The Best of LKN

Marc Wulf got hooked on investing in a sixth-grade stock market game, grew up going to Berkshire Hathaway meetings in Omaha, and spent 16 years as a NASCAR pit crew fueler. That includes a 2014 championship with Kevin Harvick. Today he's a "financial mechanic" at Castle Wealth Group in Mooresville, where he looks under the hood of people's finances and helps them plan for the retirement they actually want.

Jeff and Marc talk about how high-earning W-2 employees and business owners think about tax strategy, why Roth conversions are coming up so often with retirees, and how AI, the infrastructure build-out, and inflation are shaping 2026. They also get into Lake Norman's melting-pot culture, camper-van retirement dreams, and Marc's plan to restore a square-body Chevy C10 with his kids.

https://www.castlewealth.com/

The Best of LKN
https://thebestoflkn.com/

Hosted by:
Jeff Hamm
https://lknreal.com/

About the host:

Jeff Hamm is the visionary behind The Best of LKN – a media platform that has been spotlighting and promoting the most adored local small businesses and nonprofits in the Lake Norman area since 2020.

Jeff’s also an expert Lake Norman real estate broker who brings deep expertise in premium neighborhoods and strong ties to the region’s top builders, designers, and service providers.

Learn more:

Lake Norman, North Carolina
www.LKNreal.com

Banner Elk, North Carolina
www.BannerElkLiving.com

Jeff Hamm is a North Carolina real estate broker serving two of the state's most sought-after markets: Lake Norman and the greater High Country region. He specializes in luxury and second-home property, from Lake Norman's waterfront and golf communities to High Country communities including The Lodges at Eagles Nest, Elk River Club, Farm at Banner Elk, Diamond Creek, Blue Ridge Mountain Club, and Echota. His focus is buyer representation, where his relationships with each region's top listing brokers, builders, and designers give his clients a measurable edge.

Jeff is also the founder and host of two local media platforms, The Best of LKN and Banner Elk Living. Each includes a podcast and newsletter that spotlights the area's most admired small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs. He publishes the annual Lake Norman Visitors Guide and Banner Elk Guide, produces regular market reports for both regions, and hosts The Best of Lake Norman Business Network.

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Jeremie Evans is back on The Best of LKN, this time with a new venture. Jeremie has a background in product strategy and financial analysis. He launched StratBuild this year to help small business owners build real AI systems. His point is simple: AI won't run your business for you, but it can be the assistant that lets one person do the work of three.

Jeremie and Jeff talk about why so many founders become the bottleneck in their own business, and how to get what's in your head into an "AI brain" your team can use. Jeremie also explains his growth system for prospecting, customer recovery and reviving cold leads. He shows how a local AI tool can strip private data out of financial statements before anything goes to the cloud, and why his advice is to pick one AI tool and stop chasing the hype.

https://stratbuild.ai/

The Best of LKN
https://thebestoflkn.com/

Hosted by:
Jeff Hamm
https://lknreal.com/

Support the show

Austin Quick spent years engineering suspensions for Stewart-Haas Racing before trading race weekends for family dinners and a real estate career. He's a third-generation Realtor with Ivester Jackson Christie's International Real Estate. His grandmother started the family business in Flagstaff in the '70s, and he grew up cleaning rental houses on weekends.

Austin and Jeff talk about how his mom got through the 2008 downturn by switching from sales to buying and renovating. They also dig into why the Townes at Maxwell in downtown Huntersville are drawing investors, with new construction, strong rents and the future Red Line commuter rail nearby. Plus: why human connection matters more than ever in the age of AI, and what Austin loves most about living on the lake.

https://austinquickrealestate.com/

Links:
thebestoflkn.com

Hosted by:
Jeff Hamm
LKNreal.com

Jeff Hamm is a North Carolina real estate broker with Ivester Jackson | Christie's International Real Estate, serving Lake Norman, North Carolina. He specializes in luxury and waterfront property, golf and lakefront communities, condominiums, active adult and family-friendly neighborhoods, and short-term rental and investment purchases – with a particular focus on buyer representation, where his relationships with the region's top listing brokers, builders, and designers give his clients a measurable edge.

