Two ex-Alcon vets lose their jobs, but dig in and launch a biotech.
Hit By
The Bus
Who’s next when the business owner dies? Some Fort Worth firms step in front of the issue.
Auto Bond
D&M Leasing takes its next turns with owner’s stepsons behind the wheel.
Taxes Before DEATH
Tarrant Appraisal District, under fire, faces a long summer of tax protests.
INSURING ENGAGEMENT
Fort Worth's Higginbotham, under CEO Rusty Reid, goes from "sleepy" agency to one of the country's biggest insurance brokers.
FOR THE ORIGINAL IN YOU.
FEATURES
42 Hit by the Bus: Who’s next when the business owner dies? Some Fort Worth firms have stepped in front of the issue, but most ignore it.
50 Insuring Engagement: Fort Worth’s Higginbotham goes from “sleepy” agency to one of the country’s largest brokers. How? Bring a strong sense of humor to work with you here.
56 Auto Bond: D&M Leasing’s Mike Hernandez has aggressively built his company over 25 years but now is taking a step back and giving more control to his two sons and other executives.
60 Ear It Out: Two ex-Alcon vets lose their jobs but dig in and start a Fort Worth biotech that’s out for what’s in our ears.
64 Death and Taxes: The Tarrant Appraisal District, under fire for snafus in this year’s property appraisals, faces a long summer of protests.
68 Ready, Set, Operate: The Entrepreneurial Operating System makes its way into businesses touting a six-ingredient recipe.
If you’re looking to buy land for hunting, recreation, an ag operation or just a place to retire on, there’s one name in Texas to know. Heritage Land Bank is the right financing partner for anyone buying land in rural Texas. In fact, nobody knows Texas better. Talk to a Heritage lender today about the best loan for you, including the option of fixed-rate loans with terms up to 30 years. If you’re ready to buy, we’re ready to help.
( BIZZ BUZZ )
11 Think Big, Act Small: A new Fort Worth ad agency looks to grow by focusing on small, low-budget clients but also sharing the risk with them.
14 Best Assets: What are Fort Worth’s best assets for entrepreneurs? What could we use? FW Inc. asked around. Here are some answers.
15 All-Star Litigator: Marshall Searcy, longtime Fort Worth litigator, on juries and breaking cases down.
16 Face Time: Whoop! Rankings, faculty numbers, applicant quality, and placement rates are up in the two years since Andrew Morriss became dean of the Texas A&M University School of Law.
20 Stay Informed: Fort Worth’s Rosedale Renaissance gets one more piece in the East Side’s economic development quiver, an incubator.
22 Around Town: Images from around Fort Worth.
( EXECUTIVE LIFE & STYLE )
26 Distinctive Style: Stick your neck out with distinctive and quirky neckties.
28 Off the Clock: Complimentary Porsche when you check into your hotel? Five-star pet grooming? Try these perks at hotels to get over road warrior burnout.
30 Gadgets: Here’s a new batch of on-the-go apps - Booster Fuels, GoPass, and FW Park.
32 Wine & Dine: These Fort Worth restaurants offer a little more to their private dining, from underground wine rooms, to chefs’ tables with special kitchen access.
36 Health & Fitness: A desk with adjustable height, created by a Coppell company, is the perfect solution to neck and back problems.
38 Office Space: Black, white, elegant and playful define the offices of Seitz Design just outside Fort Worth’s Cultural District.
( COLUMNS / DEPARTMENTS )
70 Tony Ford: Practical Entrepreneur: FW Inc.'s newest contributor happened into his calling the usual way: by accident.
72 EO Spotlight: Jeff Rattikin is remaking his Fort Worth law practice to go online, delivering services locally, statewide and nationally.
74 Business Strategy: Sonny Vanderbeck was overweight and a chain smoker in college. Today, he’s a world away from that.
78 Analyze This: FW Chamber report. Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce Quarterly Report. California aviation companies flying to Fort Worth.
80 Analyze This: Energy. Texas is replacing lost high-paying energy jobs with ones in lower-paying services.
82 Analyze This: Legal and Tax. Non-union shops should be wary of National Labor Relations Act, even in Texas.
84 Analyze This: Commercial real estate. Commercial real estate update from The Real Estate Council of Greater Fort Worth.
86 Analyze This: Wealth. Cost segregation, an underused real estate tax strategy, provides cash flow for real estate.
88 Analyze This: Insurance. Bombarded by would-be roofers? Here’s how to protect yourself.
90 Exceptional Entrepreneurship: Overcoming obstacles and exploiting opportunities.
92 Management Tips and Best Practices: Lead by example and learn by example.
94 Day in the Life: Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price rarely has a typical day. But it almost always includes a workout or fitness break.
Hitting the Ceiling
My former partner and I started a publishing company in the early ’90s called Magnolia Media Group with a staff of five employees. The company consisted of one start-up national magazine called Michael’s Arts and Crafts. We owned the magazine, and licensed the Michael’s arts and crafts store’s name. As Michael’s dominated the retail craft space, having its name on the product provided us with significant cache, which helped to ensure the venture’s success.
We took the same licensing concept and duplicated it in other markets, including hunting and fishing with Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World magazine. Over the next 15 years, we sold, purchased and started a number of other titles including the launch of Fort Worth, Texas magazine in 1998. Because the magazines were all in different industries, each one was similar to a company start-up. Before we knew it, we were managing a lot of employees, with a makeshift human resources department and all the pleasures that come with that. During this 15-year-run, my average work week was between 50 and 60 hours.
One of the most challenging things about being an entrepreneur in a growing company is that you’re often forced to be a jack of all trades. You end up wearing many hats
yourself, and if you’re not careful, the business begins to run you. You can lose focus on the part of the business that you liked so much when you started it. That is where I found myself in 2005, when (with one other investor) I bought my partner out of his interest in Fort Worth, Texas magazine and went out on my own with 10 employees and got my life back.
Fast-forward 10 years to July of last year, and we had grown to 18 employees, and the business had once again begun to run me. I was the boss, but I did not have control over my time. I had hit the ceiling, and our revenue over the previous three years was not growing as fast as I felt it needed to. It was at that time that I read a book called Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, written by Gino Wickman.
The title of the book is a reference to business owners who are spinning their wheels and in need of traction to move again. In the book, Wickman details his Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), a set of simple concepts and practical tools designed to help entrepreneurs get what they want from their businesses, and he exposes a number of common frustrations that entrepreneurs face. As I’m reading it, I realize he is describing me.
In August last year, I brought on Jeff Whittle, a certified EOS implementer, to help me install the Entrepreneurial Operating System. Having it in place now for almost a year, I can honestly say it has transformed the way we run our business. Before we go to press with the next issue, we will be up to 21 employees, our profits are up substantially, I have more control, and I’m happier and less stressed. We are now proactive about solving problems and able to consistently monitor the business with confidence and clarity. I will not give you a book report in my pub note, but if your business has started to run you, I highly recommend that you read the book and implement EOS. You can read more about EOS in an interview with Jeff Whittle on page 68 of this issue.
Hal A. Brown owner/publisher
From the Publisher of Fort Worth, Texas magazine
( BIZZ BUZZ )
What Everyone's Talking About Around the Water Cooler
Think Big, Act Small
Ad agency denizen grows business focusing on small, lowbudget clients.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA
Brandon Alcorn had a tough choice to make when he “got kicked out of the nest” at a Fort Worth ad agency a year and a half ago: Look for another creative gig somewhere, or go out on his own. With two young children, a stay-at-home wife, and what he estimates was a month and a half’s worth of expenses in savings, there was substantial pressure to look for a job, which is what Alcorn did.
But Alcorn says he also wanted to create something his children – now 2 and 5 – could inherit or watch him grow. “This work ethic,” he says.
The job “really was a safety net,” he says. “I wasn’t doing what I loved.”
So Alcorn started taking small free-
lance jobs. “I literally did everything and anything I could think of to find cash,” he says. His wife out-earned him at first, putting things in their garage up for sale. “It took a few months to find rhythm,” says Alcorn, 36.
What’s evolved since then: a small agency, eponymously named the Alcorn Agency, that focuses on small businesses that can’t afford big budgets. One of Alcorn’s clients: W Durable Goods, a Fort Worth maker of leather goods with no ecommerce front. Alcorn is negotiating a deal under which he’ll build and manage the company’s website, produce this year’s print catalog, and handle marketing and social media. The business owner currently is handling all of those tasks.
In trade for his services, Alcorn is initially taking 50 percent of online sales. He put a value on his services and doubled it, and once his share of online sales reaches that number, his piece of future web sales will be 25 percent.
Alcorn will sub out services like site construction to others in his network, which includes web developers, social media experts, writers, video developers, and photographers. He’ll pay those vendors up front with fees he’s making from traditional agency work, Alcorn says.
That means he’s getting paid last from his arrangement with W. “That’s exactly right,” he says, laughing.
In another arrangement, Alcorn has entered the growing “subscription box” mar-
well the creative works. “How can I build a community of people who want to work together?” he says.
Assuming the agency grows, Alcorn says he doesn’t want to abandon its focus. “It’s supposed to think big and act small,” he says.
Alcorn grew up in North Richland Hills and attended Richland High School. His dad managed a plant, and his mother worked as a legal assistant. “My parents worked hard,” Alcorn says. “We had nice things, but it took a lot of effort to get these nice things we wanted.”
Alcorn traces his affinity for team play to growing up in soccer. He initially attended West Texas State University on a soccer scholarship as a utility player, playing every position at some point. But seeing no future in soccer, he transferred to the University of North Texas and its advertising program.
After graduating, Alcorn first worked at a screen printing shop in Fort Worth, then worked at two agencies before ending up on his own.
“I really have gotten to one of the most optimistic places in my life I’ve ever been,” Alcorn said recently, during an interview in the community conference room at Near South Studios. “I’m working 80 to 90 hours a week, but I’m enjoying doing it.”
ket, taking an ownership stake in the Aledo firm, Grace & Grit, in exchange for his services. Grace & Grit and its network of women entrepreneurs produce and bundle proprietary products aimed at helping young women and sells them through monthly subscriptions. Subscribers receive a box every month containing anything from unique garments, to books, journals, and cards.
Alcorn has outgrown his small offices in Near South Studios, a co-working space on Hemphill Street on the Near Southside, and has leased 4,200 square feet in a historic building at 916 Bryan in the South Main Street corridor. He’s subleasing part of the space to an interior designer who will design the building’s interior.
His vision for the agency is to grow it by working with other people, putting creative first, and building accountability in for how
W Durable Goods, a Fort Worth producer of leather goods, is signing on with the Alcorn agency, trading a piece of sales for services.
Grace & Grit, an Aledo entrant into the growing subscription box market, is trading equity for Alcorn's advertising services.
Chase Kennemer General Manager D&M Leasing Fort Worth
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.
Best of Fort Worth: Entrepreneurial Assets
Can Fort Worth become a top entrepreneurial center in Texas? We asked people to identify the city’s best assets for entrepreneurship and what it could use.
George Popstefanov
Founder, PMG Worldwide, digital media services, Inc. 500 fastest-growing firm, Fort Worth
Assets: The quality of life in Fort Worth makes it easy to attract talent and convince them to relocate, especially in our home court of West 7th. That said, with TCU and other quality institutions, there's a ready pool of talented people who are local to hire from.
Could use: A vibrant, visible community of start-up entrepreneurs and employees. Those people exist, but there could be better fostering of that community. That'll in turn create some buzz and excitement, within and outside of Fort Worth.
Darlene Boudreaux
Executive director, TECH Fort Worth incubator; Founder/CEO, pharmaceutical manufacturer, 1994-2006, Inc. 500 fastestgrowing company.
Assets: Guinn Entrepreneurial Campus. The three buildings on this campus, owned by the City and leased at low cost to nonprofit entities like TECH Fort Worth, IDEA Works FW, SCORE, PeopleFund,
the Small Business Development Center, and others, has allowed the City to gather lots of entrepreneurial assistance for startups of all kinds in one area. We all refer clients to each other, have events involving everyone, and do our best to make sure that people who want to start a business in Fort Worth have the assistance they need.
Could use: I am always looking for the “gap” in services for emerging businesses in this area. That’s why I started our TECH Fort Worth programs, including Cowtown Angels, over the last 10 years. The next thing that I see that’s needed is a true seed fund for early-stage businesses. This is very different from a network of angel investors. People put money into a centrally managed fund targeted for local businesses. It’s tricky, because someone needs to take the risk of managing it, but I’m studying models in other areas to figure out how it could be done.
Hayden Blackburn
Executive director, IDEA Works FW, Fort Worth incubator
Assets: An entrepreneur’s best asset in Fort Worth is his or her peers. Entrepreneurs connecting with other entrepreneurs, no matter the industry, number of businesses launched, or number of exits, is the best asset an entrepreneur can add.
Could use: It is all about filling gaps. Over the last four years in Fort Worth, we have seen the launch of an angel network (Cowtown Angels), multiple co-working spaces (CoLab, The Backlot, Ensemble Coworking) and a mixed-industry incubator/entrepreneurial development center (IDEA Works FW), which were all gaps in our community. Current gaps in the assets and resources in Fort Worth available to entrepreneurs include code camps and developer programs, seed funds, seed ac-
celerators, commercial kitchen incubation and commissary, rapid-prototyping makerspaces, flexible light assembly spaces, and a structured mentor program. We are currently working on a solution to speed the process up of connecting mentees to mentors in our community. This list includes assets that touch on education, physical amenities, capital, and access to technology. Two of the top resources I would like to see filled along with the mentor program are the launch of a seed fund and code/ developer camps. By tackling these two, we better serve entrepreneurs with access to capital and access to talent.
Tony Ford
Serial entrepreneur; owner, Ford Leadership Solutions; senior partner, Kasper & Associates
Assets: We have tremendous assets here. Darlene Boudreaux, crazy smart. Then you have people like Ed and Val Riefenstahl (Alternative Board, business coaching service). People don’t know about this, but they were in the Peace Corps before they first met. Betsy Price. Big advocate for entrepreneurship. Brad Hancock at the (TCU) entrepreneurship center. Huge heart, sold out to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneur’s Organization. There’s another one.
Could use: I think we need the entrepreneurial community to come together around the resources we already have. We need to become students of each other’s platform. Entrepreneurs are fiercely independent. It’s my belief that we weren’t designed to be independent. I believe we function much better if we’re interdependent.
— Scott Nishimura, FW Inc.
Hayden Blackburn
Darlene Boudreaux
Andrew Morriss
Whoop! Texas A&M law school dean, two years on the job, bumps up ranking, placement rates, faculty hiring.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA
Last time I caught up to Andrew Morriss was his first day on the job as dean of the new Texas A&M School of Law two years ago in downtown Fort Worth.
On his mind back then: Ways to make Aggie lawyers more distinctive; link the law school to A&M’s broader expertise; pare students’ financial burden; and bring in more faculty. What's up with Aggie law these days?
Whoop! We’ve had considerable success in rankings. We went from unranked to No. 111 this year (in annual U.S. News & World Report ranking). That’s a big jump. No. 14 in intellectual property, and 18 in dispute resolution. Those reflect the fact that we’ve made a lot of progress.
Differentiation: We’re playing off what A&M already offers in the system. First thing, we hired several faculty jointly with some of the other parts of A&M. We have two faculty now with appointments in engineering. We have two with appointments in agriculture, one in architecture, and we’ve offered a course jointly with the Bush School (of Government and Public Service) that has both law school and Bush School students in it.
We’re really exploring the ways the law school and the university can collaborate to really offer something distinctive.
New faculty: We hired 11 last year, 12 if you count President Michael Young. And then we’ve hired several so far this year (to a total 53).
Applications: When the school became Texas A&M, applications went up by 25 percent. We’ve largely held that increase, but most importantly, we’ve seen applications at the top end of qualifications go up (more than 6 percent this year).
Placement rates. Those have continued to increase. We’ve seen a steady increase in the number of students getting jobs, and also in the number of employers looking at our students. (Employment rates for graduates rose to 82 percent for the 2015 class from 2013’s 72 percent, the law school’s data shows. Employment rates rose to 75 percent from 65 percent for jobs full-time, longterm, requiring bar passage, significantly favoring candidates with law degrees, or professional.)
Student debt: We cut our tuition by more than 15 percent starting in the fall. The law review course that everybody ought to take as they prepare for the bar exam - it’s a list price of $3,800 - is now included. And we’ve dramatically increased our scholarship spend.
What’s up with expansion plans downtown: We’re in the early stages of the state process to analyze the need and get on the capital budget. As you know, we have three parking lots. The hope would be to build a new parking structure on one of them, and a new law school (on another). We’d like to put all of the law school in the new building. The old building could be repurposed for something else.
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SISEMORE LAW FIRM
Justin J. Sisemore has been recognized by his peers as a 2016 “Rising Star” in Texas Monthly and Super Lawyers Magazines, as a “Top Attorney” in Fort Worth, Texas Magazine for the last eight years, and has been a guest speaker for the Tarrant County Family Law Bar Association and various law firms throughout Fort Worth. Samantha M. Wommack has been recognized by her peers as a “Top Attorney” in Fort Worth, Texas Magazine for the last three years. Zoe Meigs, of counsel, is an AV Preeminent Rated attorney and has been recognized for the second time as a “Top Attorney” in Fort Worth, Texas Magazine. We are proud to welcome Jerold H. Mitchell, Chris B. Norris and Pamela L. Wilder to the Sisemore Family Law Firm. Jerold H. Mitchell and Pamela L. Wilder have also been recognized by their peers as “Top Attorneys” in Fort Worth, Texas Magazine. With a combined 40 years of experience in complex civil and family law trials and appeals, our firm provides an extensive range of family law services: all aspects of divorce, cases with complex property divisions, and custody disputes. While we represent clients throughout Texas, we regularly serve Tarrant, Dallas, Collin, Parker, Johnson, Denton, Hood and Wise counties. The Sisemore Law Firm works diligently to provide highly competent and efficient service to each and every client. Our firm also works with various civil litigation firms throughout the DFW Metroplex to assist their clients in family law matters. Visit our website at www.thetxattorneys.com to view our client testimonials.”
Another Arrow in the Quiver
Fort Worth’s Rosedale Renaissance gets one more economic development piece: Texas Wesleyan business accelerator
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA
Fort Worth’s Southeast Side is getting another arrow in its economic development quiver: a Texas Wesleyan University business accelerator center on East Rosedale Street.
Texas Wesleyan recently won the OK from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and City of Fort Worth to move ahead with the project. The Jack Morton Business Accelerator Center at 3114 E. Rosedale, in a strip center the university owns across from the main campus entry, is scheduled to be complete in the fall of 2016.
The center will be adjacent to the Texas Wesleyan Community Counseling Center. The renovated strip is a piece of the university’s campus improvement plan, and it complements the Rosedale Renaissance plan.
