s Premier Business Magazine
Greater Fort Worth t ’s Premier remier Business Ma azine
These 29 top entrepreneurs of the year are leaving their mark on Fort Worth business Al Micallef and his new Micallef Cigars Inside the hip offices of Red Sanders’ Red Productions An electric car recharging company start-up PLUS
( JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017 )
FW Inc.’s inaugural class runs the gamut, from aviation, to energy, health care, manufacturing and distribution, media, real estate, construction, professional services, and retail.
66 Big Easy Bootstrapper: Pushed out of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, engineer Edward Morgan finds a home in Fort Worth and comes up with a startup business – electric car chargers.
( BIZZ BUZZ )
9 Cigars: Reata founder Al Micallef gets ready to launch a national cigar business.
10 TAD's Troubles: Tarrant Appraisal District stuck with bad software, audit finds.
12 Comings and Goings: Courtyard Marriott-Stockyards, Will Rogers construction and more.
14 Face Time: Near Southside planner Mike Brennan goes car-light.
16 Stay Informed: How to handle stress at work.
18 Around Cowtown: Pictures from FW Inc.'s Best Companies to Work For luncheon.
( EXECUTIVE LIFE & STYLE )
24 Distinctive Style: Businessman Rodger Chieffalo has his Western professional look down to a science.
26 Off the Clock: Headed to the inauguration? Where to stay, eat, and play.
30 Wine & Dine: Blue Plate Network’s unusual recipe for success as a commercial real estate firm.
32 Gadgets: Amazon Echo and Google Home, dueling digital assistants.
34 Health & Fitness: Need to get in a quick workout? There’s an app for that.
36 Office Space: Red Productions occupies a hip space in Fort Worth’s Foch Street Warehouses and is willing to share it.
( COLUMNS / DEPARTMENTS
70 EO Spotlight: Developer Fran McCarthy turns his passion for urban development into helping others bring their historic projects off the table.
74 Running Toward the Roar: Bret Starr loves to be underestimated, our columnist, Jason Forrest, finds.
78 Analyze This: FW Chamber report. Brandom Gengelbach, the Chamber’s new economic development executive, shares his perspective on growth and opportunity.
80 Analyze This: Commercial real estate. Commercial Realtors resolve to support big development in
Arlington, literacy efforts in Fort Worth schools, public transit initiatives, and intelligent growth.
82 Analyze This: Legal and Tax. Disability accommodation’s a two-way street.
84 Analyze This: Insurance. President-elect Trump’s victory and the retained GOP Congressional majority portend changes to Obamacare, but how much?
88 Analyze This: Wealth. The IRS considers changes to regulations that could restrict the transfer of wealth from one generation to the next.
90 Exceptional Entrepreneurship: FW Inc.’s Entrepreneurs of Excellence share the best lessons they’ve learned in building and selling companies.
92 Management Tips and Best Practices: The best leaders search for ways to challenge the status quo, our columnist, Harriet Harral of Leadership Fort Worth, says.
94 Day in the Life: Banker and Fort Worth Chamber Chair Mark Nurdin moves between meetings and finds time for Bible study and a little John Grisham.
Amy and Jay Novacek
Texas Ranch Owners
Heritage Customers
Jay and Amy Novacek know a good piece of land when they find it. They also know the right lender. For more than a hundred years, Heritage Land Bank has been a dependable source of financing to those buying land in rural Texas. Ready to buy? Let’s talk today. If you can fence it, we can finance it.
y first job after graduating from TCU was at a small advertising agency as an account executive. After a few years there, I was contacted by an entrepreneur (and my future mentor and business partner) Mark Hulme, who owned and ran a midsized ad agency, to come to work for him. Mark had a background in printing and had just added a book publishing division to the agency. I was impressed with Mark’s vision and success at a young age and accepted the job.
After six months, I was promoted to agency director, while Mark expanded the book publishing side of the business. Shortly after taking on my new role, we convinced a former advertising client in Michael’s Arts and Crafts to allow us to license its name and launch a magazine that we would own, which was our entry into magazine publishing.
A lot happened after that, including my leaving the company and returning three years later after getting another call from Mark about coming back to lead an effort to launch Outdoor World magazine with Bass Pro Shops, which we were successful in doing. Shortly thereafter, Mark and I left and started a magazine publishing company.
Mario Andretti was once quoted as saying, “If things seem under control, you are just not going fast enough.” The next 15 years involved a lot of very fast driving where we started up or purchased 10 national magazines, closed a few and sold a few. We also launched one local product in Fort Worth, Texas magazine. It was a roller-coaster ride of experience for me.
Seeing the potential in the city magazine that was not being fulfilled, in 2005 I (along with investor Bobby Patton) bought Mark’s interest in Fort Worth,
Texas magazine. Mark and I worked in the same office for a few years before he moved MMG to Dallas.
A couple of years ago, I was in Mark’s office when he asked me what I was working on outside of Fort Worth, Texas magazine. Uncomfortable with his question, I told him I was so busy with growing the magazine that I did not have the time to work on anything else, and quickly changed the subject. The reason I was uncomfortable with his question was because I was uncomfortable with my answer.
Often the difference between success and failure in business is the risk tolerance that one must have to bet on his idea and to act. Mark’s question to me was what caused me to act on the idea that I had to launch FW Inc. It is because of Mark’s question that we are honoring other entrepreneurs in this issue with our Entrepreneur of Excellence awards. Entrepreneurs serve as the spark plug in the greater Fort Worth economic engine. They create wealth, jobs, opportunities and prosperity. Our city’s economic success is the result of encouraging and rewarding the entrepreneurial instinct.
The famous business author Peter Drucker once said, “Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” The entrepreneurs featured in this issue either started, purchased or have grown their business because they took calculated risks. All of them are successful. Please join me in encouraging and rewarding them. And, if you run into Mark, thank him for asking me that simple entrepreneurial question.
Hal A. Brown owner/publisher
events & marketing natasha freimark x158 circulation circulation manager brittany ryan corporate cfo charles newton accounting manager evelyn shook To subscribe to FW Inc. magazine, or to ask questions regarding your subscription, call 817.560.6111 or go to fwtx.com/fwinc.
Fort
Texas,
Bowie Blvd, Suite 130, Fort Worth, TX 76116. Volume 3, Number 1, January/ February 2017. Basic Subscription price: $19.95 per year. Single copy price: $6.99 ©2017 Panther City Media Group. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. how to contact us For questions or comments, contact Scott Nishimura, executive editor, at 817.560.6178 or via email at scott.nishimura@fwtx.com.
Reata founder Al Micallef is getting ready to launch his cigar business nationwide.
BY SAMANTHA CALIMBAHIN
Most people come to Reata for chicken fried steaks and rib eyes, but anyone who’s waited for a table at the popular downtown Fort Worth restaurant may have noticed something curious in the lobby – a glass case of Cuban cigars marked with the name “Micallef.”
Yes, Micallef. As in the Micallef family that runs Reata. Alongside keeping the restaurant in order, Reata founder Al Micallef is
also building up a cigar business called Micallef Cigars, selling the product at Reata, Silver Leaf Cigar Lounge and online. The company launched about two years ago and has sold about 2,000 units in Fort Worth so far, Micallef said.
This year, Micallef is looking to expand the company nationwide, sending out a Mercedes van to tour the country and introduce his cigars to other states.
He says he wants the business to get big – but not too big.
“The goal is, I want this to be a large boutique company,” he said. “But I don’t want to sacrifice quality for size.”
Micallef owns the company along with the family that makes the cigars, the Gomez Sanchez family, who came to the U.S. from Cuba. He said he ran into them at Silver Leaf, where they were rolling cigars for free. Liking the quality of the cigars, Micallef brought up the idea of turning the family’s work into a business, and they agreed.
“The growth and everything that is happening so quick, it’s amazing,” family representative Mario Palacios said. “It would’ve taken us years to acquire what we have done in the past year with Al.”
Micallef sells seven types of cigars. One of them is named the Micallef Reata, after the restaurant. Another is the Micallef Reserva, which was given a 92 rating by Cigar Snob magazine.
Micallef said he understands the health risks associated with
smoking. Mayo Clinic, for example, discourages any form of tobacco use, but Micallef stands by cigars over cigarettes, saying cigars are less harmful because they don’t have additives.
“Cigars are not cigarettes,” he said. “It should be clearly noted that when you’re smoking a cigar, you’re smoking 100 percent tobacco. Most of the issues with cigarettes are all the additives.”
Even with the cigar venture, Micallef said his cigars aren’t taking the place of
anything at Reata. “I don’t need another job,” he says – chicken fried steaks and rib eyes keep him busy enough as is. He does, however, see Micallef Cigars as his way of helping the Gomez Sanchez family.
“I like this Cuban family,” he said. “I want to make them successful along with the business.”
BY YAMIL BERARD
After two controversial years and an investment of over $1 million, the Tarrant Appraisal District is stuck with a software system that still isn’t working properly, according to a new audit.
An independent verification audit has found that more than one-third of the functions it was tasked to perform are “unfulfilled,” meaning they haven’t been resolved or don’t work properly.
Also, the timeline for implementation of the new software was compressed, creating wide gaps in testing and quality control that later led to an assortment of issues, including missing and inaccurate appraisals, errors on tax exemptions, homeowner addresses and names.
Even a request for proposal soliciting software companies to vie for the work was incomplete or lacked key details, such as statutory requirements associated with government appraisal systems.
“To me and the people in the county, it just brings back all the frustration and the anger that we’ve had to experience over the last two years, starting with the [October 2014] go-live, which was an utter disaster, an unmitigated disaster,’’ said
Ron Wright, the county’s tax assessor-collector, who sits on the appraisal district’s board of directors. “It was literally months before we got data that we could use that was of any use at all. Based on what we’ve learned here, that certainly explains a lot.”
Weaver Tidwell, a Fort Worth company, was hired by the appraisal district’s board of directors to complete the “independent verification and validation” audit of its new software. The company’s charge was to try to “broadly” certify whether the system was operating as intended.
The audit was delivered to the appraisal district’s board of directors during a public meeting, Dec. 16.
“This is explosive,’’ Wright said.
directors for the appraisal district, also affirmed the audit’s findings.
“It accurately reflects a lot of what was the root causes of some of the difficulties that we have…we can’t change what’s already happening, but what we can do is figure out exactly the best way to go forward,’’ Potthoff said.
He expressed a desire to pinpoint recommendations to fix problems. He also suggested that an outside firm could be hired to do that.
“What I don’t want to happen is that we get into a situation where we’re fixing it, and, as it occurred earlier, we fixed one thing but caused other things to break down in the process,’’ Potthoff said.
“What we can do is figure out exactly the best way to go forward.”
– Joe Potthoff, chairman of the board of directors
“It needed to come out, in contrast to the shiny lollipops the board heard from time to time when they needed to know what was going on.”
Joe Potthoff, chairman of the board of
“We need a comprehensive, full approach to this.”
Talk of a software conversion occurred as early as 2011. That year, the appraisal district initially hired a company known as Manatron to replace its legacy software holding more than 1.6 million property appraisal records. One year later,
Thomson Reuters purchased Manatron. Because of some delays and changes in software, the original implementation deadline was postponed by one year, said Brian J. Thomas, a partner of information advisory services at Weaver Tidwell.
The appraisal district went live with its new software in October 2014. Almost immediately, failures began, including a two-month shutdown at the appraisal district’s offices.
That set off the chief financial officers of a number of taxing entities in Tarrant County, who claimed they were shorted millions in revenues due to property assessments that were not included on the tax rolls because of the appraisal district’s software failures.
Estimates by the Texas state comptroller’s office, which conducts an annual property value study of every county in the state to assess the accuracy of numbers provided by appraisal districts, showed that Tarrant was short by tens of millions in assessed property in 2015.
On Dec. 16, there was also criticism by Wright and others that the company, Thomson Reuters, had not provided sufficient access to auditors during its evaluation.
After the meeting, Paul Thies, a company spokesman, said the company was reviewing the audit.
In an email, Thies emphasized that Thomson Reuters had “met all reasonable requests” to comply with auditors. Company representatives met with the auditor on two separate occasions to provide briefings on the software and implementation, he wrote.
Also, the company provided hundreds of pages of documents detailing system conversion plans, requirements, testing and change requests.
Tarrant Appraisal District’s Chief Appraiser Jeff Law, a supporter of the software, did not comment publicly during the meeting.
Yamil Berard is a Fort Worth freelancer.
In the city of cowboys and culture, here’s a quick look at some of the things happening on the cowboy side of town.
Just in time for the Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, a Courtyard Marriott hotel is opening in the Fort Worth Stockyards in late January. Dubbed the Courtyard Fort Worth Historic Stockyards, the four-story, 124-room hotel is located at 2537 North Main St., just a few steps away from Billy Bob’s Texas and the Cowtown Coliseum. Some of the hotel’s amenities include a fitness center, outdoor pool and café serving breakfast, dinner, cocktails and coffee. According to Courtyard, the hotel was custom-built to match the Stockyards’ unique Western flare.
Several potential retailers are in talks to occupy the former M.L. Leddy’s space at 410 Houston St., according to Sundance Square. The boot and saddle maker, which has been in business since 1922, closed its Sundance Square location in December to consolidate inventory at its Stockyards location at 2455 North Main
St. Meanwhile, former Leddy’s buyer and manager Leslie Harding Distler moved to The Foundry District, north of West Seventh Street, becoming the chief creative officer of Feathers, a women’s apparel and gift shop at 2621 Whitmore St. Feathers is set to open in January.
Once the Stock Show and Rodeo is over in February, construction is expected to begin on the new Multipurpose Arena at Will Rogers Memorial Center. The $450 million project, located at Harley Avenue and Gendy Street along Montgomery Street, will seat up to 14,000 people and host events like concerts, sporting events and – of course – the rodeo. Currently under construction is a six-level, 2,200-space parking garage. The parking garage is expected to open in late 2017, with the arena finishing construction in late 2019. Along with the parking garage and arena, the city also plans to start work on Montgomery Street in June, creating a five-lane road from Interstate 30 to Harley Avenue and four lanes from Harley Avenue to Camp Bowie Boulevard, as well as a path for bikers and pedestrians.
The Near Southside planning director goes car-light, getting around on bike, foot, Uber and train. But how best to get to our offices?
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA
It went without saying that Mike Brennan’s plan to get to an interview at the West Fort Worth offices of FW Inc. was going to be a challenge. Brennan, planning director for the economic development nonprofit, Near Southside, Inc., went “car-light” early in 2016 after he and his wife lost one of their cars to hail, getting around on bike, bike share, bus, train, and Uber.
Brennan arrived on his 1989 Trek 950 mountain bike, with rack, bags, lights, fenders, comfortable grips and Brooks saddle, lock, and bottle cage.
Home for lunch in his Mistletoe Heights neighborhood, he rode a trail to the Trinity River, crossed the miniature train bridge, rode through Trinity Park to West Seventh Street, caught the No. 2 Camp Bowie bus, and took that to a stop near our office — 40 minutes.
“Thousands of people do this every day,” he says. For him, “it’s more fun, it saves money, and it’s more of an experience than hopping in a car.”
Brennan's office is less than a mile from where he lives, and across Interstate 30 from downtown and Fort Worth City Hall, where he spends a lot of time. There are limits. “I live and work in one of those areas that has good transit service,” he says. “Figuring out if I could regularly use bus service to get to meetings was the challenge.”
Brennan uses the NextBus and GoPass apps. NextBus shows the number of minutes to the next bus. Users buy day passes on GoPass; the T’s cost $3.50.
Brennan’s typical downtown trip: Catch the No. 6 near his office, ride downtown, and take a BCycle bike-share to City Hall. His employer reimburses for mileage and parking: $2.50 for the five-mile roundtrip, $2.50 for parking. “I was curious if I was saving money.” If a bus trip will take an hour and transfer, he uses Uber. Another strategy: Carpooling.
“We could do a much better job with the frequency of bus and train service and hours,” he says. “If you want a system where people don’t have to consider schedules, 15 minutes is the absolute maximum between buses." The T's No. 1 North Main and No. 2 meet that; expanded service is in the new master plan.
A car-share network would be a plus, he says. Zipcar rents by the hour with DFW universities.
In some U.S. cities, apartment developers are paring parking costs — and rents — by offering passes to car share, public transit and bike share. Fort Worth could test that with a small development, he says. “I think we have those ingredients in a very small section of our city.”
D&M Leasing has been based in Tarrant County for 34 years and is excited to open the new Fort Worth Location, conveniently located at I-30 and Summit.
D&M Leasing is the largest leasing company in America and was recently awarded the 2015 Leasing Company of the Year award by Dealer Rater for Texas and the entire U.S.
With D&M Leasing you can save up to 50% each month over buying a vehicle, and the entire transaction can take place right over the phone.
Best of all, your new or pre-leased vehicle will be delivered to next vehicle can be.