Jeff is also the founder and host of The Best of LKN, a podcast, newsletter, and media platform that has spotlighted the Lake Norman area's most admired small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs since 2020. He publishes the annual Lake Norman Visitors Guide, regular market reports, and hosts The Best of Lake Norman Business Network.

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Through his company, Holliday Homes, Bill Worsley builds luxury custom homes throughout the Lake Norman area and in the heart of Davidson. He joins Jeff alongside returning guest Mike Feehley to talk about two of the most anticipated projects around the lake: the Estate at Davidson Farms and Summit Farms.

Bill explains why he rebuilt his career around "building in his own backyard," and what's coming to Summit Farms, from a coffee roastery and tasting room to a bakery, a working farm and 58 homesites. He also shares practical advice for anyone planning a custom home: bring your builder in early, and "build the house on paper" before breaking ground. That includes picking out your mirrors sooner than you'd expect.

Holliday Homes

Special thanks to Mike Feehley:
MikeFeehley.com

Mike Feehley is a Luxury Real Estate Advisor with Ivester Jackson | Christie's International Real Estate specializing in luxury homes, waterfront properties, builder representation, new construction, and development opportunities throughout the west side of Lake Norman, including Denver, Sherrills Ford, Terrell, Mooresville, and the surrounding Charlotte region.

Links:
thebestoflkn.com

Hosted by:
Jeff Hamm
LKNreal.com

Jeff Hamm is a North Carolina real estate broker with Ivester Jackson | Christie's International Real Estate, serving Lake Norman, North Carolina. He specializes in luxury and waterfront property, golf and lakefront communities, condominiums, active adult and family-friendly neighborhoods, and short-term rental and investment purchases – with a particular focus on buyer representation, where his relationships with the region's top listing brokers, builders, and designers give his clients a measurable edge.

Jeff is also the founder and host of The Best of LKN, a podcast, newsletter, and media platform that has spotlighted the Lake Norman area's most admired small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs since 2020. He publishes the annual Lake Norman Visitors Guide, regular market reports, and hosts The Best of Lake Norman Business Network.

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After forty years in Louisiana and twenty in Colorado — including a stint breeding Clydesdales on the back side of Pikes Peak — artist Pamela Quarles Adams landed on Lake Norman five years ago and fell for downtown Davidson the very first time she saw it. What started as a studio above Good Drip Coffee became a full Main Street gallery representing eight other artists, an adult class waitlist over a thousand names deep, and, eventually, a decision she never expected to make: closing it all down to finally focus on her own work.

Pamela joins Jeff to talk about the wildlife series that started with the indigenous animals of Louisiana and has followed her to every place she's lived, the Blue Ridge Mountain paintings she renders in flat blocks of color instead of realistic hues, and the single continuous contour line portraits that have to be finished in one sitting — including a Salvador Dalí piece a visitor is urging her to send to the Dalí Museum. She also shares the story behind her long-in-progress painting of Moose, the beloved Carolina red wolf, and her hope that his legacy can raise money for the sanctuary that cared for him.

pamelaquarlesadams.com

The Best of LKN Podcast
thebestoflkn.com

Hosted by:
Jeff Hamm
lknreal.com
bannerelkliving.com

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Dr. Ryan Whalen came to Lake Norman in 2007 planning to chase a career as a professional golfer, with dentistry as the side gig. The golf plan didn't last, but the practice he opened on Catawba Avenue in Cornelius — from scratch, at the bottom of the 2008 recession — is still going strong nearly two decades later.

Ryan talks with Jeff about why starting a business at zero during a downturn was less terrifying than it sounds, how Whalen Dentistry is built around eliminating stress points for anxious patients, the cosmetic work he's most proud of, and why he has no interest in growing into a high-volume "dental mill." Plus: the tight-knit team he credits for most of it.

