Jamie McAfee
World Certified Master Chef
From the tender age of 12, Jamie McAfee knew he wanted to be a chef. Throughout his childhood, he frequently helped his father prepare food, and his first successful dish (a creamy gravy for sausage and biscuits) cemented his passion for cooking. Jamie learned to cook from the African American women who worked in his parent's kitchen at the Delta Country Club, and on that foundation he built a culinary career of 50+ years.
Since his youth, Chef McAfee has earned two culinary degrees and donned many hats. He worked in distribution at a Nike warehouse for five years, giving him the management experience that he would bring with him when he returned to professional cooking. He has passed on his wisdom as culinary professor at the University of Arkansas' Pulaski Tech and held positions as executive chef and general manager at several country clubs, where Jamie enjoys the challenge of organizing and cooking meals for several hundred people. His work ethic extends beyond food prep: McAfee considers it a serious duty to give back to the world, training the next generation of chefs and raising millions of dollars for Arkansas charities.
Chef Jamie has many accolades to show for his hard work. He participated in the 2019 Diamond Chef competition held by the U of A and was entered into the Arkansas Food Hall of Fame as "Proprietor of the Year" for 2023. In July of that same year, Jamie earned the title of World Certified Master Chef from the World Association of Chefs' Societies, a distinction that few can claim.
Listen to Learn:
- How Jamie got his start as a cook
- What it takes to hold a banquet for hundreds of guests
- About the requirements to become a World Certified Master Chef, and more...
Podcast Links
TRANSCRIPT
EPISODE 459
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:08] GM: Welcome to Up In Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. Through storytelling, conversational interviews, and Kerry's natural curiosity, this weekly radio show and podcast offers listeners an insider's view into the commonalities of entrepreneurs, athletes, medical professionals, politicians, and other successful people, all sharing their stories of success and the ups and downs of risk-taking.
Connect with Kerry through her candid, funny, informative, and always encouraging weekly blog. And now it's time for Keri McCoy to get all up in your business.
[0:00:41] KM: Thank you, Son Gray. This show began in 2016 as a way for me and other successful people to pay forward our experiential knowledge. But it wasn't long before my team and I realized that we were the ones learning. Listening to our guests has been both educational and inspiring. To quote the Dalai Lama, "When you talk, you are only repeating what you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something new."
After listening to hundreds of successful people share their stories, I've noticed some recurring traits. Most of my guests believe in a higher power, have the heart of a teacher, and they all work hard. Before I introduce today's guests who checks all the boxes, I want to let you know, if you miss any part of today's show, want to hear it again or share it, there's a way. And Son Gray will tell you how.
[0:01:28] GM: All UIYB past and present interviews are available at Up In Your Business with Kerry McCoy's YouTube channel, Facebook page, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette's digital version, flagandbanner.com's website, or wherever you listen to podcasts, just ask your smart speaker to play up in your business with Kerry McCoy. And by subscribing to our YouTube channel or flagandbanner.com's email list, you'll receive prior notification of that week's guest. Back to you, Kerry.
[0:01:54] KM: My guest today belongs to an elite group. From humble beginnings as a young boy in the Arkansas Delta, he has garnered the highest global professional recognition possible in his industry as one of few Worldchefs Certified Master Chefs, Mr. Jamie McAfee. Chef Jamie has been honing his culinary skills since he was 12 years old when he made his first gravy roux for what a southerners like to call sausage and biscuits. That's when he fell in love with cooking that still holds true today.
Since then, Chef Jamie has become a celebrated figure in Arkansas's culinary community and beyond, known for his deep commitment to both fine dining and cooking education. He is, by invitation only, a member of the American Academies of Chefs, a certified executive chef of the American Culinary Federation, and a teacher of his craft at the University of Arkansas' Pulaski Tech in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Time and time again on this show, we hear the stories of young men and women who worked hard, prayed big, took risks, and became successful beyond their knowing. Such is true of my guests today. It is a great pleasure to welcome to the table the humble, hardworking teacher and current chef at Pleasant Valley Country Club, renowned chef Jamie McAfee.
[0:03:21] JM: Thank you.
[0:03:22] KM: You're welcome. You come from a bunch of – there's a bunch of chefs in your family. You're a chef, your father was a chef, your son's a chef.
[0:03:31] JM: Daughter.
[0:03:32] KM: Your daughter's a chef?
[0:03:32] JM: Mm-hmm.
[0:03:33] KM: Talk about the legacy of food in your family. It sounds like you have always wanted to cook all of your life.
[0:03:40] JM: I've always enjoyed cooking. My father, he was in the older generation, he didn't give money, he didn't give allowances. So he made me prep his kitchen when I was young. I didn't have to mow the yard, I didn't have to do household chores. I had to peel a shrimp, I had to cut his chickens, I had to get his kitchen ready. And as any 12, 13, 14, 15 year old, I resented it because I didn't want to do it.
[0:04:07] KM: Right.
[0:04:09] JM: But not knowing what it would lead to further in life, how to prep, how to do the kitchens and things of that nature.
[0:04:16] KM: You and your father kind of had a strained relationship, don't you think?
[0:04:19] JM: Very.
[0:04:20] KM: He used to be tougher on you than any of the other kids. Why do you think that was?
[0:04:26] JM: He knew I was weak.
[0:04:28] KM: I don't think so.
[0:04:29] JM: No, I'm the stutter. He knew I had issues.
[0:04:32] KM: Yeah.
[0:04:34] JM: And he said I would be the most successful, but he knew that I had weak areas. And he, I guess, wanted to beat them into you or beat them out of you.
[0:04:45] KM: He said you would be the most successful because he was so tough on you?
[0:04:49] JM: Mm-hmm. And I have been.
[0:04:52] KM: Isn't that interesting? Us parents do it all wrong.
[0:04:54] JM: We do.
[0:04:55] KM: We do it backwards. You've got to make your kids do stuff.
[0:04:58] JM: Completely backwards, you know.
[0:04:59] KM: We make up soft.
[0:05:00] JM: And I think the reason I've been so successful, I was so resentful. I wanted to prove to him, I'd do it, you know.
[0:05:10] KM: I can totally relate to that. I was terrible in school.
[0:05:12] JM: No, I did.
[0:05:13] KM: Yeah, and I wanted to be somebody. And so I think I had this drive to work hard and see where it came out. Yeah, you just said you had a stutter. Where is it?