Kelly Strausser President D&M Leasing Fort Worth
No need to “turn back time to the good old days,” as the song says. Author Genella MacIntyre has a few tips on how to handle stress at work.
BY SAMANTHA CALIMBAHIN
No matter what line of work you’re in, there’s one thing that’s always guaranteed – stress. Author Genella MacIntyre tackled the issue in her book Five Steps to Reducing Stress and shared some of her tips with FW Inc.
Tell us about the reality of work stress. How does it hinder productivity?
Distress impacts health, resulting in more sick time. If the source of work stress is poor leadership, all aspects of productivity suffer. Distress also increases conflict, employees are less creative, less able to solve problems and make more mistakes, and top performers leave.
Dealing with difficult people at work, especially, is inevitable. Does that difficult boss or co-worker take all the blame, or are there things an individual can do to reduce stress in the workplace?
Most difficult people are unaware of their impact on others. The difficult boss, however, needs to shoulder more blame than a co-worker. You as the co-
worker have two choices in this situation: either don’t give feedback to that person, or give feedback. If you don’t have a conversation with the difficult person, nothing changes. If you do, something might, or it might not. Consider the following suggestions: Focus only on the offending behavior, not on the person. If the difficult person is your boss, ask permission to discuss the situation. Find out how others communicate with this person. Also, don’t hint. Difficult people don’t get hints. Listen to the person’s perspective. Ask for permission to share yours, then find common ground or agree to disagree. Don’t assume the person is aware of his or her impact – rather, assume the opposite. Avoid words like “never” and “always” or other extreme language. Finally, document difficult behavior.
How can a business holistically look at work stress and tackle it as a company?
Communicate the importance of wellness, then walk the talk. Educate employees about distress, and ensure employees have access to employment assistance programs. Also, have zero tolerance for poor leadership. Promote increased physical activity, and ensure vending machines have healthy food options. Some other suggestions would be to discourage employees working through lunch or working excessive overtime, establish parameters about employees being on call, consider a “quiet space” for relaxation and allow a “casual dress day.”
Check out MacIntyre’s Five Steps to Reducing Stress:
STEP 1: UNDERSTAND STRESS. What is it? Why is it important? How does it show up in our lives?
STEP 2: TAKE STOCK
Identify what, specifically, is upsetting for you. Examine the “why” behind the “what” or the “who.” Know your stress symptoms and stress management style. Do you feel better or faster when you do something physical, shift your emotions or change how you think?
STEP 3: MANAGE THE EXTERNAL Look at your physical environment. What can you change right now to help you feel better?
STEP 4: MANAGE THE INTERNAL This involves challenging beliefs, turning reactions into responses, and reframing your thoughts and perspectives.
STEP 5: TAKE ACTION Select one strategy and implement it.
Best Companies to Work For FW Inc. held its inaugural Best Companies to Work For in Fort Worth luncheon Nov. 9 at the Fort Worth Club. Each business was judged by independent research firm The Best Companies Group, which narrowed down the list to 16 companies – eight with more than 50 employees, and eight with less than 50 employees, all with unique offerings from exceptional benefits to perks like massages and happy hours.
Winners with more than 50 employees: Pacheco Koch, Qualbe Marketing Group, Freese and Nichols, Apex Capital Corp, Huckabee, Rodeo Dental & Orthodontics, The Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders, Radiology Associates of North Texas, P.A.
Winners with less than 50 employees: Satori Capital, The CSG Cos., Gus Bates Insurance & Investments, The Baker Firm - Fidelity National Title, Balcom Agency, Forrest Performance Group, Trinity Habitat for Humanity, Warren Douglas Advertising
Commercial real estate broker Rodger Chieffalo has his Western professional look down to a science.
BY SAMANTHA CALIMBAHIN
“Adaptivereuse”
is a development term that refers to renovating an old building to turn it into something new. That’s essentially what Rodger Chieffalo likes to do with hats – he takes an old hat (none of them are newer than 1970, he says) and adjusts the brim, ribbon and other features to give it a modern look. It’s a side project Chieffalo does alongside running his real estate company, Chieffalo Realty.
But the hat is just one part Chieffalo’s “Western professional” look. He has a method for putting together the rest of the ensemble, and he offered some tips on how to do it.
“A shirt that’s well-made has a tall collar. [If] all of the structure is well-made here, and the structure is well-made in the cuff, they’re not going to shrink up, they’re not going to distort, they’re always going to look nice. They’re always going to give a professional look, whether the man is wearing a tie or not.”
The sport coat is the first thing that gets noticed on a man, Chieffalo says. Whether he wears a t-shirt or a dress shirt underneath, a good sport coat can turn any look into a professional one.
“That’s the key to a well-dressed man. I could be not wearing a sport coat, and I’d look like I was just hanging out. You judge for yourself. The sport coat really is the key to the whole deal.”
“Belt Bar”
Chieffalo uses the phrase “belt bar” to describe how he puts together his belt and buckle. Each day, he lays out his extensive collection of belts and buckles, piecing the two together.
“The belt matches the boots; the cuff links match the belt buckle. I try to keep the metals the same. I try to keep the leather colors the same.”
Chieffalo has a unique collection of cuff links, made from items like old bullets or toy guns as a subtle nod to the Old West.
“The cuff links always follow the buckles. I’m going to wear silver cuff links because it’s a silver buckle. That’s the only guiding force.”
“Buy whatever is the most comfortable that you like. Jeans become invisible after you put all this other stuff together.”
“The key to footwear is finding a brand that is the most comfortable. Once you find a pair of shoes or boots that are comfortable, then I say only buy that brand.”
The nation’s capital is home to diverse dining options, luxurious accommodations, an unrivaled historical experience and, oh yeah, the President of the United States.
BY SAMANTHA CALIMBAHIN
The 45th President of the United States will be sworn in on Jan. 20, marking the beginning of Donald Trump’s tenure in the White House. Thousands of government officials, community leaders and spectators, along with a few Fort Worth faces, will be there to see it all happen. But even if you’re not heading up for the
inauguration, Washington, D.C., makes for a great place to visit – and not just for the monuments. From boating the Potomac River to enjoying brunch at an authentic Belgian cafe, there’s plenty to do at the nation’s capital. Not to mention the historical and cultural experience that you just can’t find in a textbook.
The Tabard Inn tabardinn.com
Named after the inn mentioned in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Tabard Inn is a charming D.C. establishment with a history that dates back to 1922. Hotel managers have made an effort to preserve the hotel’s historical character and Victorian atmosphere, which is why you won’t find TVs in any of the rooms. Instead, The Tabard Inn
offers boutique spaces with eclectic decor, live jazz in the main fireplace lounge and a restaurant known for its brunch.
Loews Madison Hotel
loewshotels.com/madison
Just walking distance from the White House is the Loews Madison Hotel, which boasts elegantly designed rooms and beds fitted with 100 percent Egyptian cotton linens. Pets are allowed at Loews Madison, too, and the hotel even offers gourmet room service, pet-walking and pet-sitting services just for its four-legged guests.
Trump International Hotel
trumphotels.com/washington-dc
Of course, you can also stay in the hotel with the President’s name on it – Trump International Hotel. The, ahem, Presi-
dential Suite is 2,900 square feet (and can expand to 4,000 square feet), featuring a king-size bed, 55-inch high definition TV and private gym, among other amenities.
Washington has plenty of breakfast and brunch spots in the Capitol Hill area. One of them is Belga Café, an authentic Belgian restaurant serving crepes and steaks, along with a diverse selection of waffles such as cheddar waffles, banana waffles and more. Another option is Bull-
frog Bagels, which offers “Bagelwiches” filled with ingredients like house-smoked salmon and Baltimore brisket.
If you get lunch at the right place at just the right time, there’s a chance you may see a political figure or two dining at a table nearby. A few hotspots for those working in the political scene include Fiola (Italian), Le Diplomate (French) and Blue Duck Tavern (American).
You may want to plan ahead if you decide to have dinner at Rose’s Luxury. The restaurant doesn’t take reservations, so patrons often wait in line but say it’s worth it. The menu at Rose’s Luxury features dishes like pasta, fried Brussels sprouts and caviar service, if you ask. Another unique dining spot, Quarterdeck Restaurant, will require you to cross the Potomac River to Arlington, Va., but it’s still just about 10 minutes from the White House. Quarterdeck Restaurant is known for its blue crabs and three types of crab legs (snow, Dungeness and king).
Monuments like the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument and Iwo Jima Memorial are the most obvious must-see’s in Washington. To tour the White House, you can request tickets from your congressperson. But if you’re the more adventurous type, you can also kayak or paddleboard through the Potomac. Boat rentals and sailing classes are also available at various locations. Just check to make sure the boathouse is open for the season.
Texas will be well-represented during the inauguration, with people like Mayor Betsy Price and Congressman (and former TCU baseball coach) Roger Williams expected to attend. One highlight of inauguration season is the Black Tie & Boots ball, a celebration hosted by the Texas State Society (TSS) in Washington, and chaired by Williams. Event organizers expect more than 10,000 attendees, and Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence may make an appearance as well. Two of the event’s sponsors are BNSF and Lockheed Martin, companies that both have headquarters in Fort Worth. The ball takes place Jan. 19, the day before the inauguration, and tickets are $275 for TSS members and $300 for non-members. More information can be found at texasblacktieandboots.com.
A company’s building is the place where ideas happen, deals are made, and aspirations are achieved. At Speed Fab-Crete, we work with companies large and small to ensure their businesses are built strong and on solid footing.
– Architects & builders under one roof
– Customers involved start to finish
– Projects delivered 20% faster
– Budgets executed within 5% of target
– Superior, sustainable construction
Let us show you some more impressive numbers 817.478.1137 | speedfabcrete.com
Being a restaurateur takes more than just culinary expertise. It takes some business knowledge, too, and Blue Plate Network wants to help.
BY SAMANTHA CALIMBAHIN
Behind every good restaurant is a great real estate deal.
Carter Wilson knows all about that. He founded commercial real estate firm Blue Plate Network to not just help restaurateurs secure prime locations for their eateries, but also assist in making the business decisions that take place after the restaurant finds a space. Blue Plate Network’s clientele includes restaurants like Cork & Pig Tavern in the West 7th development, Piattello’s Italian Kitchen in the Waterside development, and the soon-to-open Bread Winners Café at University Park Village.
“There are a handful of operators that can do well anywhere they go, but for the vast majority of operators, it’s absolutely critical that they know the market, they know how the population works, they know the psychographics, they understand the traffic patterns, and they understand how that all works and affects their business,” Wilson said.
The key to finding a good location, Wilson says, is understanding how an area’s population operates during the daytime. Some restaurateurs tend to look at a location and envision the area on a busy Saturday night. Instead, Wilson said restaurant owners should focus on the crowd it can attract on a weekday.
“At the end of the day, where you really make your money, where you really make the difference, is how well you do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, for lunch,” he said. “That’s the difference between the sophisticated and the unsophisticated restaurateur.”
One of Fort Worth’s upcoming restaurants, Bread Winners Café, used Blue Plate Network to help secure its University Park Village location, set to open April 2017, where Blue Mesa used to be. This will be Bread Winners’ sixth location, joining the restaurant’s other venues in Trophy Club, Plano and Dallas.
Bread Winners owner Jim Hughes said Blue Plate Network’s resources have helped him expand his business.
“They’re not just looking at the lease spaces, but they’re in it for the long haul,” he said. “They’re definitely like family.”
Wilson said he’s enjoyed working in Fort Worth and helping bring restaurants to new developments.
After all, there’s a lot more that goes into owning a restaurant than most people think, he said.
“You have to be a visionary, a chef and a business person all in one,” he said. “There’s very few people who have all of those components. The successful people in this business either have all three of those attributes, or they hire partners to somewhat balance them out or complete them.”
Located in the heart of Fort Worth’s lively West 7th Street Cultural District—close to great shopping, live music, theater and fine dining— The Stayton at Museum Way is everything you love about senior living. In the center of a vibrant cultural hub, The Stayton has become Fort Worth’s most distinctive retirement destination for people with the zest and taste for the best in life.
The Stayton has become a vital cultural cornerstone of the sophisticated West 7th district. Attend a concert at the Bass Performance Hall, take in a Broadway-style show at the Community Arts Center or visit the funky shops and fashionable boutiques in Sundance Square.
We also enrich the lives of our residents and thousands of members of our Fort Worth community through our cultural and educational events, such as our renowned Red Carpet Series, and our unique partnership with the Cliburn.
2501 Museum Way | Fort Worth, Texas 76107
Call to schedule your tour today 817.632.3601.
BY SAMANTHA CALIMBAHIN
Don’t panic. People aren’t being replaced by robots...yet. But there are a couple gadgets that promise to do some of the tasks a personal assistant can do. Well, maybe except make coffee.
Last year, Google launched a new toy just in time for the holiday season –Google Home, a voice-activated smart speaker that plays music, answers questions and controls the air conditioning, among a plethora of other abilities. Google Home shares a lot of similarities to Amazon Echo, which essentially does all the same things.
So which one is better? Well, we’ll leave that up to you. But if you’re looking to get either of these, here’s a little insight into what you can expect to get out of each one.
Amazon Echo
Best Buy Rating: 4.7 stars
CNET Rating: 4 stars
Price: $139.99 on Amazon
Notable Features: Amazon Echo goes by the name “Alexa.” Say its name, and your wish is its command (so long as your wish is limited to what it can actually do). Echo connects with other apps, or “skills,” so you can call Uber or order pizza from Domino’s. It connects to home devices, too, and can be programmed to turn on the lights, open the garage or adjust the temperature. Echo is also Bluetooth enabled, so you can connect it to your phone as well. When it’s time to chill, Echo can read audiobooks to you or play music from players like Pandora, Spotify and iHeartRadio. According to Amazon, Echo can hear you even if music is playing, and its seven microphones and “beam forming” technology allow it to hear you across the room. And when you’re lonely, you can ask it questions like “What’s the weather in Japan?”
Best Buy Rating: 4.3 stars
CNET Rating: 3.5 stars
Price: $129 on Google Store
Notable Features: Google Home has a slightly lower rating than Amazon Echo on Best Buy and CNET, but it’s not as pricey, and its base also comes in different colors. Its magic words are “Okay Google.” Google Home, too, can connect with multiple programs to do things like adjust the air conditioning or turn on the lights. Being a Google device, Google Home pairs well with other Google apps like Google Calendar, Google Play Music and Google Keep. It can play music from players like Pandora, Spotify and YouTube Music, and much like Amazon Home, it can hear you when the music is on. And as mentioned, the base is customizable. So yes, Horned Frog fans, you can get it in purple.
Trying to squeeze in a quick workout? There’s an app for that.
BY SAMANTHA CALIMBAHIN
We get it. You’re busy. Working out sounds like a good idea, but “ain’t nobody got time for that,” right? Wrong. A quick workout that lasts less than an hour can be done just about anywhere – even right in your office – using fitness programs like MASHUP.
MASHUP is a Fort Worth-based group workout led by TCU alumna and Medi-Weightloss Clinic nurse practitio-
ner Jamie Zacharias. She’s an entrepreneur herself, starting MASHUP in 2012 with her husband.
“It’s extremely rewarding,” she said. “That’s why we still do it. My husband and I co-founded it together. It’s our passion and mission to, in a busy, fast-paced society, really help people realize that they can achieve and maintain their fitness goals.”
About two years since the launch, MASHUP classes have spread throughout the Fort Worth area, available at places
MASHUP workouts have three parts. Here’s how they work:
The first part of the workout focuses on improving agility and strength, while also warming up the body for the rest of the workout. Exercises include lower-body movements like squats, lunges and pushups, as well as upperbody movements like bicep curls and shoulder presses.
This part of the workout takes the intensity up a little higher with moves like burpees, high knees and mountain climbers – the “hard stuff,” Zacharias says. But it doesn’t get hard right away. MASHUP allows participants to start each exercise with a low level of intensity and work their way up.
like the YMCA Wellness Center, the E.R. Van Zandt Southwest YMCA and the Benbrook Community Center YMCA.
If you can’t make it to a class, the workout is available digitally on the Booya Fitness app. MASHUP is customizable, and participants can choose from a 15-minute, 30-minute or 45-minute workout. Each workout also has three levels of intensity (low, medium and high).
The workout closes with the mind/ body segment, using a fusion of Pilates and yoga movements to develop core strength and flexibility. The movements are slower, which helps cool down the body.
Red Productions occupies a hip space in the Foch Street Warehouses. They’re willing to share it, too.
BY SAMANTHA CALIMBAHIN / PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX LEPE
Red Sanders remembers what it was like to office in a coworking space.
When the Red Productions president started his film company about 12 years ago, Sanders found a home for his startup at TECH Fort Worth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping entrepreneurs, located inside the former James E. Guinn school campus off Interstate 35.
