How Johnston County’s New Tourism Leader Plans to Celebrate Our Community

Jonathan Breeden: [00:00:00] on this week’s episode of the Best of Johnston County Podcast. Our guest is Aaron Mullins, the president and CEO of the Johnston County Visitors Bureau. He’s brand new to the job, straight from Bentonville, Arkansas, where he used to work for the city of Bentonville and Walmart.

We talked to him a little bit about what brought him to Johnston County. How tourism is part of the community and helps shape the community. And we talked to him a little bit about his vision for how Johnston County can tell his story to the world. So listen in .

Welcome to another episode of Best of Johnston County, brought to you by Breeden Law Office. Our host, Jonathan Breeden, an experienced family lawyer with a deep connection to the community, is ready to take you on a journey through the area that he has called home for over 20 years. Whether it’s a deep dive into the love locals have for the county or unraveling the complexities of family law, Best of Johnston County presents an authentic slice of this unique community.

Jonathan Breeden: [00:01:00] hello and welcome to another edition of the best of Johnston County podcast. I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden. And on today’s episode we have Aaron Mullins, the brand new president and CEO of the Johnston County Visitors Bureau.

He came to Johnston County and he started this job, I think at the end of July. So he came from Bentonville, Arkansas. We’re gonna talk to him a little bit about his journey into tourism, his journey from North Carolina to Arkansas. Back to North Carolina and some of the tourism spots in Johnston County that you might not be aware of.

I personally enjoyed Bentonville Battleground and some of the other great locations we hear Ava Gardner Museum. I think that’s kind of neat. Maybe I’m an old soul. So anyway, talk to people a little bit about that and his vision of how he wants to see the dynamics of tourism and Johnston County be marketed.

Moving forward. But before we get to that, I’d like to ask you to like, follow and subscribe to this podcast wherever you see it, whether it be on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, [00:02:00] LinkedIn, Instagram, or any of the other social media channels of The Best of Johnston County Podcast. The Best of Johnston County Podcast comes out every single Monday and has now for two years.

So go back and list some of our previous episodes, including most of the county commissioners. Then candidate Brad Knott, now Congressman Brad Knott. We’ve had the county manager, Rick Hester re recently we had Adrian O’Neal, the county parks. Parks director for a second time talking, updating is on the parks, so go back and listen to some of those.

If you love Johnston County as much as I do, this is the podcast for you. Welcome Aaron.

Aaron Mullins: Jonathan, thank you. That’s wonderful to be here.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, I appreciate it. I, I know we, we’ve been talking before we got started, and I was telling you all the things I wanted you to do, and you were like, I just came to recruit a podcast.

Like, like, you know, I didn’t know you were gonna get told all this stuff. I’ve got a, I’ve got a list to go back to. You have a list of all the things that I would like to see happened for Cleveland because I’m Cleveland’s biggest cheerleader. Yes, you’re right. So, the defacto mayor of Cleveland, I’m, so, anyway, but anyway, state your name and what you do.

Aaron Mullins: Absolutely. So, well, first of all, thank you for [00:03:00] having me. I think I was telling you before we got started as well. I love the format this podcast. And I, I think it’s just great how you’re highlighting the people that are really making the place and ’cause you know, here in Johnston County it’s just such a phenomenal.

It’s just a such a phenomenal place. I love that you’re highlighting the, the people that are sort of leading the charge and we’re all trying to work together to get to the same goal, I think. But my name’s as you’ve stated, my name’s Aaron Mullins and I’m the new president and CEO of the Johnston County Visitors Bureau.

I started at the beginning of August, so I’m in my fourth week on the job and I think it’s safe to say we’ve hit the ground running. It’s been a busy four weeks, but I’m loving it so far.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s great. That’s great. And like I said, you inherited what I thought was a pretty good organization.