[0:05:24] JM: I lost it. Me and my mother were leaving, I guess, speech pathology and she had a little head-on collision, not major, in the neighborhood and my head hit the windshield. And I was lying on the operating table getting stitches and the doctor asked me three or four questions, and I answered them, and my mother said, "Ask him again." I have never stuttered again. My father said it knocked the stutter out of me.
[0:05:56] GM: That's crazy.
[0:05:56] KM: I know. That's a new therapy for stutterers, just hit them in the head.
[0:06:00] GM: Aha, great.
[0:06:02] JM: And I didn't stutter all the time. Probably 70 % of the time. If I was comfortable around you, I didn't stutter as much. If I wasn't comfortable around you, that's when I stuttered.
[0:06:15] GM: Interesting.
[0:06:16] KM: Strife builds character. I don't care what everybody says. It really does.
[0:06:21] JM: You have to be around people, comfortable when you stutter, you know. But now I don't have any issues. Thank goodness.
[0:06:33] KM: Yeah. Your parents divorced.
[0:06:34] JM: They did.
[0:06:35] KM: Was it the same year that you graduated high school?
[0:06:39] JM: A year before.
[0:06:40] KM: I was kind of trying to put that together.
[0:06:42] JM: They divorced in '76 and became best friends, like most people, the rest of their life.
[0:06:48] KM: Really?
[0:06:49] JM: Yeah. My dad was an alcoholic, and he was what they call a binge alcoholic. He might drink seven days in a row, then might not drink for four or five. But the only way he would quit drinking, we had had to take him to the doctor and get a shot to put him to sleep.
[0:07:09] KM: What do you mean?
[0:07:11] JM: It's just he drank so much that – I mean, once he started drinking, he might sleep an hour at a time. He just didn't go to bed, you know.
[0:07:20] KM: That's the opposite of what most people do when they drink.
[0:07:22] JM: It really is. He was a unique, very talented chef with a unique character. Had a great personality, fantastic personality.
[0:07:30] KM: Well, he was Navy, wasn't he?
[0:07:31] JM: Yeah.
[0:07:32] KM: Well, I haven't met a Navy man that didn't have a great personality.
[0:07:34] JM: Yeah. One of the things I remember about him, he was cooking peaches, and he didn't make peaches from scratch and stuff. He went and bought frozen peaches, and he would throw that napkin over his arm and he'd think he was from Italy. He was a pretty good character. Everybody loved him. There was a guy when they built the paper mill in Arkansas City, one of the uppers, he came to the club a lot to eat dinner. And Mac asked him one time, "What do you like to come here so much?" He said, "Well, I know you're going to lie to me, but I get a kick out of it." It was what he called a little white lie.
[0:08:15] KM: Yeah. Y'all, you were in McGee.
[0:08:20] JM: Delta Country Club in McGee.
[0:08:21] KM: That's where you grew up. That's the kitchen that was considered, I guess, your parents' kitchen?
[0:08:25] JM: Yeah.
[0:08:26] KM: And you worked for both of them after the divorce. You worked in your mother's hotel. I don't know where you worked with your father.
[0:08:34] JM: At that time, my father was at the Lake Village Country Club, and I'd worked for my mother in the little McGee motel in McGee. Then I would go work at Lake Village Country Club when I wasn't working for mother. Newly married, you had to have three or four jobs just to make ends meet.
[0:08:49] KM: Yeah, tell everybody about your wife that you met when you were 15 years old.
[0:08:55] JM: We'll celebrate 46 years August 11th.
[0:08:59] KM: Congratulations.
[0:09:00] JM: And like most fathers of young girls, my father-in-law wasn't real crazy about me hanging around so much they moved to California. And I think the biggest reason is trying to separate me and her. And I went out there to see her and end up staying about four months. And he finally came in one day said, "It's time for you to leave. I guess about a month after I was gone, she called and said, "What do you think about August the 11th?" I said, "I don't know. What's August 11?" She said, "That's National Smile Week." And she goes, "We're getting married." I said, "Okay," and been together ever since.
[0:09:41] KM: How old were you?
[0:09:43] JM: I think she was 18 and I was 20.
[0:09:47] KM: That's a charming story.
[0:09:48] JM: And we were married a whopping three months and she became pregnant. Then four years later – yeah, four years later, we had a daughter. It was Jay, then my daughter, Ashley.
[0:10:00] KM: Well, your father-in-law was smart to make you go home.
[0:10:04] JM: Probably was. And we get along great today.
[0:10:09] KM: Oh, sure. How did you decide to go to culinary school in Memphis?
[0:10:19] KM: My father taunted me into leaving the business, and I went to work for Nike. And at 23, I had a little over 200 people under my range as manager of the Nike Warehouse.
[0:10:31] KM: Where was the Nike Warehouse?
[0:10:33] JM: Shelby.
[0:10:35] KM: Shelby, Arkansas?
[0:10:36] JM: No. Memphis. Shelby in Winchester, right there close – it's right at the TPC Tournament. It's right behind Nike.
[0:10:42] KM: You left McGee and went to Tennessee.
[0:10:45] JM: Yes.
[0:10:46] KM: I gotcha.
[0:10:49] JM: And I was very successful with Nike. And it got to the point I just didn't enjoy going into the warehouse every day. And they opened a culinary school, and I said, "Well, let me go try it." And I just kept playing with it, playing with it and playing with it. And I graduated with top honors. And then they had a cafe, the Cafe Meridian. It was right next to the Children's Le Bonheur Hospital. And the guy that owned it was a neurologist in Le Bonheur. Me and him became friends. And I ran that restaurant for five years. And the top five people from culinary school was the staff every semester. It was all rookies doing good.
[0:11:39] KM: You've been teaching all of your life.
[0:11:41] JM: There's a guy named Joseph Carey from San Francisco that had the school and the restaurant. We just all worked for him.
[0:11:51] KM: It's not still around anymore, is it?
[0:11:54] JM: The building is, but the culinary school is not.
[0:11:56] KM: That's too bad.
[0:11:56] JM: It's been gone. They do have a culinary school in Memphis.
[0:11:59] KM: Oh, good. Well, more and more towns seem to be getting then. When I was growing up, you had to go to Florida, New York, or California.
[0:12:07] JM: San Francisco.
[0:12:07] KM: Yeah, yeah.
