in community, connection, and place. They talk openly about the challenges, risks, and rewards of running a recreation-based business in the High Country. More than just pickleball—this conversation explores what it means to build something with intention an...

Emily Brinker, co-owner of The Speckled Trout in Blowing Rock, NC, shares how she, her husband, and two friends opened a restaurant with no experience—just grit, a love for Appalachian food, and a deep belief in community. In this episode, she talks about how risk turned into reward, hospitality as a mission, and why authenticity tastes better than perfection. A story about saying yes before you&#...