Aaron Mullins: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: You know what I mean? I thought it was doing a lot of good things. You know, I thought it could do some things better, but I mean, as an organization I thought it was fairly well run. It had a structure. I get the [00:04:00] emails every week, so I kind of know what’s going on. But I mean, I know that it needs some modernizing would be the word I would use, and I think that’s why they brought you in.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah, absolutely. So, you’re absolutely right. You know, the organization, the structure of the organization really in a phenomenal place. The team is just top notch. I’ve worked and seen a lot of tourism teams around the country and the people that work our team is really some of the best.

Yeah, I’ve always thought, I think, you know, I think there’s social media, I mean like . Whoever, they’ve had different people doing it, but it’s always been kind of neat and fun and, you know, I’ve always, I’ve enjoyed that part of it as well. Absolutely. And I enjoy the emails. I, anybody can sign up for the emails.

You, you know, I’m not even sure how I got on the list, but I got on it probably seven or eight years ago when I read ’em Every, every, every week or every two weeks when they come out. Like, that’s good. It gives you the occupancy rate and the. You know, the number of visits it highlights something in the community.

It shows where our community is being [00:05:00] spotlighted in our state magazine or other type things that, that people don’t even realize. Yeah,

that’s exactly right. Well, if they do a phenomenal job are doing a phenomenal job. We’ve got some exciting things coming up though. We’re really going to zero in on storytelling.

There’s just some really amazing stories to tell throughout the county and those stories really connect. I think to why people want to visit, why people do visit Johnston County and why people should visit in the future. In addition to that I’ve already met with the team. We’re building out some new strategies going forward on the marketing communications and, and PR side.

Those strategies are gonna involve, really evolve into how we talk with and communicate with not only visitors coming into the county, but people that live inside the county as well. And how we communicate with our partners that we work with inside of the county and how we communicate with the leaders that we, that we partner with inside of the [00:06:00] county as well.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s great. That’s great. And I know your background is in communications and so let’s talk a little bit about that. I know at one point you worked for Department of Human Health and Human Services in Raleigh.

Aaron Mullins: Correct.

Jonathan Breeden: Sometimes me and them don’t always get along when you’re mad at the county and DSS and some of the things that would happen, you know, I fight for those parents now and.

Aaron Mullins: That’s right.

Jonathan Breeden: You know, fight for parents’ rights and anyway so, sometimes. I don’t know. They probably like me now that I am not the one doing that work but there was a time when I was probably persona non grata at that place.

So what’d you do for them? And where’d you go from there?

Aaron Mullins: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, I’ll backtrack a little bit I worked for a coupling United States Senators one from Oklahoma when I got outta college Don Nichols, who’s now retired.

Jonathan Breeden: I know Don Nichols. I’ve never met him, but yeah.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah. And he’s now retired. Amazing Senator. And then, I worked for Elizabeth Dole worked on her campaign [00:07:00] and traveled around the state to actually 95 of the a hundred counties including Johnston County. And then , I worked on her legislative team in Washington, DC as well doing some policy work.

And then after that I had my own. Small business, doing some consulting work in Washington, DC and then moved over, as you mentioned, to the Department of Health and Human Services to run their marketing and pr. And it was, while I, really enjoyed that job and while I was doing that, I there was an opportunity to go work for Walmart corporate.

On their corporate communications team. And I ended up, that’s what, you know, sent me to Bentonville.

Jonathan Breeden: Okay.

Aaron Mullins: And if you ever, how do you get from, from North Carolina to Bentonville, but

Jonathan Breeden: Walmart.

Aaron Mullins: Walmart brought me to Bentonville and I ended up, I ended up working on their crisis communications team and then on their community team, which supported, stores and sort of community storytelling around the country in some, in some very key markets, and really enjoyed that work. But what I really [00:08:00] enjoyed about Bentonville was what was happening within the community. And there was a tremendous amount of economic development taking place, and there was a tremendous amount of tourism development taking place alongside with economic development. And there, you know, there was a new opportunity that arose for me to run marketing and communications on the tourism side. I wasn’t even really familiar with what tourism did. But as soon as I jumped into it, I realized that it was really a combination of a lot of things that I’ve done within my career.