“The Rosedale Renaissance continues to revitalize our neighborhood, and the business accelerator will bring another economic boon to the intersection,” Frederick G. Slabach, Texas Wesleyan’s president, said. “We’ve created a critical thinking hub in Southeast Fort Worth – a place where academia is extended to support our community. The business accelerator center is the next big step.”
Led by Texas Wesleyan’s School of Business students and faculty, the center will initially focus on providing market research and analysis for Southeast Fort Worth that will be shared with prospective businesses seeking to enter the business community. The interior will have a reception area, conference room and work space.
“The center will actively engage our business students – undergraduates and MBA – with the community to solve real-world business problems and help local entrepreneurs meet their small business needs,” Hector Quintanilla, dean of the School of Business Administration, said.
INTRODUCING: FW INC.’S ENTREPRENEUR OF EXCELLENCE AWARDS
FW INC. IS LAUNCHING A SIGNATURE GREATER FORT WORTH AREA CONTEST: ENTREPRENEUR OF EXCELLENCE.
The magazine will honor 10 Entrepreneurs of Excellence, chosen from 30 finalists, in January 2017. Nominations must be received by Sept. 1 to be eligible. An independent panel of judges will choose the finalists and winners. To enter or get more information, visit fwtx.com/fwinc.
Eligible candidates must: own or lead a private company based in the greater Fort Worth area; have at least $2 million in annual sales; been in business for at least two years; primarily do business in aviation, energy and natural resources, family business, healthcare, manufacturing and distribution, media and communications, real estate and construction, retail, services, or technology.
Winners will have distinguished themselves by leading their company’s exceptional sales and profit growth, ethical business practices, innovation, perseverance and community involvement.
There’s no cost to nominate someone or complete an application for this award. Anyone can nominate an entrepreneur, or an entrepreneur can nominate himself or herself.
How does this contest work? Judges will choose three finalists from each
category based on his or her responses to the questions and essays on the application form.
Winners will be recognized as Entrepreneurs of Excellence in a special issue of FW Inc., featured in a profile in the magazine, receive a custom-designed trophy, promotional considerations from sponsors, and future opportunities to speak at or participate in FW Inc. events, and be inducted into the FW Inc. Entrepreneurs of Excellence Hall of Fame.
Once nominated for this prestigious award, all candidates complete a confidential online application form which includes a three-year financial history of the company’s performance, personal and business biographical information and four short essays (approximately 250 words) that describe their personal journey to entrepreneurial success, how their company was created and its unique business strategy, innovative approaches to overcoming obstacles and seizing opportunities, and the company’s culture and contributions to the community.
All of the financial information will remain confidential but will be shared with the presenting sponsor and judges under a non-disclosure process. For information go to fwtx.com/fwinc/eoe.
- FW Inc.
(1) The 2016 IMPACT Awards winners were OncoNano, VisioSound, Revitalize Charging Solution. Ben Hogan Golf was the 2016 People’s Choice winner. Left to
(2) Jim Lacamp introduces Darlene Boudreaux at the 2016 IMPACT Awards .
(3) EpicMavs by TECH Fort Worth series covering advertising.
(4) Entrepreneurs discuss ideas, passion and risk during Tech Fort Worth series.
right: Samantha Colletti, Jorge Varela, Jim Lacamp, Robert Sturns, Brad Hunstable, Fred Hunstable.
DA Lamont Public Adjusters, LLC
Take a tour inside the Seitz Design office on page 38.
EXECUTIVE LIFE & STYLE
26 Distinctive Style / 28 Off the Clock / 30 Gadgets / 32 Wine & Dine / 36 Health & Fitness / 38 Office Space
STICK YOUR NECK OUT
BY KENDALL LOUIS
What started as a function of the uniform of Croatian mercenaries in the 17th century became an office staple by the 1900s Now, the occurrence of the necktie is trending down in the office place as many companies opt for casual attire. But, those who choose to go unbuttoned miss a chance to showcase their individuality. As the formal occurrence of the necktie exits stage right, more casual options enter stage left. Quirky patterns and playful prints are emerging and encouraging men to wear their heart on their shirt.
THINK SHOPPING IS A PAIN IN THE NECK? SIGN UP FOR ONE OF THESE MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTIONS, AND THE TIES WILL COME TO YOU.
SPINDLETOP TIE IN RED, PARIS TEXAS APPAREL CO., paristexasco.com, $75
ITALIAN SILK TIE WITH EMBROIDERED AUTOMOBILES, J. Crew, jcrew.com, $75
MATH FORMULAS TIE, Uncommon Goods, uncommongoods.com, $49
BIKE OLIVE AND TAN TIE, The Knotty Tie Co, knottytie.com, $45
DOG TUG-OF-WAR PRINTED SILK TIE IN AQUA, Salvatore Ferragamo, Neiman Marcus Fort Worth, $190
URBAN DAPPER CLUB
Choose from a monthly ($14), threemonth ($13) or six-month ($12) option, and a handmade, slim-style tie of the month will arrive at your home. urbandapperclub.com
Ralph Lauren
ralphlauren.com, $89
UNICORN TAPESTRY TIE, The Met Store, store.metmuseum.org, $48
TIECARGO
Join for just $10/month and receive randomly selected ties from brands including J. Crew, Bvlgari and Giorgio Armani. Cancel any time you want. tiecargo.com
NECKTIEPHOON
Choose from the “Traditional Tie” monthly subscription and the “Skinny Tie” monthly subscription, both at just $22.50/month. A premium option offers bonuses like cuff links and handkerchiefs. necktiephoon.com
TOUCAN SILK TIE,
Purple Label,
Perks of the Job
BY KENDALL LOUIS
Endless work trips and a montage of planes, trains and automobiles can leave anyone worn out, leading the allure of travel to quickly dissipate. But, when you can’t stay at home, sometimes it’s the smallest or quirkiest of details that can make the difference between a bad day and a great stay. These seven hotels, near and far, make it a little easier to be away from home.
The Westin Austin Downtown - Austin If you stay at the new Westin Hotel in Austin, there are no excuses for not working out. Westin partnered with New Balance to provide athletic apparel for just a $5 fee. Simply share your shoe and clothing sizes, and upon your request, the hotel will provide clean shoes and apparel plus brand new socks that are yours to keep. The hotel has a Runners Concierge on staff who will lead runs, recommend routes, and will greet you with bottled waters and fresh towels when you return. When you check out, simply leave the items in your room. westinaustindowntown.com
Hotel deluxe - Portland Oh how very… Portland. The Hotel deluxe in downtown Portland devotes the entire third floor to humans and their pets. Or, pets and their humans. Travelers with pets will arrive in their room to find pet beds, bowls and a
welcome basket complete with toys and treats. Want to give your four-legged friend the five-star treatment? You can book from a menu of pet grooming services, pet acupuncture and even a pet psychic. A pampered pet room is just $45 extra. hoteldeluxeportland.com
The Chatwal - New York City This 76room luxury hotel is ready to appeal to each of your senses. Book a personalized consultation with a Krigler perfume expert. A representative from the French perfumer - a favorite of Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn - will arrive at your door with a trunk filled with more than 40 scents. Mix and match to your nose’s desire. Personalize a fragrance by slightly tweaking an existing fragrance ($300+); “lease” a scent to be exclusively yours for six months ($1,500+); or, buy a scent from the collection ($15,000+) to ensure that no one else will ever wear it. thechatwalny.com
SLS Hotel - Beverly Hills The SLS Hotel in Beverly Hills already has a leg up on the competition with interior designs by Philippe Starck and whimsical foodie offerings from Culinary Director José Andrés – think a room-service menu with cotton candy foie gras and caviar cones. But, the hotel also knows how to deliver the simple
pleasures. Guests can book a hypoallergenic room designed specifically for allergy sufferers called the “Pure Room.” Beds are fitted with 300-thread count Fili d’Oro linens, a pillow-top mattress and mattress encasement, and organic cotton pillows. Each room has a built-in electronic air purifier ensuring clean air flows throughout the room. The young guests are not forgotten at SLS either. Each child gets a stuffed monkey upon arrival. slshotels.com/beverlyhills
Rancho Valencia Resort & Spa - Santa Fe, California Don’t waste your time or money renting a car if you head to Rancho Valencia, just a 29-minute drive north of San Diego. The resort offers guests a complimentary Porsche for the day including your choice of a 911 S Convertible, Cayenne GTS or a Panamera S Hybrid. The only rules: You must show your ID and return the car at the end of the day. Don’t want to give it back? An on-site concierge will gladly sell you one. ranchovalencia.com
JW
Marriott - Grand Rapids You might expect a pretty reliable and standard stay at any JW Marriott, but the Grand Rapids location sweetens the deal while encouraging a little social media. Check in to Grand Rapids Marriott on Facebook or Tweet at the hotel, and a sugar cookie decorated with the social media outlet you used will be waiting for you in your room. marriott.com
Hotel
Commonwealth - Boston If you’re willing to drop more than $1,000 on the Fenway Park Suite inside Hotel Commonwealth, you can live the dream of every Red Sox superfan. The room has a balcony overlooking the Green Monster, complete with original stadium seats and a mitt in case a homerun ball makes it more than 507 feet to your balcony. Turn-down service includes a tiny Ziploc bag filled with Fenway dirt on your pillow. Feel like really cheating on your hometown Rangers? Upon request, guests can have the World Series trophy delivered for selfies and general admiring. hotelcommonwealth.com
A complimentary Porsche rental comes with your stay at Rancho Valencia.
OPEN FOR TOURS
Aug. 27 - Sept. 25
1925 Cielo Court, Keller
Wed. through Sat. 11 am - 5 pm
Sun. noon - 5 pm
$10 Admission Fee Free with a $20 subscription ($10 goes to a Wish with Wings)
PROJECT TEAM:
Builder & Designer: Veranda Designer Homes
Realtor: Dona Robinson Associates
Briggs Freeman | Sotheby’s
Worthy Apps
BY FW INC. STAFF
One day we looked up and realized that Fort Worth is in the app business. It’s common knowledge that traveling can be stressful, but sometimes even a trip across town is enough to raise your blood pressure. From parking downtown, to taking the train to Dallas, these Fort Worth-specific apps make it easier for you to make it through a day filled with business lunches, meetings and events.
Booster Fuels: On Demand Fuel Delivery Never stop at the gas station again with Booster Fuels. This Seattle-based startup has made quite the grapecolored splash in the Alliance area servicing corporate campuses like Perot’s Hillwood group (Ross Perot, Jr. is also an investor in the startup), along with Mercedes-Benz, DynCorp International and Bridgestone. Lucky employees at these campuses simply order a Boost through the Uberstyle app and pop their fuel door. Within an hour a bright purple truck fills the tank with gas, checks the tire pressure and even cleans the car windshield. Booster drivers locate requesting vehicles in the parking lot through global positioning technology. Booster orders gas wholesale to ensure their prices are competitive with gas stations. The only drawback: Booster trucks can only deliver fuel to parking lots where the company has previously made an arrangement with the property management. Free, boosterfuels.com
GoPass Thanks to free WiFi, taking the Trinity Railway Express (TRE) to a Dallas meeting saves about an hour of uninterrupted work time –a no brainer compared to the alternative of sitting in traffic on I-30. The good news is you don’t have to wait in line buying train tickets either. Download the GoPass app and simply buy as many train tickets as you need with a few easy steps. Activate the ticket when you step on the train (it’s valid for 60 days) and show your pass to the train attendant when he or she comes to your seat to check. A trip from T&P Station in downtown Fort Worth to Union Station in downtown Dallas takes 57 minutes. Check trinityrailwayexpress. org for travel times. Free, gopass.biz
FW PARK Parking meters might seem outdated, but 2,700 on-street parking spaces are now totally tech savvy. No need to search for spare change next time you cozy your car up next to a meter downtown. The City of Fort Worth partnered with Parkmobile in January so that parkers can pay for meters through their mobile phones.
“Fort Worth continues to invest in experiences that enhance the quality of life for our residents and to attract visitors to the city,” Mayor Betsy Price said in a press release. “With the Parkmobile technology, Fort Worth makes paying parking fees easier and more convenient in the heart of the best downtown in America.”
After downloading the FW PARK app, users can immediately pay for parking with their mobile device. A law enforcement officer will be able to see that a motorist has paid with FW PARK using his or her wireless handheld device (even if the meter doesn’t change). App users can also receive alerts and reminders 15 minutes before the meter runs out. There is a convenience fee of 35 cents per transaction. It’s a small price to pay for stress-free parking around Fort Worth, plus the app is free. Free, us.parkmobile. com
Meeting Expectations
BY FWINC. STAFF
As Fort Worth’s growth continues, restaurants mean big business. Many local players stay one step ahead of the competition with private dining rooms and event spaces. From unknown underground wine rooms tucked away in historic spots to chef’s tables with special kitchen access, the private spaces inside these local spots will take your business meeting or client dinner from dull to delicious.
BIRD CAFÉ Step into a nest inside Bird Café in the private dining area. The Rookery is a spacious area upstairs complete with handsome dark green drapes and wooden floors for up to 52 guests. The space can easily transition from a formal business setting to a casual meeting. Bird Café offers a family-style service for dinner events, encouraging conversation instead of turning attention to the entire meal that is set before diners. The Rookery has a private bar plus access to the second-floor balcony (with a cozy firepit) that overlooks Sundance Square Plaza. There is no room charge, only food and beverage minimums depending on the day of the week and the time of the event, ranging from $400 - $3,000. For reservations, email events@birdinthe.net. 155 E. 4th and Commerce, birdinthe.net, 817.332.2473
BREWED Show clients and colleagues the funkier side of Fort Worth at Magnolia Avenue’s Brewed. The gorgeous sunlit event space can be reserved for up to 50
guests or for as few as six guests. The 1,500-square-foot room features quirky décor with mismatched tables and chairs, vintage cameras and photographs. A projector is provided for presentations, but this room is BYO audio. Enjoy great craft beer, farm-fresh made-from-scratch food and locally roasted coffee. For reservations, visit brewedfw.com.
801 W. Magnolia Ave., 817.945.1545
CLAY PIGEON FOOD AND DRINK
Chef and owner Marcus Paslay opened Clay Pigeon at the corner of White Settlement more than three years ago and has since consistently wowed diners with
farm-to-table seasonal creations. His success has him poised to open Piattello Italian Kitchen in the new Waterside development this fall. Meanwhile, his original spot often accommodates private dining guests in the popular wine room that accommodates up to 30. The room has a view of the temperature-controlled wine storage and French doors that lead to a lit patio. The team works with private parties to create a custom dining menu beginning at $50 per person. Guests can devour truly locally made food. Clay Pigeon makes as many menu items as possible in-house including breads, ice creams and charcuterie options. For reservations, email lauren@claypigeonfd.com.
2731 White Settlement Road, claypigeonfd.com, 817.882.8065
LONESOME DOVE WESTERN BISTRO Take your business dinner to the next level by heading underground
The Rookery, Bird Cafe
Clay Pigeon Food and Drink
Your smile is more than just a response; it’s the symbol of your personality and the centerpiece to your overall look. As a pioneer in the field of cosmetic dentistry, Dr. Mitch Conditt combines technical skill with artistic vision to create a smile that will represent who you are and fit your lifestyle and aspirations.
An instructor to thousands of dentists from all over the world, Dr. Conditt takes a great deal of pride in having built a practice where patients—like you—feel rejuvenated simply because of the amount of care and experience that has been invested in their personal smile needs.
Contact Dr. Conditt’s practice today to schedule your smile consultation. We are ready to help you start the journey to a smile that is unlike any other.
to the La Cava room at Tim Love’s iconic Lonesome Dove Western Bistro. La Cava provides a VIP experience with its own private entrance and private bathrooms. Guests dine surrounded by the extensive Lonesome Dove wine collection, soft candle lighting and hand-painted art. Even though it’s underground, the room features an outdoor courtyard with a scenic view of the Marine Creek River Walk. Lonesome Dove has hosted many of Dallas/Fort Worth’s Fortune 100 and 500 companies. La Cava seats up to 60 guests and requires a food and beverage minimum of $2,000, Monday – Thursday, and $3,000, Friday and Saturday. For reservations, email Andria Prasifka, andria-prasifka@ cheftimlove.com.
2406 N. Main St., lonesomedovebistro.com, 817.740.8810
TIMES TEN CELLARS
Previously Times Ten Cellars only served cheese, cured meats, and pizza (who’s complaining?), but now the West 7th winery has a special event menu that can be altered to accommodate 15 to 40 people. Items include tri-tip sirloin, large peeled shrimp, pizzas and even a white chocolate cheesecake from nearby J. Rae’s Bakery.
The most impressive of the private rooms is The Barrel Lounge, a comfortable and spacious room filled with, you guessed it, wine barrels. The cellar provides a private bar, bartender staff and a personalized sign to welcome guests. The restaurant offers wine from its own winery, 18 miles south of Alpine, Texas, plus a selection of “wines from other wineries” as the menu says. The lounge rental room fee is $300, Sunday through Thursday, and $425, Friday and Saturday. For reservations, email fwwinery@timestencellars.com. 1100 Foch St., timestencellars.com, 817.336.9463
WATERS BONNELL’S COASTAL
CUISINE The chef’s table at Waters Bonnell’s Coastal Cuisine adds a taste of entertainment to your private dinner. The room has a view into the lively kitchen with a window that slides open so chefs can hand guests delicious menu items like Mesquite Grilled Tenderloin and oysters on the half shell. Not in the mood for onlookers? The window can be covered up with a wooden door for more privacy.
Additionally, the room has a 70-inch, flatscreen TV for presentations. This room is for more intimate business meetings as it only accommodates a maximum of 10 guests. There’s no rental fee; however, there is a food and beverage minimum of $175 for lunch and $480 - $800 for dinner. For reservations, contact Michelle Chambless at privatedining@waterstexas.com. 2901 Crockett St., waterstexas.com, 817.984.1110
The Barrell Lounge, Times Ten Cellars Brewed
La Cava, Lonesome Dove Western Bistro
Get on Your Feet
One local company’s innovative solution works to increase office health.
BY ALEXANDRA PLANCARTE
HBO’s popular Silicon Valley, the show that chronicles the ups and downs of a fictional high-tech startup, debuted the new Pied Piper office space in the May premiere of Season 3. In order to mimic the office environment of an upand-comer, set producers turned to Coppell-based Varidesk.
The creators of the product, Jason McCann and his team, know a thing or two about startups. What started as a small idea three years ago turned into a global enterprise.
The concept started when one of the founders of Varidesk had a pinched sciatic nerve. His doctor suggested he stand throughout the day as a remedy for his
pain, says McCann, CEO Varidesk.
“He thought he needed some type of desk that could go up and down,” McCann, who went to the University of Houston for his undergrad and MBA, said. “I would go into his office, and he would literally have a brown box on top of his desk with his laptop on it.”
