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 falling in love with the craft of building homes for families in a region he's watched transform from a quiet small town into a nationally recognized market.

David opens up about what it means to build a legacy business in Northwest Arkansas — from navigating the 2008 recession with a balanced portfolio of custom and spec homes, to sourcing world-class subcontractors, architects, and materials from Atlanta, Texas, London, and beyond to meet the demands of today's ultra-luxury buyers. He also shares what it's like to bring his two children into the business, the discipline behind his loyal subcontractor relationships, and why he still shows up to the office until 6:30 PM every evening — not for himself, but for the next generation.

Highlights

• 3:32 — "My least expensive home is now $950K": how David's price floor has shifted over his career
• 10:11 — The llama business and other early entrepreneurial swings before construction took over
• 13:09 — The origin of Shadow Valley: a golf course as a loss leader to attract relocating families
• 29:08 — Building a team: why common sense and work ethic beat pedigree
• 1:03:48 — Defining success: family, faith, and loving what you do — not the bottom line

Key Takeaways

1. Relationships are your competitive moat. David has kept some subcontractors for 30+ years — not by overpaying, but by paying on time, treating them with respect, and staying loyal. When things go wrong (and they always do in construction), that loyalty is what gets problems fixed.
2. Know the gap in your market. Whether it's a price point no one else is hitting in a neighborhood or a type of buyer underserved by national builders, David's success comes from reading the market carefully and building to fill real demand — not just building what's easy or profitable.
3. Balance is a strategy, not a weakness. Staying roughly 50/50 between custom and spec homes wasn't an accident. It protected David through the 2008 crash, gave him creative fulfillment, and kept his business resilient across multiple market cycles.

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 consuming upward of 50% of client budgets and no real accountability to growth. Allisha built Paradox to sit at a different intersection: not a retail brokerage, not a mega-agency serving Coca-Cola, but a full-service retail marketing partner purpose-built for challenger and emerging brands who need someone in their corner.

After a co-founder departure at the end of 2023, Allisha rewrote the business from the ground up — new values, new service model, new team structure — and that reset is what finally lit the rocket. Today Paradox is an 80% retainer business with a no-asshole policy, a 90% client retention target, and a portfolio that spans Igloo, Health-Ade, Jinx Pet Food, Genius Gourmet, and a handful of brands being built from scratch, including a new beer brand and a Dollar General owned-label they took from naming all the way to shelf.

Highlights

0:10 — How a physical therapy student became a CPG marketer: the curiosity pivot that launched a 20-year agency and brand career
10:34 — Why Allisha believes the holding-company agency model is structurally broken — and the moment she realized 50% of a client's budget was disappearing to fees
22:18 — What a "challenger brand" actually means, and why Igloo and Harry's are textbook examples of companies choosing mindset over market share
35:44 — The COVID boom, the supply chain crash, and how the aftermath forced Paradox to figure out exactly who they wanted to serve
49:02 — Taking over as sole CEO in 2023: rewriting the vision, mission, and values — and implementing EOS as the operating backbone
1:03:15 — The hardest part of ownership: carrying the weight of your people, and why the marketing is the easy part

Key Takeaways

Don't go dark — go smart. In uncertain economies, brands instinctively cut marketing spend. Allisha's counsel to every client right now is the opposite: show up clearly and consistently while competitors get quiet. The brands that hold their voice during downturns are the ones shoppers remember when things settle.

The foundation comes before the plan. No media buy, influencer campaign, or retail launch will work sustainably without knowing your shopper's mindsets, motivators, and barriers. Paradox added research and brand development to its offering specifically because the tactics were running ahead of the strategy — and without the foundation, you're flying blind.

Curiosity is the real competitive advantage. Allisha names it as one of Paradox's core values, but it shows up practically: asking why a category is declining, why a shopper buys, why a fee structure is the way it is. The brands and agencies that stop asking questions stop growing.

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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 joining Sage Partners and taking a bet on a small landscaping company that became the foundation for everything that followed. Over the next several years he scaled aggressively — sometimes too aggressively — building trucking, site work, dumpster, and topsoil businesses on top of multiple development deals, all while processing the loss of his mother.

Lauren left a 15-year CPG agency career — most recently as SVP leading Coke North America's commerce marketing — after her health made clear something had to give. After a year-and-a-half sabbatical she stepped into the family business, and the combination of her strategic discipline and Alex's vision has resharpened the focus of every arm of the operation. Today their active projects include the Bellevue mixed-use buildings, NWA Industrial flex warehouses along I-49, the long-in-the-works Pinnacle Village mixed-use site, and Trade Winds — a 130-acre master-planned neighborhood in Springdale that broke ground three weeks before this recording.

Highlights

• 0:10 — How Alex got his start: the "crazy young guy" who approached Miss Hunt at Sage, bought a landscaping company with an SBA loan, and doubled revenue in year one
• 7:34 — Why Alex says working together as a couple has been the hardest thing in 17 years — and also the best
• 15:46 — The 18-month period where grief over his mother's cancer diagnosis drove Alex to launch five businesses simultaneously — and what it cost him
• 35:22 — The design philosophy behind Bellevue: building something that looks like it has been there for 100 years in a market full of new construction
• 51:18 — Alex's case for why Pinnacle can become the true downtown of NWA — and why TIF districts and shared parking structures are the key to getting there
• 1:25:40 — Lauren on leaving her SVP career, the health wake-up call that forced the decision, and what she'd tell other women in the same position

Key Takeaways

1. Know your lane — and your partner's. Alex is the visionary who finds the workaround; Lauren is the strategist who makes it executable. The partnership only started working when they stopped trying to operate the same way and leaned into what each of them actually does best.
2. Trust conviction over consensus. Alex called the demand for wrapped apartments in Pinnacle years before national developers would underwrite it. By the time the market agreed, construction costs had doubled. Local knowledge and gut conviction are worth acting on — even when the room says no.
3. Slow, controlled growth beats fast, chaotic growth. Scaling too many businesses too quickly without the right team creates fires, not momentum. The Blasses learned this the hard way and rebuilt the entire operation around that lesson.