It is marketing, it is communications, but it is partnering with local elected officials. It is working very closely with with local businesses, it is engaging with the community. It is sort of looking to see how do we how do we partner not just locally, but regionally. How do we work with the state?

How do we create relationships with other destinations around the country that are sort [00:09:00] of doing the same thing that we’re doing or hoping to head in the same way that we’re, and so we can collaborate and share notes. And it was just a kind of a combination of things that, that really seemed to fit, and fell in love with it.

Jonathan Breeden: Oh, that’s great. That’s great. I, I’ve not been to Bentonville, Arkansas.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Of course you know it because everybody knows Walmart right now. You got to Walmart 1516.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah, it was around that time.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. Okay. So, ’cause, well, I know this isn’t really tourism, but this is business Walmart between oh nine and 14 lost its way.

The, the guy that was there was not focusing on the employees. He was trying to cut corners employees, and then they brought a different guy in, and I, I can’t remember the new guy’s name. He came in in 14 or 15.

Aaron Mullins: Doug McMillan

Jonathan Breeden: and Doug McMillan went, went back to the original thought. Right. So you get there, I guess, about that time.

Aaron Mullins: Right.

Jonathan Breeden: So what did you learn just about communicating? Because I mean, they had lost market share. Their employees were not happy. Their vendors were not happy. I [00:10:00] mean, I guess part of what you had to do was sort of help fix that because you’d have got there about the same time Doug McMillan got there.

Aaron Mullins: Well, Doug is an amazing leader and for anyone that that cares to look this up, his story is actually really fascinating because he started off pushing carts in Walmart parking lot and has worked his way up through the company had different jobs within the different stores and then within the company before he became CEO.

And that’s important because his outlook, and this translates a little bit into how I look at tourism as well.

Jonathan Breeden: Correct.

Aaron Mullins: His outlook on how to run the company is understanding how things work the nuts and bolts of how things work in the retail business.

He wants to know what’s going on in his stores, with the associates that work in the stores obviously wants to know what’s going on with the customers and wants to stay as close to that as possible. And he does that brilliantly. So translate that over to tourism. I very much have a same philosophy, which is that [00:11:00] I’m gonna want to know what’s going on in the County.

I wanna partner really close and know what’s going on with our partners, with our elected leaders with local businesses as well. And that helps inform strategies that we put together and plans that we put together. And also those, those types of partnerships I think are extremely important because if we’re all rowing in the same.

Direction. It just, it, it strengthens tourism, it creates community pride. And when people come here and visit, they sense that, and they feel that it’s not that they’re being marketed to, it’s that they’ve come to a place that people love living here. People love going out and enjoying the experiences here that they’re going to enjoy and that really translates in a big way.

Jonathan Breeden: Have you had a chance to visit some of the tourism sites that we have around the county?

Aaron Mullins: I, I’ve, I’ve been on the job for for four weeks. Right. I’ve, I’ve, I’ve had a chance to, to visit few, but I’ve, I’ve got a. List of many more. And I, I, I’ll tell you, [00:12:00] I’ve, I’ve had a chance to visit a few of the, the sites, but what I’ve really been doing is trying to get out and, and, and meet with folks.

I’ve already started meeting with a lot of the mayors around the county. Chamber leaders hoteliers, been meeting with a lot of hoteliers, obviously we’re, we’ll get into that, but we’re funded by, funded by lodging tax throughout the county. And, and not only meeting with these folks, making sure that I’m listening and understanding what’s working, what’s not working, what are some of the opportunities we can collaborate on moving forward.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s great. That’s great. And I, you know, before we started this, I was like,

Aaron Mullins: you’re gonna take me around.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, I wanna take you around. But the other thing is I want, there’d be more for our hotels here at 40 42 Veterans Parkway, you know, more promotion, more crosswork. I felt like I. Our, our hotels kind of got left out of some of the stuff. Smithfield, you know, everybody, you know, your, your office is right behind all the hotels at Smithfield on nine five.

Aaron Mullins: Right, right.