McCann and his team searched for a desk that would be height adjustable to solve the problem. However, after reviewing different products, none of the desks seemed to do what they needed.
“We joked around and we said, ‘Well, why don’t we just create our own,’” McCann said. “We had an idea for a product solution, and we sat around the table to brainstorm ideas and came up with the idea for the product that became known as Varidesk.”
The desk was created inside of Gemmy Industry in Coppell for that single employee and soon others. Gemmy is the No. 1 manufacturer of Airblown inflatables and LED lighting. Other companies around the area heard about the standing desk and wanted to give it a try. Overtime, McCann’s business has grown from two to 115 employees. McCann says about 10 percent of his staff are TCU graduates.
Varidesk is a simple adjustable-height desk already fully assembled that is placed over your existing furniture. The desk allows you to transform your desk from sitting to standing throughout the workday in less than three seconds. Just squeeze the two handles on the side, and it stands right up.
Many companies are making the switch to standing desks, thanks to its health benefits. Sitting for prolonged hours every day can cause cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer. The desks have also been linked to increased productivity in the work place. Texas A&M Health Science Center School of Public Health researchers found that workers who stood at their desk were 46 percent more productive than those with a traditional desk.
“Research shows that if you are able to sit and stand throughout the day, you are more productive at work, you are more creative, more collaborative and you’ll burn extra calories,” McCann said.
For less than the cost of a cell phone, Varidesk creates positive momentum inside an employee’s personal life, McCann says.
Varidesk has sold thousands of desks to individuals and companies in more than 100 different countries. Bell Helicopter, American Airlines, TCU, and other major companies around the Dallas/Fort Worth area have embraced Varidesk as a solution for their employees. Almost 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies use a Varidesk.
“We’ve got thousands of clients in the Fort Worth area; the whole Dallas/Fort Worth area has been very, very good to us,” McCann said. “We feel grateful to be a part of the amazing growth that has been here.”
Michael Karol
Will Northern
Chris Leito
Nathan Kurth
Michael Phillips
R. Fachon Reed Rebecca Robinson
David Rosenstein
Walker Turney
Karen Holcomb
Whitney Rodriguez
Kimberly Alexander
Brett Bergin
Scott Blakewell Ryan Campbell
Valarie Cuozzo
Janet Field
Trevor Heaney
Jake Jones
Mary Kypreos
A Seitz to Behold
BY KENDALL LOUIS / PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX LEPE
The entry court was created to allow natural light to flow throughout the building. Owner Justin Seitz calls it the "wow factor".
Istep into the Seitz Design office, and the first person to greet me is Faith, the six-month-old resident rescue dog.
She follows us around as we check out the space, and I quickly learn she’s the canine version of the design – black, white, elegant, playful and, as part Border Collie/part German Shepherd, an elite mix.
She’s the companion of owner Justin Seitz, the McAllen-born founder of Seitz Design, who’s responsible for everything from the minimalist outside of the building I’m standing in, to the extensive remodel and every inch of design inside. He bought the building, which sits at the corner of Foch and Weisenberger streets, at the end of 2013. He decided to buy after having luck with commercial real estate before, once with a building on Park Place and with another off of West Fifth Street.
“This was the last pocket of undeveloped property in this area,” Seitz said.
The area, technically referred to as Linwood, is still undergoing changes. It’s insulated by the surge of Montgomery Place to the east, West Seventh to the south and White Settlement to the north. There are signs of the continued redevelopment immediately adjacent as three old homes sit with “For Sale” signs just across the street.
Seitz took a winding path to this office space. The 40-year-old founder grew up thinking he would be a doctor – so sure that he’d be a physi-
Faith sits in front of a Damien Hirst spot painting in the communal work space.
A Robert Rauschenberg sculpture greets clients in the foyer.
Statement-making art and bright, open spaces give the Seitz Design office a gallerylike feel.
cian he went to a medical magnet high school. It wasn’t until he had three and a half years as a pre-med major at Baylor under his belt that he switched to interior design.
“When I made the switch to design, I wasn’t so concerned with how successful I’d be financially,” Seitz said. “It was a wise decision.”
He moved to Fort Worth for an interior design internship in 1999 and has been here ever since, founding his namesake company in 2001. Coming from McAllen and Waco, Seitz relishes in the inspiration provided by Fort Worth and the Cultural District museums. “Life is more aesthetic here.”
Seitz’s natural inclination to his current profession oozes out of the gallery-like space where he now offices. Although his firm is in the hub of Fort Worth (and his satellite office is in Austin), the majority of Seitz clients are not. Rather, they’re scattered all around Dallas, Colorado, Central and South Texas and Mexico. Seitz is responsible for some major local commercial spots you might be familiar with. The firm worked with Tim Love on his riverside Woodshed restaurant. “The shell was there, and we took the shell and handled the finish out,” Seitz said.
The Seitz team also designed several corporate offices including the Grubbs dealership in Weatherford. But, mostly, his team handles high-end residential – a fact that’s clear as you weave through the 6,000-square-foot office space. The conference room doubles as a dining room where the firm’s 10 staff members often share meals; various small sitting areas appear throughout the space; and the kitchen, complete with a glass Chihuly-like chandelier (I’m assured it’s faux) and lacquered cabinets, rivals that of any high-end residential home.
“When we bought the buildings, they were nondescript brown brick with no windows,” Seitz said, referring to the twin building next door that he doesn’t own but also remodeled. The exterior now boasts white brick walls with ivy and steel gates. Additionally, the buildings had horrid carpet and fake wood paneling. The Seitz team handled all of the architecture and interior design and construction, contracting all work themselves. The renovation took about a year.
“The courtyards were created so we can get a lot of natural light throughout the building,” Seitz said. “We gave up square footage to do that. But, that’s the real wow of these buildings – the entry court.” The team also curated the space with limestone floors, white walls, and steel windows and exterior doors. “It’s an amazing space,” Justin adds.
It shows lighting well – a fact that was not ignored when designing the interior. Seitz opted for atypical gallery-grade lighting as opposed to the kind of lighting one would usually see in an office space. That move won the building a lighting design award last year.
Great attention was paid to the decorative lighting fixtures also – almost all of them were designed before 1950. The sconce above Justin’s personal office is a 1920s design from a French designer, two alabaster sconces in the gallery are from the 1930s. Most of what fills Justin’s office he purchased at auctions all over the world. He describes himself as a “hunter” who looks for specific things and follows their path until he can buy them for himself. A bronze sculpture by Andrew Lord sits in his office. He spotted it in a magazine article in 1995, and it wasn’t until 14 years later that he was able to buy it for himself. Other furniture Seitz contracts through local cottage furniture makers. Something he says sets his firm apart. “We’re creating bespoke interiors instead of having showrooms where people walk in and pick up pillow cases.”
When asked to describe his own style, Justin says it’s a little odd. “I tend to like edited, pared-down design, but I like things to be a little off kilter,” he said.
The striking front foyer embodies his taste well. A Robert Rauschenberg sculpture mixes with a table from Paris and Egyptian-style Revival side chairs, creating the perfect elegant-meetsmid-century-modern vignette to welcome clients (and nosy journalists). Another vignette in the communal office room, where the employees sit, leans more modern, grounded by a Damien Hirst spot painting from his famous acid series.
At first glance, the office, which Justin describes as “energizing, bright and airy,” is all form, but the Seitz office was also designed with function in mind. “Working on a project, the space becomes a huge mess,” Seitz said. So, the middle area is lined with polished white cabinets that hide all of the samples needed for clients, while the back of the building has a large storage and staging area.
In all, the Seitz office is part gallery, party office and even part investment. Seitz intends to stick around for about another three years before putting the building back on the market. Until then, the Seitz team will use the space for function and inspiration as they
service their clients near and far.
“The No. 1 mistake people make is [designing] on their own and not engaging a professional. More often than not, people get themselves down into a mess and then ultimately bring in a professional. They wouldn’t pull their own teeth so they shouldn’t design their own house,” Seitz says. “People have a tendency to stretch their pennies and dollars until they ultimately get a watered-down project.”
Seitz shares this advice before adding something that embodies what he’s done at 213 Foch Street.
“Design should be more intentional.”
Becky, Doug and James Renfro, at Renfro Foods' Fort Worth plant.
Hit by the Bus
Who’s next if the business owner dies? Some firms have stepped in front of the issue, but most ignore it.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA / PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX LEPE
Bob Johns called the meeting seven years ago. He was 55, had spent years building custom kitchens through a business called The Kitchen Source, and was finally contemplating succession. None of his three daughters were in the business, so he gathered them when they were all home during the holidays. “If any of you want to do this, I’d like you to be here by the time I turn 60,” he told them. That would ensure ample time – several years – for transition. “If you’re not going to do it, I need to make other plans.”Johns didn’t think any of his daughters would bite. One, Jennifer, lived in Austin and had an established, lucrative career in information technology for Motorola. A second, Jessica, was also established as an actuary, a good-paying job for a strong organization, USAA, in San Antonio. “They were both making more money than they could ever make running a small business,” Johns says.
At first nobody did bite, then Jennifer Johns changed jobs, moved to Dallas, and took a post working a minimum 60 hours a week, much of it on the road. Then her mother – Bob Johns’ wife – died in 2013. Bob Johns took a sabbatical at a home in Colorado the family has owned since the 1940s. “I was coming out of the fog,” he says.
Jennifer Johns checked in on the kitchen business, which her father founded in 1991 and now has showrooms in Fort Worth and Arlington, every few weeks. “I could see they needed leadership; it was only going to sustain itself for another five years,” she says. That’s when she decided to give up her career, come off the road, and go into the family business, travelling to Colorado to give her father the message and finally arriving on board in October 2014.
Bob Johns, now 62, still owns 100 percent of the company in a Subchapter S corporation, but, with the agreement of his daughters, he’s laid out a plan for inheritance. The company will be split evenly three ways, regardless of whether the children enter the business, with an agreement in place that has Jennifer Johns paid to run it. Bob and Jennifer Johns split profit-sharing evenly. His other daughter, Judith, who has a young child, has come into the company part-time and helps with special projects and events. If Bob Johns retires, the family would likely tweak the management agreement to give Jennifer Johns, 39, a greater share of the profit bonus to run the company. That would help fill in the earnings gap; she says she’s making less than a third of what she used to make. “But there’s no reason to do it now,” she says. “And I don’t want to make a lot of changes and me not like it.”
on it puts The Kitchen Source in a league apart from many other family-owned businesses, where the owner doesn’t pull the trigger in time to ensure a good transition. If the owner dies unexpectedly without having set up a plan, that often thrusts the business into a leadership vacuum and family friction, says Marvin Blum, a Fort Worth lawyer who specializes in succession and estate planning. Unnecessary extra estate tax, forced fire sales and closures, throwing employees out of work, can result, he says.
Not knowing where to start, procrastination, and ignoring planning because they think they’ll work for many more years and are indispensable in any case are big mistakes that business owners often make, Blum says. He cites Small Business Administration statistics showing that half of U.S. small business owners are 50 and older to demonstrate the magnitude of the oncoming transitions that will occur in Baby Boomer-owned companies between now and 2029. “Most are not set up,” Blum says.
Blum likes to use a football analogy when he talks to business owners about estate planning and succession, comparing the owner to a quarterback. “The quarterback is on the field," Blum says. "The kids are standing at the other end of the field not knowing what to do with the football that’s coming at them. It’s time for you to move from being the quarterback to being the coach and training a new quarterback. That’s really the guts of succession planning.”
“Every best practice you look at says you have to go to college and get a real job.”
– Doug Renfro, Renfro Foods, on expectations for family members who want to be in the business
Blum has a client, the founder and owner of an oil and gas company, who decided to take up succession and looked first at family members. “He identified a son-in-law who had the best skillset (and capability) of stepping into the business,” Blum says. The owner convinced the son-in-law, who already had a career in a technology business, to come into the oil and gas business. For five years, the son-in-law shadowed the owner, who then died unexpectedly in an accident.
“Today the business is thriving under the direction of the sonin-law,” Blum says. The business is owned evenly by the founder’s four children, none of whom is in the business. The son-in-law, married to one of the children, runs the company and is paid a salary. The company has strong cash flow, allowing such a structure, Blum says.
That Bob Johns moved to set up a succession plan and executed
Without a succession and estate plan in place, a typical scenario
plays out when the founder dies, Blum says.
“If this transfer of control hadn’t happened, the estate executor typically handles the business,” Blum says. “Normally, it’s the widow who, very frequently, has had little exposure (to the business). She either has to run it or sell it. If they have to sell it, they sell it under high-pressure circumstances.”
Another scenario that often plays out in family-owned companies is when the founder and spouse both die with no plan and children in the business continue to receive a salary, while other siblings not in the business don’t get a salary. “It leads to resentment,” Blum says. “You can set up an estate plan where one of the children buys the business. Or the siblings (not in the business) get something else, like life insurance.”
Even a founder who decides it’s time to pursue a succession plan might discover what he doesn’t want to hear: that there is no logical family successor, Blum says. “Sometimes, a sale is the only solution,” he says. “That is a dagger in the heart to a lot of founders. But if you want to save the company, you sell the business to an outsider or employees.”
When do you know it’s the right time to put together a succession and estate plan? “The critical time is when the owner
gets offers, when the market is right to sell,” Blum says. “When a company is thriving is the best time to do this. That’s when you’re going to get your best price.”
Blum recommends a 10-step process to building a plan, typically ending with establishing business succession. It starts with identifying psychological barriers. The process requires building a team, including a member who has a good relationship with the founder. “The likelihood is no one is going to be completely happy with the outcome,” Blum says. “That’s the way this works.” The ideal team should also have a leader, such as an attorney, certified public accountant, or business consultant who keeps the process moving from meeting to meeting, Blum says.
Fear of loss of control and expense of putting together a plan are typical barriers, Blum says. But a good plan can be designed that means the founder doesn’t lose control, he says. “Give the founder something to do and somewhere to go,” if the founder is ready to move on from daily leadership, he says. That can mean management of family investments, philanthropy, or special company projects. And if they’re worried about costs, business owners have to weigh those against the potential expense of doing nothing, he says.
Bob Johns and daughter Jennifer Johns, at the Fort Worth showroom of their company, The Kitchen Source.
“It’s not cheap,” he says. “When I’m talking about putting together a planning team, everybody at the table is going to get paid. But the cost of not doing it is much more expensive.”
Renfro Foods: Food company has a plan Fort Worth’s Renfro Foods is one company that’s gone through such a process. The third-generation food business, now in its 76th year, has 10 owners, including the founders’ sons, Bill and Jack Renfro, and their adult children – Doug Renfro, Becky Renfro and James Renfro. The latter three run the company, which has $20 million in sales and 40 employees today, making its own products and ones for others.
Bill and Jack Renfro have agreed to changes over the years that have helped put a succession plan in place. That included giving their voting stock to Doug, Becky and James Renfro. Doug Renfro, the company president, has 42 percent of the voting stock, and Becky and James Renfro – siblings - have 21 percent apiece. Doug Renfro persuaded his dad to give up voting stock five years ago; Becky and James Renfro then talked their father into the same.
come in” with succession, Doug Renfro says. The new buy-sell agreement addresses their generation and the next one, which now includes five children, two who are working in the company in blue-collar jobs.
The Renfros sought the advice of an attorney in putting the buy-sell together, a process that took as many as 20 hours of meetings over two years, Doug Renfro says. The buy-sell agreement will even take the pressure of business travel plans. “Becky and I try to fly an hour apart” from each other when heading to the same destination, Doug Renfro says.
Doug, Becky and James Renfro all have defined roles. Doug Renfro handles new product development; Becky Renfro, a vice president, handles the company’s international business, accounts, freight, insurance, and customer service; and James Renfro, also a vice president, handles production, warehouse, shipping, and receiving.
The company has also put into place expectations for family members want to enter the business. “Every best practice you look at says you have to go to college and get a real job,” says Doug Renfro, who has an MBA. He worked at EDS before joining Renfro Foods, 26 years ago. Becky Renfro was a land analyst at an oil and gas firm before jumping to the family business, 30 years ago. James Renfro came into the business, 36 years ago, immediately after high school.
The Renfros wanted to avoid problems with succession they’ve seen in other firms, Doug Renfro says. “I’ve seen companies implode,” Doug Renfro says.
“My goal is to have her take over the company at her own pace.”
– Larry Kemp, of daughter
“We were running the business and had zero votes,” Doug Renfro says. The five-member management team splits the company's profit bonus evenly.
The family also is putting a new buy-sell agreement into place covering ownership and voting stock that ensures the siblings won't be in business with each other’s spouses in event of a death. Without the buy-sell, for example, if any of the three Renfros died, their spouse would inherit, diffusing ownership and complicating management. “Spouses tend to be where most problems
Kemp & Sons: Coming to grips with succession Kemp & Sons, a Fort Worth janitorial services company founded in 1972, that’s now owned and run by the founder’s son, Larry Kemp, and wife Reggi, has put together a succession plan in recent years.
The couple’s daughter, now 23, has a college degree in international business and works for a company in Manchester, England, doing digital marketing.
“My goal is to have her take over the company at her own pace,” Larry Kemp, now 59, says. He and Reggi Kemp, 51, both work in the business. Their daughter is interested, he says. Larry Kemp graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington in 1980 and took a job at IBM, working there until leaving and joining his dad’s janitorial business in 1998. Once at Kemp & Sons, he began marketing it. The firm has gone from $250,000 in contracts and
Reggi and Larry Kemp, of Kemp & Sons, on the downtown campus of client Tarrant County College.
$100,000 in annual sales to $5-$6 million in annual sales and $22 million in generally city, state and federal contracts that are currently in place. It has 200 employees and offices in Fort Worth and Huntsville, Alabama. It’s also getting ready to break ground on a 13,000-square-foot facility, east of Interstate 35 close to downtown, to handle growth.
The Kemps, like the Renfros, also sought the advice of their attorney in putting together a succession plan two years ago. If the Kemps both died today, the company would go to their daughter and the two young children of their son, a junior high school coach. That’s regardless of whether they’re working in the company. A sister-in-law, now in the business and running quality control, would run it.
Talking succession has opened the Kemps’ eyes to the possibility that somebody who isn’t a family member may end up running it, Larry Kemp says. “We are looking at people who may not own the company, but can run the company,” he says. “I was not comfortable with that for a long time.”
He says he has one employee he can see in a top management position. “Everybody is not built to run and own a business," he says. “Owners take it more personally. I can’t fail. I have to succeed.”
At The Kitchen Source, Jennifer Johns dove into the kitchen design business after she arrived on board.
All of the company’s cabinets are custom-built in the United States by Wood-Mode, itself long family-held. The Kitchen Source has 20 employees today and will do $5-$6 million in sales this year. Jennifer Johns isn’t the designer, but the company has those people on board.