Whalen Dentistry

The Best of LKN

Hosted by:
Jeff Hamm
LKNreal.com

Support the show

When Megan's son Luke was diagnosed with cancer at three years old, she couldn't find a single book written for a kid that young — so after he rang the bell in 2024, she wrote one. Luke and the Lost Bell has since put more than 500 free copies into the hands of hospitals, clinics, and families across the country and into Canada, with Spanish, Philippine, and French editions in the works.

Megan joins Jeff to talk about building Next Chapter Station into a 501(c)(3), the "Road to the Rails" section she wrote for the parents and teachers in a sick kid's corner, and the second annual Next Chapter Station Golf Classic coming to NorthStone Country Club on Monday, September 28 — where the goal is to double last year's number and get 1,000 books out the door. She also gets into her day job as a Lake Norman marketing consultant and why AI search has become the thing local businesses ask her about most.

https://lukeandthelostbell.com/golf-classic

Learn more about Megan:
https://thebestoflkn.com/160-experiential-marketing-with-megan-miller/

LKN Business Network:
https://thebestoflkn.com/lake-norman-business-network/

The Best of LKN Podcast
https://thebestoflkn.com/

Hosted by:
Jeff Hamm
Expert Real Estate Broker
https://lknreal.com/
https://bannerelkliving.com/

Support the show

Mike Feehley of Ivester Jackson Christie's International Real Estate is back to break down what's actually happening on the west side of Lake Norman. His read on Q2: this isn't a crash or a stall, it's a return to normal — roughly three to three and a half months of inventory, buyers taking their time, and sellers still chasing 2022 prices finding out the hard way that the market moved on.

Mike walks through his three Ps for selling in this market (preparation, price, patience), makes the case that your agent should be spending their own money to get your home ready, and then gets into The Cape — a 27-unit luxury townhome community on the water in Denver with rooftop pools, outdoor kitchens, elevators in every unit, and 15 dock slips. Reservations just opened, with the first building targeted for delivery by the end of November.

https://mikefeehley.com/

https://capelakenorman.com/

Hosted by:

Jeff Hamm
Lake Norman Real Estate Broker
https://lknreal.com/

Support the show

There are 96 islands on Lake Norman, and Paul Chickene will be the first to tell you that number is shrinking. Paul is VP of Communications and Volunteer Engagement for the Lake Norman Wildlife Conservationists, a volunteer nonprofit working to protect, conserve, and restore wildlife habitat in and around the lake – and he found his way into it the same way a lot of people do: he tagged along on a cleanup, got a ride on a sheriff's boat, and never left.

Paul walks Jeff through the Adopt an Island program (all you really need is a kayak, a bag, and some gloves), the 80-plus osprey nesting platforms the group has installed around the lake, and how the trash volunteers log on the website loops back into funding for trees and native plantings that fight shoreline erosion. He also shares a weekend rescue story involving an osprey tangled in fishing line and the Carolina Raptor Center – and makes a straightforward ask for the thing the organization needs most: people.

https://lnwc.org/

Carolina Raptor Center:
https://carolinaraptorcenter.org/

The Best of LKN Podcast
https://thebestoflkn.com/

Hosted by:
Jeff Hamm
Lake Norman Real Estate Broker
https://lknreal.com/

Support the show

Paras Gore's three nephews used to sit through family birthdays and holidays with two or three Oreos each – the only thing on the table that wouldn't send them to the emergency room. So she put her organic chemistry background to work and started rebuilding dessert from the ground up. Today, Atelier Doux is an allergy-friendly bakery serving the Lake Norman and Charlotte area, and those brownies have a cult following.

Paras joins Jeff to talk about what it takes to run a dedicated gluten-free kitchen, why cross-contamination is a genuine emergency-room risk and not a food fad, how she went from taking extras to the office to hiring her first employee in under six months, and where you can find her – from Kunu Coffee and the Davidson Farmers Market to the fall lineup dropping August 25.

https://www.atelierdoux.com/

Get the Lake Norman Visitors Guide!

Hosted by:
Jeff Hamm
www.lknreal.com

Support the show