Jonathan Breeden: You know, [00:13:00] but I don’t think that, that our hotels maybe got the attention that they should have gotten. That’s just my opinion. I, I would think that hotels would probably agree with that. But, you know, it is what it is. It’s a new day and you know, we’re gonna make sure you can try to get a chance to meet them and, and, and talk about what their needs are. They’re, they’re all, they’re all great and, you know, we only, I mean, even though we have a lot of hotels, it’s really only like two owners.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: I think there’s really about, like, I think two people own just about all the hotels here. Right, right. So, they’ve sort of been consolidating nice, nice people. So anyway. So are you funded by, is there a restaurant tax?

Aaron Mullins: It’s not so, where I came from in Bentonville, Arkansas was a combination of restaurant tax and lodging tax.

Jonathan Breeden: Which they have in Raleigh.

Aaron Mullins: Which they haven’t, and they have in Raleigh.

Okay. I think here in Johnston County it’s just, it’s lodging tax. So we’re funded by 3% of lodging tax across the County. And just to be specific, ’cause sometimes people will get that confused. It’s not tax that’s coming from the hotels themselves. That’s [00:14:00] the tax that’s being passed through from the customers that are actually purchasing the room.

So that’s coming directly from people paying for the rooms. So we get funded by 3% of those taxes. And then in addition, we have six towns within the county that have elected to use an additional 2% of their lodging tax for specific promotion about their town specifically that we work with them on as well.

So in essence, we market the County as a whole, but then we work with. At this time, six of our towns specifically, where they want to leverage their 2% of their budgets for specific marketing, specifically for their towns.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s that’s great. I, I didn’t realize that.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: You may not realize this, but the two, two hotels in Benson are fairly new, and it was a big deal to get that first hotel in Benson.

It might’ve been five or six years ago. And then [00:15:00] that owner, I think, built the other one right next to it, you know? Right on I 9 95 at exit 81. And, and that was a big get for Benson. I mean, it was that those are economic drivers. Tax base.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: Those people stay there. They eat in the restaurants in Benson.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: You, you know, I mean, so I thought that was big. I, I don’t think people think about, I travel all the time. I love to travel. I, I, I’m very fortunate. I, I get to go a lot of places around this world. But, and I, believe me, I pay the room tax wherever I go and a lot of places higher than it is here.

So, yeah. But, but like, but hotels are a big deal when it comes to

Aaron Mullins: That’s right.

Jonathan Breeden: Especially in small towns and stuff. To be able to get those, you know, Clayton hadn’t had hotel. All that long.

Aaron Mullins: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Breeden: I mean, I would say maybe 10 or 12 years. You know, like it hasn’t been that long since Ho Clayton didn’t really have any.

So, you know, I I, we sort of take it for granted out here at 44 2. We’ve had ’em for since, you know, for 20 some odd years. We’ve got a lot more of ’em now, but it’s, you know, it’s not always a given that these towns have ’em.

Aaron Mullins: Right.

Jonathan Breeden: You know what I mean? And I don’t know, I mean, I guess Benfield had to have a lot [00:16:00] because of Walmart and all the meetings and all that.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah. They, they, they, they had a few, but they’ve, they’re building more. And I think what’s exciting is that we have more ho, you know, we have more hotels on the, on the way as well. And we’re going to need more. But that also means that we need to be creating more experiences, year round experiences for for people to to visit and spend the night in, in Johnston County. So that’s, that’s gonna be part of our charge.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s cool. That’s cool. There is a, for people that are not listening, there is a brand new home to suites in Smithfield, right there off of I 95 at exit 95. I went to the, the ribbon cutting just a few weeks ago. Absolutely beautiful.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah,

Jonathan Breeden: just beautiful.

Aaron Mullins: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s modern. It’s got light, it’s eco-friendly. I mean, it is as nice a hotel Yeah. As I’ve been in, in a very long time. They also own the other hotel right in front of it, but they really went outta their way with that design and the windows and. And eco-friendly. And they just did [00:17:00] a really nice job. So, if, you know somebody needs like, that is a really nice hotel,

Aaron Mullins: that’s the place, yeah

Jonathan Breeden: in Smithfield.