“Always surround yourself with people smarter than yourself,” she says. “I have people who are the experts. I don’t want to be an expert. If I’m the expert, the company’s in trouble.”
BUSINESS SUCCESSION IN 10 (NOT-SO-EASY) STEPS
HAVEN’T TALKED ABOUT SUCCESSION AND ESTATE PLANNING IN YOUR FAMILY-OWNED BUSINESS YET? Marvin Blum, a Fort Worth attorney who specializes in succession and estate planning, has a 10-step process he uses to work with clients on succession.
1. Start the process. Identify psychological barriers and work through denial and “planning paralysis.”
2. Create an Action List. Tackle tasks by priority, start with the ones that are easiest to complete, and keep in mind that business succession is usually the last step.
3. Form a Planning Team. The team can include your lawyer, CPA, and a business consultant. It must include somebody who has a relationship with the business owner. And it must include a leader – Blum calls this person the “quarterback” – who keeps the process moving from meeting to meeting.
4. Manage Expectations. There’s no perfect solution that gives every stakeholder what he or she wants, the process will likely change over time, and there will be multiple meetings.
5. Identify the Issues. Interview key stakeholders, including the founder, founder’s spouse, children, in-laws, and key employees. No two solutions will be alike.
6. Define the Desired Outcome. Many effective succession plans contain some combination of these facets: business is managed by people with the right skills and it generates good cash flow, an exit strategy is place for shareholders who want
to exit, the business represents a reasonable portion of each owner’s net worth, and a sale may offer the best chance of success.
7. Search for a Solution. Three primary choices are transferring the business to a family member or members, selling it to people inside the business, and selling it to an outside party. Does the business have assets that can be divided and distributed to the owners? For example, does it own real estate that can be put into a separate entity that generates cash flow for family members who aren’t in the business? Look to publicly traded companies for ideas. Identify who will serve on your company’s board of directors, identify who will choose the directors and consider classes of voting and nonvoting stock, and consider leaving the stock in a trust with a trustee who’ll do what’s best for the business.
8. Get Buy-In from Key Stakeholders. Get buy-in from all stakeholders, starting with the founder. Conduct a family meeting to educate and collect consensus. Consider hiring a facilitator for this meeting.
9. Address the Challenges. Confront the founder’s fears of loss of control, and address conflicting goals among family members. Focus on “commonalities.”
10. Implement the Solution. This could take several years. Start training your successor, or prepare the business for a sale.
Attorney Marvin Blum, in his downtown Fort Worth law offices.
Insuring Engagement
Fort Worth’s Higginbotham goes from “sleepy” agency to one of the country’s largest brokers. How? It helps to have a sense of humor if you work there.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA / PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX LEPE
Rusty Reid was a few years out of college and had a good job, managing a territory for the major insurer American General. His job was to sell insurance brokers and agents on repping his company’s products. “We had a saying at American General,” he says. “You get on the northbound train. I was on the northbound train.” One of those reps Reid signed was Higginbotham, a small Fort Worth agency. Bill Stroud, the owner and a nephew of the Higginbotham founder, noticed Reid and began recruiting him. “I was 23 when I met Bill,” Reid remembers. He jumped a year and a half later. Then in just three more years, Stroud asked Reid to figure out how to buy the company.
What Reid and Stroud came up with: an employee stock ownership plan, which meshed well with the nature of insurance.
“It’s a very people-centered business,” Reid says. “We kept coming back to the ESOP as the right structure.”
Today, with employee ownership one major piece of the firm’s underpinning, Higginbotham has grown to a projected $155 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 774 employees in Fort Worth and across Texas and, in 2015, was the na-
tion’s 32nd largest insurance broker of U.S. business, according to Business Insurance magazine.
The company, targeting commercial clients and high-net worth individuals, 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 risk management and employee benefit administration services, including safety and loss control, contract review, claims advocacy, risk management
information systems, employee communications, wellness programs, compliance and HR technology.
In 2000, Higginbotham hired its first risk management specialist and began examining how it could continue adding value beyond providing insurance policies. “How can we do a better job at helping our customers better control their risk?” Reid said. “How can we be a greater value to the client beyond just selling them an insurance policy?”
That’s when “we really began to penetrate these customers with our risk management services,” Reid says. 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 91.5 percent
One of Rusty Reid's first tasks as Higginbotham CEO: Come up with a plan to buy out the owner. The solution: ESOP.
customer retention, Reid says.
The company has expanded aggressively since 2007, all within Texas, including using its private stock to make acquisitions. To drive growth internally, it’s developed a sales strategy team that teaches methods and technique to producers and provides mentorship to new salespeople.
The company, in another move to nurture employees as partners, founded a charitable fund in 2011 that’s granted $717,161 to Texas nonprofits since.
It became the first local employer to achieve certification in the Blue Zones Project Fort Worth, a well-being initiative based on lessons learned from communities worldwide where people live the longest. And it’s also a sponsor of Fort Worth Bike Sharing, with a station just outside its downtown offices. “We can’t tell clients to have wellness programs and then not do it ourselves,” Reid said.
And then there’s another thing that helps if you want to work for Higginbotham: having a sense of humor.
Employees are known to lock their offices ahead of the annual Red River Rivalry game between Texas and Oklahoma, lest they return to find the sharp work of
a practical joker.
And take managing director Jim Hubbard, the agency’s 13th employee, who painted a colleague’s office purple while the man was away on a trip. And the three people who Saran-Wrapped Hubbard’s car, cleverly dressed in monkey suits to escape detection. Hubbard, who had to borrow a pair of scissors and a knife to extricate his car, was unable to identify the offenders from security video. Then there was the day, Hubbard, who is particular about his clothes and had left a change of clothing at his office, had to endure watching Reid’s secretary walk in wearing the outfit the next day. “Things come back to haunt you,” Hubbard says.
the University of Texas at Austin when his father died, and, deciding to stay closer to home, he enrolled at the University of North Texas in a pre-med program.
“I ran into a wall with organic chemistry,” Reid says. The head of the pre-med program, in a conversation with Reid, learned about his family’s insurance background. “He said, ‘Let’s start with insurance,’ ” and then sent him to the dean of the UNT insurance program, Reid recalls. Reid graduated with a bachelor of business administration in insurance and started his career at American General in Houston.
Morgan Woodruff, now Higginbotham’s secretary/treasurer, was one of Higginbotham’s first five employees when he showed up in 1970. Higginbotham’s offices were on the east side, and “there were three ladies then” and Bill Stroud, he says.
“We were a sleepy agency” when Reid arrived, he says. Woodruff says he immediately noticed Reid’s level of energy, expertise, knowledge of insurance, administrative capability, and easy interaction with people at such a young age. “Salesman personified,” Woodruff says.
“We really began to penetrate these customers with our risk management services.”
– Rusty Reid, CEO, Higginbotham
First, a Pre-Med Central to the company’s success over the years has been Reid, 53, who initially chose a different path in college, even though his father and grandfather were both in insurance and worked together. Reid was set to attend
Reid, who joined Higginbotham in 1986, assumed leadership in 1989 and immediately recruited Hubbard and insurance executive Michael Parks. Reid and Hubbard were fraternity brothers in college and served in each other’s weddings. “I was in the construction business; it was feast or famine,” Hubbard says of his decision to come into Higginbotham. The same year, the company also set up two cornerstones in the ESOP and launching the employees benefits line of business.
The ESOP in 2015 had 370 employee shareholders and 620 holders of “HIG units,” stock appreciation grants the com-
Higginbotham's board (L to R): Mary Russell, Chris Rooker, Michael Parks, Rusty Reid, Morgan Woodruff, Jim Hubbard, Jim Krause.
pany gives all employees after one year of employment. The company's strategy is to monetize the HIG units every three to five years. “Some people take that money and pay student loans or buy homes,”
Mary Russell, a managing director and Higginbotham’s15themployee,says.
“We see a lot of new cars on the parking lot” after the company monetizes grants.
Employees can also buy Higginbotham stock outside of the grants each year. The stock price is $1,100, set annually by an outside audit firm and voted upon by shareholders. The last several years, the company declared and paid dividends to shareholders. “We go through the motions as if we were a public company,” Russell says. All shareholders have a put right if they elect to sell, providing liquidity. “It does have a certain amount of liquidity to it,” Reid says.
Higginbothamusesathree-part structure, including the stock, to make itsacquisitions.Sellingshareholders agree to use part of their proceeds to buy Higginbotham stock, another piece of the sales price is based on the acquired company meeting projected earnings, and Higginbotham finances the remainder of the acquisitions with debt.
Reid calls the ESOP “a perfect scenario. In 1989, we went from being owned by one person to being owned by all employees. When you have a good year, then they’re going to win. The ESOP was a great vehicle for distributing shares.”
Trusted Advisor
Higginbotham added employee benefits as a business on the recommendation of clients. “A lot of our customers trusted us as an advisor,” he said. Today, benefits are Higginbotham’s second-largest line at 37.7 percent of the business based on 2016 data, behind commercial property-casualty and risk management, at 53.9 percent.
After employee benefits, the company added life insurance, then retirement plans, risk management, Section 125 health plan administration, employee
benefitcommunications,humanresource technology, health risk management, compliance, and, this year, human resource services.
The company grew to $37. 5 million in revenue and 206 employees by 2007, mostly through internal growth. That year, the agency, through what it called its “Best in Texas” vision, moved to become Texas’ leading broker. It began acquiring independent agencies - Higginbotham calls them partners - strong in local markets.
Since 2008, the company has brought in 23 partners, aggressively expanding its footprint in Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Arlington, Friendswood, Waco, Lubbock, Victoria, Mount Pleasant,Odessa,McAllen,PortArthur, Tyler, McKinney, Corpus Christi, and Wichita Falls. Reid declines to say how much the company has spent in making the acquisitions.
Higginbotham finds prospective partners in firms that have a need for scale, where large shareholders want to diversify, or where they’re focused on one industry segment and want to broaden
out, Reid says. Higginbotham makes it clear that key executives just be willing to hang around – at least for a while.
“We want them hanging around,” he says. “They may want to hang up their cleats and go out to the farm. We’re OK with that, but it’s got to be a strategic transition down the road.”
The reason is obvious: “Our new partners make a significant investment in Higginbotham stock, so they have a vested interest in our future success,” Reid says. “It’s the absolute best due diligence we have. A lot of the acquisitions that joined us weren’t for sale at all.”
Higginbotham, in evaluating targets, likes to talk to their owners, employees and insurers they carry, honoring confidentiality. “It’s a people business,” Reid says. “The numbers certainly have to work, but what’s more important than that is the people dynamic.”
Texas: Where It’s At Reid says the company continues to focus on Texas for future growth. “We think we’re underrepresented in Dallas,” he says. The company sees opportunity in San Antonio.
Higginbotham has become a Blue Zones-certified workplace and Fort Worth Bike Sharing sponsor: "We can't tell clients to have wellness programs and then not do it ourselves."
Employees of the Capps Insurance Agency in Mount Pleasant, which Higginbotham merged with this year.
HIGGINBOTHAM’S HISTORY
Paul Higginbotham opened his agency nearly 70 years ago. It estimates it will turn $155 million in revenue this year. Here’s a look back at its history.
• 1948. Higginbotham founds agency.
• 1960s. Bill Stroud buys agency.
• 1986. Stroud recruits Rusty Reid to agency.
• 1989. Stroud tells Reid he’s ready to sell, asks Reid to find a way to buy the company.
• 1989. Reid assumes leadership of company, introduces employee stock ownership plan that allows Stroud to exit.
• 1989. Reid recruits executives Jim Hubbard and Michael Parks, Higginbotham forms employee benefits line of business based on customers’ suggestions.
• 1986-2007. Higginbotham grows to $37.5 million in revenue from $1 million, largely through internal growth.
• 1997. Higginbotham adds life insurance as line.
• 1999. Higginbotham adds retirement plans as line of business.
• 2000. Higginbotham adds risk management.
• 2001. Higginbotham adds Section 125 administration to its lineup.
• 2007. Higginbotham adds human resource technology.
• 2007. Higginbotham management decides it wants to be Texas’ leading broker, decides to fulfill this by acquiring agencies. Has 206 employees in seven offices and $38.6 million in revenue at the time.
• 2008. Higginbotham adds health risk management.
• 2008. Higginbotham buys two agencies, in Houston and Wichita Falls.
• 2009. Higginbotham ranked 41st largest broker in the country by Business Insurance magazine, with $54.7 million in revenue.
• 2009. Higginbotham buys two agencies, in Waco and McKinney.
• 2010. Agency reaches $61.1 million in total revenue.
• 2010. Higginbotham buys three agencies, with offices in Corpus Christi, Houston, Portland, Victoria, Austin, and Friendswood.
• 2012. Higginbotham adds compliance.
• 2012. Higginbotham buys three agencies, with offices in Friendswood, Houston, and Dallas.
• 2013. Higginbotham buys two agencies, with offices in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio.
• 2014. Higginbotham buys three agencies, with offices in McAllen, San Antonio, Odessa, Port Arthur, and Tyler.
• 2015. Higginbotham buys two agencies, with offices in Friendswood and Houston.
• 2015. Higginbotham reaches $132.1 million in total revenue, is 32nd largest broker of U.S. business, according to Business Insurance.
• 2016. Higginbotham adds human resource services.
• 2016. Higginbotham buys three agencies, with offices in Mount Pleasant, Victoria, and Dallas.
Source: Higginbotham
“There’s an opportunity to support other industries.” It’s on the hunt in Houston.
“We think there’s great opportunity in Houston to expand,” he said. And there’s the Texas Panhandle. “We don’t really have anybody in the Panhandle. That’s a good market from an insurance standpoint.”
It’s not too interested in going outside Texas, he said. “Rather than dilute our efforts and build a firm that was national in scope, let’s just focus on Texas,” he says. “We think there’s ample room within the state of Texas.”
The company has continuously built its community profile, particularly since launching the charitable fund. Each of Higginbotham’s markets has a representative for the fund. Employees who are contributors to the fund have the right to request contributions from it. Potential recipients must be nonprofits and meet the other criteria of the North Texas Community Foundation, which administers the program.
“You’ve got to be a contributor, even it’s just a dollar,” Reid says. “That gives you the keys to to be able to request a contribution. And generally speaking, if we’re not able to accommodate (a request) the first time around, we get them the second time around.”
Since inception, the fund has amassed $1 million in employee contributions and pledges, more than half of which has gone back out to nonprofits operating in Texas, Higginbotham said.
“The community gives back to us,” Reid says. “We just can’t be takers. We also have to be the givers.” .
Think Beyond Business as Usual
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D&M's Chase Kennemer, Cody Kennemer and dad Mike Hernandez.
Auto Bond
D&M Leasing’s Mike Hernandez has aggressively built the company over 25 years, and now he’s taking a step back and giving his two sons and other longtime executives more control.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA / PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX LEPE
THE AUTO LEASING BUSINESS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A STOPPING POINT ON THE WAY TO SOMETHING ELSE FOR MIKE HERNANDEZ. He’s now 26 years in at the helm of D&M Leasing, which he’s now built into a firm that manages $1.2 billion in auto leases, more than $300 million in annual gross sales, offices in North Texas and Houston, a used car operation, and a finance arm – a postrecessionary tool that freed the company from reliance on banks to loan money to its customers.
“I figured I’ll do this until I figure out what I’m going to do for the rest of my life,” Hernandez, who, at a young 54, has been stepping away from the business to give more control of it to his stepsons, Cody Kennemer and Chase Kennemer, and spend time with charitable endeavors he supports to end poverty in his hometown of Brownsville.
Hernandez doesn’t want to talk about that for this story. “I don’t do it to sell more cars,” he says of contributions he’s making through a nonprofit that provides legal assistance, food, healthcare alternatives, and Wi-Fi, computers, phones and safe places for people to use them.
All in the Family The Kennemers’ rise through the organization from entering it in sales – Cody Kennemer, 31, heads the D&M Dallas sales office, and Chase Kennemer, 29, heads the Mid-Cities office, responsible for the area between Dallas and Fort Worth – is part of a broader plan Hernandez has put into place over the years that allows the executives of each office and business unit to buy him out of it over time. None has yet, he says. Not clear yet is who ends up controlling Hernco, the parent company now owned entirely by Hernandez.
Hernandez has been thinking about succession at least since the boys were in junior high school. That’s when he had the boys doing everything from filing to managing voice mail during the summers. If they were interested in the business, they’d have to work their way up from bottom, just like everybody else, he told them.
“My buddies and I were going to Wet ‘N Wild, and we were summoned to the office,” Cody Kennemer jokes, ‘we’ meaning the two brothers, recalling the summer interruptions that he says started when he was 10. “Every summer, it was something different.”
Chase Kennemer remembers the cancelled checks he was as-
signed to organize. “They’d slap a box of checks on my desk,” he says. “And I’d have to ‘numerize’ them. And then there’s a FedEx guy with a dolly, and he’s got eight more boxes of what I just spent three days doing.”
No surprise then that auto leasing wasn’t what Kennemer thought he’d end up doing. “I always thought I’d be an attorney,” he says. While at SMU, where he played on the Mustangs’ football team, Kennemer took the LSAT, followed up with a prep course, and was set to take the exam again when the team’s trip to the Hawaii Bowl - SMU's first bowl game since the NCAA-imposed "death penalty for infractionswas scheduled over it in December 2009. “I was linebacker on the team that broke the death penalty,” Kennemer says. “I didn’t take the test.” Kennemer was wait-listed at the SMU law school. With no news on his status, he dove into selling cars at D&M in the Mid-Cities office.
D&M Leasing owner Mike Hernandez has gradually turned more control of the company to his two stepsons and other senior managers.
a 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass from D&M, owned by Don Davis and David Moritz, father of a close friend of Hernandez. Hernandez, offered a job at D&M, took it and made $40,000 in his first year, twice what he made selling oilfield equipment. In 1990, Davis and Moritz invited Hernandez to become managing partner and take a 25 percent stake in the company for $60,000, which they allowed him to repay over time. In 2002, Hernandez bought Davis and Moritz out.
“Ended up loving it,” says Kennemer, who worked his way into a post as sales manager, opened D&M’s Fort Worth office in 2014, and then took over as general manager of the Mid-Cities office in January. “I had no idea I’d work at D&M.”
Cody Kennemer’s route into the company was more direct. He graduated from Texas A&M in 2007 with an economics degree and minor in business. On the front end of the recession, Kennemer went right into selling cars at D&M in the Mid-Cities office, moved into the Dallas office, opened D&M’s Houston office, and then was moved back to Dallas as general manager of that office.
The Houston post – D&M acquired an existing operation that Kennemer says had a poor reputation with customers – was a key moment in his growth, Kennemer says. “My job was to go find people with integrity,” says Kennemer, who turned down people from the existing operation who wanted jobs. “It was sink or swim. It allowed me to open my own office without the pressure of having 40 sales guys wondering what’s going on here.”