As Red Productions’ number of film projects and clientele grew, Sanders eventually moved his company to where it is today, an approximately 3,400-square-foot space at 1075 Foch St.
But Sanders said Red Productions didn’t want to keep the space just for themselves. He remembers what TECH Fort Worth did for him, and he wanted to do the same for others. So about four years ago, Sanders got an idea.
“We work in such a collaborative industry as it is,” he said. “There are so many different creatives and creative partners and subcontractors we work with, that we thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a space where we can work under the same roof?’ And everyone could be doing their own different projects. They’re separate businesses, but at the same time, there’s a creative collective to the culture here.”
That’s when Backlot was born – a coworking space made specifically for those working in the creative industry, complete with a studio and audio/voiceover booth. About 1,600 square feet of Red Productions’ office is dedicated to Backlot members, who can rent out the space for between $150-$475 per month, depending on their level of membership. The studio and audio booth are available for single day use as well, and members can rent some of Red Productions’ equipment at a discounted rate.
Red Productions sometimes uses the space for its own shoots as well. Sanders says it’s a throwback to the Old Hollywood days of shooting on a studio backlot.
“That’s why we picked that name,” Sanders said. “It’s kind of our studio backlot back here. It’s fun that we’re on the backside of Foch anyway.”
The entire space is designed with an industrial vibe, using wood and recycled metal from a nearby scrapyard, to keep in line with the warehouse feel of the area, Sanders said. Touches of black and bright red, reflective of the company’s logo and color scheme, are found throughout the office.
Building the office was a family affair. Sanders’ mother, artist and designer Janie Cavender, came up with the design concept. Cavender’s husband owns a construction company, Cavender Creations, which helped build the space. The walls of the office are decorated with some of Cavender’s art, as well as nods to filmmaking with posters of old movies like Ghostbusters and Spaceballs Sanders said the idea was to create a “free flowing” atmosphere that fostered creativity.
The two main areas sectioned off for Backlot are an upstairs loft and a community workspace adjacent to Red Productions’ main office space. To get to the loft, one has to climb a steep flight of stairs leading up to a balcony that overlooks the rest of the office. The balcony can serve as a meeting space with a conference table and bright red glass dry erase board made by Fort Worth company Clarus Glassboards. Next to the conference area is an enclosed private space with desks and couches, along with a foosball table in case someone needs a break from work.
Downstairs is the community workspace, separated from Red
Productions’ main office by a sliding wood door. This space is a collaborative area with open concept desks, tables and couches for meetings. On the days when a client needs to shoot, the room can be cleared and transformed into an approximately 800-square-foot soundstage. Sound dampening panels help cut down the echo in the room, which makes for an ideal shooting space, Sanders said.
If the project needs narration, there’s also an audio/voiceover booth in the same room. Just outside the booth is a kegerator that serves local beer, and those who signed up for the upper levels of membership can get a personalized beer mug. Members get access to the kitchen in Red Productions’ office as well.
Though the space is suitable for filmmaking, members have ranged from consulting firms to photographers.
Local photographer Dwight Vasel is one of them. He uses Backlot as his studio and says one of the best things about the space is, well, “location, location, location.” Backlot is just a walk away from Foch Street establishments like Chimy’s, as well as the West Seventh mixed-use development.
“Location is awesome,” he said. “Trendy area, surrounded by wonderful places to eat and drink – people are impressed when you tell them the area [where] you have a studio. When clients walk into the contemporary, urban environment of the Backlot, your business gets instant credibility, and the amenities are out of this world. Nothing is lacking.”
Sarah Copp, who runs a marketing consultation company called Good Copp Creative Consulting, discovered Backlot through a Google search. She started her company at home after
her first daughter was born. Now officing at Backlot, she says the space is a “wonderful environment” where she can bounce off ideas with other members.
“It's really just the whole package for me – the use of their WiFi and printers, access to the conference room for meetings, snacks, coffee, drinks, etc., the creative energy and the friendly and fun people,” she said. “Bonus benefit is that a couple of the guys bring in their dogs, and who doesn't love dogs?”
There’s just one caveat about Backlot – Sanders said Red Productions’ lease expires in a little over a year, so the company is considering relocating, but staying in Fort Worth. Wherever the company goes, however, Backlot will still continue, Sanders said.
“We’ve certainly enjoyed this space,” he said. “We are looking at other options to expand this and stay in Fort Worth certainly. Our lease is up here. We’re currently looking at options to be able to move our studio and also expand the Backlot side as well to be able to offer more amenities for members in the future.”
Sanders said he sees Backlot as a way to give back to the community, the same way the community helped him in the early days of his company.
“It’s an honor to be able to pay it forward and provide an easy business solution for folks, whether they’re trying to follow their dream with a new startup idea, or whether they’ve been in business for years and just looking to take it up a notch and have an office setting to come to,” he said. “That was a big thing for me at TECH Fort Worth, the separation between home and work.”
You will spend upwards of 45 years working to support your lifestyle, provide for your family, and set aside money for retirement. Doesn’t it make sense to make sure your money is working as hard as you are?
I offer thoughtful and unbiased investment guidance designed to help you realize your financial objectives.
Call today for more information or to schedule a consultation.
CapRock Wealth Advisors
Christian Bridges, AAMS®, CPFA President Chief Compliance Officer
1200 Summit Ave Ste 780 Fort Worth, TX 76102-4403
(817)484-9800 (817)529-8463
christian.bridges@caprockwa.com www.caprockwa.com
FW Inc.’s top entrepreneurs sell everything from jet fuel, to oil field equipment, new media, in-home health, packing material, luxury homes, concrete, real estate and birthday parties.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA
The lineup of businesspeople in FW Inc.’s 2017 Entrepreneur of Excellence awards is an impressive class that represents everything from old-line industry to emerging technology.
FW Inc. is honoring 30 finalists in 10 industries and one winner in each category: aviation, energy and natural resources, health care, manufacturing and distribution, media and communications, real estate, residential construction, commercial construction, professional services, and retail services. The inaugural contest was run and judged independently of the ownership and staff of the magazine. Tony Ford of Ford Leadership Solutions was project director. First Preston HT of Dallas provided the software platform that judges used to evaluate the nominees.
Judges evaluated applicants in financial performance, vision, best practices, relationship building, and community involvement, with equal weights. At least $1 million in annual sales was required for eligibility. The applicants' financial data was available to the judges, but not for this story. In interviews for this article, some of the applicants disclosed financial data. This report also uses data from other publicly available sources. Judges did not evaluate their own industry categories.
Judges were: John Avila, Jr., Thos. S. Byrne; Andrew Blake, Presidio Interests; Darlene Boudreaux, TECH Fort Worth; Johnny Campbell, Sundance Square; Toby Darden, Wolfcamp Water Partners; Homer Erekson, TCU Neeley School of Business; Steve Greig, Auto Maxx; Grant James, Origin Bank; Steve Laird, attorney at law; Mark Page, Tailwind Advisors and Zyn Fitness; Vince Puente, Southwest Office Systems; Ken Schaefer, Schaefer Advertising; Dorian Sims, Stacy Furniture; Hillary Strasner, ProLab; Robert Sturns, City of Fort Worth economic development; Andy Taft, Downtown Fort Worth Inc.; Dr. Jodi Tommerdahl, University of Texas at Arlington; and Martha Williams, Williams Trew.
Sponsors: Whitley Penn, Origin Bank, and Park Place Fort Worth. Video: Please visit fwtx.com/fwinc/ videos to view interviews with each finalist.
Texas Jet, the largest fixed-base operator at Fort Worth’s Meacham Airport, outsells a fuel discounter there by 10-1 factor. How does that happen?
“It’s because of our culture of excellence,” Reed Pigman Jr., who founded Texas Jet in 1978 and has 23 hangars at the airport today, says flatly.
Rated the No. 1 independent FBO nationally for 2016 by Professional Pilot Magazine, extending a nineyear streak of Top 10 ratings, Pigman might have reason to brag. He attributes such honors to Texas Jet’s nearly 40 employees, whom Pigman refers to as “our ladies and gentlemen.”
“We treat them with respect, and they give outstanding service to our customers,” he says.
Texas Jet sells about two-thirds of the jet fuel and aviation gasoline at Meacham. Gross revenues fell in 2016, but that was because of the lower cost of fuel, Pigman said.
To keep itself on its toes, Texas Jet, which sells fuel and rents hangar space, regularly asks its employees what changes they would make and what policies and procedures they would trash. In 2015, the company implemented 80 of those suggestions, Pigman said.
The company uses Ritz-Carlton’s custom service training, which starts with referring to customers by name and anticipating their needs.
A few years ago, Texas Jet began offering valet parking and washing its customers’ vehicles. In 2015, it added a garage to store their vehicles. All of
those services are complimentary.
Recognizing that pilots have significant discretion in choosing which FBOs to pull up to, Texas Jet maintains a fleet of 14 free loaner cars for pilots to use overnight while their aircraft are at Meacham and bosses are in town at meetings.
The city estimates that Texas Jet has 80 percent of the market share among Meacham’s FBOs. Texas Jet’s terminal has a main lounge with food and beverages, conference rooms, flight planning facilities and a service desk. Pilots waiting on their passengers can relax in a TV lounge, darkened room with leather chairs and lighted fish tanks, or quiet quarters with beds and computer connections.
In another nod to pilots’ influence, Texas Jet maintains a wall covered with “pilots choice” awards. “We have to make the pilots look good (to their bosses),” Pigman, 66, says.
In the community, Pigman recently served as chairman of the Fort Worth Business Assistance Center and has served on the boards of the Camp Fire Foundation and Fort Worth Country Day School. He currently serves on the board of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce and its economic development committee.
Pigman’s wife Pam has been actively involved with the Lena Pope Home, Camp Fire, Chapel Hill Academy charter school, Baylor All Saints Women’s Auxiliary, and Jewel Charity board for Cook Children’s Medical Center. Texas Jet in the last three years reports it has contributed nearly $200,000 to nonprofits.
The oldest business at Fort Worth’s Meacham Airport, Broadie’s Aircraft, started in 1946 by D.W. Broadie, has grown aggressively since 2012 when it moved out its World War II-era hangar at the airport and moved into a new one more than twice as large at 66,000 square feet.
By shifting to a larger, modern hangar with wider doors, Broadie’s – a repair and maintenance business - has broadened
the kinds of aircraft it serves, moving more deeply into the corporate market. Broadie’s wants to be known as the most respected provider of goods and services in its segment, and aircraft owners “will fly thousands of miles to come to good maintenance,” Ken Broadie, son of D.W. Broadie and president of Broadie’s Aircraft, says.
The company added an office in the hangar for the family’s Blend Supply Co., which Ken Broadie founded in 2013 and has become the nation’s largest distributor of airplane paints and supplies. In 2012, Broadie founded Accord Aviation Interiors at Meacham, a corporate jet aircraft interior refurbisher that serves clients nationally.
The family’s holdings at Meacham also include Tex-Air Parts, a national aircraft parts distributor that Ken Broadie expanded in 1978, and Tex-Air Parts International, an international distribu-
tor that Broadie founded in 1990 that serves South America, Latin America, and Europe.
The company’s strength has come from being in the middle of the fast-growing market, near downtown, and having major sports attractions that bring in business from out of town.
The company’s total employment is under 100, Broadie says. It’s recently implemented the “Culture Index,” an increasingly popular system designed to match employees or hiring prospects with the demands of a job.
“We’re real busy,” says Broadie, whose daughter, Allisen Prigel, serves on the board that oversees the companies and runs Broadie’s Aircraft. Broadie’s son, Clint Broadie, also serves on the board and runs Blend.
“It’s great times right now,” Broadie says. He feels the administration of the incoming president-elect, Donald Trump, will make moves that prove to be a “catalyst for spending.” “We’re all excited about the new economy.”
Broadie says the company isn’t looking for any more businesses to get into. “Our goals are set,” he said. “We’ve got enough challenges right now.”
In the community, Broadie’s and its employees collect and deliver presents to children with a parent in jail or prison and put on food drives for the Tarrant Area Food Bank. Broadie’s also regularly offers its aircraft hangar and ramp area for use in aviation celebrations and Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce events.
One tenet of the strategy at Baseline Energy Services, a Fort Worth power generation rental company serving energy and industrial customers, is play it to stick around.
“We were conservative early on, prudent, and weren’t going to take any risks that could put us out of business,” Graham Radler, president of the Fort Worth company, says. “In the energy industry, we see the big downs, but we also see the big ups. We want to stick around.”
Radler founded the company in 2012, after having written a business plan for an oilfield service company while earning his MBA at TCU. He’d been in the corporate world as a financial analyst and in com-
mercial real estate.
“I didn’t want to go back to the corporate world,” Radler, 32, says. Radler had done an internship in investment banking, “but I was not called to investment banking.” Radler’s family has been in energy; his father Michael Radler is CEO of Tug Hill, a Fort Worth investment company whose largest holdings are in oil and gas operations.
Radler started Baseline with “friends and family capital,” identifying the natural gas generation business as a big opportunity and slowly building a fleet of equipment for rental. The company took on its first large investment partner, Donovan Ventures, in 2014.
In 2012, the marketing was roaring, Radler recalls. “It was just blowing and going,” he says. Crude oil prices crashed in mid-2014 from their peak at more than $100 per barrel, but, Radler said, “the downturn has really helped us. We’ve been able to grow through it. We didn’t overbuy in the good times.”
The company’s response during the downturn: “We offer a mission-critical service, where they rely on us 24-7. Let’s show up every day, be faithful. Our identity is not in the price of oil. Our identity is we’re going to do a good job. Let’s just be faithful.”
The company today has a presence in multiple regions: the West Texas and New Mexico Permian Basin, Mid-Continent in Oklahoma and Kansas, and Eagle Ford Shale in South and East Texas. Baseline also has a very diversified, high-quality customer base, and is well-capitalized, Radler says. “We’re in fantastic condition.”
The company, which kicked off with about $300,000 in startup capital and a $1.5 million loan, has invested close to $30 million since then, including investment, bank debt, and re-invested cash flow, Radler says.
As for the direction of oil prices, which have been on the rise to about $55 per barrel in December, Radler says, “we’re going into January with a bit more optimism. I’m a simple-minded dude. I’m looking at global supply and global demand for oil. I think we’re definitely in the $50 range for (2017), which makes a lot of American supply fields competitive. We’re always adding equipment to our fleet,” and the company expects to continue additions in 2017.
Greg Cobb is quick to point out a key valueadd he brings to his business of selling oilfield equipment. “There’s not a piece of equipment that we build that I have not operated in the field,” he says. “That’s all I’ve ever done in my life, is work in the oil field. It’s been a good life for us.”
Cobb, 57, started his energy career 30 years ago as an equipment operator, helped into the industry by a cousin of his wife. A subsequent partnership he had in the business broke up, and Cobb went off on his own in 2010, launching Precise Energy Products, which assembles and manufactures equipment used in oilfield services.
Today, the Fort Worth company - whose headquarters are in the Stockyards Exchange Building and engineering, design and manufacturing are on North Sylvania Avenue - has 13 employees and sales in the United States, Nigeria, Mexico, Australia, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Precise won the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce’s Small Business of the Year award for 2015 for small employers, and the company placed No. 2,450 on the 2014 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies, with three-year sales growth of 153 percent and sales of $3.3 million.
Precise, like other service companies, has been battling the downturn in energy prices, but it’s turned to the international markets to help diversify its business.
“Nigeria and Mexico saved our
bacon,” Lisa Cobb, Precise’s CFO and Greg Cobb’s wife, says. “They really have helped us out.”
In 2014, Precise won the federal Small Business Administration Dallas-Fort Worth Area Exporter of the Year Award, and the SBA Region VI Exporter of the Year Award.
In June, Greg Cobb predicted crude oil would hit $55 per barrel by Christmas and $65 per barrel by 2017’s second quarter. Crude was at $54-$55 in late December, buoyed by an OPEC-led production cut.
Service companies are “starting to get a little budget” for capital expenditures, Cobb says, adding one customer has been gearing back up for six months. “They’re starting to see it coming back.”
Cobb at one point went to college, for one semester, thinking he’d be a coach. “I realized how much I hated high school,” he jokes.
The Cobbs have a special needs son, and they’ve been actively involved in the Best Buddies Organization, Special Olympics, and The Clubhouse for Special Needs, a Bedford-based organization that serves teens and young adults.
They contribute money to The Clubhouse for Special Needs, Camp Summit in Argyle that serves children and adults with disabilities, Special Olympics, The Company of Rock House, American Heart Association, and The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation for suicide awareness, prevention and research, in support of an employee who lost his son to suicide.
Dr. Michael Boothby is one of two physicians named a finalist in FW Inc.’s inaugural Entrepreneur of Excellence awards. That they’ve figured out how to navigate the fast-changing health care maze is nothing they learned in school. “There’s no class in medical school,” Boothby, 43, a longtime Fort Worth orthopedic surgeon who founded the Orthopedic & Sports Medicine Institute in 2011, says. “There’s really not that sort of training.”