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Jonathan Breeden: So one of your things is you have an expertise in telling place stories. What is a place story and how would that work here?

Aaron Mullins: So place stories are many things, but really what it boils down to it’s the story about the people that live in a place.

My experience has been that people relate to other people’s stories and experiences. That’s why I go back to this. In my mind, it’s gonna be, and [00:18:00] to the Doug McMillan example, which is gonna be so important to work closely with people within our County. I want our tourism office partnering.

Not only with our elected officials and our tourism partners, but with other partners across the county as well. And so those stories that we tell, you know, it’s one thing to tell a story about maybe an attraction of some kind that people are like, well, that sounds like a fun thing to do, but what’s the emotional connection that you’re making? And that’s the emotion. That’s the story of place when you have an emotional connection to it at some point.

And from my experience, that emotional connection happens when you hear stories about specific people. For instance, you know, business owners or attraction owners or somebody who’s sort of telling the story of the history of a place, those are emotional connections that can, that can really attract people.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and yeah and we’ve got a great, I mean, you think about Bentonville. Our, the last, one of the last battles of the, of [00:19:00] the

Aaron Mullins: Yep.

Jonathan Breeden: Civil War and went on for two or three days. Right. And, and you know, I think the war may have actually been over, but nobody, there was no way to tell them. And they continued to continue to fight in March of 19 of 1865.

Aaron Mullins: Right.

Jonathan Breeden: There had a lot of stories there. They’ve done a nice job with, with that battlefield. It’s one of the largest civil war battlefields in the United States. Right. They continue to buy more land. There’s a conservancy group there, and they bought more of the land and

Aaron Mullins: the hiking trail I haven’t been on yet, but I’m excited. It’s amazing. Sounds amazing.

Jonathan Breeden: Right, right. And then we just, they just completely redid Tobacco Farm Life Museum.

Aaron Mullins: Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Breeden: It had been closed for a while. It reopened in July of 2025.

Aaron Mullins: Right.

Jonathan Breeden: And it does a really good job. I’ve not been to the new one, but the old one did a really good job of telling the story of our ancestors and what it was like to grow tobacco and the, and the troubles they had and from, from diseases to just the physical nature of the, of, of the [00:20:00] plant to trying to get it dried out. Lots of old stuff. So, I mean, those are great things. If you’ve not been to, I would highly encourage people to go.

Aaron Mullins: That’s exactly right. And it’s a, it’s a great opportunity to, to tell the story of a place that’s the past, present.

And then, but also the story of where that place is headed in the future. I think those are things people get connected to. And, you know, I’ll give you just a, an example. Yesterday morning I was meeting with an amazing organization that we partner with called Joco Grows. And you know, they work with farmers throughout Johnston County.

I was hearing some stories about. Some of these family farms,

Jonathan Breeden: oh it’s phenomenal

Aaron Mullins: that I, that were just, that were just phenomenal. I’ve got a list of those and those, that was just the tip of the iceberg. And so we, those, those stories are throughout our county and, you know, great way to tell those kind of stories are examples of like what you’re doing here through a podcast. There’s other avenues where those stories can be told as well. And so we’re, we’re putting together some plans and strategies around that.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, I mean, you know, this [00:21:00] agritourism thing is a big thing.

Aaron Mullins: Absolutely.

Jonathan Breeden: And some of the families in Johnston County have done a great job. If you’ve, you know, Clayton Fear Farm is getting ready to open up and it is as good a fright place as you will ever see. But you know, the other thing about Clayton Fear Farm is, you know, they have Clayton Fear Farm daytime with pumpkin patches and, and you could play, huh? They have, they have sand sandboxes full of corn and they have slides that land in the corn.

Yeah. I used to take my kids when they were little there and we would get a pumpkin can and they would’ve face painting and stuff like that. And then at night they have the haunted hays where they literally. Are so successful they were hiring. Hollywood set designers to help design the scares on these plate with from, from the, from the costuming of, of the actors to the sets in the barns, to everything to really scare you.