D&M “In the Hole” D&M wasn’t always in such sound shape. Hernandez came into the company in 1984, out of Texas A&M, where he majored in industrial distribution. But “most of those jobs were in oil and gas,” and, with the early ‘80s crash in oil prices, “there weren’t any jobs to be had, Hernandez says. “It affected real estate; it affected everything.”
Hernandez landed a job selling oilfield equipment and leased
At the point he became CEO, the company was not in good shape, Hernandez says. “We were in the hole,” he says. D&M had withdrawn from a multi-state business plan that included offices in Florida, Atlanta, Austin, Arlington, and San Antonio. Hernandez opened the San Antonio office and had moved to Florida and was managing the Tampa office, when Davis and Moritz called him back to run the company. Hernandez moved to make D&M more professional, adding policies and procedures, including formal sales training and techniques. He developed the rationale of leasing. “Back then, people didn’t lease,” he says. And he began aggressively advertising on talk radio, hitting talk radio’s growth, and initially doing the creative and writing the spots, buying the air time, and hiring the voice talent. “I analyzed the successful companies that were on the radio and just listened to them all,” Hernandez says. “Talk radio was just starting to become popular. We kind of caught that wave.”
The internet forced changes in D&M’s approach. The company does not operate new car lots. Rather, it arranges leases with its network of auto dealers, and customers pick their cars up at D&M’s offices. Years ago, D&M carried out these conversations with customers over the phone. Today, it largely handles them over the Internet.
Rebuilding the Brand Hernandez rebuilt D&M around the Mid-Cities location. He recruited longtime friend and D&M colleague Joe Graber to open D&M’s Dallas location and, in 2009, promoted him to president. “We felt that was going to be a strong market, and we were right,” Hernandez says. Hernandez then added the Houston location, opened a used car sales operation in Addison, the finance company, and, finally, a year and a half ago, the Fort Worth office at Interstate 30 and Summit. Hernandez even opened a car wash in North Dallas to handle the detail work for its used car sales. D&M today does about 1,100 lease
deals a month and has 160 employees and 20,000 active customers, Graber says. The used car business sells as many as 300 cars a month through the retail lot, and another 200 by wholesale, Hernandez says.
The creation of the finance company was a major step in assuring the longtime stability of D&M, Hernandez and Graber say. Five of six major banks that used to finance auto leases exited the market during the recession, with one bank saying it had taken big hits on residual values – the price lessees can pay to buy the car when their leases expire. D&M’s customers are prime credit risks, Hernandez and Graber say.
“We have got lending partners, we have all the money we need, and we control our own destiny,” Graber says. “It’s better than it was before,” Hernandez says. “It’s funny how these things work out.”
With the Dallas-Fort Worth area 72 percent of the company, D&M is looking toward Houston for future offices. It plans a new office in The Woodlands north of Houston and, potentially, a third Houston-area office in Katy, Graber says. D&M also is interested in opening another used car sales operation, likely in Houston, Hernandez says. “The idea is just to mirror the growth of DFW,” Graber says.
Hernandez, through the company’s growth, had his eye on roles for his stepsons, Graber says. “When the boys got older, Mike and I developed a plan to bring the boys in,” says Graber, who started with D&M 31 years ago and has an equity stake.
ing 40 salespeople, two sales managers, and support staff. The building has another 50 employees from other D&M operations. Chase Kennemer’s Mid-Cities office now has 60 people, including 41 sales agents.
The Kennemers’ approach to recruitment reflects what occurred in the transformation of the company. They look for organized people who have a record of successful sales, personal financial stability, and understanding of the consultative approach and how to maintain clients using it. A big order, given that the company’s compensation for salespeople is 100 percent commission.
Not every customer is right for leasing, which means salespeople have to talk some people down from leasing, just because they can get into a car for the first month’s payment and fees, the D&M approach goes. The sales managers are trained to ensure they’re not making bad deals, Cody Kennemer says.
“I depend on these guys to stay involved to make sure we’re not rushing into a car deal,” he says. Consumers who roll negative equity from one lease deal into the next send up red flags, Kennemer says.
“We have lending partners, we have all the money we need, and we control our own destiny.”
– Joe Graber, D&M president
The plan they came up with ensured Cody and Chase Kennemer knew every part of the business and also protects the executives who run the various business units, who have the right to buy into the business, as do the Kennemers. “They learn the business, they work in the organization, they’re involved in the business,” Hernandez says, explaining the plan to bring his stepsons in. “It was important to me that they come and prove themselves. I have GMs who have been with me a long time that are partners.”
Key in the plan is that the general managers who buy Hernandez out keep running their deals through the finance company, Hernandez says.
“Over time, each one of the GMs will take over their operation and probably buy me out over time,” Hernandez says. “The boys will probably end up buying theirs out over time. They keep running their deals through the finance company.”
Cody Kennemer’s Dallas office now has 50 employees, includ-
“We don’t want to take them down the path of thinking they can trade more quickly on these lease terms, because they can’t,” Kennemer says. Sixty to 70 percent customer retention is the company’s target, although certain customers have a retention rate with D&M of as high as 90 percent, Kennemer says.
D&M trains its salespeople to be in touch frequently with customers, even if their lease terms aren’t set to expire, Kennemer says. A happy birthday call or one reminding a customer of upcoming maintenance can sometimes lead to conversations about a new lease deal, say, for a customer’s driving-age child, Kennemer says.
“These are the kinds of conversations you walk into when you’re in touch with your customers,” Kennemer says. “My goal is we’re talking to them every six months.”
The fast-paced nature of the business and required followthrough are what Chase Kennemer found he loved about the business right off. The detachment of dealing with customers over the Internet – or, in the past, by phone – also helps D&M maintain customer relationships, Kennemer says.
“Because we’re not there in front of them, we can have a different approach,” he says. “Our model isn’t built on trying to kill someone, quite frankly. You’re building a relationship with clients forever.”
Ear It Out
Two ex-Alcon vets lose their jobs, but dig in and start a Fort Worth biotech that’s out for what’s in our ears.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA / PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX LEPE
It was an unusual lunchtime conversation topic to be sure. Over the ranch comestibles at the Fort Worth’s Michaels Cuisine & Ancho Chili Bar last year, Elyse Stoltz Dickerson and Joseph M. Griffin - two ex-Alcon veterans looking for a first product to launch a new biotech firm off of – dug in on an idea with Dr. Janice Knebl, a respected University of North Texas Health Science Center geriatrician. Earwax.
Little innovation had been done over the years on treatment for impacted earwax, a problem that afflicts an estimated 57 percent of seniors in nursing homes and, to a lesser extent, children and other adults. Dickerson and Griffin, who had heard from meetings with other experts that earwax might be a strong way to go, soon pushed into tests on potential formulations, looking for one that would dissolve earwax within 15 minutes or allow it to be easily rinsed out in the same time. And without irritation and other risks.
The solution could be more difficult to reach than it might sound, Knebl warned. “It’s not just wax in the ear,” Knebl says. “You’ve got hair in there. Sometimes, dirt. Bugs. It really gets clumped. In a dry environment, it cakes.”
The revelation to Dickerson and Griffin: “How different wax is,” Dickerson says. “We just laughed the whole time,” Knebl says. “I mean, earwax.” But, she adds, “It’s a very serious thing.”
Dickerson and Griffin and their Fort Worth company – named Eosera, inspired by Eos, the Greek Goddess of dawn and new beginnings, and Era, or time – late this spring completed a human clinical trial into the efficacy of the several formulations they came up with. More than
82 percent of patients experienced resolution with Eosera's Earwax MD, with no safety issues, Dickerson and Griffin report. "These are incredible results and are definitely a game-changer for the category," Griffin says. Winning a $50,000 Comerica Bank-sponsored pitch competition last fall helped Eosera raise $1.2 million in firstround financing they believe will take the product to market. Their goal: to get it to market by January next year.
ACCIDENTAL JOURNEY
And it wasn’t necessarily a journey the two, both colleagues at Alcon, had envisioned as they came up through the big eyecare products company. Dickerson, 41, a Notre Dame graduate and SMU MBA, managed a $1.7 billion portfolio of products at Alcon, working her way up to senior director over 13 years. “Once I was in a big company, I kind of sensed I would just constantly work my way up,” says Dickerson, whose father, Michael Stoltz, is a Fort Worth physician, and mother, Elaine Stoltz, a longtime Fort Worth image consultant.
Griffin, 49, who has a PhD in toxicology, was of the same mindset. Griffin, whose dad was a research scientist and mother once owned a clothing store in Arkansas, had worked at Alcon for 16 years. Of going out on his own, “it was always in the back of my mind,” Griffin says. But “I enjoyed (Alcon), and I was thinking I could do this until I retire.”
Then, as Dickerson says, “things changed. I began to understand how difficult it was for women to make it to the C-suite.”
Both were asked to leave Alcon within two months of each other in early 2015. Dickerson, first, had been looking into ideas. Dickerson was one of the first calls Griffin, who had run clinical studies for products in Dickerson’s portfolio at Alcon, made after he was laid off. “I sensed he was happy to start over,” Dickerson says.
Neither Dickerson nor Griffin was under pressure to find something immediately, even though the job losses were big hits on their families’ incomes. Dickerson’s husband, C.D. Dickerson III, was curator of European art at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth. (He has subsequently taken a job as head of sculpture at the Nation-
al Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and commutes on weekends to Fort Worth.) Griffin’s wife works in global training at Alcon.
“Over these 24 years (of marriage), my wife said we are going to save money,” Griffin says. “We’re going to save for our retirement. We’re going to save for our kids’ college. It just became a habit.”
“I was raised always being told to pay yourself first,” says Dickerson, who, after she left Alcon, joined a colleague in filing a federal suit against Alcon in New York, alleging gender bias, which she is pursuing. “From my first job making $24,000, I was still putting away money and saving.” She and her husband moved money from investments to replace her salary for a year. “Then that money was spent and gone,” Dickerson jokes.
From their first conversation, Dickerson and Griffin decided to build a company around “Conscious Capitalism,” a model championed by Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey that asserts businesses best serve themselves by looking out for customers, employees, investors, suppliers, communities, and the environment.
“We said, what’s next?” says Dickerson, Eosera’s CEO with 51 percent of the company to Griffin’s 49. The answer: “Put people first. All stakeholders will be treated equally well.”
HUNTING FOR PROBLEMS TO SOLVE Dickerson and Griffin started meeting with physicians, asking them what kinds of problems they were seeing. They don’t have non-compete agreements with Alcon, Dickerson said, but opted not to enter the ophthalmic space. In their interviews, “this one problem of impacted earwax kept coming up over and over,” Dickerson says.
Impacted earwax, if left untreated, can cause hearing loss and lead to depression. Symptoms include dizziness, ringing in the ear, discomfort, and a feeling of fullness in the ear. “They go to the doctor, and it’s packed in there,” Dickerson says. In seniors, the problem can be exacerbated by hearing aids. About 10 percent of small children have the problem, and it's believed earbuds can raise the likelihood of problems in adults, Griffin says.
Over-the-counter treatments, long on the market, typically work to soften the wax but not dissolve it in a short period, said Knebl, who uses an ear spoon to dig wax out of her patients’ ears. Technology for extractions has improved, with tools such as a lighted speculum and pulsating syringes now on the market, she said.
“It would be phenomenal if they can come up with something for earwax (that works in) a couple of hours,” Knebl said.
Fifteen or 30 minutes is more like what Dickerson and Griffin have in mind. Griffin says there has been little innovation in existing over-the-counter treatments because the federal Food and Drug Administration would have to agree to expand the allowable ingredients, doses, formulation and labelling. “It would just drag on,” he said.
In May last year, Dickerson and Griffin rented a lab at the UNT Health Science Center, in partnership with TECH Fort Worth, the small business incubator that Eosera joined. Over the next nine months, they built what Griffin calls an “artificial earwax” and
Joe Griffin and Elyse Dickerson spent nine months in a lab at the UNT Health Science Center.
tested more than 100 formulas on it. As many as eight were working to dissolve the wax, Griffin said. The two started collecting human specimens of earwax from physicians who agreed to participate and tested their formulas on those specimens.
Knebl was one of the doctors who agreed to collect specimens, which meant they were required to ask patients for permission. “It’s the easiest study I’ve ever been recruited for, because it’s something I throw in the trash,” said Knebl in an interview at her office, showing off a full, black earwax “bud” she had extracted and put in a vial for Dickerson and Griffin. “When I can get a full bud, I’m thrilled,” she said, laughing.
“It was like gold to us, getting human wax,” Griffin says, matterof-factly. “We found that there was a wide range of human wax types, so we had to come up with a formuation that worked on all of the wax.” Griffin narrowed the formulas further to three that he said were repeatedly dissolving earwax in a test tube within 15 or 30 minutes.
Dickerson and Griffin finally narrowed the field of formulas to one – they’re keeping the makeup confidential – and recruited a Plano geriatrician to run a human clinical trial, which started earlier this year and was completed in June. This summer, in a second study, Eosera may put its product in a head-to-head test with a competing product on the market.
Eosera’s product will be over-the-counter. Dickerson and Griffin won’t have to prove efficacy, but intend to do so anyway, they said. “We want to be a company that had efficacy data behind our product,” Dickerson says.
RAISING MONEY
Winning the Comerica pitch prompted the start of calls from investors who were interested. Since February, the company has recruited more than two dozen, each investing $25,000-$100,000, Dickerson and Griffin said. “We’re going to raise enough to carry us a good 18 months (until) we have revenue coming in,” she said.
Their primary targets: friends, family and angel investors. The investments are structured as convertible debt. “We offered reasonable terms and structure; we tried to make it a win-win for the investor and company,” Dickerson said. One of the investors: Jim Hubbard, a longtime managing director at the Higginbotham insurance agency in Fort Worth, who already knew the Dickersons. “Elyse is a real go-getter,” he says.
earwax solutions currently at $63-$65 million. But the U.S. extraction market is about $600 million, estimated from billing coding, Dickerson said. “We feel we can take some costs out of the system.”
Dickerson and Griffin also have to choose which FDA-allowed path they’ll take to bring their product to market. One they’ve ruled out: drug. “We early on decided not to go the full drug route,” Griffin says. “It’s the longest, most expensive path. We want our product to be available over the counter, so that people have easy access and we can keep the costs down for patients.”
One OTC route would be to follow the so-called “OTC monograph,” which would require them to “follow the FDA recipe” for ingredients, doses, formulas and labelling, Griffin said. They could also classify their product as medical device or cosmetic. Eosera is working with two regulatory consultants to determine what path the company will take.
Dickerson and Griffin kept seeking mentors as they developed their business model. “We knew what we didn’t know,” Griffin says.
They joined TECH Fort Worth, where the executive director, Darlene Boudreaux, who built her own pharmaceutical manufacturing company in Fort Worth before selling it, helped “pressuretest our business model,” Dickerson says. Eosera had already filed for a provisional patent to protect its formulas, and Boudreaux helped direct them to the UNT Health Science Center.
A certified public accountant, Boudreaux also helped Dickerson and Griffin with their projections and estimation of how much startup money they needed to raise. TECH Fort Worth also put the two in touch with contacts in the contract pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, regulatory consultants, potential investors, insurers, accountants, and attorneys.
Dickerson and Griffin have highly complementary skills, Boudreaux says. “It’s very good to see in a founder team,” she says. “They play off of each other’s skills very well.”
It’s easy for entrepreneurs who are in the position of Dickerson and Griffin to make significant mistakes, Boudreaux said. “It’s what they don’t know that can hurt them.”
“It was like gold to us –getting human wax.”
– Joe Griffin
Eosera’s strategy for getting Earwax MD to market revolves around publishing their clinical data and pitching the product to ear-nose-throat specialists and audiologists at meetings and through the American Academy of Audiology. Griffin calls the approach “seeding the market.” Dickerson: “When we do launch, we’ve already got people interested in it.”
The two are working on selecting a third-party manufacturer and packaging. They estimate the U.S. over-the-counter market for
One common mistake, she said: Giving up too much equity, too early, and overstating the value of services they get in trade for stock. It’s a common first question among TECH Fort Worth’s clients, she says. “Can you just give me a list of people who have money?” she says.
“People go out and get money when there are ways to bootstrap that company,” says Boudreaux, recalling her company hit $20 million in sales before she brought in an investor. (She sold the company at $30 million in sales.) “The longer you can go, the more value you can keep.”
With Dickerson and Griffin, the analysis quickly went to how much money they needed, Boudreaux said. “The more milestones we could check off, the better we were in the long run,” Dickerson says.
Death and Taxes
Tarrant Appraisal District, under fire for snafus in this year’s property appraisals, faces a long summer of protests.
BY YAMIL BERARD
Mike Farah, a real estate attorney in Arlington, is expecting to deliver some bad news to tenants who live in the more than 300 rental properties he owns: Your rent’s going up $200, $300, $400.
“It’s a shame,’’ Farah said. “God, it makes you sick.”
Farah says he’s not the bad guy here. It’s the Tarrant Appraisal District that has raised by more than $2 million the assessed value of his properties, jacking up his tax obligations, he says.
“It’s a trickle-down effect,’’ Farah said, as he waited his turn to appeal a vacant land valuation on a mid-June Saturday morning in the crowded offices of the appraisal district.
The appraisal district is struggling to recover the public trust after a faulty $2 million software conversion put in question the integrity of its appraisal processes. Tens of thousands of protesters like Farah - an unprecedented number - are angry over soaring residential and commercial tax bills that they say were caused by the appraisal district’s failures. Even state lawmakers have
weighed in on the agency’s woes.
“These systems are integral to public trust,” said State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, RHouston, chairman of a state committee on tax reform. “That type of trust takes years to build, and that’s why government has a special responsibility not to do a software conversion poorly. It takes years to build credibility with the public, but you can throw it away with one season of bad performance.”
For years, Tarrant Appraisal District had chugged along like a well-oiled machine; its appraisals came in on time. The public griped about yearly hikes, but they experienced nothing systematically outrageous. Now, taxpayers are seeing double-digit increases to their property values. Farah’s valuation on vacant land near Joe Pool Lake shot up $150,000, he said.
The problems began in October 2014 when the appraisal district upgraded its mass appraisal software after relying on a legacy system that stored and classified 1.6 million property tax records. The switch went south immediately. Work came to a screeching halt, putting millions of dollars’ worth of 2015 appraisals in limbo.
This year’s byproduct: higher-than-normal tax bills in 2016 to adjust for last year’s lag. State Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, described it as a “two-year catch-up.”
Elected officials, including Fort Worth Mayor Betsy Price, have spoken out in defense of the appraisal district’s efforts to upgrade its software. It was time to make the switch after 30 years on an old system, the mayor said.