Boothby learned from a mentor to set up his practice and address whether to go into business with others and go for a big practice. In the end, Boothby decided against joining one of the large hospital systems or physicians groups, choosing instead to “work between the big health care systems, relying on our surgical results and quality patient care to bring in new patient referrals by word of mouth.”
Boothby, who has two other physicians and two physician assistants in the practice, uses technology to streamline patient data collection, improve efficiencies with electronic medical records, and provide new therapy treatments, such as a therapy pool that speeds post-operative recovery. The clinic also uses web and social media communications to educate patients so they’re less likely to pass up needed treatments. Boothby likes to say the practice’s office is reminiscent of a hotel
lobby and coffee bar, not a sterile doctor’s office. Besides the main office in Fort Worth’s Clearfork development, the practice also has a standalone physical therapy center in Willow Park.
Health care was already fastchanging before the federal Affordable Care Act and its focus on outcomes landed over the last several years. “The ACA has really forced all of us to look critically at how we provide care,” Boothby says. Boothby is sports medicine team physician or chief orthopedic surgery consultant for several local high school football teams, including Aledo, Brewer, Crowley, and North Crowley.
Boothby teams with local middle and high schools, donating the time for pre-participation athletic physicals. The practice operates a free Saturday morning clinic that allows access to athletes, even if they have no insurance.
The practice in 2015 launched OSMI Cares, an internal office program that raises money for local causes. OSMI Cares teams with the Project Access Tarrant County initiative, partnering with other physicians, donating services, and extending their reach to patients who might not have access to quality specialist care. “Our mission is not to be the biggest or most lucrative orthopedic practice, but to continue to treat patients like people and to keep getting them back to whatever they love to do.”
Dr. Angela Bowers was the first office user in Southlake Town Square when she opened Southlake Dermatology in 1999.
These days, Bowers is working on her third expansion. Having started with a 1,400-square-foot office, she’s moving in the spring to a space of more than 10,000 square feet in Methodist Southlake Hospital, up from her current 6,000-square-foot quarters. She started with two employees and now has 28. The office has one other physician besides Bowers, and two physician assistants, and Bowers expects to bring in another physician in a year. “We basically have grown up with Southlake,” says Bowers, 47, who estimates her office has seen 80,000 patients since 1999.
She’s seen plenty of other change over the years, with changes wrought by managed care and, most recently, the federal Affordable Care Act. In her practice,
Bowers takes a broad view of what she can do for patients. “Often, people’s self-esteem is dramatically affected by their skin conditions,” she says.
Bowers learned the basics of setting up practice from other physicians. She started working in a dermatology practice while on college breaks in Fort Worth.
Lately, her office has put in new medical software to gather data the federal government wants, and it’s installed a web portal patients can use to manage aspects of their care, including prescriptions and lab work.
In the community, Southlake Dermatology supports a family at The Gatehouse in Grapevine, a two-year, $78,000 commitment for women and children in crisis. Southlake Dermatology contributes to GRACE, which supports the needy; Bowers sees patients from their clinic pro bono.
The practice also gives to Southlake schools and PTAs and other charities.
Shay Smith founded Therapy Heroes, which provides physical, occupational, and speech therapists to home health agencies, on a simple idea.“I’ve been a home health therapist for 20 years,” he says. “What (patients) will tell you is they just want to go home.”
Smith, 48, a licensed physical therapist, founded his Fort Worth company in 2011 with one client and six therapists. Today, the company does 400-500 visits per week and works with eight home health care companies and 80 part-time contract therapists.
It hasn’t been easy. Smith lost the client in 2012 and had to start over. But the trends are obvious, given the huge aging baby boom segment, he says.
“All of the move is to the home,” he says. “As long as Medicare is in charge, they’re going to look to provide safe care for the
least amount of money.”
Smith's father was an administrator who worked at state schools for people with developmental disabilities. “I grew up on the campus of Denton State School.”
Smith started forming his vision as he worked in nursing homes and ran a consulting business. He readily says he’s not the cheapest provider, pricing in Medicare requirements other agencies overlook.
That means he’s had to lose business, says Smith, who’s financed growth internally and has no debt, investors or partners. Smith still does a lot of his own visits, but Therapy Heroes is well past the 150-visit breakeven point.
Therapy Heroes supports the Thursday Boys nonprofit, which teaches leadership to children. Therapy Heroes estimates it’s provided more than 1,000 volunteer hours and made substantial equipment gifts. “Thursday Boys is who I am,” Smith says.
Angela Bowers Southlake Dermatology
Bill Woods had been in logistics for 30 years, spending, he figures, 90 percent of his time on the road when his employer began to prepare a sale. “I decided I just wanted to get off the road,” says Woods, 52, who followed his parents into warehousing from high school. “My employer was getting ready to sell, so I left.”
Looking around for the next thing to do, he settled on helping small business in the warehouse and distribution space. “The bigger players didn’t want to help get the small businesses started,” he says.
In 2013, he found a small warehouse, leased it, and launched Woods Distribution Solutions, offering storage and distribution. In 2015, he started Woods Transportation Solutions, offering pickup and delivery in the DFW area. In 2016, he leased another warehouse and distribution site, in Arlington, and now operates 205,000 square feet of space. The Haltom City company today employs 14.
Woods, whose employees volunteer once a month serving meals at a Haltom City senior center, has been doing $1 million a year in revenue, but he expects that to go over $2 million in 2017. It’s possible, he says, he’ll open another warehouse in 2017. Clients include UPS, Costco, Subway, Snap-On Tools, and a banner company.
Peter Zehr has an easy-tounderstand goal for the FGL Group, a small Kennedale chemicals producer he owns that’s a regional leader in cleaning and deodorizing solutions for the industrial and institutional market.
“Double it,” he says. “Our growth is consistent and steady.” Zehr bought the company in 2012 from the founder who launched it in 1980. Zehr doesn’t discuss his financials, but he said the company, which employed 10 people when he bought it, now employs 22-30 depending on situations. In September, for one, “I can’t keep up” because of the startup of schools.
The company had two buildings; Zehr has grown that to nine in Kennedale. FGL produces all of its products, which sell under the Montgomery and CPACEX brands and private labels, in Kennedale. Zehr has grown the company through four acquisitions, using cash flow and bank financing. “That allowed us to scale,” says Zehr, who remains the company’s 100 percent owner.
His market is intensely competitive, facing stiff multinational competitors, but “when you buy from us, we have the flexibility to customize solutions,” Zehr, 43, says.
It’s often said entrepreneurs land in their work by accident. Take Keith Webster. “I really thought I’d be in finance management,” says Webster, who has an MBA from TCU.
Today, Webster’s a furniture maker, having purchased the 1958-era Fort Worth company Kisabeth Furniture in 2013. The purchase saved the company from closure – it has 40 employees today - and Kisabeth has continued to make upholstered seating, casegoods, and millwork for the residential, office contract, and hospitality markets. In 2014, the company added a mill shop that was on the verge of closing.
Webster, who'd been in commercial real estate, was finishing his MBA when a friend suggested Kisabeth. “I liked the tangible aspect, the history, the quality,” he says. “We’re in year two of a three-year turnaround plan."
That's included implementation of a cost accounting system; the company had none. “We’re looking at a pretty significant price increase to move forward,” he says.
Kisabeth is also significantly increasing its brand presence, updating its website, working the Dallas markets, reaching out to new and old clients, and recruiting a creative director.
Webster bought the company with four partners, and in 2016, he bought out two of them. In the community, the company has raised money for the Fort Worth Library Foundation, Dwell with Dignity, and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Debbie Cooley spends her days having to be perfect, as CEO of M-Pak, a distributor of packaging and containers for clients like the federal government.
“We have to be perfect with the federal government,” she says. “We have to be 100 percent and timely with them.”
M-Pak, based in Aledo, distributes products like coolers, gel packs, void fill and air pillows.
Working for Lockheed Martin, it designed a helmet case for pilots of the F-35 fighter that took three years to get approval for and guarantees the helmets “cannot be juggled or jiggled.”
The government represents 65-70 percent of the company’s business. “You do well on a contract, and they spread the word,” she says.
Cooley was working for another packaging company “being paid less than half of the men” when she decided to launch her own company in 1999. M-Pak is a play on the word “impact.”
“My customers were great,” Cooley, 63, says. “I took quite a few of them with me, and it just grew.” She started the company in her home, using the garage and a spare bedroom for an office.
“I wasn’t sure we could do it,” Cooley says. Sales likely topped $10 million in 2016, she says, and the company appeared on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies five times between 2009 and 2013.
The company’s offices are on Camp Bowie West in Aledo. It has
other locations and warehouses in Murfreesboro, Tenn.; Greenfield, Mass.; Charleston, S.C.; and Hines, Ill.
The company recently purchased nine acres on Jim Wright Freeway in Tarrant County, with a goal of building a “state of the art” office space and warehousing to meet expected growth.
The company recently won two multi-million dollar contracts and a second federal General Services Administration contract worth $1.3 billion. “We’re actually talking to banks about getting loans,” she says. “First time in my life I ever said that.”
In the community, the company supports numerous nonprofits, including The Parenting Center, One Safe Place, Shoot for the Blue, Dream Outside the Box, Plaid for Women, Expanco, Child Study Center, Fort Worth Zoo, Turtle Survival Alliance, Paschal High School, Gracefully Strong, Multi Cultural Alliance, Young Women’s Leadership Academy, Azle Women’s Business Association, Fort Worth Opera, Fort Worth Food and Wine Festival, Meals on Wheels, TCU’s Values and Ventures competition, and Como Community Center.
Cooley is active with The Parenting Center, National Institute of Packaging and Handling Logistics Engineers, Entrepreneurs’ Organization, Dream Outside the Box, and M.J. Neeley School of Business at TCU. She’s also a Parker County election judge.
Simpli.fi operates one fast-growing platform for digital advertising. Co-founded six years ago by CEO Frost Prioleau, Chief Technology Officer Paul Harrison, and Chief Designer Armin Roehrl, the Fort Worth company turned in about $80 million in 2016 revenue, up from $50 million in 2015, Prioleau says. “Fifty percent growth a year.” Simpli.fi’s technology gives the power of programmatic advertising to local advertisers. Digital ads are auctioned off real-time while an app or web page loads.
About 3 million auctions run every second from 25 exchanges across Simpli.fi’s platform, representing 15,000 advertisers and 40,000 campaigns, Prioleau says. What ads are finally presented to viewers are based on those viewers’ demonstrated preferences.
The auctions factor in “whether there’s a match, whether we should bid, how much we should bid, probability of a result, a click or some other action,” Prioleau says. “And we have .2 of a second to make those decisions.”
“This is how digital works today,” Prioleau, 56, says. “More than 50 percent of digital advertising works through these auctions. The world is going programmatic.”
Don’t like it that advertisers know that much about you?
“Clear your cookies,” Prioleau says. “Then it would start all over again.”
The company has 180 employees, including 150 software developers, client service personnel, and accounting and marketing staff who work in Simpli.fi’s headquarters building near downtown Fort Worth.
Two-thirds of the traffic is for newspaper and magazine sites, and one-third for multi-location national brands, Prioleau said.
“They can take a campaign and localize it,” he said. Simpli. fi brought in its first investors, Frontier Capital, in 2013.
Prioleau, a Princetoneducated engineer, previously co-founded another digital advertising company with Harrison and Roerhl.
Collective Media bought that company in 2008. All three made the jump to Collective after the acquisition, and then to Simpli.fi.
In the community, Simpli. fi is actively involved with Fort Worth’s Como Community Center, where company volunteers help staff the food pantry, engage in pen pal relationships and lend their expertise to the web and social media pages.
Simpli.fi also coordinates food drives for the North Texas Food Bank and contributes to the Star Scholarship Fund, using employee donations to fund scholarships for elementary school students.
It was an idea, and Michael Fletcher, media executive and owner of TV studios, was in the business of looking over ideas.
An intermediary several years ago set up a meeting between Fletcher and Craig Morris, a National Cutting Horse Association Hall of Famer who had $2 million in career winnings.
Morris had his own show, but it was on another network that charged producers for air time.
Fast forward, and RIDE Television Network – an internationally distributed cable and satellite TV network aimed at horse enthusiasts and their lifestyles - is what eventually developed. In 2016, the network’s revenues surpassed $2 million, and the Fort Worth company says it went cash-flow positive in the fourth quarter.
The company, which has 22 employees, largely creates its own content
– shows it produces.
As the company grows distribution worldwide to 50 million subscribers, it believes it can hit $75 million in annual revenue and $33 million in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization by the end of 2020, Fletcher and Morris say.
RIDE TV is available on Dish Network, Verizon FiOS, CenturyLink, Google Fiber, and other U.S. cable companies. RIDE TV will soon be available as an online subscription model worldwide.
Its investors include the billionaires Alice Walton and John Paul DeJoria, cofounder of the Paul Mitchell line of hair care products and Patron spirits.
RIDE TV supports The Parenting Center, National Cutting Horse Association, TCU, Fort Worth Film Commission, and Mustang Heritage Foundation, which saves wild mustangs.
Ed Frazier, one of the founding fathers of regional sports TV networks, has spent a career developing media properties. He’s got another one on his hands.
Frazier - chairman of Centerpost, LP, an Arlington private equity company he founded in 2010 whose properties include the BizTV, BizTalkRadio, and Youtoo America networks over the air and on the web – believes the networks can target small business owners who have questions about access to capital, marketing, sales, HR, insurance and other topics. “There are 30 million small business owners in the U.S. who feel they are underserved,” Frazier says.
The networks are available over the air in 18 of the top 50 U.S. markets and six of the top 10, including New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas/Fort Worth. Viewers can also find them on the web at biztv.com, biztalkradio.com, and youtooamerica.com. Much of the content
is provided by independent producers, although the company produces some of its own content, Frazier said.
Frazier, 63, doesn’t disclose information about the company’s finances.
“We’re growing. Distribution and revenues are on a very upward trend. We’re contrarian in the media business.”
Frazier launched the company with help from several angels. The company has 24 employees, including three at the corporate offices in Arlington. The rest work remotely.
Frazier was one of the founders behind the Regional Sports Networks that make up Fox Sports. He built HSE, now part of Fox Sports Southwest, and was CEO of Liberty Sports.
Centerpost’s employees volunteer in the community through their churches and other organizations; the company contributes promotion to non-profits and carries public service announcements.
Margaret Davis
Mary Margaret Davis Real Estate Team
Mary Margaret Davis had attended Tyler Junior College to be a tennis pro and was working as pro at Snyder Country Club in her West Texas hometown when something occurred to her. “What else might I do when it’s raining and snowing?” she says.
She got her real estate license at age 20, when interest rates were double-digit and, at age 27, was president of the Snyder Board of Realtors. “I knew everyone and just loved the possibilities of bringing everyone together.”
A broker since 1982, Davis moved to Fort Worth and built a beachhead selling new homes for builders, working for Perry Homes for 16 years. A big break came in 2006 when she landed the gig selling the 228 condos in the T&P Lofts tower in downtown Fort Worth. “I sold myself out of a job,” she jokes.
That led her to a new specialty in urban real estate, and in 2011, Davis opened
Chris Powers has had quite a ride so far in his young business career, and he’s still 29.
By the time Powers graduated early from TCU at age 21, he owned eight single-family homes. And he’d launched a real estate management business with a website, running 40-50 units and earning bonuses if he got higher rents than the property owners were making.
From there, Powers quickly moved on to bigger deals.
Today, he’s taken the lead among several developers in rebranding 275 acres overlooking the Trinity River in west Fort Worth as the River District, with a goal of redeveloping it into a luxury mixed-use hub for the affluent West Side.
Powers, who does business today under his Fort Capital banner, says the firm has done $78 million in projects in six years and has $55-$60 million in
assets under management.
Powers has sought mentors throughout his career. The seeds of entrepreneurship were sown early for Powers, who found a mentor in the family friend and El Paso developer Meyer Marcus.
And at TCU, Powers found another mentor in fellow student Adam Blake, who was buying houses and eventually took down the Electric Building downtown.
Powers says Fort Capital, which he founded in 2012 as his main investment vehicle and has developed a manual for how to talk to property owners, is playing its opportunities conservatively.
Fort Capital wants to do only the best projects, ones that “inspire people to be better versions of themselves,” Powers says.
“The ups can be great, and you have a safety net on the downside. You won’t see us doing projects that are trying to take advantage of the market.”
a brokerage. Davis created an urban certification for the Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtors; 150 Realtors have obtained it.
Davis, 56, says there’s a gap in the market for more “aging-in-place” residential product, where people 60 and older can live out their lives, with simple condo ownership, city tax incentives, some rentals, and amenities such as nutrition, fitness, “peaceful” design features, and memory care supplied by vendors. Much of the local senior product is too expensive, she says.