[0:12:10] KM: I think that was the top five. New Orleans, San Francisco, New York, Chicago. That was –
[0:12:16] KM: I think. Yeah. This is a great place to take a break. When we come back, we'll continue speaking with the renowned Arkansas chef, Jamie McAfee, who recently made a career move from the Pine Bluff Country Club, where he was for 20-plus years to the newly renovated Pleasant Valley Country Club in Little Rock, Arkansas. Still to come, we'll learn about the business of cooking, some celebs he's met, and tell you how you can take a culinary class from him at Pulaski Tech. We'll be right back.
[BREAK]
[0:12:45] GM: You're listening to Up In Your Business with Kerry McCoy, a production of flagandbanner.com. In 1975, with only $400, Kerry founded Arkansas Flag & Banner. Since then, the business has grown and changed, along with Kerry's experience and leadership knowledge. In 1995, she embraced the internet and rebranded her company as simply flagandbanner.com. In 2004, she became an early blogger. Since then, she has founded the nonprofit Friends of Dreamland Ballroom, began publishing her magazine, Brave. And in 2016, branched out into this very radio show, YouTube channel, and podcast.
In 2020, Kerry McCoy Enterprises acquired ourcornermarket.com, an online company specializing in American-made plaques, signage, and memorials. In 2021, Flag & Banner expanded to a satellite office in Miami, Florida, where first-generation immigrants keep the art of sewing alive and flags made in America.
Telling American-made stories, selling American-made flags, the flagandbanner.com. Back to you, Kerry.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:13:49] KM: Thank you. We're speaking today with Chef Jamie McAfee, the executive chef of Pleasant Valley Country Club in Little Rock, Arkansas. If you're just tuning in, you need to go back and hear about Jamie's life of strife when he was a child and how he overcame a stutter and how he's grown to be a successful person and just get some tips on how to – if you really want to succeed in life and have a career, I think it's just work hard, be passionate about what you do, and be willing to take risks. Let's talk about the business of cooking, the career in cooking. Do you have to go to school?
[0:14:22] JM: No, in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. You had to go to school for the people that's doing the hiring to take you seriously. And if you don't go to school, it takes you 15 years to get where you did if you didn't go to school.
[0:14:39] KM: Really?
[0:14:40] JM: It takes that long for you to serve your internship, or your hardships, or for people to say, "Oh, they're going to be pretty good, whether it's a he or a she." If I wanted to do a job, apply for a job at Pleasant Valley without a degree, I would probably get on as a –
[0:15:03] KM: Sous chef.
[0:15:03] JM: No, probably a line cook. I wouldn't be qualified for the head position.
[0:15:11] KM: What does sous chef mean?
[0:15:12] JM: Second in command.
[0:15:15] KM: Is that what sous means in French or something?
[0:15:17] JM: Assistant. I'm the corporate master chef at Pleasant Valley. I have an executive sous or an executive chef, and then I have four sous chefs. I have an extremely talented crew. And that was one of my – I don't like to use the word demands, but concerns taking the role at Pleasant Valley. I wanted the staff to stay in put because they wanted to be there. And I didn't have to worry about them not wanting to be there. And just like I told him, I can train anybody to do what I ask of them or need them to do. And I am super impressed with the crew.
[0:16:01] KM: How long have you been there now?
[0:16:02] JM: 90 days.
[0:16:04] KM: No. Is that true?
[0:16:05] JM: Yeah, something like that.
[0:16:06] KM: I must admit – in your first month.
[0:16:08] JM: Yeah, it wasn't very long.
[0:16:11] KM: If you're just tuning in, Chef Jamie started in McGee and then he ended up in Memphis, went to a culinary school there. You're at a little cafe near the hospital.
[0:16:22] JM: We finished there, and then my father became ill. My son was in the first grade, and he had to get on the bus at six in the morning, get home at four in the afternoon. And I told my wife, I said, There's better things in life than putting our children through this." And she only had one demand. Wherever my children, our children start to school, they're going to finish.
[0:16:45] KM: How interesting.
[0:16:47] JM: I took over for my dad in McGee with the Delta Country Club and was very successful. Interviewed at Pine Bluff four different times, and I refused their offer because I was making at that time more money in McGee than they was offering. But the day my daughter graduated high school, I got a call from Pine Bluff. A very prominent citizen from Pine Bluffs said, "I want to talk to you about coming to Pine Bluff." And I said, "You know, I told y'all that I wasn't interested in the amount of money that I was offered was not what I wanted. So I don't really want to interview again." And he said, "I didn't call to interview you. I called to hire you." I was, "Oh, okay."
He said, "What do you want? What's it going to take?" And I wrote the number down. He said, "When are you going to start?" I said, "Wow." He answered all my questions, and we had a great relationship in Pine Bluff for 22 years. And the decision that I took over now and Pleasant Valley is almost identical to what Pine Bluff was 22 years ago. They were hungry for great food. They were hungry for a seasoned chef. And everything's going great. Pleasant Valley went great at Pine Bluff for 22 years.
[0:18:15] KM: You were a chef in the Delta Country Club. Did you carry that same menu with you to the Pine Bluff Country Club?
[0:18:22] JM: Some other things.
[0:18:23] KM: Do the different areas want different kinds of food?
[0:18:26] JM: No. And the menu I'm writing at Pleasant Valley currently is a staple country club menu. They want good food done well. Yes, they want chicken Alfredo, they want chicken fried steak. You have to divide it up into three sections. You have to divide it up into family, chicken strips, mac and cheese, hot dogs, hamburgers. Then you have to divide it up into what we call the classics, the older generation, hamburger steak, chicken fried steak, fried catfish, you got to have that. Pork chop. You have to have that section. And then you have the foodies. They like to experiment, but they still like the fried foods. I call it comfort food.
It's going to be a very basic menu. Some people will be disappointed in it. But where I'm at my strength is when I go to the table and said, "Well, what can I do for you?" "I don't know. What do you want to do?" I said, "Put the menu away." And we will get there at Pleasant Valley probably the next two or three months. And if you have a table eight, I might come to the table and just said, "What do y'all like? You like seafood? You like chicken? You like pork? What do you like?"
[0:19:47] KM: Italian, Asian.
[0:19:48] JM: Yeah, it doesn't matter.
[0:19:49] KM: And then you just go back and take one of your sous chefs off the line and say, "We're cooking together." And then you get to create. I don't know if people understand how creative cooking is.
[0:19:58] JM: Oh, extremely talented and creative.
[0:20:01] KM: It's beautiful.