Really? Yeah. And people come from [00:22:00] all over to go to Clayton Fear Farm. It’s been there for, probably, probably, I mean, my son’s 16. I took him for, we had his third birthday party there, so at least 13, 14 years. And then I think they do, a Christmas. Christmas light tour. Oh, okay. Hayride with lights, I think they call it Lights on the Noose.

I think that’s the same family. But, but there, there’s tons of those and the, the, the Smith Nurseries. I know they had a fire a couple years ago, but I think they’re getting back up and going. Yeah. And they do a lot in the fall. And I mean, there’s just, there’s just tons of these, those are the ones that are, that I know of that, that I’ve enjoyed going to over the years.

And, and I think, I think that’s great and, and I think it’s great for these farmers and I think we should do more to promote that.

Aaron Mullins: Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s built into who we are as, as a county. And it’s exciting as well because you, one of the other things I do is I follow sort of tourism trends around the country and there’s a couple, several trends taking place right now.

One is a agritourism where I think people are wanting to [00:23:00] connect back to the places where their food is coming from. Another one is called town sizing, where a lot of people are wanting to. They’re like, we’ve experienced cities already. Where are the places off of the road? We can take a road trip and go experience that are, that are, that are sort of off the map a little bit.

You know, where we’re located as we all know we’re in a prime position for that. And so you think about all of the experiences. The cool experiences that people can have in, in Johnston County. It just, it puts us in a really prime, prime position from a tourism standpoint.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, and we also have the Meadow Lights, which is awesome.

Thousands and thousands. I, I don’t have many people go to Meadow Lights, but I would be shocked if it’s not. More than 50,000 people. Hmm. I mean, meadow Lights is a massive agritourism thing down at, down in Meadow, outside of Benson, where the farmer, I, I [00:24:00] forget his name, it might be Johnston, decided 30 years ago, he just started making Christmas lights.

Hmm. And he started putting up, up in one of its fields and now it is one of the largest, you know, Christmas light things in North Carolina and it’s in Meadow. And Meadow is. Really small, but it’s in Johnston County. Yeah. And so many people go to the Meadow Lights and the candy store. You got this old fashioned candy store there.

It’s open from the week, the week before. I think it starts around Thanksgiving all the way to January 1st. Santa Claus is there every night. Hot cocoa. I mean, it’s all the Yeah. Great traditions that you would have as a child. It doesn’t cost very much. It doesn’t cost anything to just go look at the lights.

If you wanna ride the train around the lights, it’s like $3. I mean, it’s phenomenal.

Aaron Mullins: Sounds amazing.

Jonathan Breeden: We’ve got so much of that in Johnston County. Yeah. That, I don’t know if everybody’s aware of it, but like, but we really do. And, and, and, and, you know, and, and we’ve done a decent job. But I do think there we, the, the [00:25:00] tourism work could do a better job.

And so what are some of the things that where you could see, where we might see coming outta there in the next 12 to 18 months to communicate this better than we’ve communicated it before?

Aaron Mullins: Well, I think when you look at the, what we have in place right now throughout the County. I think there’s a lot of opportunities and, you know, again, I’ve been here four weeks, so, I wanna be very careful about being the new guy who’s coming in with big ideas who may not know what he is talking about. I’m trying to listen to as many people as possible and meet as many people as possible.

But what I’ve picked up on so far, I think we have some tremendous opportunities with outdoor experiences. That goes back to what we have happening with the farms. That goes back to the trail development that’s taking place , certainly both bike and hiking. That goes back to you know, the Bentonville battlefield that you mentioned.

Those types of experiences. I think we’re in a prime place to really build out sort of a music scene within Johnston County as well. There’s already a [00:26:00] phenomenal scene. We have some amazing venues like the Rudy in Selma.

I know there’s, there’s the, the Clayton center, which is, I haven’t had a chance to go to go there yet either, but you know.

That’s amazing. That’s great. Got the theater down in downtown Smithfield, and so on and so forth. But where we’re located again, right off the highway and what we have, I, I think from a fest, from a music festival standpoint, I think there’s some interesting things that could be done there.