“We’re not in Florida, where all the CEOs are going; we’re in Fort Worth, Texas,” she says. In the community, Davis supports causes like the Don’t Forget to Feed Me pet food bank and Leukemia and Lymphoma, and has been a recent past committee member at the Fort Worth Club, Downtown Fort Worth Inc., Near Southside Inc., Historic Fort Worth, and the Greater Fort Worth Association of Realtors.
Alexander Chandler remembers his first real estate sale: a $20,000 snow-covered lot in the middle of a mountain pass in New Mexico. “I’m still not sure I sold the right lot,” he jokes.
Chandler may have been destined to become a real estate agent. His mother, a longtime agent in Fort Worth, introduced her son to the business at a young age. “I was always being dragged to open houses,” he says.
But he saw the potential. “It has unlimited potential, and helping people with the largest investment in their life is an honor,” he says.
Chandler launched Alexander Chandler Realty in 2007, coming over from another agency in Fort Worth, and it today is Fort Worth’s largest independent brokerage, with $268 million in sales in 2015. Chandler himself was the No. 3 Realtor nationally in transaction sides – representing the buyer or seller or both in a sale – in the 2016 Real Trends/Wall Street Journal survey. He was the second-ranked agent in Texas in transaction sides; an Addison agent ranked first.
Chandler, 48, says he saw a big opening in the market when he launched his firm, calling himself a “hybrid agency.” “We are the solution to franchises,” he says. “Franchises are focused on the company logo. A lot of independents lack the resources and marketing knowledge. We provide superior marketing that franchises do not do.”
Chandler says he still makes time to cold-call owners of homes that are for sale by owner. “I don’t ask anyone in my company to do anything that I’m not prepared to do myself,” he says.
The agency’s approach, which aims to provide superior, ethical service using advanced technology, has three prongs: training for its agents, web services, and print marketing.
The firm, which has 105 agents and serves Tarrant, Parker, Johnson, Wise and Dallas counties, offers training to its agents from lawyers, lenders, and other professionals in the trade. The agency’s operations director provides training, business planning, and other resources.
Chandler calls the agency’s site, alexanderchandler.com, “the most advanced and user-friendly site available,” supported by the agency’s social media and search engine optimization.
The agency markets itself as a new home specialist; its stated goal is to dominate the new home market. The website touts new and existing homes for sale, and the agency is rolling out improvements to the site that Chandler says will provide services to builders that nobody else in the market offers, including a builder menu.
It’s also recruited an industry veteran to run the builders program, which Chandler will run as a separate division.
In the community, the agency’s locations serve as a donation point for animal shelters, Toys for Tots and Secret Santa programs; Alexander Chandler organizes volunteer days at the Tarrant Area Food Bank and blood drives; and it supports causes that benefit the homeless, public safety employees, and the arts.
One of the firm’s “flagship causes” is support of police officers; top agent Sherri Aaron helped found the Blue Ribbon Movement to back the police.
NH Southern, a small Fort Worth homebuilder, wants to “replicate the 1950s golden age of customer service,” Trey Hardin, its principal partner, says.
“We educate and spend a lot of time up front framing the project (to the homebuyer) because that helps take a lot of frustrations out of the process,” he says.
Founded by 50-50 partners Hardin and Wayne Noack in 2012, NH built three homes in its first year, seven in 2013, and 10-13 in each of the last two years, Hardin says.
“Honestly, that’s as large as we will likely ever be,” Hardin says.
The company builds in the $600,000-$3 million range in North, Central and West Texas. NH has two employees, including one dedicated to warranty repairs, and sells by word of mouth, doing little advertising and marketing. “If you call me up at 10 o’clock at night, I answer the phone,” Hardin says.
Hardin and Noack were unlikely partners. Hardin, 39, went to Texas Tech, where he was a pre-med major, focusing on biology, chemistry, and psychology and started working on studying for the MCAT medical school admissions test. After an internship at a Fort Worth hospital, “I decided that’s not what I wanted to do,” Hardin says.
He took a job as a pharmaceutical salesman, working the East Coast, where he says he fell in love with the architecture. He moved back to Fort Worth and worked in construction for eight years. “I didn’t know a single thing about construction,” he says.
Hardin and Noack, 61, a construction industry vet, met and decided to go into partnership. Noack works the construction side, and Hardin the client relationships.
“We’re not a large speculative builder, because, frankly, we’re not very good at it,” Hardin says. “What we are very good at is taking care of clients. Unfortunately, the customer service aspect of our industry has been diminished in return for higher profits and self-satisfying goals.”
NH Southern contributes to Habitat for Humanity, the Fort Worth Stock Show, and numerous other causes. But it believes its biggest contribution is in what it estimates are the hundreds of meetings it holds annually with prospective clients, including many who find they can’t proceed financially with a custom home.
“Not every individual or family can build and/or afford a custom home,” Hardin says. “It is our commitment to utilize our knowledge to help in any way possible.”
John and Linda Askew got their start in residential construction as newlyweds and remodelers in 1979. “I was 21,” John Askew jokingly recalls. “We’d sell the jobs together.”
That led to building homes starting in 1983, which the couple did for eight years before the housing downturn turned them out.
John Askew went to work for Centex as Fort Worth sales manager from 1991-1998, and then the couple took another shot at their own company, founding the John Askew Co.
The Askews now figure they’ve built some 600 homes together during their career. Excluding land, they estimate they did $20 million in sales in 2016.
“We decided we wanted to be the best custom home builder possible,” John Askew, 59, says.
The Aledo company typically builds homes around $1 million, excluding land,
and 75 percent of the business comes from referrals and about 40 percent all-cash, Askew says. The company works in the $1 million-$5 million range.
The company builds about 25 homes a year. It doesn’t own a lot of lots, a lesson it learned in the 1980s, building about 75 percent of its homes on lots it doesn’t own, Askew says.
Linda Askew, 60, is the company’s design director, with three designers working for her.
One of the company’s 18 employees is dedicated to warranty repair, a big part of the company’s value proposition.
The company supports numerous community organizations, including the Race for the Cure, Beautiful Feet Ministries, Young Life, March of Dimes, E3 Partners, Fellowship of the Sword, Aledo Advocats, and Gracefully Strong.
It also financially supports employees in their mission and other volunteer work.
John Askew Co.
Paul Ramon likes to say he started his Fort Worth roofing company 21 years ago “with $5,000, a flatbed truck, and a few helping hands.” Two decades later, the company, now a specialist in tile, slate, and metal roofs, surpassed $6 million in sales in 2016, Ramon says.
Not bad for a guy with a high school diploma and some junior college credit hours. Ramon, who grew up in Fort Worth and did roofing a few years after high school while attending TCC, was interviewing for a job selling home equity loans when friends encouraged him to start his own company.
A friend’s father hired Ramon to put a roof on a building in Burleson. Ramon begged the sales rep at a supply company for credit. The client paid him $22,000 in $100 bills, Ramon recalls. “I went to my creditor and paid him in cash, paid my crew, I had $5,000 left.” That launched
Ramon Roofing. At that point, he says, “I was doing what everybody else was doing.” Then, a woman called the company looking for someone who could repair broken tiles. “I brought a couple of guys over to fix it, and I watched them do it,” he says. “That just led to tile, metal, and slate roofs.”
Today, he typically does 75 roofs a year, “but they’re big projects,” says Ramon, 46, who has 12 employees. The specialty roofs are higher-profit, “and they’re just better.”
Ramon teams with the North Texas Roofing Contractors Association in donating labor for families in need and gives equipment and money to schools and other organizations. He contributes to an industry fund in Texas that gives scholarships to students whose parents are in roofing.
And he’s a member of the Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate, which raises money each year to buy steers from youth exhibitors. “I wanted to be different than anybody else. Not the same.”
Robert McCarthy Cheyenne Construction Co.
Harold Muckleroy Muckleroy & Falls
There’s no shortage of things to tend to on Bob McCarthy’s desk.
His Cheyenne Construction reached $35 million in sales in 2016, taking it from $4 million in the five years he’s owned it. The company’s recent concrete construction projects: Fort Worth's Neiman Marcus store and surrounding road infrastructure, Whole Foods store, TCU dorms, and I-35 expansion.
McCarthy’s Got You Covered uniform store, which caters to public safety personnel and industrial workers, did $2.4 million in 2016 sales, McCarthy estimates. And the Leg Up Program, a nonprofit McCarthy launched to bring people out of homelessness, recently won a $600,000 grant that will let the organization go to as many as six staff members from two over three years. McCarthy’s businesses employ 200 people today. McCarthy, who got his start building a small cabinet shop into
one employing 260, bought Cheyenne in the downturn, assuming $750,000 debt. McCarthy continues to invest in real estate, melding it with his interests in homelessness, buying commercial real estate along the city’s East Lancaster corridor, home to shelters and social services. He’s moved his businesses, including an investment company, into the historic Parker Browne building, which he redeveloped for $2.6 million before $1.35 million in incentives. McCarthy is preparing to move Leg Up from Parker Browne to a neighboring building he’s redeveloping.
He promises 15 percent of net profits to employees with him for a year. And he’s on the lookout for their dreams. He recruited a longtime manager to Got You Covered, promising 50 percent if he brought it into the black. One assistant confided she wanted to be a Realtor. “We helped her achieve her dream, at a loss to our company.”
Harold Muckleroy has seen some cycles, having spent a career in commercial construction and real estate development. His first cycle, starting in the late 1980s and lasting through the early 1990s: “I had 70 employees.” End of cycle: “It was me, an assistant in the office and one superintendent.”
These days are good ones for his Muckleroy & Falls, a full-service commercial construction company started in 1979. Revenue, $13.5 million in 2013, grew to $31.5 million in 2014, and $45 million in 2015. The Fort Worth firm has a $70 million backlog and 45 employees. “Our company has been blessed with many opportunities."
Out of college in 1974, Muckleroy went to work for American Quasar and the legendary wildcatter Dick Lowe. Muckleroy soon moved toward launching his own
business, with a goal of being a developer. His father, an entrepreneur, suggested pairing commercial construction with development.
In business for himself, Muckleroy hired a seasoned superintendent. Their first two jobs, Muckleroy remembers spending entire days in the field. “Until you do it all, you really don’t understand it,” he says.
The firm over time has established long-term relationships with some of the region's most prestigious clients, emphasizing employee training and planning.
In the community, Muckleroy & Falls supports the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, Leadership Fort Worth, and First Tee. Muckleroy has served in leadership at University Christian Church, Colonial Country Club, Colonial Tournament Committee, Metropolitan YMCA of Tarrant County, Youth Sports Council of Fort Worth, and TCU.
Chris Jordan’s resume over a little more than the last decade includes installing the audio or visual systems at the Ballpark in Arlington, Bass Hall, Kimbell Art Museum, Eisemann Center, Irving Convention Center, TCU Amon Carter Stadium, Daniel-Meyer Coliseum at TCU, Christ Chapel Bible Church, and Sundance Plaza.
He’s not that far from the $10,000 church that was once the biggest job Jordan had done. Jordan and his son, Luke, principals in Electro Acoustics, Inc., a Fort Worth firm, turned in a record $7 million year in 2016. “Completely debt-free, and cash in the bank,” Chris Jordan, 60, says.
Jordan, one of several finalists in FW Inc.’s inaugural Entrepreneur of Excellence awards with just a high school diploma, founded the company 32 years ago, selling a car to buy a used cargo van and tools and operating from a spare bedroom in their home. Jordan’s wife, a nurse, eventually quit her job to join the company.
Churches quickly became one of Electro Acoustics’ business segments. For a while, the $10,000 church installation was Jordan’s biggest job.
“That let us know we could scale up.”
Recognizing he needed to be larger to compete with big competitors, Jordan won the bid in the late 1980s to install a $250,000 system at Groesbeck High School, taking out a loan to take care of the job. “We made money on it,” he says.
Then came the winning $1.5 million bid to install an audio system in the mid1990s at the Ballpark in Arlington. “We had to put everything on the line again,” Jordan says. “We lost real money on that job. But that put us on the map. The credibility issue was off the table.”
Luke Jordan, Jordan’s youngest son and a Texas A&M graduate, joined the company five years ago, starting at entry level and rising to become special systems division chief. Jordan’s oldest son, Sam, is retiring from the U.S. Air Force and due to start working for the company in April.
The company has been able to finance its growth internally, without taking on investors. “We’ve always been selffinanced,” Jordan says.
The company, which has 25 employees, prides itself on longevity. It estimates 25 percent of employees have been with the company for 10 years, 25 percent for more than 20 years, and several approaching 25 years. The company pays 95 percent of employee health premiums and offers a 401(k). The firm also prides itself on the number of key industry certifications it maintains.
In the community, Electro Acoustics contributes to the Ronald McDonald House, Fort Worth Pregnancy Center, Trinity Habitat for Humanity, and Tarrant Area Food Bank, and helps guide military veterans in their transition to civilian life.
Rusty Reid’s been at the helm of Higginbotham since he was in his 20s. He’s now 54.
The Fort Worth company has gone from a small insurance agency to the nation’s 31st largest broker of business in 2016, according to Business Insurance magazine.
“Our goals are still the same,” he says. “We want to be a great place to work for our employees, we want to be a great advocate for our clients, we want to be a great carrier platform, and we want to give back to the community.”
Colleagues and clients recently feted Reid with a surprise party at River Crest Country Club in Fort Worth, celebrating his 30th anniversary with the company.
Reid was a few years out of college and was managing a territory for a major insurer, responsible for selling insurance companies on repping his company’s products. One rep was Higginbotham, a small Fort Worth agency.
Bill Stroud, the owner and a nephew of the Higginbotham founder, noticed Reid and began recruiting him. Reid, 24, came over a year and a half later. Then in just three more years, Stroud asked Reid to figure out how to buy the company. What resulted: an employee stock ownership plan.
Today, with the ESOP a major piece of the firm’s underpinning, Higginbotham has grown to $158 million in 2016 revenue from $132.1 million in 2015 and $1.2 million in 1989.
Reid was employee No. 12. The
agency today has 900 employees in Fort Worth and across Texas.
The company, targeting mid-market commercial clients and high-net worth individuals and business owners, has built itself into what it calls a “Single Source” for all insurance-related needs, including adding employee benefits early on in response to clients’ suggestions.
And Higginbotham built an array of related services, consulting property and casualty clients on loss prevention, contract review, claims advocacy, and risk management, and employee benefits clients on communications wellness, compliance, and human resource technology.
In the late 1990s, Higginbotham began examining how it could add extra value to its lineup of services so it wasn’t so reliant on having to renew customers’ policies every year without having continuously touched base with them. That’s when Higginbotham began to penetrate companies with its risk management services.
On the employee benefit side, that’s included emphasis on wellness programs that help drive claims down and contain premium increases, and advising clients on how to comply with Obamacare’s requirements. Higginbotham now boasts 90 percent customer retention, Reid says.
The company has expanded aggressively since 2007, all within Texas, using its private stock to make acquisitions. The company, in another move to nurture employees as partners, founded a charitable fund in 2010 that’s granted $545,086 to area nonprofits since.
Gus S. Bates, in his 27th year at Gus Bates Insurance and Investments, the Fort Worth firm his father Gus Bates III founded, remembers his leap into the company.
He was in his early 20s and working at Joe T. Garcia’s, the legendary Fort Worth restaurant. “I made $50,000 in tips my last year,” Bates, now 50, says. His first year in insurance: $22,000. “I thought, oh my gosh, what have I done.”
Things have since gone somewhat better. Under his leadership, the firm has expanded into full-service offerings, including employee benefits, retirement planning, supplemental insurance, property and casualty, and personal lines insurance. The firm has $400 million in assets in its 401(k) plan by itself.
Bates, like our other CEOs, heaps praise on employees. The firm has 55 employees, including 10 in sales. “I was a C-student, but knew everyone. We believe in people.”
The firm puts a premium on building relationships in an industry where product and services have become commoditized.
The most challenging business problem he says he’s faced: the owner of a professional basketball team, already a client, who wanted to consolidate its programs from various entities nationally. Bates bid and won. “What’s cool about us is we don’t get fired. It’s very unusual we lose a client.”
Bates himself has become involved in other entrepreneurial ventures, with common investors. His Pop’s Garage private rec center in Fort Worth will soon become a baseball academy run by an outside operator. Bates is a partner in the recently opened Mopac Event Center off of University Drive. Bates is involved in a number of charities, including Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Fort Worth, American Heart Association, Como Youth Promoting Pride, Paschal High School, and TCU.
Benson Varghese says he thought he’d be a prosecutor his entire life.
That’s when there was a logjam at the Tarrant County District Attorney’s office, where he worked as an assistant district attorney.
Three years ago, he launched his own criminal defense law firm out of a 10x15 office, using $9,000 he borrowed from an uncle. Today, the Fort Worth firm Varghese Summersett occupies 18,500 square feet of space, has nine attorneys, and is the county’s second largest criminal defense firm.
