Kirk was born at a very young age, to a poor North Carolina farmer and a baker’s daughter some time before World War II rolled around and daddy was drafted and sent to battle the nefarious Hun. By the time it came for him to be educated, the war was over and Daddy had returned to the farm, and Kirk was sent off to a rural four room schoolhouse sitting out in the middle of the proverbial Southern cotton field.
Then, some time, after graduating high school, attending North Carolina State College (now North Carolina State University) and playing on the collgege basketball team, followed by a short stint in the Army, defending our nation from the dreaded Red Menace at a missile artillery base, again out in a field. This time somewhere in Indiana.
Next, Kirk migrated to the Golden West of California, to seek his fortune under the gilded lights of Hollywood.
There, capitalizing on his experience as a small town disc jockey for George Beasley (founder of the Beasley Broadcasting Group) at startup radio station WPYB in Benson, North Carolina, in 1962, he sought and gained employment at KRLA radio in Pasadena, California, working with soon to be superstars such as Casey Kasem, Bob Eubanks, and began doing personal appearances playing on the station basketball team with the likes of up and coming rock ‘n roll stars such as the Righteous Brothers as well as Jan and Dean. During those heady “Entertainment Years,” Kirk moved through a series of broadcasting jobs, eventually finding his way to NBC in Burbank in 1967.
Somewhere along the line, he migrated out the world of show business and joined with a guy named Glen Bell in his startup concept taco stand chain. After a short while, because of his skills in management and promotion, Glen financed Kirk into a Taco Bell franchise in Central Texas, where he moved to virgin career territory and over the course of a few years, was able to build a small four unit chain of taco stands under different names in Corsicana, Killeen, Belton and Waco, Texas.
Then, as fate would have it, because he was making more money than he knew what to do with, and at a such a young age, had no idea what all those numbers in his monthly financial statements meant, he sold this small group of taco stands to friends and mentors and entered Hankamer School of Business at Baylor University, in Waco, to earn a BBA with a concentration in Accounting, all with the intention of returning to the restaurant business as an older and wiser entrepreneur
However, after graduation with a 3.85 GPA, when he was unexpectedly approached by a recruiter who introduced him to the world of Commercial Finance, and Asset Based Loan Auditing, which he soon discovered was a lot like detective work revolving around contract compliance and fraud prevention. Kirk found this detective like work interesting and satisfying as he got to dig into the operations of hundreds of small and medium size businesses discovering an enormous variety in management styles and business models, but after a dozen years of fifty week a year travel, with a new wife and a baby he decided to get a bit of stability by settling into one location and opening an accounting practice.
During the next dozen years, Kirk opened three accounting offices, one in Kennesaw, Georgia, and later offices in Durham and Wilmington, North Carolina. He also partnered with one office in Cartersville, Georgia and another in Atlanta, Georgia as a marketing partner. While operating his accounting practice, he recognized the need for some useful industry credentials, so he studied for and passed the Special Enrollment Examination to become an Enrolled Agent, a credential issued by the IRS. Along with that experience, he also wrote a review course for others wishing to take and pass this examination. This course was published by an early computer based training firm called MicroMash, later a division of Thomson Reuters.
Then, in 1997, Kirk’s desire to fulfill his “social” itch that he got in the entertainment field sold his accounting office interests to open a fast food restaurant in Jacksonville, North Carolina, just as it seemed the entire 40,000 strong Marine base was loading on ships headed for the war in Bosnia (Ah, timing can be everything!). The business failed, and a followup attempt in Wilmington also failed, teaching him that there are some successes that don’t repeat after a long hiatus.
In 2001, Kirk returned to the world of finance by accepting employment as a Commercial Finance Auditor with a small company called Jefferson Wells that was immediately gobbled up by Manpower. A few years later, as the Jefferson Wells division of Manpower was closed down, he took early retirement and settled in the North Georgia mountains and began to explore the internet.
While surfing this newfound internet thing, Kirk soon discovered an underserved market for information on how to build accounting practices, which as the serial entrepreneur he was, with the promotional skills that came natural to him in his earlier careers, he decided he needed to fill this newly found need. And, in so doing, he built several websites marketing accountancy marketing skills training to startup and struggling accounting firms across the United States and in several English speaking countries such as Australia and the UK.
Then, one day, a chance conversation over dinner with an old friend, about all the fun things he had done over the years in and around the entertainment industry, and all the“bright idea” inventions he had conceived, Kirk was encouraged to develop one of those ideas, a new sports concept, and take it to market. So, at 80 years of age, he has developed a sports concept unique enough that he has filed for and received USPTO patent protection, and is seeking funding so that prototypes can be built, players recruited, fans developed and leagues and teams can be brought into existence