USMC Iraq Vet Chose Beaumont Over Palm Springs, Temecula for Business

A Marine with two tours in Iraq recently decided to open his own business, and he chose Beaumont over a host of other communities, including Palm Springs, Temecula and Rancho Cucamonga.

"Beaumont is a beautiful city," Aaron Hurst, 32, said in a recent interview at the Beaumont Marketplace Quizno's, where he took charge in September.

"I'm not trying to take anything away from any other city, but Beaumont and Banning, there's good people that are here," Hurst said.

He and his wife Kimberly, 33, live in San Jacinto, and they have two young boys. Braedon is 4 and Carter is 2.

They had a lot of places to choose from when they went looking for an ideal place for a business.

"We drove around all over the place," Hurst said. "I must have investigated 20 different locations, and the reason that I selected Beaumont was because of the area and the atmosphere of this city.

"Just it seems to be genuine, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of presumptuousness, things like that," Hurst said. "You look at somebody, you shake their hand, and it seems like you're getting what they're telling you you're going to get."

Hurst is from Cleveland, Ohio, and he entered the Marines in 1998, straight out of high school.

"I didn't go to my high school prom, I didn't go to graduation, I went to boot camp instead," Hurst said. "Paris Island.

"I was in the infantry. I was a machine gunner. I was stationed four years in Hawaii . . . then security guard in a couple different countries . . . then I got elected with 11 other Marines to go to Iraq to open up the American embassy in 2004.

"There, myself and the other Marines, we were responsible for the internal security force," Hurst said. "We had to build that up from scratch. It was pretty amazing what 12 Marines could do, in such a small amount of time and make it as effective as it was.

"Myself and a couple other Marines ended up getting promoted. I got promoted to meritorious staff sergeant because of my efforts over in Iraq during my first tour, which lasted about six months," Hurst said.

"Then I went to Camp Pendleton after that, spent some time training Marines. Then I volunteered to go over to Iraq as part of a MiTT team."

The acronym MiTT stands for Military Transition Team.

"Our mission was to train Iraqi platoons and companies on warfare," Hurst said. "It was me and about eight other Marines, at that time, and we worked in tandem with some of the Special Forces that our military has to offer.

"That tour was a little bit more hectic. That one started in December 2005 and it ended in 2006. I discharged shortly after that."

He and Kimberly married then. She was from Hemet and they moved to Temecula. Hurst tried his hand at investment firms for several years before deciding to buy his own business.

"When I was in the Marine Corps, I had a dream of always owning my own business, and it's something my father has wanted me to do as well," Hurst said. "I'd been working for about four years. I started working with Edward Jones, then I was working with Wells Fargo. . . .

"I wanted to sell investments for Merrill Lynch, that didn't work out for me, I didn't get hired," Hurst said. "So I ended up selling cars for about seven, eight months, and right around the middle of 2007 I started for Edward Jones.

"I spent time at Edward Jones, a great great firm," Hurst said. "But I lost a little interest in retail brokerage. . . . and the grass was greener on the other side and so I went to work for Wells Fargo. I thought it would be a little bit more fast-paced, a little bit more Wall Streety-type feel, which is something I was interested in. But it was the same thing, just a different logo.

"I kind of got tired of the corporate grind," Hurst said. "My boss was an amazing guy. He did not have a thumb on top of me or anything like that. Wells Fargo's a great firm, they take really good care of you.

"I just, if I'm going to be putting in an unlimited amount of time for something, I want to put in an unlimited amount of time into something that I own, that's mine," Hurst said. "And I didn't want to do the whole corporate thing any more."

Hurst's business stands between two vacant storefronts in Beaumont Marketplace. But he sees potential and he and Kimberly are working hard to make the most of it.

"This is not a corporate-run store," he said. "This a mom-and-pop shop where myself and my beautiful wife work. Her and I are putting in collectively over 80 hours a week, just to make things happen, and we're trying to keep people employed."

They have five part-time employees for now.

Hurst said he likes people and he takes time to get to know his customers.

"You know, you focus on customer service here, and the people come back," Hurst said. "And that's what we've been doing. People come in here and they say 'We used to come once every two weeks, but now we're coming twice a week, because Aaron, you know my name. You talk to me. You shake my hand and say hello.'

"Things like that. That's what I think the people of Beaumont like, and that's who I am," Hurst said. "I'm that kind of guy. The kind of guy that doesn't just want to serve you a sandwich, I want to serve you a sandwich and talk to you for a minute. We've got about three-and-a-half minutes together while I'm serving you a sandwich and if I can strike up a conversation in that time, get to know you a little bit, why not?

"We want return business, yes, and we want to see Beaumont succeed," Hurst said. "If businesses are going to succeed - I mean look to my right, look to my left, it's empty. The spaces are empty, and all down on the other side the lot down there it's all empty spaces as well."

That doesn't seem to worry Hurst. He knew what he was looking for when he and Kimberly searched for where they wanted to be .

"Palm Springs I did not pick. Temecula I did not pick. Hemet I did not pick. Rancho Cucamonga, I did not pick," Hurst said. "Let's see . . . Victoria Gardens I did not pick there, mainly because you're going to get a higher volume of people, but your fixed costs are going to be a lot higher as well. You're going to pay four, five, six thousand dollars in rent. Where, here we're not paying that, we're paying a fraction of that."

Enthusiasm and good people skills have paid off so far, Hurst said.

"I know who I am," he said. "I'm the type of person who can get people to frequent my establishment because they know me and they talk to me and they know who I am. It's kind of like Cheers, you know."

The is at 1668 E. 2nd St., Suite J. To go orders can be phoned in at (951) 845-6377.