Varghese says the traditional model of criminal defense – solo shops and expensesharing arrangements with other lawyers – provides incentives for low costs and high case volume, but not service or trial skills. Varghese maintains low overhead and keeps its substantial web offering in-house.
The firm’s site, versustexas.com, contains hundreds of articles generated by Varghese.
The firm maintains a 24-hour web portal for clients. Three of its five senior attorneys are board-certified in criminal law, and all five worked for the Tarrant County DA. Most of the firm’s business is by retainer.
“The one quality I bring is the jury knows I’m genuine,” Varghese says. “I don’t say what I think the jury wants to hear.”
Varghese Summersett attorneys each year donate 10-20 percent of their time to helping indigent residents. The firm seeks opportunities to help veterans accused of crimes. The firm also supports police through volunteering for, and donating to, organizations like Walk Like MADD and Victory Over Violence. It provides training to the Fort Worth and Arlington police associations, and its attorneys speak to school and social groups about drinking and driving.
Kevin Lackey says he got hooked on powersports when he got a dirt bike for Christmas at age 4. A hobbyist in high school, Lackey found himself working for a powersports dealership in Weatherford and working his way up to store manager.
In 2012, Lackey closed on a $5 million deal to buy two dealerships, using an SBA loan for 50 percent of capital, seller finance, and his own money. Shortly after, he took on an equity partner. Today, Freedom Powersports owns 14 locations - including 10 in Texas, three in Georgia, and one in Alabama - and surpassed $150 million in sales for 2016. The dealerships sell a power panoply: motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, side-by-sides, personal watercraft, and boats.
Not bad for another of FW Inc.’s inaugural Entrepreneur of Excellence class who has just a high school GED diploma. “It was a hobby, (a chance) to make a little money,” says Lackey, 38, now in the business for 18 years. Then, “I realized I was good at it.”
Talk about a side job. Bruce Schultz was consulting for Sabre when he co-founded the Boardroom Salon for Men in 2004 in Southlake. In 2006, Schultz left Sabre to go fulltime into the Boardroom.
Today, the Southlake company has 25 salons in Texas, Tennessee and Oklahoma, including 12 in the DFW area, that offer the “ultimate relaxed grooming experience for men.” The Boardroom – in the most recent of three appearances on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies since 2013 - placed No. 2,757 in the 2016 ranking, with 2015 revenue of $6.8 million and 127 percent three-year sales growth. That was up from 2012 revenue of $3 million. The company has 180-190 employees in its corporate stores, and about 85 in franchise stores.
The idea occurred to Schultz, who’d spent eight years consulting internation-
ally for Deloitte and 10 at Sabre, when he read a magazine article about men's grooming in 2003. He sought to meld what he says is a “1920s country club with Cheers’ feel.”
The company plans four or five new stores in 2017, Schultz says. It has a small number of franchises, but the focus is on corporate-owned expansion, he said. It cost as much as $300,000 cash to open the first store, says Schultz, 51, who owns the company today with his wife. "We liquidated savings, and we took out a bunch of credit card debt,” Schultz says of the first store. The company has financed its growth organically, he said.
The company offers employees hourly base pay with a bonus plan, health insurance, and vacation. In the community, Schultz is an advisory board member of Art in the Square in Southlake. The stores contribute to schools and other nonprofits.
After working his way up in the Weatherford store, Lackey tried to buy it. “I worked for six months to find the financing,” he says. The owner sold the dealership to someone else, and Lackey got demoted. But he connected with the new owner and rose to manage multiple dealerships.
The Fort Worth company has grown under the capital structure it reached with its investor. Today, Lackey retains 30 percent. It uses equity to recruit. “We’ll give up to 20 percent (of a store) for the right GM."
Today, the company has 350 employees, up from 30 originally. The company has ambitious goals: $500 million annual sales within the next five years, Lackey said. “At some point, we may expand into automobiles and RVs,” he said, but “we want it to be profitable and sustained."
In the community, Freedom’s stores support causes for autism awareness, veterans and first responders. Corporately, the company supports Ronald McDonald Houses and Cook Children’s Medical Center.
Michael Browning was in medical technology and attending a conference in San Francisco when he ran into a busy trampoline park in a hangar at the city’s bayfront Crissy Field.
“Really, the light went on,” he says. “Everybody’s got a birthday, and these kids live to celebrate their birthdays. It’s very stable. Even in an economic downturn, parents were going to throw birthday parties for their kids.”
Browning and his father, a Dallas homebuilder, soon met at Crissy Field to plot out what a trampoline park back home in North Texas could look like. The result for the Grapevine company, founded in 2011: a $900,000, all-cash first location in Southlake.
Demand went off, Browning, 31, says. “Return of capital in nine months,” he says. “Then we used the profit to expand.” Today, the company has 48 locations in seven states, including one in the United Kingdom. Seven are corporate-owned; the remainder are franchises.
Aggressive expansion continues; Browning is aiming for five new corporate locations in the next year. The company is also planning an indoor adventure park in Fort Worth’s Alliance Corridor that will include trampolines, rock climbing, roller coaster, and a 46-foot “sky diving” apparatus.
“It’s going to be amazing,” Browning says. “What we’re bringing to market doesn’t exist. We’ve proven trampolines, rock climbing, roller coasters. Bringing them all into one entertainment center hasn’t been done.”
As far as continued franchising, Browning says, “we say right market,
right people, right time. That’s our philosophy. We’re going to grow as we’re blessed to grow, as long as we can check those boxes.”
It costs $1.5 million to get into a franchise, and Urban Air manages locations for some franchisees. “Someone who has that kind of money doesn’t want to be a small business owner,” Browning says. “Someone who’s got the liquidity to do one of these things doesn’t want to work that hard.”
The company is debt-free and owned by Browning, father Mike Browning, and the company’s lawyer, Stephen Polozola, Browning said. The locations range in size between 20,000 and 95,000 square feet apiece and are fully indoor and heated and cooled.
Each location typically serves about 10,000 people a month and turns about $2 million revenue a year, at 44 percent operating margin, he said. The company has 17 employees, and the corporate stores employ about 50 part-timers apiece.
Safety is paramount, Browning said. “At the end of the day, mom is the customer, the kid is the user. And at the end of the day, if it’s not safe, mom’s not coming back.”
In the community, Urban Air in 2015 donated about $90,000 in tickets to help raise money for children with Leukemia and Lymphoma in North Texas, the company reports. The parks also hold a free event in April each year where children with autism can experience them in a way that stimulates fine motor skill growth. The company also donates to PTA auctions and gives thousands of tickets annually to Milestone Church in Keller for single moms.
FW Inc. would like to thank our sponsors and prestigious panel of judges for making the 2017 Entrepreneur of Excellence a great event.
SPONSORS
A Fort Worth engineer and entrepreneur, transplanted to Cowtown after Hurricane Katrina, turns his passion for the environment into a startup producing chargers and charging stations for electric cars.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA
Little more than a decade ago, Edward Morgan was working as an engineer for Bell South in New Orleans and growing a couple of computer stores on the side. Hurricane Katrina forced him and his family out of Louisiana and to North Texas, where he continued with AT&T as a senior technical engineer.
Morgan has a new venture he’s trying to move along: rechargers and recharge stations for the growing numbers of plug-in vehicles.
Morgan, 46, is planning to leave his full-time job in midJanuary – after 17 years with the company - to go full-time into his Revitalize Charging Solutions business, operating out of a small office at the TECH Fort Worth incubator on the south side of Fort Worth.
A pilot test with the city of Fort Worth earlier in 2016 went well enough that Morgan was poised at the end of the year to enter into an agreement to place one of his charging stations on the campus of Fort Worth’s Business Assistance Center, the complex that also houses TECH Fort Worth and the Idea Works incubator. Morgan also was on the verge of signing an agreement to put a charging station at a restaurant. And he’s working on plans to build a charger that he would sell into the residential market.
There’s competition nationally in the space, but Morgan points to statistics showing 520,000 plug-in cars – all-electric cars and other vehicles that have some sort of plug-in feature – on the road and growing fast.
of plugs, meaning the actual number of locations is lower.
For Morgan, RCS is his latest entrepreneurial venture. When he was a teenager, Morgan, whose mother worked for the state of Louisiana and dad was a carpenter, would pick up aluminum cans and sell them to recyclers. As a college student at Prairie View A&M, he sold baseball hats, T-shirts, and costume jewelry door-to-door. “We would always sell out,” says Morgan, who later earned an electrical engineering degree from a technical school.
In New Orleans, he opened his two computer stores and sold one before Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out the customers for his other store. He and his wife moved to Fort Worth in 2007; his wife is a Fort Worth public school teacher.
Morgan says he began noodling on the idea for rechargers and recharge stations in 2013. An allergy sufferer, he was thinking of environmentally-friendly businesses he could build. “I always thought electric cars were going to be the [industry] future,” he says. “Obviously, infrastructure is a challenge.”
The number of electric car charging stations in the United States has been rocketing up.
2016: 42,011
2015: 30,945
2014: 25,602
2013: 19,410
2012: 13,392
A friend put him in touch with an employee who worked at another competing company in the space, who offered advice. TMAC, part of a public-private consultancy hosted by several Texas organizations including the University of Texas at Arlington, helped Morgan create the schematics for chargers and find a manufacturer in APS Industrial Services of Arlington, Morgan says. TECH Fort Worth helped him define the need and scalability, he says.
Source: U.S. Alternative Fuels Data Center. Stations estimated by the plug, not by numbers of locations.
“This is a young industry,” he says. “There is a lot of room for any company to grow, given how spread out the infrastructure is.”
Indeed, the number of electric car charging stations nationally was 42,011, up from 13,392, according to the federal Alternative Fuels Data Center. That counts the number
That led to the six-month test with the city of Fort Worth, where he put one charging unit at Taylor Street and West Lancaster Avenue downtown for two months, with little publicity. “Would people find it, and would they use it?” Morgan said. The station turned in typical usage of two to three sessions per day.
By mid-December, Morgan had reached a tentative
agreement with the City of Fort Worth to place a charging station on the grounds of the Business Assistance Center at Rosedale Street and Interstate 35E. “The most important of this is we finally have a draft agreement, but the ultimate goal with the city is to be a bigger partner and have these things throughout the city,” he says. “We’ve identified six [city-owned] locations of high interest.”
Morgan has also been in touch with malls, restaurants and retail stores to try and reach deals to place stations on their property, in revenue-sharing partnerships. In mid-December, he said he had reached a tentative agreement to place a charging station at a restaurant in the Interstate 35 corridor between Hillsboro and Waco.
with advertisers in exchange for being allowed to install his machines on-site, offering 10 percent of advertising revenue generated at the charger and 50 percent of the electricity revenue after paying costs to the utility company. For 2017, Morgan says he’d like to deploy 25 chargers, largely in Fort Worth and has tentative commitments for 10 of those.
Still, residential will be “our focus,” Morgan said, citing industry statistics estimating 95 percent of electric car charges occur at home. That's another reason why he doesn’t want to invest in manufacturing his own DC Fast charger. “It’s very expensive,” he said. “The entry into the commercial market is much easier, but we believe residential is
Morgan is also finishing the engineering schematics for a residential charger that he wants to roll out to the residential market by June. It would charge an electric car in two and a half hours to six hours, compared to a typical residential charge that can take 15-16 hours and is “very, very slow,” Morgan said.
nt to t a station g at a t restaurant in t the r between Waco. d nishing the g engineering schematics g for a r residential ts to roll out l to t the residential market l t June. y It ctric car in r two and a d half hours f to six hours, x al residential l l that can t take 15-16 ery slow,” y Morgan said.
g with two kinds of He’s manufacturer is r for g him r – “Level stry standard y in which a full and a d half to six hours x He’s rchase so-called “DC d Fast” arge an electric car c in r as
Morgan’s working with two kinds of chargers. He’s designed – and an Arlington manufacturer is building for him – “Level 2” chargers, an industry standard in which a full charge can take two and a half to six hours. He’s also planning to purchase so-called “DC Fast” chargers that can charge an electric car in as little as 20 minutes.
ers cost Morgan about he says. The DC Fast $35,000 to make.
The Level 2 chargers cost Morgan about $8,000 to produce, he says. The DC Fast chargers cost about $35,000 to make.
the d com$100,000-$130,000 into e and t the d Level 2 l without de investment. Morgan nd has d used contractors for pment.
Morgan says he’s bootstrapped the company so far and has $100,000-$130,000 into it, including software development and the manufacture of six Level 2 chargers, without having to seek outside investment. Morgan has one employee and has used contractors for the software development.
He’s working on several revenue streams, teaming up with TCU MBA students for market research. The commercial chargers, which stand five feet tall, will have media screens that will show a constant stream of 30-second advertisements, ideally from nearby restaurants and stores, Morgan said. The machines can also be branded with ad wraps, he said.
“If we can make our revenue off our advertising, it’ll help keep the costs of the session low,” compared to competitors, he said. “It could be 10, 15 years before revenue from charging stations can sustain a company. I think we can sustain what we’re doing at a bootstrap level, as long as we’re generating revenue from our ads.”
everal revenue l streams, CU MBA students A for e commercial t will have l media w a constant stream isements, ants and stores, d machines can also wraps, he said. ur revenue r the costs ompared to d comcould be d 10, 15 years stations g ny I think we k can oing at g a t bootstrap e generating revenue g ng partnerships
Morgan is pitching partnerships
ing his g own DC Fast t Its very expe y into the commercial market is much easier, going to g be a big side g for us.” r wants to sell his l residential char l from the website “But we’re car dealerships,” r he said. “We may ha y box g retailers], x but we t haven’t got t There are numerous t acknowledges U S consumers hav even th ing substantially. Other major r competi r such as NRG and dealers and d box g chargers. Manufacturer have to d su set and start. d Mo what features t he’s – other th r same capability of f it will t sell for It would t d s electric car c chargin r line ser vice station a difficult sell t at th t nature of the f indus stations to of said “Too At som t like to con electric se c owned d efforts th 2016 Im Worth Mo about tion is a m road,” be oppo
Morgan wants to sell his residential chargers direct-to-consumer from the company’s website. “But we’re also hoping to partner with car dealerships,” he said. “We may have a play toward getting into [big box retailers], but we haven’t gotten that far yet."
There are numerous challenges to the company, he acknowledges. U.S. consumers have been wary of electric car technology, even though the numbers have been grow-
Other major competitors are already in the market, such as NRG and Blink. Retailers, like auto dealers and big box retailers, sell residential
Manufacturers of residential chargers have sought to differentiate their products with features such as remote-controlled set and start. Morgan declined to discuss what features he’s putting on his residential charger – other than that it will feature the same capability of a Level 2 charger - and what
It would make sense in the future to locate electric car charging stations at existing gasoline service stations, Morgan says, but that’s a difficult sell at this point, given the nascent nature of the industry. “We’ve approached gas stations to offer additional services,” he said. “Too early.”
At some point, Morgan says he’d like to consider setting up his own electric service stations on land owned by the company. Morgan’s efforts thus far earned him a 2016 Impact Award in Tech Fort Worth’s annual competition. Morgan says he’s not worried about competitors. “The expectation is, by 2020, there’s going to be a million electric cars on the road,” he says. “There’s going to be opportunity."
purpose drives what we do. We find unexpected opportunities to create places that inspire people to be their best and in turn, help build a better Fort Worth. We believe in this city’s future and aim to be an integral part of its growth for years to come.
LANDMARK PROJECTS
Kimbell Art Museum
Bass Performance Hall
TCU Amon Carter Stadium
TCU Schollmaier Arena
TCU Brown Lupton University Union
Texas Rangers Globe Life Park
Eisemann Performing Arts Center
Christ Chapel Bible Church
LANDMARK PERFORMANCE
InfoComm APEx (Highest Certification in A/V Industry)
NSCA Excellence in Business Award
Sound & Communications
Top 5 Integrators in Southwest US
Solomon Award with HH Architects
Faith & Form Award with Oglesby Green Architects
33 Years of Business Excellence!
Fran McCarthy turns his passion for urban redevelopment into helping others push their historic projects off the table and get them done.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA / PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX LEPE
Fran McCarthy was 25 and managing construction of nationally branded retail stores in California when he took a promotion and moved to Fort Worth. He found, among other things, a dead downtown. “For a while, I thought Joe T’s was the only restaurant in town,” he says. But it was at Joe T’s where McCarthy figured something else out about Fort Worth. “You could sit down at Joe T’s and be sitting next to the mayor,” he says. That’s still the same. “To me, it’s remarkable that a small-time businessman can be as active as they want in the future of the city. Everybody’s accessible. Your opinion is at least listened to.” McCarthy, who will turn 63 in February, has enjoyed a robust career in construction and real estate development in Cowtown, founding Westwood Contractors and doing build-to-suits for chains like Pier 1 Imports before selling it and moving into urban redevelopment, focusing on the Near Southside. McCarthy has become an expert in using federal and state historic tax credits to shore up what would otherwise be non-viable projects, and other property owners have brought him on as a consultant and sometimes investor.