Plus, “anytime you make a conversion like that, you have a few issues,’’ Price said. “Probably, it wasn’t the smoothest transition, but if you look at it, it went pretty well.”
Nevertheless, before a packed room in April, Jeff Law, the Tarrant Appraisal District’s chief appraiser, apologized to more than 500 local and state elected officials and taxpayers for the software failures. Law didn’t give specifics on what went wrong, but he did acknowledge problems during implementation.
After Law conceded there were problems, appraisal district leaders have been espousing greater transparency with the public. In June, appraisal data was released to the public that had been tied up in a lawsuit filed
PROTESTING YOUR PROPERTY TAX APPRAISAL
1. Deadline: Taxpayers have until 30 days after they receive their notice of appraisal to alert the appraisal district that they want to protest the appraised value of their property.
2. Your Hearing: Go to your appraisal district web site, and click on the tab that says “appraisal review board,” which lists protest hearings by property owner. Search for your name. You’ll also receive your date by mail. The appraisal district must notify you within 15 days of the hearing.
3. TAD’s Evidence: Within 14 days o f your hearing, the appraisal district must provide all evidence it collected to increase your value. But you have to ask for the evidence to receive it. Get to it online through e-access. To do that, you must a the property “pin” number that is available on your appraisal notice. If you don’t want to access it online, you can go to the appraisal district’s offices at 2500 Handley Ederville Road in Fort Worth. If you go to the appraisal district offices, it must immediately show
you the evidence. You also can obtain copies.
4. No New Evidence at Your Hearing: If the appraisal district doesn’t provide evidence when you ask for it, it cannot use any evidence at your hearing.
5. Be Prepared: It’s very important that you look at the appraisal district’s evidence before the hearing. The evidence will show you the information that will be used against you. Usually, the appraisal district will use sales data to explain why your value shot up. You want to show their evidence does not present the entire picture of sales in your neighborhood or that the information does not reflect “adjustments” and comparable pricing for homes in your neighborhood.
6. The Tall Grass: If the appraisal district, for example, compares your home price to a home with a pool and your home doesn't have a pool, you can point out that your home should be valued less. Other adjustments should be made when comparing homes with different amenities.
PROTESTING COMMERCIAL APPRAISALS
Mike Flynn, president of Southland Property Tax Consultants, is having a busy summer contending with commercial protests of Tarrant Appraisal District valuations.
Because of issues it’s encountered with a software conversion, TAD hasn’t
If, for example, the appraisal district is comparing your home to a home with granite countertops and yours doesn’t have granite countertops, you should assemble pictures of your kitchen’s countertops as proof at your hearing.
7. Other Adjustments: Make sure the appraisal district is deducting value for other home characteristics when necessary. Factors include home size, location, amenities, features, and age.
8. Look at MLS Comps: Find a Realtor or property tax agent who has access to sales prices of properties under the Multiple Listing Service database. The appraisal district has access to this information and uses it at your hearing. Usually, the appraisal district’s strategy is to cherry pick homes in your neighborhood that sold for the highest prices. Your job is to find homes that sold for less and compare that to yours. That way, you can argue your home should be appraised at a lower value or the same value as last year. – FW Inc.
by the software companies that operate the new program.
And leaders have been more open to explain how they plan to address problems going forward.
Joe Potthoff, chairman of the board of the appraisal district, said in early June that the appraisal district had received $800,000 in refunds from the software vendor, Thomson Reuters, for missed implementation deadlines. In addition, the company won’t be paid an additional $800,000 for professional services and software expenses until the system passes an independent audit.
“Simply put, the vendor did not provide as smooth a transition with the new software as we all wanted,’’ Potthoff said.
Asked to respond to Potthoff’s statement, David Wilkins, a spokesman for Thomson Reuters, said the company designed the software system to provide accurate assessments and to be transparent to the public. In March, the company updated the software to “better equip (the appraisal district) to effectively manage citizens’ concerns and assessment appeals,” Wilkins said.
“We understand that there are considerable demands from the community on government appraisal offices...” Wilkins said.
How profound a change the public will feel won’t be fully evident until every appeal is heard.
It’s going to be a long summer. Property owners submitted more than 77,400 appeal requests so far this year through late June. That’s more than last year’s 58,218 and the prior year’s 69,953.
been able to raise many values over the last two years, but it’s trying to catch up with 2016’s valuations.
“The weighted average value increase appears to be approximately 14 percent verses 2015 final values,” Flynn says. “As would be expected, the number
of 2016 protests filed by Southland has increased this year.”
Southland likes to tell clients not to just accept increases in tax appraisals and move on. For more on this interview, please visit fwtx.com/fwinc – FWInc.
Farah’s appeal went swiftly. He was invited into the hearing room by a member of the appraisal review board. Six minutes later, he emerged with a result favorable to him. The appraisal district had set a market value of $471,240 for vacant land he owned near Joe Pool Lake in Grand Prairie. After the appeal, its new value: $289,001.
“Boom, done,’’ an appraiser told Farah.
Agency Under Fire 2016 didn’t get off to a good start for the appraisal district.
The Texas comptroller of public accounts was the first to deliver the distasteful news:
The appraisal district hadn’t met its expectations on market values for 2015. Its $142 billion appraisal of property in Tarrant County was too low.
Just how low?
Tarrant Appraisal District was short by tens of millions of dollars, the state comptroller reported. From 2014 to 2015, it had experienced an increase of 5 percent in property values. (Dallas and Denton experienced increases of up to 10 percent over the same period of time. The Tarrant Appraisal District, for 2015-2016, has publicized a projected 14 percent increase, however.)
Leaders of several public school districts went ballistic as the lower estimate meant less money from local property taxes to support education.
“We have a mess on our hands at the appraisal district,’’ Ashley Paz, a Fort Worth school district trustee, wrote in response to questions this summer. Paz pointed to local estimates that showed Fort Worth school district had lost up to $12 million in funding for its 2015-2016 school budget because of the software snafus. That means fewer staff and resources to support the urban district’s growing student population of 86,000.
In April, at a crowded forum at the University of Texas at Arlington, Bettencourt, the Houston senator, rebuked the appraisal district’s failure to release the data as well as its software failures.
“There was no reason for this lawsuit,’’ Bettencourt said later this summer. “None of this behavior needs to occur.”
In early May, Todd Clark, an attorney representing the appraisal district in the suit, met with attorneys for the software companies to try to prompt a settlement.
By May 25, Bawcom’s attorney, Bill Aleshire, was flexing his political muscle. Less than a month later, Bawcom had the data. Without Bettencourt’s involvement, the data dump likely would not have occurred, Aleshire said. “I give the senator (Bettencourt) great credit for the fact that this case settled. Not much cooperation was occurring before then.”
“It’s a shame. God, it makes you sick.”
– Mike Farah, real estate investor, on projected rent hikes
“That is money we will never be able to recover, and we have no way of knowing if it will happen again,” Paz said.
In March, Austin tax agent Susan Bawcom went public with a failed effort to pry loose raw data on land improvements and other factoids from the appraisal district. Bawcom had tapped such data for years as evidence in appeal hearings. Not this year.
Then, even after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ordered the appraisal district to release the data, the appraisal district said it could not. In October 2015, a district court judge in Travis County had ordered a temporary injunction that declared that the data could not be made public; it was proprietary. The software companies that held the data had sued Paxton and the appraisal district to keep it secret.
A Call For Greater Accountability Decades ago, individual local governments set their own property values, creating a mishmash of conflicting appraisals and instances of cronyism. Current law created separate county agencies that appraise property.
An area as large and complex as Tarrant County has 70 different taxing agencies, including cities, schools, the college and hospital districts. The board of the appraisal district is collectively chosen by the elected representatives of the taxing bodies. The bigger your tax levy, the more say you have in appointing members to the appraisal district’s board. The Fort Worth school board, for example, appoints one of the five members.
“We work for them, we are accountable to them, and we will always be accountable to them,’’ said Potthoff, the chairman of the
board of directors.
But not everyone agrees that there’s enough accountability to the public. One recurring complaint is that taxpayers don’t understand much about what the boards do or even who the members are.
Tarrant Tax-Assessor Collector Ron Wright is the only elected official on the board, but he does not have a vote.
“Nobody knows who they are, and they have tremendous power,’’ Wright said.
Bettencourt’s tax reform committee expects to issue a report in the fall to boost the transparency of boards. One recommendation could be to create a state position to evaluate boards.
“None of these groups are accountable to anyone in reality,’’ Bettencourt said. “There’s no central state (entity) that they’re responsible to.”
Paz, the Fort Worth trustee, said she would like her colleagues on the Fort Worth school board to pay closer attention to the nomination of candidates to the appraisal district’s board of directors.
This year, when Fort Worth elected its nominee to the appraisal district’s board of directors, she had barely time to study the qualifications of the nominee before her colleagues jumped to vote, Paz said.
“It’s not going to fix (the appraisal district),’’ she said, “but if we set our expectations higher and put an end to the ‘good ‘ol boy’ system, then we can create some accountability when issues arise.”
Yamil Berard is a Fort Worth-area freelance writer.
Mike Farah, an Arlington real estate investor, says he'll have to raise rents to cover higher property taxes. Yamil Berard photo.
Ready, Set, Operate
Entrepreneurial Operating System makes its way into businesses with a recipe that includes setting vision, getting the right people into the right seats, embracing measurable data, identifying problems, setting up systems, and executing.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA
Business owners looking to get a grip on their business increasingly are turning toward author Gino Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System, a system he promulgates in a series of books headlined by “Traction.”
Wickman’s six-tiered system:
• Vision. Everyone in the organization has to understand the company’s vision and be on board with it.
• People. Business owners should not only surround themselves with great people, they should ensure they have the right people in the right places.
• Data. Business owners should develop a handful of metrics they can rely on to measure what’s important, and, as part of this, everybody in the organization should develop his or her own scorecard with measurable goals. Do this right, and the business owner should be able to monitor the business, no matter where he or she is. The data should allow the business owner to reliably predict outcomes.
• Issues. The best organizations become expert at identifying problems and solving them.
• Process. The business should identify and document the core processes it takes to get things done and use them to set up consistently operated systems.
• Traction. The best businesses become great at discipline, accountability, and execution.
Jeff Whittle, an entrepreneur and founder of Whittle & Partners, a Dallas-based consulting firm that coaches entrepreneurs, business owners, and leadership teams, calls EOS “the recipe for success.” Whittle, who’s implementing EOS at Fort Worth, Texas and FW Inc. magazines, sat down for a Q&A with FW Inc.
What EOS addresses that most businesses aren’t doing You’d always like to think you’re doing the right stuff, but the fact is you don’t know. The six components, when they’re put together, are just the right way to run your business.
What kinds of resistance do you encounter in implementing EOS? There are all kinds of resistance. Part of the process is asking hard questions about people and roles and capabilities. There are businesses that have sacred cows. There are business owners who are comfortable they’ve done things the way they need to be done, but everybody else in the organization disagrees. But the people who just love it say we have been spinning our wheels for so long.
Are Traction’s recommendations based on research into effectiveness? It’s a result of thousands of hours of working with businesses.
Are certain businesses more appropriate than others for EOS? The professional services firms struggle with the organizational systems we put into place. But it’s a pretty universal toolkit.
Can you go wrong in implementing EOS? Thinking you’ve done the work through the sessions (means) the right things will happen. EOS is not a magic wand. People can lose focus. When they get back into the firefight of the day, it’s easy for all of this stuff to create the rationalization for why you’re not focusing on the important things. Strategic planning is the easy part. The hard part is making sure every single day, people are working on the things that are most likely to achieve outcomes.
Consultant Jeff Whittle, a FWIW certified EOS implementer, is installing the Entrepreneurial Operating System at Fort Worth, Texas magazine.
Tony Ford: Practical Entrepreneur
Serial entrepreneur happened into his calling the usual way: by accident.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA
Tony Ford, FW Inc.’s newest regular contributor, says he travelled the same path to entrepreneurship that most do. “It was an accident,” he says.
Ford, who earned a hotel and restaurant management degree at Oklahoma State University, started his career as a manager at the fast-growing Steak & Ale and “learned how to replicate things” into large footprints. After two and a half years, following a calling, he left for seminary study in Fort Worth. But by the end, Ford had learned something about himself. “I knew I wanted to take care of other people, I want to serve God, but I don’t have a pastor’s heart,” he said. “I discovered I had an entrepreneur’s heart.”
Ford left seminary and took a part-time job selling commercial lighting and, passing by a one-hour photo finishing lab under construction in Fort Worth, called the owner, who bought bulbs and recruited Ford as president of operations. “With his money and my experience in multi-unit operations, we built eight stores and a commercial lab in 18 months,” Ford says. After three years in business, they sold it.
Next, Ford and another man started a company called Sidelights, putting reflectors on trucks and trains. That company’s rapid overseas expansion won Ford the SBA Exporter of the Year award. Then Fort Worth’s mayor, Kay Granger, asked Ford to launch the Fort Worth Business Assistance Center, a public-private partnership that assists small businesses. Shortly after, he created his next venture, Salon Support, which grew to become the U.S.’ second-largest supplier of equipment
and lotion products to the indoor tanning industry, shipping same-day. After 14 years, during which Ford’s business analyst wife Jane ran the company, they sold it.
Ford spent five years as entrepreneurin-residence at the Kauffman Foundation, helping it strengthen communities’ entrepreneurial infrastructure. Then he took the helm of another startup, Ride TV, the Fort Worth television network aimed at horse enthusiasts. Today, Ford focuses on helping entrepreneurs grow as owner of Ford Leadership Solutions, his 24-year-old consulting practice, and as a senior partner in the Kasper & Associates mergers and acquisitions firm.
"We were poor. My goal in life was to not be poor anymore. Kind of the guiding principle of my career has been to find out what nobody else wants to do and find an easier way to do it."
Ford, who will write a regular column for FW Inc. called Exceptional Entrepreneurship, says he’s on a mission to help make Fort Worth the “entrepreneurial capital of Texas.” “We have tremendous assets here,” he says.
Becoming an entrepreneur: We were poor. My parents were in the Army. I didn’t have a big vision. My goal in life was to not be poor anymore. I found out if you’re willing to work, people will pay you. So, kind of the guiding principle of my career has been to find out what nobody else wants to do and don’t just do it, find an easier way to do it.
First job: When I was 12, I had 40 yards I mowed every week for $2 a yard and 40 cars I washed every week for $2 a car, with a bucket. And I made enough money by the time I was 14 to buy my first car.
What defines an entrepreneur: People tend to think of entrepreneurs as wild-eyed risk-takers. All the entrepreneurs I’ve met weigh the odds, do the research, look at the data, and then they hold their nose until they can absolutely not breathe anymore before they jump. Entrepreneurs are the people who choose to lead from the front. You’re the last
to get paid and the first to get hit. America’s disconnect: It’s only been in the last few years that entrepreneurship has really been recognized as a legitimate profession. We have always been a country of entrepreneurs. According to the Small Business Administration, nine of 10 people will spend their working life in a company of under 50 people and will never have the systems and resources of a Fortune 500 company. We will have to pull together and figure out how to solve problems with the limited tools and people in our small circles. If we don’t start recognizing we are a nation of entrepreneurs and ripple that training imperative back through our education process, we’re going to continue to send people out into the workforce who don’t have the right skills to make our entrepreneurial society function. This is the complaint I hear most often from other entrepreneurs: I can’t find well-equipped people.
The entrepreneurs’ reward: Everybody sees the reward computation differently. I’ve always been in it for the people, and I’m not being altruistic when I say that. I’m being selfish. It’s really a mathematics issue. There’s one owner, 25 employees, 10 vendors, 300 customers. When you have all these people waiting on you to lead and make smart decisions, you better find out what they want. Because when you figure out how to build their dream, they’ll build yours.
Helping others: I talk about interdependence. When we get together, let go of our egos and combine our experience and expertise, tremendous things start to come out of that mix. Fort Worth is a place that has always rewarded folks who like to do favors for others with no expectation of reward. When you’re an entrepreneur who cares about people in that way, new opportunities just show up.
Jeff Rattikin
Fort Worth lawyer revamps practice and pushes it online to capture Millennials – the next generation of customers.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA / PHOTOGRAPHY BY ALEX LEPE
Jeff Rattikin had long planned to fool with this Internet thing to advance his legal practice, but being a young dad and attorney got in the way. He’s “dusted off” the idea and is moving to use the web to capture a next generation – Millennials – of customers who have legal needs and want immediate access to information, but don’t want to pay for it.
“Lawyers used to feel they were the gatekeepers of information and people need to go to them to find out what the law is,” says Rattikin, 52, whose grandfather and father were lawyers. “That’s no longer the case. Lawyers can’t be the gatekeepers of information. It’s out there; it’s available for free. But the lawyer still plays a pivotal role in analyzing and evaluating a specific situation and applying the law to that situation.”
Rattikin, a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization who’s built his Fort Worth law practice off of title and traditional civil transactional law services and a specialty in 10-31 tax exchanges, is working off of three platforms: his Rattikin “bricks and mortar” law firm and website, the texaslegaldocs.com site he launched in 2009 and is simplifying, and getlegal.com, a national site he owns with the Fort Worth attorney Phillip Galyen. He’s converting the three to a uniform process that will enable staff to extract information from potential clients and serve them the same way, regardless of how they contact him.
Secret recipe: The secret is to merge the reputation and experience of a qualified awardwinning attorney with the visibility and access that today’s consumers are demanding. The access is the key. If I’m doing it online, people have got to find me, my website has got to be intuitive, and it’s got to be efficient.
Services: My practice is all transactional in nature. If I can do real estate, business and estate planning online at a great price point, we’re going to be very successful. Texas real estate law is the same all over the state.
Competitors: There are so many free forms
out there right now. The problem with the free forms, they are generally multistate, generic forms. People who go online to get those forms don’t know how to fill out the questionnaires. A computer generates these forms, which are bad forms to begin with. My texaslegaldocs.com was never a computer-generated form. It extracted information from the clients so we could recommend and deliver the proper forms.
Upcoming changes to the site, which has charged a flat fee per document: We’re not going to sell documents anymore. We’ll give the documents for free. I’m creating these packages, where
online, (clients) can tell us what their need is, and we will evaluate, analyze, and recommend, and we then execute the documents they need. Clients (will be paying) for the expertise and experience and knowledge of Texas law we have.
Getting the word out: I’m talking to some advertising agencies right now about all levels of advertising and marketing. Social media, obviously, is going to be a key part of it. And of course, SEO and making sure we’re visible on Google is very important.
Billings, online vs. brick and mortar today: It’s probably 20-
25 percent. It could go to 75 percent if it performs like I think it could.
How getlegal.com, founded in 2009 by Galyen and joined by Rattikin in 2014, works: That service does not practice law. It’s educating the consumer to various topics of law. Once they educate themselves, then they can make the decision: Do I need a form, or do I want to contact an attorney? We put attorneys and consumers together. We allow attorneys to be attorneys in residence on particular subject matter. We also have plans for physical marketplaces for legal services.
