Hello, my name is Kirk Lawton and I run the Save-A-Lot grocery store in Statesville, NC.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to talk to me about your trials and successes as an entrepreneur.
No problem.
Tag Archives: entrepreneur
AVL Marketing ~ an interview
Katie Cleary is a natural when it comes to marketing. She gets it. She get’s the businesses she’s representing; and even better, she get’s the people she’s connecting those businesses to.
To be honest, marketing is not my favorite subject. And it was unfair to Katie, I know, but I came to the interview expecting a conversation about markets and ratios and target populations. With a comfortable ease, Katie immediately drew me into her vision of what marketing really is. She has an innate enthusiasm for what she does and it became immediately clear that she’s done her homework and she knows what she’s talking about.
Interview With Patrick Jones by Hillary Watkins
I have had the privilege of working with Patrick Jones in my previous job, and when the opportunity arose to interview someone in the financial field my thoughts immediately turned to him. Pat, as I like to call him, is the branch manager of North State Acceptance, a finance company that focuses on consumer loans in the Eastern part of North Carolina. His friendly demeanor and ever smiling face are attributes that I’m sure have benefited
him greatly in his career, however he is an individual who genuinely cares about people and businesses and has always strived to do the right thing in an industry whose reputation has been marred by those who have not had the same strong character.
When I asked about his past experience with the finance industry he told me that he had previously worked for Wachovia Bank for 23 years managing both consumer and commercial lending. He worked with automobile, RV, and yacht loans with the largest credit underwritten at $3.5M. He later managed a portfolio of automobile dealers by lending them credit and managing wholesale lines of credit. In his career with North State Acceptance, Pat states that currently the biggest challenge is irrational competition. “Many new lenders are entering the market and have forgotten the sins of the past. There is very little discipline that I compete with daily.”
Interview with Kat Chitow, co-owner of The Wine Dive in Mooresville, NC
Interview with Kat Chitow, co-owner of The Wine Dive in Mooresville, North Carolina which opened in July 2010. Tracy Brener, student in the Masters of Entrepreneurship Program at Western Carolina University conducted the interview on April 29, 2011.