There’s a, there’s already a, a sort of an arts and culture. Type of experience that we’ve got built in with the Ava Gardner Museum the tobacco museum that you mentioned. But I think there’s a lot of things, a lot of things we can do there. The food scene here is, it’s been a phenomenal experience so far.

Right, right. It’s very underrated. Very underrated. I, I think, and I’m, I’m just, you know, again, the, the tip of the iceberg on that, but I, I think there’s, I think there’s a lot of things we can do around the food scene that I’m excited about, especially. Being in such [00:27:00] a agricultural county and sort of that partnership with farms, I know a lot of that’s there that, that you know, fresh approach with menus, I think is gonna, is gonna be amazing.

And then, you know, shopping is obviously a big part of what we have going on in the county as well with the Atla malls. That’s a huge draw for us. But I think also letting people know that in addition to the outlet malls, we have a lot of private businesses in our, in our downtowns and throughout the county.

There’s a lot of cool markets across the county that, that, that people could visit. And that’s, that’s a whole, you know, that’s a whole shopping experience that we can, we can sort of, spread out as well.

Jonathan Breeden: Yeah. Well, I tell you what, I can. Talk to Aaron all day, and I might, but it’s not gonna be on this podcast, but we’re definitely gonna have to have Aaron back in the future, maybe come back in six months to 12 months as you’ve been on the job a little bit longer.

Great. And sort of see, see what you think. But so far, you’ve been here a month. Last question, last everybody. What do you [00:28:00] love most about Johnston County?

Aaron Mullins: What do I love most about Johnston County? Well, I, I, I’d have to say the people. I’ve had a chance to meet a lot of people so far, and everyone’s been extremely welcoming.

Extremely helpful. My family just moved in this past weekend and we just love it here. Well, so it’s, it’s the people for sure.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, it, it, everybody, almost everybody says the people. I think it’s the people’s. Well, I love Johnston County.

How can people get in touch with you?

Aaron Mullins: Well, there’s several ways.

So, one is our website johnstoncountync.org. And then we’re on social media as well at visit Johnston County, nc. That’s a great opportunity. I, I, we’re on Facebook, we’re on Instagram, we’re on LinkedIn. Twitter. I would also call out though our newsletter which we have a lot of people from around the country that receive that newsletter, but also a lot of people within Johnston County kinda let you know.

What’s happening and what’s coming up. And you can, you can sign up for that newsletter on our website as well.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, I, I get the newsletter and, and read it. I dunno if it’s weekly or biweekly, but whenever it comes [00:29:00] out, maybe it’s monthly, but whenever it comes out I read it. I’ve learned so much

Aaron Mullins: Yeah.

Jonathan Breeden: About the county and everything. They, they do a great job with the newsletter. I would highly recommend the newsletter if you wanna know what’s going on in Johnston County, because it’s really good. It’s got pictures and videos and I, I never read it and not learn something.

Aaron Mullins: So the team does an amazing job.

I appreciate you saying that. And we’ve got, yeah, we’ve got some exciting things coming up on with our newsletter as well.

Jonathan Breeden: Well, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, we’d like to thank Aaron Mullin’s, the new president and CEO of the Johnston County tourism Bureau here for being our guest on The Best of Johnston County Podcast.

Like we mentioned earlier, please like, follow, subscribe, this podcast, wherever you’re seeing it. Give us a five star review down below so, other people will be aware of The Best of Johnston County Podcast. If you have guests that you would like us to maybe bring on, you can reach out to us at social media at breedenlaw.com, or you can leave it down in the comments below.

Until next time, I’m your host, Jonathan Breeden.

That’s the end of today’s episode of Best of Johnston County, a [00:30:00] show brought to you by the trusted team at Breeden Law Office. We thank you for joining us today and we look forward to sharing more interesting facets of this community next week. Every story, every viewpoint adds another thread to the rich tapestry of Johnston County.

If the legal aspects highlighted raised some questions, help is just around the corner at www. breedenfirm. com.