[0:20:02] JM: See, one sauce can be turned – we have five mother sauces. We have what we call a béchamel, which is what comes out of a béchamel is Alfredo sauce, cream gravy, things of that nature. Then we have a tomato sauce. Out of that tomato sauce, you can turn it into any culture in the world.
[0:20:23] KM: Italian. Yeah, you sure can.
[0:20:25] JM: Spain.
[0:20:26] KM: Mexican.
[0:20:27] JM: MexTex, TexMex. And then we have espagnole, which in the southern, we call that brown gravy. We call it a demi. But once you make it, all you got to do is add wine, all you got to do is add mustard to make it a hunter sauce and things of that nature. Then we have a velouté. Campbell soup does all this for us, cream of chicken, cream of mushroom, tomato. But teaching somebody to do it from scratch. As you just mentioned, you don't like gluten or you don't like this, there's other thickeners and stuff we can use.
[0:20:59] KM: How has all the food allergies changed the way you cook?
[0:21:04] JM: It's changed it. But the important thing about the food allergies is you have to be honest with your customer. If you don't really know about it, say, "Well, let me research it." And that's where education really comes in. I had a board president one time, said, "The only day you have office, Mondays," and I was an adjunct teacher, "I don't want you teaching. You need a day off. And I listened to him and I said – and his name was Gene Hutchin, very successful guy. I said, "Mr. Gene, what you fail to realize, when I studied to teach a subject, not only do I pick up what I forgot, but I ended up learning more than a student. It's very beneficial to this club for me to continue."
I don't want people to think that you have to go to culinary school to be a chef. You don't have to. But it's when you start getting into allergies and working for hospitals and things of that nature, you do need that education. What can I thicken the cream sauce with instead of flour? There's several things you can do.
[0:22:17] GM: I think that's a good working definition for education in general, not just cooking. It's not about learning exactly job skills in an academic setting. It's about learning what some people maybe call critical thinking skills or something like that, so that you can change what you're doing and be dynamic as the world around you and the needs of your workflow change.
[0:22:42] KM: Customer. Yeah.
[0:22:43] GM: Yeah.
[0:22:45] JM: And think young chefs have a tendency to know it all. Making pancake batter from scratch. There was an article four or five years ago, the chef said, "Of course we make our pancakes from scratch." And they used the box, and the young chef I guess was too embarrassed to say it comes out of a box. But the [inaudible 0:23:09] in the restaurant had a severe wheat allergy. When he read the box, they didn't read it properly, or didn't know what some of the scientific terms were. [inaudible 0:23:20] she had died in that restaurant. So that's when education really comes in. What does this word mean to me?
[0:23:28] KM: Vocabulary.
[0:23:29] JM: Yeah.
[0:23:31] KM: I love this quote you said, "I tell a lot of people I've been to three or four different chef schools, taking classes all over the US. But the actual cooking, the soul of cooking, 75% of it came from the African-American women and my parents' kitchen."
[0:23:46] JM: Yes. That's when you realize they had to be there. That's the only way they need to make a living. They would even turn their backs when they were mixing stuff so you couldn't see. Because if you did it better than them, they might lose their job. But that's when I really learned the heart of it. They embraced how they cook, that they cook from the heart. It was a religion to them.
[0:24:12] KM: Yeah.
[0:24:13] JM: And that's when I said, "Well, there's more to just throwing a hamburger patty on the grill and cooking it. There's more to doing this." I guess they taught me the soul of it. Every Saturday morning, you listen to blues. Every Sunday morning, you listen to gospel. And they did that same way in their cooking and in their recipes. They took it seriously.
[0:24:36] KM: This is a great place to take a break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Chef Jamie McAfee, the Corporate Master Chef at Pleasant Valley Country Club in Little Rock, Arkansas, and long-time teacher of culinary cuisine at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's Pulaski Tech campus. The nuts and bolts of cooking professionally, which we've been talking about, the celebs he's met, and how you can take a class from Chef Jamie. We'll be right back.
[BREAK]
[0:25:02] TW: One of our favorite holidays here at flagandbanner.com is coming up, 4th of July. You can imagine why. 4th of July and hanging banners, and bunting, and flags. Fantastic. Show your pride by draping your house with all the red, white, and blue you can handle. And save 20% off your order right now if you use the code BD20. BD20 at flagandbanner.com. That'll save you 20% off your order. It's valid through Monday. And browsing through flagandbanner.com's different red, white, and blue selections, well, it will have your head spinning. There's so many great things. Please take advantage and enjoy the 4th of July with flagandbanner.com. Thanks for listening to the show too, Up In Your Business with Kerry McCoy.
[INTERVIEW CONTINUED]
[0:25:43] KM: We're speaking with Chef Jamie McAfee of Little Rock, Arkansas, who is in an elite group. He is a recipient of the Worldchefs Certified Master Chefs. Only 1500 designations have that title worldwide. Think about that, y'all. There are seven billion people on the planet and he's one of 1500. That is a very elite group. You meet a lot of people. I bet you have got a lot of ends with a lot of important people at all the hundred clubs you've worked at.
[0:26:13] JM: Well, the reason I'm at Pleasant Valley is Simmons signed that Senior PGA Tour event. Five-year contract with Pleasant Valley. Huge amounts of money. And the guy that's in charge of Simmons and one other person, Simmons hired me to be a consultant with Pleasant Valley.
[0:26:37] KM: When you were at Pine Bluff.
[0:26:38] JM: Mm-mm. And they said we want you to bring students to volunteer. Or they paid them. We want students working in the kitchen. And then they made a donation to the school. Simmons did. And the same guy that hired me in Pine Bluff. He kind of threw the carrot out there, and I said, "You want the job?" I said, "I don't like to take a job when I physically can't do it." With a lot of rehab, physical therapy, whatever you call it. And I'm not having any problems with my knees anymore. So I said, "Yeah." They called me a couple of times, not interested. The same guy I said, "Right now, what it's going to take?"
[0:27:28] KM: He's like your agent.
[0:27:30] JM: Yes, he really is.
[0:27:31] KM: Do you live in McGee, Pine Bluff, or Little Rock?
[0:27:34] JM: I live currently in Pine Bluff. My wife, all she wanted for years, "Let's move to Little Rock." I was like, "Let's do it." Now she works for my son with his restaurant in Simmons Bank.
[0:27:46] KM: In Pine Bluff or here? Oh, in Pine Bluff.
[0:27:48] JM: And he feeds their employees. She goes, "I don't want to drive back and forth." So I get to drive back and forth.
[0:27:55] KM: It's a great road. It's a great highway.