His portfolio includes the Newkirk Building at West Magnolia Avenue and South Main Street, Modern Village and Fort Worth National Bank Building at West MagnoliaAvenue and Hemphill Street, Original Fire Station No. 5 at Bryan and Pennsylvania avenues, the B. Max Mehl Building at West Magnolia Avenue and Henderson Street, and the Banks Building at Eighth Avenue and Allen Street.
“You’d walk down Magnolia, and you
could see downtown, and buildings and land were so cheap,” he says of his first impressions years ago.
What are you up to these days? I finished one, I’ve got one downtown (Fort Worth), three in Ennis, and we’re looking at one in San Antonio. The plan is to use historic tax credits to revitalize these buildings.
Game-changer: Texas’ historic credits, approved
by the Legislature in recent years The federal credits (up to 20 percent of eligible expense) are hard to use and very expensive. State (up to 25 percent of eligible expense) is much easier to use and much less expensive. On the state, you can monetize them much easier. On the federal, you can only sell them to somebody who’s an owner in the project.
Why the consulting work these days?
Getting older – I’ll be 63
in February – and not wanting as much risk in a historic preservation project. So this gives me an opportunity to still enjoy projects.
What’s your downtown Fort Worth project? 907 Houston St. (next to Peter Bros. Hats). It used to be called Tribeca Bar, and now it’s going to be retail and office. I’m consulting on it. I put the pro forma together, oversee the design, work with the bank on the financing, hire the general
contractor and oversee the construction.
Why Ennis? There were three buildings that were hit by a tornado. I’m a partner in that one. We exported Finn MacCool’s from Eighth Avenue (in Fort Worth), and they’re opening a second location in Ennis. You’ve got a town of 15,000, you’re close to two freeways, and you’re not far from Corsicana and Waxahachie, and you’re not far from Dallas. They’re creating a destination.
BY JASON FORREST Forrest Performance Group
As a true underdog at heart, Bret Starr loves to be underestimated. When you have nothing to lose, he says, you're free to be creative, take risks, and reinvent. Bret Starr is the first of many things in his family. First to leave his hometown. First to graduate college. First to launch out into the tumultuous world of entrepreneurship. As the founder of The Starr Conspiracy, Bret has spearheaded a first of its kind “strategic marketing and
advertising agency dedicated to enterprise software and services companies” and “capitalized billings of more than $29 million in 2014.”
He attributes his success in part to feeling like he doesn’t have anything to lose. One of the biggest benefits of growing up without the comfort of financial security, he says, is being free from the fear of losing money. If the worst that could happen is living without financial comfort, well, he’s done it before and could do it again.
As an entrepreneur myself, I’ve observed that the most successful people among us are those who double down in the face of fear. They run toward the roar because as scary as their big teeth, full manes, and deafening roars are, male lions aren’t dangerous. Their job on the hunt is to be so How does Bret Starr eliminate the fear and release the creator? Please see Jason Forrest's video interview at fwtx.com/fwinc/videos.
loud and intimidating that they send their prey scattering–right into the quiet, lurking lioness’ path. What gazelles and zebras don’t understand is that if they resisted their quivery legs and stood their ground, they’d survive. And in the case of businesspeople, those are often the ones who thrive. Bret certainly fits this category and has too many runtoward-the-roar moments to name. Among them is starting a business in the HR software field at a time when he says the market for it was perceived as “too small to paint on the top of a pinhead.” To top it off, he had zero experience working in one, let alone running one. To Bret, the key steps to eliminating fear and gaining a “nothing to lose” mindset are:
and your team’s perceived heroes. Bret describes voluntarily parting ways with about two “detractor clients” a year. These are clients who lower the morale of employees because they don’t share the attitudes, behaviors, or beliefs of the organization. He also has zero tolerance
“Bret describes voluntarily parting ways with about two detractor clients a year. These are clients who lower the morale of employees because they don’t share the attitudes, behaviors, or beliefs of the organization.”
1) Identify where you’re dependent. The client or employee you think you can’t live without is the one you must learn to live without. When you put yourself in position to be dependent, you lose your freedom, and it’s inevitable that you’ll eventually lose the client, too. Likewise, you have to recognize that the employee who always steps in to save the day actually has their ego wrapped up in being the hero. What Bret describes as a hero employee can also meet Jack Welch’s description of someone with high performance and low integrity. They are enigmas, and their ability to rescue a bad situation is incredibly high. But when we look at why the situation exists in the first place, sometimes we see that the so-called heroes are the ones who caused the moments that turn into crises in the first place.
2) Engage in a process of creative destruction. Once you’ve identified where you’re dependent, it’s time to cut ties, even with high-paying clients
for a client who is abusive to an account manager. Clients are important, but employees are even more important. But you can’t let an employee be so important that you are dependent on him or her. When their presence eliminates options for others to grow, it prevents your business from becoming scalable, and it’s time for them to be eliminated from the team.
3) Reinvent and rebuild. Once you’ve eliminated dependencies, rebuild a sustainable model where there’s a shared risk across multiple clients and multiple valuable employees. Build a process that no longer requires heroes.
Bret came to this point in his own business. He said, “If we don’t change something big, we are going to work ourselves to death and have nothing to show for it.”
Making such a drastic change with a successful business was risky, and they did it at a time when they actually had a lot to lose. They felt like it would either destroy them or position them for greater growth over the next 10 years. They transitioned to what’s called a flat organization—where the team decides how work gets done and requires little management. This is not a common approach in advertising agencies, and though it has worked out, they had some very touch-and-go moments.
This is exactly the stuff that true runtoward-the-roar moments are made of. Reinventing is necessary in any life—on a personal or organizational level. Bret advises that if you ever look around and think you are as far as you can go in the situation you’re in, get up and look further. If you’re serious about being an entrepreneur—take stock of the influences in your life. Keep company with people who pull for you and pull you up. If you’re not surrounded by people with the attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs of successful people, remove yourself from the situation. Like gazelles, humans instinctively run away from the things that look or sound scary. But sometimes, those challenges and conflicts are exactly what we need to run toward because when we do, we find something better than survival–we find life. We find that sweet spot that allows us to do and believe and achieve what doesn’t seem possible. This is when underdogs triumph and deep-seated traditions and beliefs change. The only way to thrive is to eliminate everything you’re dependent on because it makes you operate out of fear. The disruptions in our lives can catalyst a complete transportation. It’s scary as hell. And it’s also where the magic happens.
Jason Forrest is CEO of Forrest Performance Group, a global leader and designer of sales, management, and corporate training programs. Last year, the company made the Inc. 5000 list. Forrest grew up “under the influence” of his father, a business owner and professional salesman, and his mother, a persuasive speaking professor. Jason writes Running
Fort Worth Chamber’s new executive vice president of economic development shares his perspective on growth and opportunity.
BY
Brandom Gengelbach, 40, a business leader with diverse foreign and domestic experience, joined the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce in late November as executive vice president of economic development. He comes to Fort Worth from Mount Pleasant, Tenn., where since 2013 he was vice president of business development for Smelter Service Corporation aluminum company and its owner’s related ventures. Previously, he served as president of the public-private Maury County Chamber and Economic Alliance. Earlier, Gengelbach’s career included work in organizational development and corporate partnerships for the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce and economic development for the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. Also, he served Brisbane Marketing, the official marketing authority for the Greater Brisbane, Australia, region after taking a sabbatical to Central and South America to learn Spanish.
Gengelbach grew up in Houston and the Plano-Addison area. He holds an MBA from the University of Southampton, near London, where he was a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar, and a bachelor’s degree from Samford University in Birmingham, Ala. He and wife Alison have two sons. A runner, Gengelbach is a fourtime qualifier for the Boston Marathon.
Q: What’s it like to be back in North Texas, and what are your initial thoughts about Fort Worth?
A: There is no other place that my family and I want to be than Fort Worth. I loved living in North Texas as a child and always said if I came back home, I would want to live in Fort Worth. The genuineness of the people is truly unique and makes this a special city in which to live, work and play. Three factors that convinced me it was the right move were the stellar reputation of the Fort Worth Chamber team in the chamber industry; the excellent community product we are privileged to promote; and the thoughtful collaboration of civic leaders to achieve progress and sense of place.
Q: What’s your plan for your first 90 days on the job?
A: I’ve created a 90-day personal agenda that includes listening to what is taking place in our community, meeting the economic development stakeholders of Fort Worth, and learning the best ways to create and implement a shared vision. In addition to that, we continue to manage a robust pipeline of 72 projects this year with 12 site visits and four international manufacturing and distribution opportunities in play.
Q: What about your experience
best prepares you for this opportunity?
A: The common thread in my economic development background has been the importance of cooperation and collaboration when helping grow a community. The ability to put what is best for the expanding business ahead of your personal goals, or that of the organization you represent, separates good communities from great ones. There’s no doubt we can accomplish more by working together, than by working individually.
Q: What are best practices in successful economic development?
A: Successful economic development is all about identifying and recognizing the strengths of your community and leveraging those to help existing industry grow and attract new business. You will not be successful trying to compare yourself to another community or trying to be all things to all people. Another important ingredient to successful economic development is working with local partners to ensure the business environment is conducive to growth. We need to do all we can to ensure our community infrastructure (think education, transportation, workforce) is being developed to address the growing needs of current and future business.
Brandom Gengelbach is vice president of economic development for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, a regular contributor to FW Inc.
Commercial Realtors resolve to support big development in Arlington, literacy efforts in Fort Worth schools, public transit initiatives, and intelligent growth.
BY MICHAEL BENNETT Bennett Benner Partners Real Estate Council of Greater Fort Worth
January is here — the time of year to begin anew and make big plans. The Real Estate Council of Greater Fort Worth is looking forward to the opportunities offered by the new year and has some New Year’s resolutions to back them up.
As always, the new year will kick off with the annual Tarrant County Real Estate Forecast. This gathering of over 600 real estate professionals will anticipate development trends and future economic development projects across Tarrant County. We anticipate yet another year of growth in Tarrant County, and we expect Arlington to be a leader in that growth.
The University of Texas at Arlington has become a juggernaut of growth, graduat-
ing over 11,000 students each year, and will lead the way along with the new Texas Live! development, the continuing revitalization of downtown Arlington and, last but not least, the new ballpark.
Texas Live! will drive our economy by bringing 3,000 new jobs to the area, expanding the entertainment district and bringing tourism dollars that are so important to Arlington and our region. The Real Estate Council has cooperated closely with Mayor Jeff Williams to strengthen and support his efforts, and we resolve to continue to do so.
The Real Estate Council recognizes the link between a well-educated community and our area’s long-term success. The Council will continue our support for the Fort Worth Literacy Partnership, a collective action plan for improving the overall literacy of students in the Fort Worth
Independent School District. This partnership between Mayor Betsy Price and the city, Matt Rose and the Literacy Partnership, and FWISD led by Superintendent Kent Scribner, deserves the support of our entire community. The 100X25 FWTX plan’s focus on improving children’s literacy is imperative to the economic development of Fort Worth and Tarrant County. We resolve to continue to support these important efforts.
As our region continues to grow, transit will become a more pressing issue to address. Improving our ability to move around Fort Worth and Tarrant County is paramount to the live, work, play model we all enjoy. We are working on a public private partnership with the Fort Worth Transportation Authority and other interested groups that will further the use of transit dollars and a multi-modal system that works for all. We resolve to continue our focus on mobility in our region to safeguard our investments and quality of life.
As our region grows, we also want to do our part to be sure that we grow in a way that benefits us all while avoiding the mistakes of the past. To accomplish this, we are partnering with other like-minded organizations to commission a study that will help us analyze our region’s strengths and weaknesses and inform our planning for the growth yet to come. We resolve to continue to think proactively about our region’s future and to work to make it the best it can be.
As you think about 2017, what will you resolve to do? We welcome your participation in continuing to grow Fort Worth and Tarrant County into one of the most livable cities in the United States.
since 1958
x Congratulations to Keith Webster, President of Kisabeth Furniture, for being nominated and selected as a finalist in FW Inc.’s Entrepreneur of Excellence Awards for Manufacturing & Distribution.
dallas showroom 1313 slocum st. #101 dallas, texas 75207
214-745-1340
fort worth showroom 5320 glenview dr. fort worth, texas 76117 817-281-7560
Your ideas, expertly realized.
kisabethfurniture.com
A Texas court finds that disability accommodation requires good faith by the employee as well as his employer.
BY MIKE LOFTIN Underwood Law Firm
Does a disabled employee have an obligation to make a good-faith effort to succeed in a position offered as an accommodation? The answer is "yes", according to Dillard v. City of Austin, 837 F.3d 557 (5th Cir. 2016).
Derrick Dillard was a City of Austin employee. His job required him to perform manual labor. After injuring his back and shoulder in an on-the-job accident, he was no longer able to perform manual labor.
After about 10 months in the City’s “Return to Work” program, Dillard was released by his doctors to “administrative duty” work. He was then assigned by the City to an
“The outcome of this lawsuit would likely have been different if the City had set Derrick up to fail by arbitrarily assigning him to a position for which he was unsuited and not providing him with the training needed.”
administrative assistant position. Due to his lack of clerical or secretarial experience, the City provided Dillard with extensive on-the-job training to assist him in transitioning to his new job. Dillard showed no interest in learning the skills needed to succeed as an administrative assistant. During the 21 weeks Dillard was assigned to the administrative assistant position, he frequently missed work without giving proper notice. When he did come to work, he spent lots of time playing computer games, surfing the internet, and making personal calls. Not surprisingly, Dillard was terminated by the City due to his unsatisfactory per-
formance as an administrative assistant. Dillard claimed that the City denied him a reasonable accommodation and discriminated against him based on his disability, which led to a federal court lawsuit.
The trial court granted the City’s motion for summary judgment, and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the trial court—resulting in the dismissal of Dillard’s lawsuit.
The 5th Circuit described the disability accommodation process as a “twoway street” requiring the employer and employee to work together in good faith to find a reasonable accommodation for the disabled employee.
The court concluded that the uncontroverted evidence established that Dillard did not make “an honest effort to learn and carry out the duties of his new job with the help of the training the City offered him.” His failure to make a good-faith effort to succeed as an administrative assistant was fatal to his claims against the City.
A word of caution for employers: the decision in this lawsuit is based on the City’s substantial efforts to accommodate a disabled employee and the employee’s complete refusal to cooperate.
The outcome of this lawsuit would likely have been different if the City had set Dillard up to fail by arbitrarily assigning him to a position for which he was unsuited and not providing him with the training needed to succeed in his new position.
Mike Loftin is a shareholder with Underwood Law Firm. He is board certified in Civil Trial Law. This article is not intended as legal advice. If you seek legal counsel regarding a specific employment law matter, please contact an attorney.
President-elect Donald Trump’s victory and Republicans’ retained majority in Congress portend change in health care. But how much change?
BY LES MCPHEARSON CEO, United Benefit Advisors, and The CSG Cos. Fort Worth Human Resource Management Association
What’s next for Obamacare, with President-elect Donald Trump’s election and the retained Republican majorities in Congress? Many of our clients and business colleagues have asked: “What is changing, and when will these changes be in effect?”
The Republicans retained the majority in the Senate (52 Republican) and House of Representatives (238 Republicans, 191 Democrats). U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will likely remain the house speaker. It’s expected that the Republican House will work to pass legislation that follows the health care policies in Ryan's “A Better Way” proposals. The success of these proposals remains to be seen. Employers should be aware of the main tenets of President-elect Trump's proposals
and the policies outlined in Speaker Ryan's white paper. These proposals are likely to have an impact on employer-sponsored health and welfare benefits. Repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and capping the employersponsored insurance (ESI) exclusion for individuals would have a significant effect on employer sponsored group health plans.
Trump's policy initiatives have seven main components:
• Repeal the ACA.
• Allow health insurance to be purchased across state lines.
• Allow individuals to fully deduct health insurance premium payments from their tax returns.
• Allow individuals to use health sav-
ings accounts in a more robust way than regulation currently allows.
• Require price transparency from all health care providers.
• Block-grant Medicaid to the states.
• Remove barriers to entry into the free market for the pharmaceutical industry.
Trump's proposal also notes that his immigration reform proposals would assist in lowering health care costs, due to the current amount of spending on health care for illegal immigrants. His proposal also states that the mental health programs and institutions in the United States are in need of reform, and that by providing more jobs to Americans, we will reduce the reliance of Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
SPEAKER RYAN'S “A BETTER WAY” PROPOSAL In June 2016, Speaker Ryan released a series of white papers on national issues under the banner “A Better Way.” With Republican control of the House and Senate, it would be plausible that elected officials will begin working to implement some, if not all, of the ideas proposed. The core tenants of Ryan's proposal are:
• Repeal the ACA.
