Whether selling coffee or beer (and whether you’re 20 or 70), sound business principles abide
Posted On October 2, 2022
It’s tough enough to build and run one successful business. But starting over in a new industry at 67? For Hatton Smith, taking on a new challenge has been invigorating. After helping his family’s business, Royal Cup Coffee, become a national leader, Smith became the CEO and largest investor four years ago in Back Forty Beer Company, a Gadsden-based craft brewery. Smith, who had also played an integral role in helping resuscitate UAB’s football program, saw a company led by people who knew how to brew great beer, but needed capital. He was able to bring that capital and… Read More
Categories: Blog, Entrepreneurship, Podcast, What's Working with Cam Marston
Harnessing the power of an inter-generational workplace
Posted On September 21, 2022
I have long been an advocate of Baby Boomer and Generation X CEOs and managers not only listening to their millennial employees, but learning from them and giving them an active role in the decision-making process. The unique perspectives and skills of millennials are valuable in today’s workplace and can help a business ensure it is reaching the younger segments of the marketplace in the most effective ways. In the latest episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” I spoke with someone who has taken that mindset a step further. Tanya Hart Little met Allison Johnston Frizzo while serving as… Read More
Categories: Baby Boomers, Blog, Entrepreneurship, Generation Y / Millennials, Generations, Podcast, Real Estate, What's Working with Cam Marston, Workplace
What’s Working is Growing!
Posted On September 11, 2022
My radio show, What’s Working with Cam Marston, continues to grow. Last week we added two new broadcast markets – Tuscaloosa and Gadsden, and a new state-wide advertiser is working to get their ads ready and join the show. I’m thrilled with the growth and am eager for more. Once we get comfortable with the new markets, we’ll start eyeing an additional market or two. Looking for coverage in Sylacauga, Auburn, or Dothan next. The goal is the show is to bring listeners the workplace, workforce, and marketplace trends that are shaping Alabama business. My guests have an expertise or a… Read More
Categories: Entrepreneurship, Podcast, What's Working with Cam Marston
Symbol Health Solutions CEO Mike Molyneux identified a problem and created a solution
Posted On August 28, 2022
Successful entrepreneurs typically see a problem in need of a solution or an unfilled niche in the marketplace. Then they build a business to fill that niche or fix that problem. Mike Molyneux has done just that with Symbol Health Solutions, the company he built and currently serves as president and CEO. Our guest in the latest episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston,” Molyneux shares how he identified a problem in the healthcare marketplace and built a business to fill that need. Molyneux, a physical therapist, had over 1,500 employees in the healthcare company he co-founded and found that… Read More
Categories: Blog, Entrepreneurship, Podcast, What's Working with Cam Marston
Bello Nock walks the tightrope of show business
Posted On July 4, 2022
They call the entertainment industry “show business” for a very good reason. As one great showman I met recently told me: “If you have no show, you have no business. If you have no business, you have no show.” That showman is Bello Nock, a seventh-generation entertainer, circus performer and daredevil who performs around the country. You might have seen him on America’s Got Talent a few years ago, You might remember him from his years with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. You might have seen him in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest unsupported… Read More
Categories: Blog, Entrepreneurship, What's Working with Cam Marston
The comfort and challenges of running a family-owned business
Posted On March 6, 2020
There’s something special about a family-owned business. And in many of them, no one knows that better than the employees. “I think when you have a family-owned business, I think you get very close to employees, especially employees that have been around a really long time,” said Brent Barkin, president and CEO of Shoe Station, and our guest in a recent episode of “What’s Working with Cam Marston.” “Because of the longevity of being a family-owned business, you kind of grow up around these people. I wouldn’t say it’s trite that you starting thinking of them as family,” says Barkin,… Read More
Categories: Entrepreneurship, What's Working with Cam Marston
Scrap that top-down thinking: Listening to your employees is important
Posted On September 3, 2019
If one were to read a book by a man who built a scrap metal business that includes 77 locations and handles 3½ million tons of recycled metals a year, that book would be about recycling scrap metal. But the book that George Adams, owner of California-based SA Recycling, decided to write isn’t about recycling. It’s about leadership. And it contains some advice that’s important in any business, whether it’s recycling scrap metal, serving hamburgers or building skyscrapers. “A company is a shell until you put people in it,” says Adams, our guest on “What’s Working With Cam Marston” recently…. Read More
Categories: Entrepreneurship, What's Working with Cam Marston
How a family-owned coffee company is brewing for a new generation
Posted On August 26, 2019
It’s not often that I get to do a radio show with the owner of a company while I’m consuming his product. But in the latest episode of “What’s Working With Cam Marston,” I sipped on some coffee with chicory produced by Baton Rouge-based Community Coffee while talking with the company’s fourth-generation owner and president, Matt Saurage. He shares a brief history of the company with us (including the story behind the house drawn on the package), his goals in running a family business, and why, although its habits are different, the millennial generation is as bountiful a market for… Read More
Categories: Entrepreneurship, Generation Y / Millennials, What's Working with Cam Marston
The Gospel of Murder Point Oysters: How to build a boutique seafood business
Posted On August 20, 2019
Boutique businesses are all the rage. From craft beer and small batch bourbon to organic produce and specialty cheeses, small operations that reach and build followings among specific segments of the market are thriving in a number of industries. But seafood? How do you build a following for that? Our guest in a recent episode of “What’s Working With Cam Marston” knows how. Lane Zirlott of Murder Point Oysters and his family got into the oyster business almost accidentally and have built a brand that is now being asked for by name. Zirlott comes from a successful family of shrimpers… Read More
Categories: Entrepreneurship, What's Working with Cam Marston, Work
Blind faith: When the business plan is answering a call from God
Posted On April 9, 2019
Marquis Forge is the CEO of Eleven86 Water, but he says that’s just a title. It’s God, he says, who runs the company, and God who started it in the first place. Forge, our guest in a recent episode of “What’s Working With Cam Marston,” is a former walk-on football player at the University Alabama who had worked in the automotive industry for two decades. But he’d made a promise to always remember where he came from, the small town of Autaugaville just northwest of Montgomery. And God, he says, showed him the way to keep that promise. He didn’t… Read More
Categories: church, Entrepreneurship, What's Working with Cam Marston