[0:27:56] JM: It's a good highway. At night, I can relax and say, "What went wrong? What we needed to fix?"
[0:28:05] KM: Mm-mm. You can unwind.
[0:28:07] JM: We, one Tuesday night – they was feeding 40 people a night. Our average right now on Tuesday night is 150.
[0:28:15] KM: Wow.
[0:28:16] JM: And they were feeding 60 people on a Friday night, and our average now is 250. One Tuesday night – and the way I work at the main kitchen, but same as teaching, we got what we call in the industry, our ass handed to us one Tuesday night. I said, All sous chefs, Saturday morning, I want to see you at 7 o'clock." Well, I said, "Just be here at 7 o'clock." And it was a steak issue. I said, "We have three ways to cook a steak. We're going to do seven minutes and then we're going to – in seven minutes, they should all be medium rare. Now what form of this cooking is going to take us to the medium well instead of medium the quickest and the most effective where we have quality?"
[0:29:05] KM: And they all come out at the same time. And a medium comes out at the same time as the –
[0:29:11] JM: The seven minutes. But now, what's the easiest way to get it from medium rare to medium well?
[0:29:16] KM: In seven minutes, right? Don't they all have to come out at the same time?
[0:29:19] JM: Oh, yeah. We sort of had a mini-classroom that morning. They said, "Wow, I didn't know we could get that fine-tuning stuff, that detail." I said, "That's what I do. Now we know how to correct a problem. I'm not going to frustrate you if you go by the procedures. You got to have this temperature, this temperature, and this temperature." And we have a pasta cooker. So we sous vide our chicken. Actually, it was pork chop. We sous vide.
[0:29:53] KM: What does sous vide mean? In a plastic bag?
[0:29:55] JM: Yeah, you poach it.
[0:29:56] KM: Yeah, I don't like that.
[0:29:58] JM: The pork chops. Okay. But the issue was they was taken out of the sous vide bag and it took 25 minutes to finish the pork chop.
[0:30:06] KM: Everybody's food, is it coming – at the table, is getting food finished at different times. The rare guys finished in seven minutes, and the well-done guys in ten minutes.
[0:30:15] JM: No. Now, it's when the expertise comes in. We got to get all that together at once.
[0:30:21] KM: Yeah, yeah. That to me is one of the hardest things of cooking.
[0:30:23] JM: Oh, it's the hardest.
[0:30:25] KM: I think it is too. My mother used to always say getting all the food warm and on the table at the same time is the hardest part of cooking.
[0:30:30] JM: That's when you know you're a true professional when you can get all – and one of my daddy's biggest pet peeves was if eight people was eating, for six people to get a food, plating and – he would just explode.
[0:30:45] KM: I don't blame him. I don't like that either.
[0:30:47] JM: I don't like either.
[0:30:48] KM: Mm-mm. We're speaking with Chef Jamie McAfee of Little Rock, Arkansas. I'm going to just recap the life of a chef. McAfee became a sous chef, then a working chef in the late '80s, an executive chef in 1994. Then he became a chef in the American Academy of Chefs in 2013, and he is now a Worldchefs Certified Master Chef. It is a long legacy of work and sticktoitiveness that has made you successful.
[0:31:17] JM: Well, there's two ways to get it is, obviously, you have to have the education level. And education is very important. Then you have to have the years experience. And everybody said, "Well, why did it take you 40-some-odd years?" Well, you have to build the experience level and the education level.
[0:31:36] KM: Cooking is chemistry.
[0:31:38] JM: Well, yeah, it is.
[0:31:40] KM: Yeah.
[0:31:40] JM: My great friend, Chef Sam Choy, Food Network, it's the yin and the yang.
[0:31:47] KM: What does that mean?
[0:31:47] JM: It's the sweet and sour. The cooking experience, the years of experience gives us, I guess, the courage to try stuff that you wouldn't try.
[0:32:01] KM: Maybe, yeah.
[0:32:01] JM: Well, let's put this with this to see what the world happens, you know. There's a lot of stuff I've thrown in the garbage can that y'all never see. But there's some of the things you go, "Hmm. By George." I make a great blackberry barbecue sauce.
[0:32:16] KM: Oh, really?
[0:32:16] JM: Yeah, I was in a competition, we was cooking sea bass for the Arkansas Hospital Association. It was in July. And I said, "It's July. Let's do barbecue." I pickled watermelon, cucumber, pickled onion. We had some potato salad. Then I had a bunch of blackberries. I had a couple of ribs. I threw the ribs and all the blackberries in a pot with some water and sugar and reduced it down. Got to see that smoky flavor from that blackberry sauce. And I said, "Well, let's incorporated in the barbecue." And I had one of my cooks in Pine Bluff taste, and she says, "Wow, you got something here." I said, "Now taste it on the sea bass." "You got something here."
And six or seven of the chefs that cook sea bass, the next two or three nights, the competition come walking over and said, "Congratulations." I said, "For what?" They said, "You're going win this. You blew our mind. You can blow our mind. Just think what it's going to do with the judges." I did end up winning that competition.
[0:33:30] KM: I think of a blueberry sauce for sea bass as being a blueberry blanc.
[0:33:34] JM: Blackberry.
[0:33:35] KM: Oh, a black. Oh, I'm thinking blueberry in my head this whole time. I'm thinking of a blueberry beurre blanc black sauce.
[0:33:41] JM: There's nothing better with fish. Lemon and blueberry go together. That's the yin and the yang. Now, the only fruit that you can successively pickle is the blueberry, the texture of it.
[0:33:51] KM: Really?
[0:33:52] JM: And you get a street taco. You can have pulled pork, you can have barbecue sauce on it, you can have a little slaw on it, pickled onion. But when you top it with that pickled blueberry and you bite into it right at the last, you think, "My God. Who would have thought?"
[0:34:06] KM: Do you pickle blueberries?
[0:34:06] JM: All the time. All the time.
[0:34:10] KM: Oh! If you open a refrigerator, wherever I'm working, you're going to have pickle blueberry.
[0:34:15] KM: I already know. Son Gray.
[0:34:18] GM: I'm like, "I'm going to figure out how to do this." Yeah.
[0:34:20] KM: Aha. They're cooks, too. I can already tell.
[0:34:22] JM: Actually, easy. Easy peasy.
[0:34:23] GM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Aha.
[0:34:25] JM: You take vinegar and sugar together, 50/50. Get it hot, boiling it. Pour it over the blueberry and leave it alone.