Potential markets: There’s a huge untapped market for legal services for Hispanics in the United States. Getlegal also plans on being the market leader on video content.
When do the first brick-and-mortar locations come along: We’re probably talking 2018. The goal would be to establish getlegal as a known brand name in various markets. We don’t need to go national all at once, but certainly in the top five states.
How many lawyers do you have? I have three, but I anticipate probably two more by the end of the year. We have a staff of eight, but that’s going to be increasing rapidly as well.
Conscious Capitalism
Profit is what you create, not what you take.
BY JASON FORREST Forrest Performance Group
In college, Sunny Vanderbeck was a world away from the disciplined Army Ranger he would become. He was 20 pounds overweight, smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, and just plain unhappy. It was time for something completely different. He quit school, enlisted in the U.S. Army, and served as a Ranger for four years. As Sunny describes it, “Apparently, I jumped in the very, very deep end of the pool.”
Sunny’s low-key description of what was anything but a low-key experience feels like the essence of who he is: refresh-
ingly understated, seemingly unflappable, quietly confident. And, courtesy of the Army, persistent. He says the experience taught him that “the difference between a good outcome and an extraordinary outcome is that moment when you want to quit, and you just don’t quit.”
I think of such moments as “run toward the roar” opportunities. They are the times when we feel we have the most to lose, but actually have the most to gain. The idea comes from big male lions—whose role is to provoke fear with their intimidating teeth and deafening
roars. What the hunted don’t know is that the real danger lies with the smaller, quieter lionesses. In the animal kingdom, the lion’s roar sends prey scattering away from the startling noise—right into the path of the waiting lionesses, the true hunters. If gazelles knew to run toward the frightening sound, they would have a better chance of survival. The roar doesn’t represent the real danger.
Likewise, humans sometimes have an instinctive desire to shy away from pursuits that look and sound scary. But often, running toward those challenges and conflicts is the best (or only) way to grow and meet our goals. In business, those who run from the deafening noise never reach their full potential, while those who turn and face the fear thrive.
Sunny has built his life on running toward the roar. After leaving the Rangers, he started a company, took it public, sold it, bought it back, and sold it again. Then, with longtime friend and fellow 30-something CEO Randy Eisenman, he co-founded private equity firm Satori Capital. Like its owners, Satori operates well outside the box. Here’s how Sunny describes the company’s origins:
Randy and I noticed there was something missing in capital. Many of the companies that provided capital to entrepreneurs and to mature businesses had a view of the world that was very short-term and really only focused on hard metrics like P&L, and missed things like culture and the long term.
The big idea was this: What if we could bring an investment firm into the world that was able to take into account strategy and operations and finances and all those things that are very important, and also could take into account things like: “What does it mean to a company to have a great culture? What does it mean when a company is a good citizen in its community? And how does performance change if you can think about 10, 20, 30 years instead two, three, four quarters?”
Sunny and Randy faced an uphill battle selling their value proposition. “We were
going to make a new investment fund that had a totally different investment philosophy than any fund had ever had. In fact, many of the things that were held as core truths and deep beliefs about investment we believed just weren’t true.”
Potential backers who heard, “We have a totally different strategy. Would you like to invest?” didn’t even give them a chance. New investment funds rarely make it—let alone ones with completely unconventional investment strategies. They were too young and inexperienced. Their core principles defied conventional wisdom. Still, Sunny and Randy audaciously launched their enterprise at what seemed like the worst possible time—early 2008—during the middle of the worst financial crisis in our lifetime. Sunny says, “There were three lions roaring at us at once.”
And yet, they had to do it, Sunny says. “The way you know it’s time is not when you see the perfect moment in the market, or this thing happens or that thing happens, it’s when you can’t stop thinking about it.”
So they did it. Sunny, whose given name suits him well, has a very hopeful view of the role businesses can play as global citizens and how Satori’s unorthodox investment style can help:
The way to make the world a better place at scale is to change how investing is done. Because if you can change the minds of investors just a little bit, you’ll change the way companies behave, and if you change the way companies behave, you’ll change the experience all of us have. What if every company in the world was just 1 percent better as a place to work? How much impact did we just have on the world?
Don’t for a minute write Sunny off as a pie-in-the-sky optimist detached from reality, though. He believes in the big idea behind Satori strongly enough that he’s fought to see that it gets traction. “That’s not a thing you get done by telling,” he says. “You pick up the machete and start hacking a trail through the
jungle—make a trail so that others can follow.”
As he talks about the heavy lifting required to win acceptance of a new idea and a new way of doing business, the lesson Sunny took from his experience as an Army Ranger bubbles to the surface. He embodies the “do not quit” mantra and understands the why behind it:
Part of the idea underneath “do not quit” is learning about yourself and what you’re capable of, and your team and what they’re capable of. One of the most rewarding things as a peer and as a mentor is helping someone through that moment they didn’t think they could get through, where they can look back and say, “I had no idea I could pull this off, but I did.” So being able to compound those moments over your life can really make for some extraordinary outcomes. As a leader, those are my best moments. If, as Sunny believes, profit is what you create, not what you take, his profit is multiplying with each investment, each employee who achieves more than he or she thought possible, and each investor who changes his or her mind about what’s important. This kind of profit far outlasts a person or a business, and it only comes from running toward the roar.
Want to learn how to lead your organization towards a customer-centric culture? Sign up at fpgseminar.com for Jason Forrest’s Human Performance Unleashed: The Event in Fort Worth, Aug. 1-4.
Forrest is CEO of Forrest Performance Group, a global leader and designer of sales, management, and corporate training programs. He grew up “under the influence” of his father, a business owner and professional salesman, and his mother, a persuasive speaking professor. Jason is a regular contributor to FW Inc.
Jason
The FW Inc.
ENTREPRENEUR OF EXCELLENCE AWARDS
What Is It and Why Is It a Big Deal?
FW Inc. magazine has created Greater Fort Worth’s first and only Entrepreneur of Excellence (EOE) awards competition to showcase and honor the contributions of 30 exceptional entrepreneurs in the area. Nominees in 10 categories will compete for 10 top EOE Awards.
This program will evaluate each entrepreneur’s financial performance, integrity, growth, risk, leadership, strategic direction, innovation, company values, key employee initiatives and community involvement. The FW Inc. EOE awards will identify high-
APPLICATION PERIOD May 15 – September 1
growth, privately owned companies that will benefit from the award’s recognition and future business services provided by our sponsor partners. Three finalists from each category will be featured in a future issue of FW Inc.
Anyone can nominate an exceptional entrepreneur – you can even nominate yourself. All applications must be received no later than Sept. 1 to be eligible. For more details on the award and to nominate an outstanding entrepreneur today, go to fwtx.com/fwinc/eoe.
AWARDS BANQUET JANUARY 12, 2017
California Aviation Companies Flying to Fort Worth
BY DAVID BERZINA
Executive Vice President of Economic Development Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce
Traditionally, people associate the greatest volume of aviation and aerospace activity in the U.S. with destinations such as Southern California or Washington State. They are often surprised to learn that Fort Worth is the second largest aviation cluster in the nation, just behind the greater Los Angeles area. In fact, the aviation industry contributed more than $40 billion to the North Texas economy in 2014. We anticipate this industry influence will strengthen over the next five years as Fort Worth remains an attractive option for California aviation manufacturers seeking relocation and expansion opportunities in a less restric-
Donnelly says new requirements going into effect in Southern California over the next 10 years will be extremely harmful to his business.
One in five North Texans are employed by the aviation industry, and Fort Worth's deep roots in the industry have created a highly skilled workforce that California companies covet.
Similar sentiments were expressed by Buddy Tobin of C&S Propeller when his company announced plans in May to move its headquarters from Burbank to Fort Worth. He cited Fort Worth’s “business-friendly” environment and its deep roots in the aviation and aerospace industry as appealing. Founded in 1968, C&S Propeller is one of the world’s foremost experts in the maintenance, repair and overhaul of the propeller systems used on the Lockheed C130 Hercules aircraft. With more than 1,400 aircraft in military and civilian operation, the C130 is one of the largest and most widely used air transport fleets. The company plans to hire 12 North Texans.
Southern California. Their loss has been Fort Worth’s gain. So far this year, Fort Worth welcomed two of these companies. In April, Calcomp, Inc. announced plans to move its manufacturing operations from Santa Fe Springs, Calif., to a 250,000-square-foot facility in North Fort Worth. The company, which makes commercial engine composites that
According to the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp., employment in the state’s aviation sector is down 40 percent since 2004, because a number of airplane parts manufacturers have left
Fort Worth’s reputation as a desirable location for aviation and aerospace companies is not something that happened overnight. It dates to 1911 when the first-ever powered flight in Fort Worth soared above a crowd of 17,000 spectators. Afterwards, private investors such as Amon G. Carter, Sr. worked with city leaders to lure more aviation companies to the community. The Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce was also engaged in recruiting aviation companies by gathering data for the U.S. War Department about the city and its industrial capacity. These efforts culminated in 1941, when Fort Worth secured an Army bomber assembly plant, known today as Lock-
Accord he Los Angel E nomic Development Corp. t in t he aviation sector is r 40 percent since t 200 number of parts manufacturers have lef t from California and plans to hire 3 Nort h Texans. Fred Donnelly, president of Calcomp, f says he elected For t Worth based on its central geographic location and because cit y leaders made him feel welcome Despite his presence in Ca lifornia for a more r t han seven decades, firs soared bo ro tors Afterwards, private investor as Amon G. Carter, Sr. worked w it h cit y leaders t lure e aviation companies to t he community. The For t Wor th Chamber of r Commerce was a lso enga in recruiting aviation g companies g ering data for t he r U.S War Depar tm r about t he t city nd y its industria l capa These efforts culminated in 1941, w Fort Wor th t secured an Army bomb plant, y k nown as y Lo
heed Martin. The construction of Meacham Field and Carswell Air Force Base, now known as Naval Air Station/Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, further cemented the city’s foothold in aviation.
In the years after World War II, Fort Worth rapidly emerged as an aerospace hub. It is now home to some of the world’s largest aviation companies, along with hundreds of related suppliers.
California aviation companies are not the only ones investing in Fort Worth. A number of highly influential brands that have been in this city for decades are expanding their presence. For example, last year, Lockheed Martin announced plans for a $1.2 billion upgrade to its mile-long facility. The company is also adding approximately 1,000 employees to accommodate an aggressive production schedule for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the largest national defense program in our nation’s history. The company currently employs approximately 13,000 in North Texas, with 8,800 dedicated to production of the F-35. Lockheed Martin also has at least 73 North Texas suppliers, which provide an additional 10,000 jobs and support 28,000 indirect positions.
American Airlines is another local aviation company that recently reinforced its commitment to Fort Worth. The world’s largest airline announced plans to spend $350 million on construction of a new 1.1 million-square-foot headquarters at Dallas/ Fort Worth Airport. The expansion will result in the addition of 5,000 jobs.
The city’s deep roots in the aviation industry have created a highly skilled workforce that California companies find extremely attractive. The large volume of military personnel with substantial expertise in defense programs, engineering and avionics support the region’s aerospace workforce of more than 22,000. Roughly one in five North Texans are employed, in some aspect, by the region’s aviation industry, resulting in an annual payroll of about $11 billion.
In order to keep this pipeline primed, representatives from Fort Worth’s aviation
community have partnered with Tarrant County College on specialized training and certification programs. They include the FAA Airframe and Powerplant certification, as well as a certificate and degree program in avionics. In 2015, TCC partnered with Alliance Aviation Services to launch the Erma C. Johnson Hadley Center of Excellence for Aviation, Transportation and Logistics at Fort Worth Alliance Airport. Housed in a renovated 163,500-square-foot facility that was previously used by Bell Helicopter, the program specifically focuses on teaching students the necessary skills for their future employers to remain leaders in the aerospace industry.
California’s aerospace companies are flying to Fort Worth in response to our central geographic location, favorable business environment, rich aviation history and current position as one of the top aviation and aerospace clusters in the nation. Their addition to the city’s current roster of distinguished aviation companies will only strengthen our position in this constantly growing economic sector.
David Berzina is executive vice president of economic development for the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce, and he joined the Chamber in 2004. His projects have resulted in more than 13 million square feet of building space, $3.4 billion in capital investment, and more than 20,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in annual payroll. The Chamber provides an economic development update in each issue of FW Inc.
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Lone Star Snapshot
Texas replacing lost high-paying energy jobs with ones in lower-paying services.
BY SCOTT NISHIMURA
Oil prices were up this spring. What impact?
That boosted fuel and chemical prices, but demand for oilfield services remained “depressed,” the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank said in a recent report. Drilling continued to decline, and “the financial positions of many firms, particularly smaller ones, remained weak.” Some service firms were buying drilling and completion equipment at “heavily discounted prices,” the Fed said.
“Confidence continued to build that oil prices have found a bottom,” the Fed said in its second-quarter report on the Fed’s Eleventh District. “However, firms want prices to remain at these levels for a while longer before making any changes to existing business plans.”
45,700
Texas mining and logging job loss to 227,600, from May 2015 to May 2016.
$861
Texas average weekly wages, March 2016, down from February 2015 peak of $913.
1.9%
Drop in Texas’ hours worked in 2015, a trend that continued into this year’s first quarter.
171,800
Texas non-agricultural job gain to 11.97 million, May 2015 to May 2016.
7.6%
$2,361
Texas energy’s average weekly wages, third-quarter 2015
Texas’ decline in average weekly wages, first quarter. High-paying energy, manufacturing and construction jobs have declined in number, while lower-paying service jobs have increased and hours worked have also fallen.
Sources: Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, Texas Workforce Commission
A Federal Case
Non-union shops should be wary of the National Labor Relations Act in writing policies.
BY STEVE PEGLAR
Texas is certainly not known as a hotbed of union activity, but even those organizations without union representation in their workforces should be aware that the way they develop and enforce their human resources policies may be directly affected by a federal law designed to protect employees’ rights to join and form labor unions.
Key components of the federal National Labor Relations Act significantly limit how strict an employer, even those without any existing labor union activity, may be in formally restricting an employee’s conduct in a surprising variety of ways. Under the NLRA, employees have the right to organize in unions, join together to advance their interests as employees, and refrain from such activity. It is unlawful under the NLRA for an employer
to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of these rights. Many common human resources policies that an employer may choose to include in its employee handbook can potentially, depending on how they are written and enforced, be interpreted as interfering with or restraining employees’ NLRA rights.
violate an employee’s NLRA rights in an obvious way, the NLRB may still interpret it as being unlawful or otherwise improper if employees could reasonably believe that the policy interferes with their exercising their rights.
Many common human resources policies, which regulate behavior, could be interpreted as interfering with employees' NLRA rights.
The General Counsel of the NLRB has issued guidance to employers relating directly to handbook development. In it, the NLRB was critical of “overbroad” policies that are not specific enough regarding what behaviors an employer intends to restrict. Even the most well-intentioned policies can come under critical scrutiny for being too general in their language.
Many employer policies that are common in the workplace exist in an attempt to somehow regulate the behavior and conduct of employees.
Even though we may generally consider such policies as reasonable, the National Labor Relations Board and courts may interpret some policies as unlawful and as limiting an employee’s ability to exercise his or her NLRA rights.
If a policy, for example, prohibits employees from discussing their wages with each other, it could be viewed as unlawful, because employees who may be lawfully engaging in union organization activity may need to discuss their wages as part of the process.
Or, if a policy attempts to limit what an employee may post on social media concerning the organization, this could be seen as interfering with an employee’s NLRA rights to engage in “concerted activity” (and talk with other employees about) the workplace or conditions of employment. Also, it’s important to note that even if an employer’s policy doesn’t
For instance, a policy that states “employees may not engage in any action that is not in the best interest of the company” as part of a larger conflicts of interest policy, would likely be considered as being too general. A different version of this policy that includes specific examples of what types of actions would result in a conflict of interest, such as “holding an ownership or financial interest in an outside business” and “accepting gifts, money, or services from an outside business” would probably be considered as lawful.
Because of the need to avoid this potential over-generalization, employers are advised to be cautious when creating policies that attempt to put limits on employee behavior.
Steve Peglar, SPHR, PI, SHRM-SCP, is vice president with WhitneySmith Co., a human resources consulting firm based in downtown Fort Worth.
The WhitneySmith Co.
Affordable Housing: Not Just for the Poor
Rising housing costs and the tough job market mean today’s affordable housing is geared toward middle class and families below the poverty line.
BY NAOMI BYRNE President, Fort Worth Housing Solutions Real Estate Council of Greater Fort Worth
Picture this – May 2015, and you have just graduated from Texas Christian University with a bachelor’s degree in business. You land your first job earning $50,000 a year, the average salary for a newly graduated bachelor degree candidate in Texas. You’re single, no kids, and you are now in the top 30 percent of income earners in Fort Worth.
Now picture this – May 2015, and you have just graduated from TCU with a bachelor’s degree in business. You land your first job after graduation earning
$50,000 a year, but you also have a stayat-home spouse and two young children. Instead of being in the top 30 percent of income earners, you now qualify as “lowincome.”
In 2015, the average family income for a family of four in the Fort Worth area was $70,500. If your family earned just 80 percent of that ($56,300), you were classified as “lowincome” for the purposes of the federal government. And if you were paying more than 30 percent of your gross monthly income ($1,400) in rent or on a mortgage payment, you were considered “costburdened” as well, a situation that affects nearly one out of every two Texans. Now picture this – you have been laid off from your job working in the oil fields after making six figures annually for the last few years. Or recently divorced with children after being a stay-at-home mom for the last
ten years. Or a Vietnam Veteran on Social Security and a retirement pension. Or a new Fort Worth firefighter whose base salary is approximately $50,000 a year, a Fort Worth police officer ($52,200), or Fort Worth ISD teacher ($48,300).
The point is that “low-income” is not limited to the stereotypical single mother on public assistance with three children. Low-income defines a wide demographic today, and “affordable” housing in today’s market is not “the projects” of old. Rather, it’s geared towards not just providing housing options for families below the poverty line, but also individuals and families who have been historically categorized as “middle class.”
Many people believe that the housing crisis is a function of poor life choices. That if a person wants a nicer place to live, all they have to do is go to school and/or get a good job, and success will follow. But that is not entirely true.
Rising housing costs and a tough job market have created a housing shortage not just for those considered “poor,” but for a broader spectrum of working individuals. All across the U.S., the number of households that rent is at a 20-year high. In most markets, but especially robust ones like Fort Worth, we are faced with falling vacancy rates and exponential population growth. Millennials are more likely to rent than buy, and older and higher income households are more frequently turning to renting as they downsize.