• Expand consumer choice through consumer-directed health care; employer provided health reimbursement account funds to purchase individual coverage.
• Support portable coverage.
• Cap the employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) exclusion for individuals.
• Allow health insurance to be purchased across state lines.
• Allow small businesses to band together and offer “association health plans” or AHPs.
• Preserve employer wellness programs.
• Ensure self-insured employer sponsored group health coverage has robust access to stop-loss coverage by ensuring stop-loss coverage is not classified as group health insurance. This provision would also remove the
Unlimited Telephone and Help Desk Support, Remote Access Support with Timely & Responsive On-Site Support.
One-Flat-Rate All Services and Support at a Flat, Reliable, Monthly Rate that Fits Your Budget Needs.
Consulting Services and Planning on All Business Network & Project Issues on an as Needed Basis.
Customize Your Business Support Solution to Include Off-site Backups, 24/7 Monitoring, Anti-virus & More.
ACA's Cadillac tax.
• Enact medical liability reform by implementing caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits and limiting contingency fees charged by plaintiff's attorneys.
• Address competition in insurance markets by charging the Government Accountability Office to study the advantages and disadvantages of removing the limited McCarranFerguson antitrust exemption for health insurance carriers to increase competition and lower prices.
• Provide for patient protections by continuing pre-existing condition protections, allow dependents to stay on their parents' plans until age 26, continue the prohibitions on recissions of coverage, allow cost limitations on older Americans' plans to be
based on a five-to-one ratio (the ratio is three to one under the ACA), provide for state innovation grants, and dedicate funding to high-risk pools.
Although Republicans hold the majority in the Senate, they do not have enough party votes to allow them to overcome a potential filibuster, which can continue until “three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn” close the debate by invoking cloture.
There is potential to dismantle the ACA by using a budget tool known as reconciliation, which cannot be filibustered. If Congress can draft a reconciliation bill that meets the complex requirements of our budget rules, it would only need a simple majority of the Senate (51 votes) to pass. Neither Trump nor Ryan has given any indication as to whether a full repeal, or
a repeal-and-replace, would be their preferred method of action.
The viability of any of these initiatives remains to be seen, but with a Republican president and a Republican-controlled House and Senate, if lawmakers are able to reach agreeable terms across the executive and legislative branches, some level of change is to be expected.
Fighting our way back after an injury or surgery is one of life’s greatest challenges. It puts stress on our family, our co-workers, and especially ourselves. We need more than a stranger showing up with a page full of exercises. We need a Hero. Therapy Heroes is a unique assembly of Physical, Occupational, and Speech Therapy clinicians who provide customized services to home health providers.
Therapy Heroes is a cohesive group of experienced, innovative, and talented clinicians who are dedicated to their patients, and to each other. We are dedicated to our collective mission to:
Honor individuality.
E ncourage improvement. Reinforce effort.
Overcome fear.
E xpect success. Serve.
BY RYAN SCHARAR Scharar Law Firm
Fort Worth Chapter, Texas Society of CPAs
Historically, families have used various ways to transfer wealth among family members that minimize estate and/or gift taxes. One popular method involved setting up an entity that would be owned by multiple family members, some of whom received the ownership interest as a gift or inheritance, usually from a parent or grandparent. The entity would often be a partnership whose ownership interest was subject to certain restrictions on the right to control the partnership and that lacked easy marketability. The existence of these restrictions allowed the partnership interest being transferred to be valued at a discount, thus saving gift taxes.
As this article goes to press, the Internal Revenue Service is conducting a hearing on the new proposed regulations under Internal Revenue Code §2704 that, if adopted, would drastically restrict or eliminate traditional valuation discounts available to family-controlled entities.
The regulations expand the types of entities affected by the valuation rules from partnerships and corporations to include other business arrangements, eliminate discounts for family controlling interests transferred within three years of the transferor’s death, disregard limitations on liquidation per state law or contained in governing documents, and further limit the relevance of nonfamily member owners in a valuation analysis. The IRS rules have seen significant political opposition in recent months, with legislation introduced in the House and the Senate to block funding for them.
The IRS issued the proposed regulations
in an attempt to stem abuses under IRC §2704, but opponents say the regulations are too broad and prevent family businesses from applying discounts to transferred assets for legitimate purposes like lack of marketability and lack of control. More information on the major changes:
Expanded application of discount valuation rules to more types of business arrangements, as they will expand from applying to corporations and partnerships to also include S Corporations, qualified chapter S subsidiaries, LLCs, joint ventures and other similar enterprises.
Transfers three years or less prior to transferor’s death may now need to be included on the estate tax return. If a person transfers their family business interest within three years of their death and the transfer results in the loss of liquidation or voting rights, then the value of the liquidation or voting right is included in the person’s gross estate at death. Since the value of the rights would be “phantom value,” the rights would be ineligible for the marital deduction or as a charitable deduction. This is significant since the minority discount for lifetime transfer may now be added into the transferor’s gross estate if the transfer occurs within three years of death.
More restriction will be disregarded under the proposed rule.The proposed regulations would disregard limitations on the ability of the interest holder to liquidate the company if the limitation arises from state law, not expressly mandatory
under state law. This means that state law limitations on liquidations, while in effect, would still be ignored if they are not plainly required under state law.
The proposed regulations also describe an entire class of other “disregarded restrictions” that would not be allowed as the basis of a valuation discount, such as restrictions that limit the ability of the holder of the interest to liquidate the interest; limit the liquidations proceeds to less than a “minimum value”; defers the payment of the liquidation proceeds for more than six months after the date the holder gives notice of intent to have the holder's interest liquidated or redeemed; or permit the payment of the liquidation proceeds in any manner other than in cash or property, subject to certain limitations.
Nonfamily members disregarded The definition of “family members” changes so that nonfamily members are disregarded more often for valuation discount purposes, making the exception more difficult to meet. The new definition would disregard nonfamily member interests if the interest was held for less than three years; constitutes less than 10 percent of the entity’s equity interests or interest in profits and losses; constitutes less than 20 percent of the entity’s equity interests or interest in profits and losses when all nonfamily interests are aggregated; or the nonfamily owner has no enforceable right to receive the minimum value (as defined in disregarded restriction) on no more than six months’ notice.
Once the regulations are finalized, these changes would be legally binding. Individuals are advised to consult their attorney or CPA.
FW Inc.’s Entrepreneurs of Excellence share the best business lessons they’ve learned in building and selling companies.
BY TONY FORD Ford Leadership Solutions
For the last seven months, I have had the privilege to serve as program director for the 2017 FW Inc. Entrepreneur of Excellence Awards. Like so many things in life, what started out as a simple conversation among friends and fellow entrepreneurs soon took on a life of its own. It started when publisher Hal Brown and I discovered we were both concerned there was no independently judged, highlevel competition designed to recognize the personal achievements, sacrifices and community contributions of Fort Worth’s most excellent private business owners. That glaring deficiency, coupled with the fact that FW Inc. magazine exists to spotlight our community’s top business leaders and their best practices, demanded the creation of the EOE Awards program.
“We should listen to ourselves when we are talking to employees, customers, vendors or friends retelling war stories. While this may be a type of therapy, it does not help improve our understanding of what is possible.”
As our leadership team began developing the requirements, technical tools and marketing information necessary to attract Fort Worth’s best entrepreneurs to apply, we were very gratified to discover
how positively the business community embraced the program. Applications started arriving via our online entry portal. Sponsors invited us to share our ideas and generously reciprocated in ways that made the program even more attractive to potential finalists and winners. We contracted with First Preston HT (the same company used by TCU’s Values and Ventures competition) to provide the independent judging process required to maintain fairness and integrity. Twenty local subject expert judges invested many hours in narrowing down the pool of applicants to 29 finalists and 10 winners (to be announced at our EOE Awards Banquet on Jan. 12 at the Fort Worth Club). Throughout this process, I had the opportunity to visit with many of the judges, sponsors and applicants. As a fellow entrepreneur, I could not resist the temptation to get their opinions on “What kinds of practical wisdom have made you an excellent entrepreneur?”
Here are some of the more “hardearned” things they learned:
1. Get out of your own head: As business owners, we know what we know, but we do not know all there is to know about what is going on around us. By surrounding ourselves with trusted professionals who see our business from different perspectives, we prevent blind spots. In order of significance, build relationships with an experienced coach/mentor, seasoned financial strategist (fractional CFO/ accounting firm), peer mentoring group (TAB, EO, C-12), commercial insurance expert, and established local business attorney.
2. Get past your own past: We should listen to ourselves when we are talking to employees, customers, vendors or friends retelling war stories. While this may be a type of therapy, it does not help improve our understanding of what is possible. Each of these people has important real-time information they need to share with us.
3. Get back in touch with market realities: What has changed in your market, products, competition, and technology? When we seek out people, articles, subject experts, seminars and other reality resources, we will know more, do more and sleep more.
4. Get real about your actual skills and abilities: Nobody builds a successful company on their own. The longer we work to grow our companies in relative isolation, the more mentally and physically exhausted we become. Sometimes exhaustion overtakes sound judgment. At times like this, reaching out to other business owners and professionals we respect is a sign of strength and character.
5. Get success advice from someone who has been successful: We can respect subject experts who have never started and grown their own successful company as long as they focus on areas that they have actual experience in. Unfortunately, many stray off into giving advice in critical business areas that require actual experience. The first question you should ask a potential business coach or mentor is “please describe the success YOU have had in growing your own company.”
6. Get growing or get going: One of the most costly mistakes we make as private business owners is that “we stay too long.” By that, we mean we work so hard for so many years to build
our companies and then, right when we should be bringing in an experienced business intermediary to help us harvest our equity through a sale, we just hang on to it while the market around us starts to change (and often decline). This piece of advice really struck a chord with me since I have personally left money on the table by not recognizing it was time to sell one of my companies.
As a coach/strategist, I spend most of my time helping other entrepreneurs find the funds, subject experts and strategies they need to become more successful. Leading the 2017 FW Inc. Entrepreneurs of Excellence Awards program has been instructive and very rewarding. I hope as you read the profiles of this
year’s EOE finalists, you will consider entering next year’s competition. If you would like to know more about the program, please contact me at tony.ford@fwtx.com or 817-832-5696.
Tony Ford is an awardwinning Fort Worth entrepreneur with a history of starting and growing industryleading companies. He now helps other businesses grow and sell their companies. He also is program director for the 2017 FWinc. Entrepreneurs of Excellence Awards program. Tony writes this column in each issue of
Online platform connects applicants, judges and program administrators while providing real-time oversight to program events.
BY HARRIET HARRAL Executive Director Leadership Fort Worth
At BNSF, nothing is more important than safety. Like many industries, theirs is an unforgiving environment with 24x7 operations and heavy equipment. BNSF’s commitment to safety and its willingness to continually seek to enhance and deepen its safety training have had impressive results. BNSF achieved record safety performance in 2015, and injuries have been reduced by 17 percent since 2012. Each year, they are challenging and improving the safety status quo.
Both the Burlington Northern and the Santa Fe railways had a longstanding commitment to continuous safety improvement. When the two companies were combined in 1995 to create BNSF Railway, that commitment was reinforced with employee training on the expectations and values of the new organization, and the message was clear that safety was inherent in its way of doing business.
Shortly after BNSF was created, its leadership created a Leadership Model to provide a consistent focus and a common language for leadership expectations, and that model was reinforced through People Leader Training, an annual program established to drive business results through meaningful application of the model. Today, the CEO and five other senior executives guide the training content. Annually, all 5400 leaders go through training on one of the model’s five tenets:
• Create a Compelling Vision
• Model the Way
• Lead More; Manage Less
• Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
• Make Development a Priority
This model is closely related to the Leadership Challenge model developed by James Kouzes and Barry Posner that this column has been exploring. Over the past several months, we have looked at the leadership practices of:
• Modeling the Way as demonstrated by Fidelity Investments,
• Creating a Shared Vision and the success this created at GE Manufacturing, and
• Enabling Others to Act and the impact of leadership training at Southside Bank.
Today we explore the leadership practice of Challenge the Process and look at a creative approach to changing the locus of responsibility for safety at BNSF.
The impressive safety results cited at the beginning of this column grew from a focus in 2012-2013 on the tenet, Lead More; Manage Less. A portion of this tenet reads:
“Encourage leadership and innovation at all levels of your organization. Build strong teams and coach them to challenge the status quo, initiate solutions and act with a sense of urgency.”
In 2012, the thrust of People Leader Training was “See it, Own it, Solve it, Do it.” Building on that in 2013, BNSF directly addressed the reality that a majority of their employees are in situations in which they work unsupervised. With extensive rail operations in 28 states and three Canadian provinces, BNSF has a broadly dispersed workforce. It became clear that if safety policies and procedures were going to be reinforced, it was going to require peer-to-peer interactions.
Debra Ross, assistant vice president of learning and development, said organizational assessments found BNSF employees were already committed to speaking up and approaching each other on safety topics. So it made sense to leverage this strength to bring the organization to the next level of safety performance.
Employees provided significant input on the design and production of an annual training program called Approaching Others About Safety. It is based on a simple concept: If you care about your co-worker, you will interact with them to reinforce safe behavior and to recommend a safer approach when you see unsafe behavior.
Each year for the last four years, 30,000 employees have been trained by 450 unionrepresented peers in the largest training program BNSF has undertaken. The training provides employees the authority to take action and to do so with a sense of urgency. This is revolutionary in the railroad industry.
Ross emphasizes that success requires executive support and ownership. At BNSF, the executive team provides guidance on content and is also the first team to attend the annual training. In addition, BNSF builds development goals based on the training into each leader’s performance expectations.
The results speak for themselves. Challenging the process of the traditional safety training process has firmly reinforced BNSF’s leadership role in the rail industry as its employees continue on the path toward operating free of accidents and injuries.
Mark Nurdin - Bank of Texas' Fort Worth CEO and chair of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce - makes time in his schedule for Bible study and family downtime.
6 a.m. Alarm goes off and I do my daily Bible study. This helps me to set my moral compass for the day.
6:20 a.m. Review the headlines of the day on my iPhone; make note of any stories that require further research. I look for economic news, news on the financial services industry or any news about a client. I also get my instructions for the day from the CEO of the Nurdin household – my wife Robin.
7:40 a.m. Leave the house in Stonegate
and listen to Hal Jay on WBAP 820 on the way to the bank. Hal is one of the funniest guys on the radio. He and his team routinely have me laughing out loud on the way to work. I try not to take myself too seriously, and a bit of humor on the way to the bank helps with that.
8 a.m. Arrive at the bank; review calendar for the day (no two are exactly alike). Most mornings are spent in team meetings, one-on-one coaching sessions with my team members or meetings
Rotary membership luncheons, nonprofit fundraising events or recruiting talent. The Fort Worth Club is my standard go-to for lunch if I have a choice.
1:30 p.m. Afternoons are similar to the mornings except that I am typically involved in more strategic matters in the afternoons.
5:30 p.m. I typically leave the bank by 5:30. It is very common for me to have two or three events per week after work, some involving dinner, some not. For example, this week I have a cocktail reception for a nonprofit on Tuesday and a campaign fundraiser on Wednesday. I have Bible Study Fellowship every Thursday.
restaurants. Lately, we have been frequenting The Tavern quite a bit. Sometimes, my oldest son, Tyler, 24, will join us. He’s a busy young professional, and it’s always nice to catch up with him. Our youngest son, Hunter, 21, is a senior at Texas Tech. We are looking forward to having him back in Fort Worth soon.
with clients or prospective clients. I will also do a more in-depth review of any pertinent news items. This year, I am chairman of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. We typically have a couple of bi-monthly, early morning meetings at the Chamber (officers meeting, executive committee meeting, board meeting).
11:30 a.m. Lunchtime is spent with clients or prospective clients, in United Way of Tarrant County board or committee meetings, Chamber or
7 p.m. On nights when I don’t have an event, Robin and I usually have dinner together at around 7. She is an excellent cook! I love her tacos (soft or crunchy) and her spaghetti with meatballs. We will frequently go out for dinner at one of our favorite
8 p.m. Downtime with Robin. Robin and I are both sports fans. If our TV is on, there is typically a sporting event on. If not, we will read and listen to music. I’m a John Grisham fan, and I’m also a history buff. I like to alternate between a Grisham/history book and a business book of some sort. I’m currently reading “Un-Kill Creativity: How Corporate America Can Out-Innovate Startups” by Yoram Solomon, PhD.
9 p.m. We make every effort to watch the 9 o’clock news on Fox 4. 10 p.m. Lights out.
“[I] listen to Hal Jay on WBAP 820 on the way to the bank. Hal is one of the funniest guys on the radio. He and his team routinely have me laughing out loud on the way to work. I try not to take myself too seriously, and a bit of humor on the way to the bank helps with that.”