[0:34:31] GM: That's it. Okay.
[0:34:31] KM: Yeah, they just explode.
[0:34:33] JM: Pickle it the same way you do jalapeños.
[0:34:35] GM: Yeah, yeah.
[0:34:36] JM: But you can't bowl the blueberries with it. You got to pour it over.
[0:34:39] KM: So they don't explode.
[0:34:40] JM: If you bowl them with it, they will.
[0:34:42] GM: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You pour it over.
[0:34:42] KM: Okay. And let it cool for a second, then pour it.
[0:34:45] JM: But, see, the great thing about blueberries versus blackberries, the blueberries hold their firmness, and their shape, and the color. Any other fruit loses it.
[0:34:54] GM: Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, is that they would all just kind of explode. But they have that nice, firm skin so they can hold themselves.
[0:35:00] JM: Yeah. The blackberry turns to a whiteberry.
[0:35:04] GM: Oh, because it saps all the color out.
[0:35:05] JM: Yeah.
[0:35:06] KM: Interesting. All right. Chef Jamie, I told you that we would tell everybody how they could take a class from you. You can either sign up at Pulaski Tech and become a student and sign up for your class.
[0:35:18] JM: There's two ways to do it. You can be a non-traditional student. You don't want a degree and you can take classes. Or there's community ed classes with different chefs around the state teaches for one night, a specific task if you want to make something. I don't usually do that. But if I got the right crew, I would. But non-traditional, you might take one class every Wednesday for a semester.
[0:35:45] KM: You can do that at Pulaski Tech. You can just be a non-traditional student, come out to Pulaski Tech. And then the other one that you were talking about, you could take a class from a kind of a round robin.
[0:35:56] JM: There's a class that they do it upstairs, in the community headroom. And everybody signs up. You can go online, and it might say Chef Carey is teaching how to make gumbo. You'd learn how to make a gumbo –
[0:36:11] KM: Do you make it in the classroom with them?
[0:36:12] JM: Absolutely.
[0:36:13] KM: You'll get dirty. You will put your apron on and get dirty, too. Love it. I may have to do that. Of course, I say that after every show we go on. I say, "I want to do that." And then I never do any of it.
[0:36:22] GM: No, that's not true. Sometimes you go and visit.
[0:36:24] JM: And I always tell to my students, and I tell – I had a young, a guy making a second career. He worked for me in Pine Bluff for a year, and he really wasn't good at frying stuff. The busiest station in every kitchen. And he said, "Chef, what am I going to do?" I said, "Just cook." What do you enjoy doing?" He said, "Cook." I said, "Quit worrying about it. Just cook. You'll get it. You might not be good at it, but you'll get it." We call that being in the weeds. Nowadays, you can work for a week, and I say, " You need to do this, then this, then this."
[0:36:58] KM: Yeah, you can identify their strengths. You've actually had some very successful students go on to be –
[0:37:06] JM: I have a guy right now. It's Josh Smith. I taught him in school. He worked for me seven years. He is the head chef for all athletics at Vanderbilt University.
[0:37:15] KM: Wow.
[0:37:17] JM: Hugely successful. But I got several of them that's making six-figures.
[0:37:20] KM: Who was the girl that was on TV from Little Rock?
[0:37:22] JM: Jennifer Maune. She's was a teacher and a mentor. But yes, I gravitated towards her because of her willingness and desire. She has six children. She has a dream. And I tell my students, "Don't ever quit dreaming. Don't ever lose your desire or your determination to achieve that dream."
[0:37:46] KM: Describe what a week looks like for you. You're a teacher, you're a big chef.
[0:37:51] JM: Eight months of the year, my day starts at five in the morning. And I teach until – it depends on the schedule. About two in the afternoon. Then I show up at the country club eight months a year, about three in the afternoon, and I work till close. I only teach typically three days a week. I'm there on weekends. We're closed on Monday. Typically, Tuesday and Wednesday, I will have a normal day at the club, eight to 10 hours. Weekends, I'm there. This past Father's Day Sunday, I was there at six in the morning and left at four in the afternoon.
[0:38:30] KM: What days a week are you teaching usually?
[0:38:32] JM: I teach Monday, Tuesday morning, and Thursday mornings. Then I teach the food for class, which is we try to duplicate a true restaurant on Wednesday night.
[0:38:45] KM: What's the difference between cooking for a banquet and cooking at a restaurant?
[0:38:51] JM: Well, banquet you have a set menu. I have one of the best banquet chefs in this state that works for me at Pleasant Valley. Her name is Courtney. But banquet, it's a lot of physical work, but you have set menus, a la carte. Sunday, we had 70 at Pleasant Valley walking in, a la carte, at Father's Day.
[0:39:17] KM: How'd it go?
[0:39:18] JM: It went extremely well. The average ticket time was 15 minutes. The first day I got there, the average ticket time was 40.
[0:39:29] KM: Did they not have a chef there before you came?
[0:39:32] JM: Well, he had left. But it all boils down to organization. It boils down to not only did I believe in them. I let them know I believe in them. And let's just kind of reorganize our thoughts. The hardest thing to do is when somebody gets down on a chef or down on you just to say, "Hey, it's not all your fault. Let's change this." And they know I believe in them. And now the members believes.
[0:40:01] KM: You weren't always like that.
[0:40:02] JM: Oh, heck no. Heck no.
[0:40:06] KM: Before the show, you said, "I was like –"
[0:40:08] JM: Gordon Ramsay.
[0:40:09] KM: Just cussing like a sailor.
[0:40:11] JM: And a good mentor of mine said, "Why don't you quit bitching and start teaching?" They said, "You are so knowledgeable." And I really gravitate towards education and experience. And it does me more pleasure to turn somebody around and teach them something that it does to yell at them. As young chefs, we think nobody cares as much as we do. But a lot of people do care about what they do.
[0:40:36] KM: Yeah, everybody does. Everybody wants to be good at something.
[0:40:39] JM: Yeah.
[0:40:40] KM: Why do you not have a restaurant? And are a country club guy.
[0:40:46] JM: Well, I just enjoy working for people and don't have to put up my own money. I like to save my own money. I like to keep it to do things I want.
[0:40:54] KM: I want to tell everybody that we are talking today with the Little Rock Arkansas renowned chef, Chef Jamie McAfee from Pleasant Valley Country Club and, who for decades, is still teaching and sharing his culinary knowledge with students at the University of Arkansas' Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute on the Pulaski Tech campus. You use a lot of football analogies. Do you do that in your teaching?