On the flip side, units that were considered “affordable” in the past continue to be lost either to renovations resulting in higher rents or through demolition and new construction. In 2015, DFW rents increased by 7 percent from the prior year. In 2016, the pace is projected to slow to 3.9 percent, though the average rents will top $1,000 per month for the first time ever, with an average vacancy rate of 4.4 percent. Several thousand units are scheduled to come on line in 2016 in Fort Worth, but the majority of those units are primarily built for the higher income renter.
Now, years after the official end of the
recession, the number of renters living in housing they cannot afford continues to set new records. Federal assistance efforts have struggled to keep up with need, while funding cuts limit new construction of affordable housing as well as preservation of existing subsidized units.
Aside from affordability, the nation also faces the challenge of revitalizing the many distressed neighborhoods where the housing recovery has failed to take hold. The private sector cannot profitably supply lower cost units, which results in affordable housing developers who must rely on decreasing government subsidy programs to lower construction costs and debt service.
These types of market conditions only further serve to exacerbate a tight market and result in an additional strain on the budgets for the nearly 50 percent of households that are unable to find units they can rent for less than 50 percent of their gross monthly income. Factor in other living expenses like food, clothing, child care, and transportation costs, and you begin to see why affordable housing is not just a “poor person” issue, but more increasingly, an issue faced by working families.
The U.K. defines affordable housing as: “social rented, affordable rented and intermediate housing, provided to specified eligible households whose needs are not met by the market.” In today’s market, where the lowest income families must make their money go even further, and where the middle class once thrived but now struggles, the perception of “affordable housing” needs to focus on “housing affordability” instead. Affordable housing means housing that YOU can afford, and for nearly 50 percent of our population, that is becoming more and more difficult to find.
Naomi Byrne is president of Fort Worth Housing Solutions, which builds communities through the purchase, acquisition, and construction of housing aimed at a mix of incomes. Her column is on behalf of the Real Estate Council of Greater Fort Worth, which writes a commercial real estate update for each issue of FW Inc.
6TH
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
The Worthington Renaissance Fort Worth Hotel 11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. Tickets $70 - $125; Table of 8 - $900 Register with Brenda Dyer bdyer@fortworthchamber.com or call 817-338-3371
6th Annual Vandergriff Award will also be presented.
Tax-Efficient Expansion Outside the United States
BY BRIAN MITCHELL
When considering the expansion of your operations outside the United States, a number of tax, business, legal, and regulatory issues should be addressed in advance to ensure the overall objectives of the expansion are satisfied. The key considerations include:
The company’s commercial footprint in the new territory Determine the activities, assets, and personnel that the company will deploy outside the U.S. The range of activities may vary from a limited scope and duration to a full-scale operation with long-term deployment of capital, plant and equipment, and local workforce. The scope of the operation will determine the impact of foreign income tax, sales or value-added tax, and transfer tax.
The company’s sales strategy in the new market Sending sales and other professionals into a new jurisdiction can cause the company to be taxable in that jurisdiction. These foreign tax costs, as well as the costs of outside advisors and business start-up, can be expensive and should be evaluated as part of the overall sales opportunity and product pricing.
The company’s decision to operate as a local foreign entity or as a branch This decision should be based on the applicable business, tax, legal, and regulatory issues. Your tax advisor and
attorney should work together to determine the best operational structure. A foreign legal entity generally costs more to administer than a branch, so initially, the company should consider operating as a branch.
The
company’s capitalization of a separate local foreign entity
Decisions on funding operations with a combination of equity and intercompany loans should be made at the formation of the entity. Intercompany loans to a foreign entity provide a valuable tax shield in the form of interest deductions at the local level. However, the foreign jurisdiction can reclassify debt as equity if a loan is not respected as a bona fide debt. Reclassification of equity as debt will impact the treatment of funds transferred from the foreign entity, including the deductibility of interest expense and the applicability of income tax withholding requirements.
The
company’s
U.S. taxation and reporting of foreign operations
Based on current law, U.S. persons are taxed on a worldwide basis. Therefore, the company should consider the U.S. tax effects of foreign expansion. If foreign source earnings are earned through a foreign entity, those earnings may be deferred from U.S. taxation until repatriated as a dividend. However, special rules that require the immediate U.S. taxation of income earned by a foreign subsidiary may apply.
The U.S. also imposes certain reporting requirements for foreign operations. Failure to meet these filing requirements can result in substantial penalties. Typical filing requirements include:
• Form 5471. Information Return of U.S. Persons With Respect to Certain Foreign Corporations. An annually required information report of a nonU.S. company that is controlled by a U.S. person.
• Form 8621. Information Return by a Shareholder of a Passive Foreign Investment Company or Qualified Electing Fund. An annually required information report of a non-U.S. company that is not controlled by a U.S. person and that generates certain types of income or holds certain types of assets.
• Form 8865. Return of U.S. Persons With Respect to Certain Foreign Partnerships. An annually required information report of ownership of entities treated as non-U.S. partnerships.
• Other forms: Form 8858, Form 926, Form 1118/1116, Form 5472, Form 8804/8804/1042.
Summary When considering expansion into foreign jurisdictions, U.S. companies should consult both their U.S. and foreign advisors to ensure that all potential tax issues related to that expansion are addressed as part of the overall business considerations related to that expansion.
Mitchell, CPA, is director of international tax
Brian
at Whitley Penn LLP, one of the region’s most distinguished public accounting firms. He is writing this column on behalf of the Fort Worth Chapter of the Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants, a regular contributor to FW Inc.
Whitley Penn, LLP
Fort Worth Chapter, Texas Society of CPAs
Call for Nominations
Is your company one of the best places to work for in Fort Worth?
FW Inc. and Fort Worth, Texas magazine are pleased to present the Best Companies to Work for in Fort Worth awards. Our program uses a two-part assessment process taking into account the employer’s policies, practices, benefits and demographics, as well as the company’s employees and their engagement and satisfaction. After all, employees know best if their company is a great company to work for or not. The combined employer and employee components assessment produces both quantitative and qualitative data that will be analyzed to determine the final rankings. The winning companies will be recognized in FW Inc. and Fort Worth, Texas magazine and honored at an awards event.
To register your company for participation and award consideration, please visit: www.BestCompaniesFW.com. PARTICIPATION IN THE SURVEY IS FREE
That Was Fun, Right?
Affordable Care Act Reporting for 2015 was torture for many HR departments; here’s how to get on top of it for next year.
BY JENNIFER REED
TInvestments
here are many topics when it comes to ACA that I joke about and should only be discussed over drinks; 2015 ACA reporting for Applicable Large Employers (ALE) could easily fall into that category. Even if you did not directly help your organization get through the 2015 ACA reporting, I am sure you felt your HR department go into project mode for months on end trying to figure it all out. Hopefully, your organization is not one of the many who still hasn’t filed for 2015, because the IRS emphasized that they would
not respond to extension requests for 2015 because delays were more generous than what they would approve. Since a failure to file relates to both the information return and the employee statement, to the tune of $520/individual, most organizations were forced to just get it done and not worry about errors for 2015 reporting. Not to mention, most companies that invested heavily in HR Technology to automate this part of the process found their investment only helped their HR department minimally, if at all, for 2015. In addition to the many hours invested by
HR departments, some companies were spending an average of $2-$6 per 1095-C (not considering the ongoing cost) only to find out that all their forms were incorrect.
Now the question becomes: How does your organization learn from 2015 and conquer ACA reporting for 2016 without investing so much of the HR Department’s time and resources?
Invest in Technology I know this area was quite a disappointment in regards to 2015 ACA reporting services. But this will improve now that technology companies have had the first go around with the IRS. The upside with HR technology companies that filed electronically is that they will receive an error report from the IRS to learn from; whereas, employers that filed manually with the IRS will not receive feedback regarding if they filed correctly. Knowing what mistakes were made in 2015 will be critical for the success in 2016.
Work with an insurance broker who is not afraid to get his or her hands dirty with ACA. Many benefit brokers decided to take a hands-off approach in regard to ACA reporting. This has provided more service opportunities for others that invested in resources to navigate their clients through ACA reporting.
Have a legal resource that you trust available. This law is so complex that even some attorneys have misinterpreted it. Those situations may unfortunately harm their customers in 2016.
Jennifer Reed leads the compliance and HR Technology Consulting practice at Gus Bates Insurance & Investments. She is writing this column on behalf of the Fort Worth Human Resource Management Association, a new regular contributor to FW Inc.
Gus Bates Insurance &
Fort Worth Human Resource Management Association
Entrepreneurship: The (Wild) Ride of Your Life
BY TONY FORD Ford Leadership Solutions
Welcome to “Exceptional Entrepreneurship” – a conversation between you and me about all of the issues that make being a private business owner the best and at times the most challenging job there is.
In this ongoing series in FW Inc., I will solicit your opinions, ideas and examples of how we entrepreneurs overcome obstacles and exploit opportunities. Please read these articles with an eye toward emailing me your take. Give me your ideas and solutions for ways to solve problems and create new opportunities. I will share them and, together, we can test their effectiveness.
As a starting point, I want to provide a word picture that answers a question that I get all of the time – maybe, you do too:
So, What’s It Like To Be An Entrepreneur? “I’m shaking, I’m sweating, I’m laughing and trying to walk in a straight line toward the nearest bench. The Texas Giant roller coaster looms large and deafening behind me. Momentarily, another train car full of screaming passengers roars down a 150-foot drop with their eyes squeezed tight and their mouths hanging open, now fully appreciating why they waited an hour to experience these precious few seconds of terror.”
Having just gone through this same riotous span of emotions, I still can’t wait to go again. This is why we so often refer to entrepreneurship as a roller coaster ride. Because it is:
• Filled with anticipation -We have to
"Thrilling and terrifying. Once the ride starts, there is no stopping until we get to the end. We are committed to finish."
stand in line for a long time, waiting our turn to prove our solutions will work. It starts with a service to offer or a problem to solve. That soon becomes a mission, then maybe an obsession, but we have to wait for others to see it like we do and then to join their hearts, minds and resources to our vision before it becomes a real business.
• Thrilling and terrifying - Once the ride starts, there is no stopping until we get to the end. We are committed to finish.
• Unnecessarily lonely – Even before sitting down in a ride car filled with excited passengers, each of us has to make a conscious choice to join the group in the experience. Entrepreneurship is by nature an individual undertaking that requires the participation of others to reach its full potential. Unless we make ourselves “interdependent” with others, it rapidly becomes the loneliest ride of our lives.
• Personally satisfying – Sitting at the front of a seemingly out-of-control roller coaster car seems foolish to some. Yet, when the ride ends, the satisfaction of having confronted our fears makes the risk worthwhile. In the same way, entrepreneurship is a very personal journey into overcoming obstacles and exploiting opportunities that others dare never to challenge.
• Over, way too soon - The sudden drop,
curves, screams, relief, all come flooding back as the passenger car suddenly slams us forward in our harnesses, and we arrive back where the ride began. No matter how long it takes an entrepreneur to find success, when he or she looks back, it feels like the longest and shortest ride of his or her life. All of the problems, people and places come flooding back as if it were yesterday when they had that first crazy idea that ultimately worked.
• Leaves us wanting to do it again and again – Some things in life just don’t make much sense. Like why would anyone rush to get back on a roller coaster that had just scared him or her half to death? Entrepreneurs know why. It’s the adrenalin rush when an idea comes around full circle to become a successful business. It’s seeing co-workers overcome challenges and grow. It’s proving to the rest of the world that dreams still do come true. It’s finding our unique path in life that makes us who we really are.
Sadly, most people will never have the opportunity to experience this incredible ride. They will never submit themselves to it. That’s the thing about being an entrepreneur; it’s really hard to explain to folks who have never experienced it. Just like a roller coaster.
Tony Ford is an award-winning Fort Worth entrepreneur with a history of starting and growing industry leading companies. He now helps other business owners grow and sell their companies. He is also program director for the 2017 FW Inc. Entrepreneur of Excellence Awards program.
Tony will write this column in each issue of FW Inc. Contact Tony at tony.ford@fwtx.com.
WORKPLACES FOR WOMEN
Modeling the Way
Lead by example, learn by example
BY HARRIET HARRAL Executive Director Leadership Fort Worth
In our last discussion of leadership, we were introduced to a leadership model that is applicable in a wide variety of contexts. The Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership developed by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner are:
• Model the Way: Create standards of excellence; set an example for others to follow.
• Inspire a Shared Vision: Envision the future; enlist others in the vision.
In the DFW area, Fidelity's community relations office has created opportunities for employees and their families to serve the communities where they live.
• Challenge the Process: Search for opportunities to change the status quo.
• Enable Others to Act: Foster collaboration; build spirited teams.
• Encourage the Heart: Recognize contributions that individuals make.
Leadership skills are learnable; we can train ourselves to be better leaders. One of the most effective ways to learn is through example – actually observing the practice in action. The next five columns on leadership will provide examples of each of the five leadership practices and how they are being demonstrated in a business here in Fort Worth. The first practice for us to look at is “Model the Way.” Kouzes and Posner say that modeling the way rests on a foundation of values. Specifically, this requires aligning corporate actions with stated values.
Fidelity Investments provides a strong example of acting on its values. Consider one of its core values: “Good corporate citizenship has been one of Fidelity’s core values since the company was founded. Fidelity is committed to being a good corporate citizen in all of the communities we work and live in.”
A stronger way to understand this value is by observing the encouragement and support that Fidelity gives to its employees to serve communities where they live and work. “Everybody volunteers all the time. It’s a sense of giving back what Fidelity has given us,” said Kristopher Ayala, associate systems analyst.
Leadership Fort Worth has been the very fortunate recipient of skills-based volunteering by experienced Fidelity employees from across business areas who have worked closely with the LFW team to solve a specific, strategic technical need. This partnership has come about because Fidelity works with Common Impact, a nationally recognized nonprofit that connects corporate employees to nonprofit organizations tackling challenges in their communities. Common Impact has connected LFW with four different teams at Fidelity, all chosen because of their expertise and because the project will stretch the participating employees in their own critical growth areas.
Through four projects over three years, Fidelity has served LFW and the Fort Worth community in the following ways:
1. Strategic identification of appropriate database management system
2. Development of an app for an LFW membership directory
3. Creation of an RFP for a new website host
4. Development of a process to achieve an effective shared digital workspace as well as appropriate archiving of documents
Matthew Ashmore, a senior manager at Fidelity and organizer of the most recent project with LFW, spoke of the strong commitment that Fidelity has to local communities. In the DFW area, its community relations office has created opportunities for employees and their families to serve the local communities where they live, not just where Fidelity offices are located.
In the last five years, the Fidelity Investments Workplace Investing business has supported future leaders in their career development and yielded a community investment valued at $1,334,725, said Molly Weinstein of Common Impact in an April 2016 blog. They have “connected the dotted lines between social initiatives, human capital development, and business success and see tremendous returns in the form of business benefits and social change,” Weinstein said.
Fidelity Investments is modeling the way with its employees and the communities they serve.
Harriet Briscoe Harral, Ph.D., is executive director of Leadership Fort Worth, an organization that empowers and connects diverse leaders to serve as catalysts to strengthen and improve the Fort Worth community. She is a regular contributor to FW Inc.
5:45 a.m. Wake up, let our cat and dogs outside, make a cup of tea for me and coffee for Tom (in our separate Keurigs).
6:30 a.m. Head to the gym to workout. This can include weightlifting, swimming, cardio, or all of the above depending on how cruel my trainer
is feeling that day.
7:30 a.m. Driving back to the house, I’ll take briefing calls with staff.
7:45 a.m. Getting ready for the day back at the house, grab breakfast with Tom. I’ll try to catch up on morning news and review upcoming speeches and
meetings before I head out for the day’s meetings and events.
8:45 a.m. Based on my schedule, the daytime hours consist of a variety of meetings, public appearances and speaking engagements. It’s not uncommon to have a handful of media
Betsy Price,
Fort
Worth’s mayor, is constantly on the go and rarely has what she calls a typical day. But it almost always includes a workout or fitness break with constituents.
interviews and film spots alongside a Fit15 (fitness promo with a local company) or a stop-in at a local school to read.
If I’m not attending and/or speaking at a luncheon, I’ll try to break for lunch and head back to the office for staff meetings and desk time.
Throughout the day, I’ll get texts from my kids with an occasional fun video or picture of one of my four grandkids. These truly make my day!
5 p.m. As I mentioned earlier, no evening is typical either…evenings can include a rolling town hall, galas/ evening events
where I am speaking, council meetings (on Tuesdays) and dinner with friends and family. Sometimes I’ll even cook, as long as it’s something easy to make!
9 p.m. (or later) Once all is said and done as far as events go, I’ll head home and try to unwind a little bit. In the summer months, most nights we’ll hop into the pool for a refreshing swim before the day’s end. Or, Tom and I will talk about our day over a glass of wine.
10:30 p.m. Bedtime for me. Spend last few minutes catching up on my twitter feed, nightly news, daily paper and texts.
“No
evening is typical. Evenings can include a rolling town hall, galas, events where I'm speaking, council meetings, dinner with friends and family. Sometimes, I'll even cook.”
Top Row: Margaret Simmons, Chris L. Stewart, Roland Drechsel-CCIM, Lee M. Owen, John Casburn Bottom Row: Dick Myers, Nathan Vasseur, Gary E. Vasseur-Principal, Jennifer Beale
The multiple offer scenario is having a big impact on the way buyers write offers. The savvy buyer has already interviewed a lender and received a prequalification letter to submit with an offer. Also, if a buyer locates a desirable property he or she must be decisive and ready to pull the trigger. Many younger buyers rely on the advice of friends or family when it comes time to make a big decision. The savvy buyer will have a ‘committee’ ready to go.”
Clay Brants | 817.980.9500
cbrants@briggsfreeman.com
“The trend continues! Home sales are steadily increasing, achieving their highest level in 10+ years! Inventory of homes remains low and interest rates have stayed below 4 percent for the past 16 of 17 months. According to the National Association of Realtors, homes pending sale increased 6.8 percent in April. And sales in April 2016 have increased by 5.1 percent over sales in April 2015. Sales are great and are predicted to climb even higher than expected as the year continues.”
Jerri Pedro | 817.925.9462
jpedro@briggsfreeman.com
EXPERTS
“Social media selling is of the utmost importance in today’s fast-paced real estate market. Often times with limited inventory, top agents post about coming-soon properties, which can make all the difference in finding the ‘needle in the haystack.’ Make sure your agent has professional social media pages to share live videos, produced videos and marketing pieces for the quickest sale.”
Michael Hoover | 817.458.1431
mhoover@briggsfreeman.com
“As the D-FW area experiences growth at a rate of one new buyer every five minutes, inventory remains low. This expansion increases pricing and lowers days on market, creating greater opportunities for those wishing to list their home. And while interest rates remain low, many homeowners are trading up and several are choosing to build new.”