[0:41:20] JM: I don't know if I do it or not.
[0:41:21] KM: You do. You talk about preparation, preparation, Alabama's preparation, Arkansas –
[0:41:26] JM: Well, why is Alabama so good?
[0:41:26] KM: Preparation.
[0:41:28] JM: They prep the same way every day.
[0:41:30] KM: Is that true?
[0:41:33] JM: When I taught my son to play golf, he went to college playing golf. Routine. What sock you put on first every morning? Before you hit each shot, you got to do this. When you set your kitchen up, you got to be prepped and ready. I preach and preach prepped and ready. And the greatest chefs are the most organized.
[0:41:53] KM: I think everybody young should work in a restaurant, except for the problem of drugs and alcohol in restaurants.
[0:42:00] JM: Terrible.
[0:42:01] KM: It's terrible. Because you get the rush from cooking. Then you don't ever want to go down. My father was a victim of that.
[0:42:11] KM: Do you talk about that in your classes?
[0:42:12] JM: Mm-hmm. There's another thing I talk about. If you don't get obsessed with drugs and alcohol, then most chefs get so heavy they can't produce work. They lose their legs. I'm 300 today, and I've spent probably 25 years of my life pushing 400. That's the reason I had two knee replacements. You either eat so much, or there's drugs. And it's easy to get caught up in it. Somebody was, "Let me buy the chef." Are you seeing on the bottom of some menus a round of beer for the cook? Worst thing in the world you can do for them.
[0:42:48] GM: What's the advice you give to your students about those sorts of things?
[0:42:54] JM: Just pay attention to the crowd. Don't get caught up working with the wrong crowd.
[0:42:58] GM: Oh, sure.
[0:43:00] JM: In any job in life, you have to –
[0:43:04] GM: The culture.
[0:43:05] JM: I think the culture, but you also have to – to be a great chef, you got to be determined, and you have to know where you're going. I think a lot of us, young chef – as a young chef, I really didn't know where I wanted to go. I knew what I wanted to achieve, but how in the world do I get there?
[0:43:22] KM: Nobody knows. You just work hard and it just unfolds.
[0:43:25] JM: Yeah. And I did work hard. You missed a lot of football games. You missed a lot of family activity.
[0:43:31] KM: You ever had a meal or an episode in your long decades, long career that you're like, "This was –" it still comes up in your memory bank every now and then and you go, "Oh, I can't believe I did that?"
[0:43:43] JM: Oh, yeah.
[0:43:43] KM: Tell me when.
[0:43:45] JM: Just yelling and cursing all the time, and treating people like I shouldn't have treated them.
[0:43:51] KM: Oh, you feel guilty about that, huh?
[0:43:52] JM: If I could see them today, I'd hug him and apologize to them.
[0:43:56] KM: It ain't nice to get older? You mellow out.
[0:43:57] JM: You do. Yeah. And probably the biggest thing that I haven't done is I should have traveled more.
[0:44:03] KM: Aha. To learn more cuisines.
[0:44:05] JM: To learn more.
[0:44:06] KM: Well, maybe that's in the future for you.
[0:44:08] JM: I hope so.
[0:44:09] KM: Who's the most famous person you've ever met?
[0:44:12] JM: Well, I guess, Bill Clinton. I've met him several times. Cooking-wise, I've cooked with him. Wolfgang, the great chef, Sam Choy, Rick Bayless. A lot of the Food Network stars. I go to Cleveland, I used to, and I hadn't been in the last couple of years. One of Wolfgang Puck's sous chefs at Spago got throat cancer, and the Cleveland Institute saved his life in Ohio. He started a little benefit for him, and it turned into the five-star event. COVID has kind of dwindled a little. But the last time I went, it was probably a thousand chefs from around the world there, and 500 sous chefs, some pastry chefs, raised 4.5 million Saturday night for that hospital. But they probably spent a million entertaining all of the chefs on a Friday night.
I've had a very fortunate – and it was all volunteer. And it all started with my mentor chef with Paul Prudhomme. Sam Choy and Paul Prudhomme. I've been very fortunate. The guy that saved Paul Prudhomme life [inaudible 0:45:27] in New York was from Monticello. Did open-heart surgery on him. Dr. Bo Busby. He had that connection with –
[0:45:35] KM: What it's like when a bunch of chefs with a bunch of big egos get together?
[0:45:40] JM: You would really be surprised. It's total respect from everybody. I was sitting at the table with all these guys in Cleveland one night and they brought out half of a hog head, roasted. And I look up and there's 10 chefs sitting there just listening to me. First thing I did is grabbed the ear and I grabbed a cheek out of it and explained what I do. And I said, "Why are y'all here?" They said, "We love your accent. So you could just talk all night." And I said, "Do I sound that country?" They said, "Yeah." But they all said, "Surprisingly, you're very knowledgeable about our field." And coming from such a small town, that's impressive. -
[0:46:20] KM: Because you love it.
[0:46:20] JM: I do. I really do.
[0:46:22] KM: You still love it.
[0:46:23] JM: My wife, I was leaving for work the first two or three weeks I was at Pleasant Valley and she goes, you hadn't been this excited in years.
[0:46:33] KM: That's wonderful. Cooking for causes for Arkansas, you have raised over 20 million dollars for charities in Arkansas.
[0:46:42] JM: Helped.
[0:46:44] KM: Helped raise. There you go. There's that humble thing I talked about. You've helped raise over 20 million dollars for charities in Arkansas.
[0:46:53] JM: I'm doing one Monday night for Our House.
[0:46:56] GM: Nice.
[0:46:59] JM: And I buy the food and cook it. Now, whoever I take with me, I pay them. But I think there's 20 people at some lady's house in Little Rock.
[0:47:08] GM: Nice.
[0:47:10] JM: You can't always take from an industry. You must always give.
[0:47:15] KM: What do you mean by that?
[0:47:17] JM: You can't just take money. And you can't take experiences. We have to learn to give back. The Bible tells us that.
[0:47:23] KM: Yeah?
[0:47:25] JM: Don't always take. Learn to give.
[0:47:27] KM: It is better to give than to receive.
[0:47:30] JM: And people don't realize how much more satisfying that is.
[0:47:35] KM: Yeah. And I think that comes with age, too.
[0:47:37] JM: Oh, absolutely. I just enjoy giving back. I had a young chef that worked the other day. He had a knife that wasn't sharp. That's a habit of mine. I buy knives. I have three or 400. I said, "Here, take this one." He looked at me and said, "Are you serious?" I said, "You won't ever get this one sharp."
[0:48:01] KM: Yeah.
[0:48:02] JM: You have to learn to give.
[0:48:03] KM: Yeah. Do you have a favorite food?
[0:48:06] JM: Italian.
[0:48:08] KM: Italian?
[0:48:09] JM: Mm-hmm.
[0:48:10] KM: Pasta.
[0:48:11] JM: If I'm cooking it. No, not the pasta. Italian sauce is the red gravy.
[0:48:17] KM: Red gravy.
[0:48:17] GM: Rustic Italian.
[0:48:18] JM: Yeah.
[0:48:19] KM: Red gravy, I had not heard of till I was a grown person. But it's tomato sauce that you're talking about the beginning of the show turned into gravy. I really like it.
[0:48:28] JM: And I like Asian, lamb, things about nature.
[0:48:32] KM: I do not like lamb.
[0:48:33] GM: Oh, love it.
[0:48:34] JM: Let me cook it for you.
[0:48:35] KM: Okay.
[0:48:37] JM: And obviously, you got to have Arkansas. You got to have fried chicken.
[0:48:42] KM: Catfish.
[0:48:43] JM: I enjoy catfish. But I enjoy it black – I don't like the muddy flavor of the catfish you can get sometimes. There's a place right before New Orleans called Middendorf's. It's like catfish chip. I mean, it's literally thin as a potato chip. I really like that fried catfish. But growing up with African-American women in the kitchen, when you cook real fatty catfish in the South, they would marinate it in mustard.
[0:49:10] KM: Really?
[0:49:11] JM: Mustard and peach hot sauce or Tabasco. And I'll be like, "Why, why, why?"
[0:49:19] KM: Get the muddy flavor out.
[0:49:19] JM: Get the muddy flavor out.
[0:49:21] KM: That's a good idea. When my kids were young, I had a cook at the house, and she always marinated our fish an hour before in Sprite.
[0:49:29] JM: Yeah.
[0:49:29] GM: Oh, sure. Sugar water, yeah.
[0:49:32] KM: And the lemon. And it pulled the fishy flavor out. You know who has thin fish and little rock? Faded Rose. Paper thin. They sure do.
[0:49:43] JM: They have good food.
[0:49:44] KM: They have good food at Faded Rose.
[0:49:45] JM: One of the things that – obviously, in my profession, people are scared to cook for you. I just enjoy good food. Now, everybody says, "Well, what do you think?" I don't like to give you criticism if you could for me. I will if you just keep on. But a young chef that is kind of cocky and I know everything, I would lower the boom on them from time to time, but only when they ask me for it.
Today's world, there's YouTube and there's internet, being a great chef, you have to build relationships. And if you have a relationship with the chef, it's a lot harder to hit that negative button on Facebook. If you don't have that relationship, it's easy to just – you can ruin a person's career doing that. I had a food blogger ask me one time, or a foodie, "Well, what do you think of foodies?" I said, "I don't think much of them." "Why?" I said, "Well, you can't do what we do. Now, how are you going to tell me how to do it? But I also have respect for you." She said, "Why?" I said, "Because I can't do what you do. I can't write. I can't blog." It's a love-hate relationship. But don't try to tell me how to do a beurre blanc when you've never made one.
[0:51:10] KM: Yeah.
[0:51:10] JM: Yeah, you can Google it or read it just like education. But that's when labs come in. When it actually comes down to it, can you do it? And can you do it when 300 people is waiting on you? The difference between a cook and a chef, the chef manages attitude of their cook. The cook just cooks. I'd much rather be called one badass cook than a chef.
[0:51:34] KM: Really?
[0:51:35] JM: Because I was at Cleveland one time, and Wolfgang Puck and Rick Bayless walked by and said, "Sam, are you're going to play golf?" "Yeah." Who you're going to leave your thing with?" "Chef Jamie." And all of them said, "He's that good of a cook." Sam said, "He's one bad cook." You'd think that was a slap in the face, but probably the best compliment I ever had. You got to be able to cook to do what we do.
[0:52:01] KM: I love that. I have sure enjoyed talking to you.
[0:52:04] JM: Well, thank you.
[0:52:06] KM: I want to come out and eat at your restaurant. Maybe I can get a pass someday.
[0:52:09] JM: You can. Putting all the puzzles together in our world, once that puzzle – and you are 100 % correct. When that symphony is going, there's nothing prettier than the world. But when it's not clicking on all cylinders, it's nothing.
[0:52:25] KM: I don't think people realize it's not just cooking. You've got to plate it beautifully.
[0:52:29] JM: Oh yeah.
[0:52:29] KM: Plating it to me is just as important, when it comes out and the way it looks is just as important. Or it's at least 40% of it to me.
[0:52:38] JM: I think so.
[0:52:39] KM: Mm-hmm. All right, we've been speaking today with the award-winning chef from the Pleasant Valley Country Club and culinary teacher at the University of Arkansas Pulaski Tech campus here in Little Rock. You have a gift. It's a US and state flag for your desk set. You can put it in your kitchen or your office. Probably never in your office.
[0:52:59] JM: I don't have an office.
[0:53:02] KM: You're one of those weird chefs that's still in the kitchen, still. Most people by now have graduated to the office. You're still teaching, you're still in the kitchen because it's a passion for you.
[0:53:13] JM: I had a couple of my sous chefs one day, they said, "Why do you spend so much time in the kitchen?" I said, "Because I enjoy it." But most people we work for is always in the office. I said, "Well, I'm going to be here, so get used to it."
[0:53:29] KM: Love it. This show was recorded in the historical Taborian Hall in downtown Little Rock, Arkansas and made possible by the good works of flagandbanner.com, Mr. Tom Wood, our audio engineer, Mr. Jonathan Hankins, our videographer, Mr. Delora DeVore, our production manager, and my co-host, Mr. Grady McCoy IV, aka, Son Gray.
To our listeners, we want to thank you for spending time with us. We hope you've heard or learned something that's been inspiring, enlightening, and 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 after today's show, I'll say work hard.
[0:54:13] JM: Absolutely.
[0:54:13] GM: You've been listening to Up In Your Business with Kerry McCoy. For links to resources you heard discussed on today's show, go to flagandbanner.com, select our podcast, and choose today's guest. Kerry's goal is simple: to help you live the American dream.
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