2020 Entrepreneur of Excellence

Our annual class of some of Fort Worth’s finest entrepreneurs is in. One thing these executives have in common: COVID-19 and its big test. Or, as one CEO asked us: “You want the good, the bad and the ugly?”

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Fort Worth Inc.’s 2020 Entrepreneur of Excellence class is in. These 27 entrepreneurs — in commercial construction, consumer and durable goods, energy, health care and life sciences, hospitality, professional services, real estate, residential construction, and technology and e-commerce — showcase some of our region’s fastest-growing and well-managed enterprises.

They’ve all been fire-tested by COVID-19 and believe they’ll emerge stronger than they were before.

Presented by Whitley Penn, this is Fort Worth Inc.’s fourth annual Entrepreneur of Excellence edition. As is the case each year, applications were judged independently of the ownership and staff of the magazine. The judges — business leaders from across the region — reviewed each application confidentially, based on sales and profit growth, best practices, ethical business practices, innovation, perseverance, and community involvement. The judges made their decisions earlier this year, choosing finalists and winners in each of nine categories. Financial performance data in the applications is confidential and not made available to the magazine staff for use in the biographies in this issue.

The category winners’ identities were kept secret until they were revealed Sept. 10 during a dinner at the Fort Worth Club. There was no cost associated with applying for, or being considered for, this award.

Eligibility criteria included ownership or lead of a business in the Greater Fort Worth area, at least two years in business, and $1.5 million in annual sales.

Separately, the staff of the magazine selected an honoree for our annual Supporter of Entrepreneurship: Tony Ford, a successful longtime Fort Worth entrepreneur and cheerleader for entrepreneurship in Fort Worth.

THE OFFICIAL LIST

Commercial Construction Category Winner

Jeff Kenny | Architectural Fabrication

Jeff Kenny’s company was a jack-of-all-trades and specialist in nothing when he was hired as sales manager more than 10 years ago. Five years in, Kenny bought the Fort Worth firm and decided to focus on manufacturing products such as aluminum sunshades, commercial canopies, and metal and fabric awning systems for markets like restaurants and multifamily complexes. He ditched the side businesses and renamed the firm Architectural Fabrication. In 2016, the company moved into an 86,000-square-foot plant in the Ash Crescent neighborhood near Poly in southeast Fort Worth.

Kenny was employee 14 when he showed up, and sales were $1.5 million, “which, in the construction world, is nothing.” Last year, sales reached $16.7 million, and the firm employed more than 100, Kenny says.

“We were everybody’s mistress and nobody’s wife,” Kenny likes to say, of when he joined the firm. “We did anything you asked us to do for $5. We installed flag poles, we made decks, we did custom light fixtures. We also made awnings and canopies,” but the company had little brand recognition, and no architects specified its products in plans to developers.

Kenny launched lunch-and-learn campaigns aimed at architects, offering a catered barbecue lunch for the opportunity to come in, make presentations to architects, and ask them to specify Architectural Fabrication products in their plans. The architects, in return, earn continuing education credits. Today, Kenny estimates about 50% of the firm’s sales come off of architects’ specification. The firm is the specified manufacturer for large national accounts such as Walmart, IHOP, and On The Border restaurants.

Kenny also revamped the firm’s culture. Virtually nobody attended its Christmas parties, he says. “I don’t want to work at a place that nobody wants to get together for a party.” After he bought the firm with an SBA loan, he began throwing big annual Christmas parties. The firm throws itself an annual birthday party and an annual whirlyball employee outing. The firm invested in Salesforce four years ago, and earlier this year, process management software. Kenny also emphasizes workplace safety, saying he expects employees to call him on it if he’s not demonstrating safe practices, such as the wearing of protective eyewear and ear plugs.

Kenny retells the Christmas story at the annual holiday parties. “I want to work at a place where people want to get together,” he says. “They’re empowered to make great decisions. I’ve had great leaders, and I’ve had bad examples. This place is chock-full of good leaders that are empowering people to independently make good decisions. And we’ve created this repeatable process, which is so amazing.”

Michael Freeman | Steele & Freeman

Steele & Freeman continues to build on its four decades as a commercial and institutional contractor, putting up school, municipal, industrial, entertainment, medical, higher education, commercial, and faith buildings. Through August, the company estimated it completed $100 million of work so far this year. Its backlog has grown to $400 million from $300 million. “We’ve done more work than we’ve ever had,” Michael Freeman, the company’s second-generation president, says.

The Fort Worth company has seven active projects and will start more than $200 million in new projects through April next year, Freeman says. It relies on repeat business — through architects and end users like city governments — and doesn’t pursue bid work. Twenty-three “fundamentals” like no-fault problem-solving guide the business. It’s added 17 people this year and laid off none, Freeman says, while many others in the industry were laying off employees off amid disruptions caused by COVID-19.

Like others among this year’s Entrepreneur of Excellence class, Steele & Freeman won a federal payroll protection loan. “We’ve utilized it to its fullest.” COVID-19 has been a disruption, but the firm layered on numerous precautions, such as daily temperature checks on job sites. While it’s had to quarantine crews due to exposure, it’s had no positive tests. “Knock on wood,” Freeman says.

John Avila | Byrne Construction Services

Byrne Construction Services likes to bill itself as “smallest of the large contractors, largest of the medium-sized contractors.” “That’s the way it’s always been since I’ve had the company,” Avila says. “When you’re that size, you don’t have to get everything. You can keep your people busy without being forced to do things you really don’t want to do.”

Avila purchased the then-declining Fort Worth firm in 1995 and revamped it, participating in major projects such as the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport terminal remodeling program. Besides the airport, it’s working on a recreational facility for the City of Arlington and a medical project in the city. The firm maintains a diverse project volume of about $375 million under contract.

“We’re very blessed,” Avila says. Contractors were considered an essential business when COVID-19 hit, “and our pipeline was pretty full. We’ve gone about building our projects as per normal.”

Managing through COVID-19, Byrne has staggered in-office workdays. On construction sites, it’s installed precautions such as daily temperature checks and required wearing of masks and gloves. “We’re weathering this thing pretty well.”

Today, Avila is chairman, his son Matthew is CEO, and son Paul is chief operating officer. Avila’s maintained active leadership in the community, serving on various boards. “Every business has an obligation as corporate citizens to give back to their community.” 

Consumer & Durable Goods Category Winner

Prasad Reddy | Twisted X

Twisted X, a Decatur-based designer and maker of casual footwear, was on a continued growth streak and one of America’s fastest-growing companies when COVID-19 hit. “March 15, the lockdown was announced; that’s when it really hit us,” Prasad Reddy, the CEO, says. “Business was down 95% the first week. Eventually, it opened up slowly.” Sales in June and July posted records, he says. 

Reddy has seen tough times. A turnaround man, he led a group that bought the company out of bankruptcy after its filing in 2008. The company, at $8 million in sales the year Reddy came aboard, turned in more than $80 million in sales in 2019. The company this year earned a spot on the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies for the third straight year, with three-year growth of 75%.

The Twisted X team met early to address its approach to COVID. “One thing we didn’t want to do is take any rash actions that would impact the long term. We don’t want to change our values, how we operate our business.”

First, the company maintained its stance of not entering into competition with its 3,000 retailers. “This COVID situation, staying at home, that’s a great opportunity for online sales,” Reddy says. “We have the technology, but we decided we’re not going to do that. We’re going to help our retailers. Our marketing team has come up with a lot of social assets the retailers can use.”

Second, Twisted X decided it wouldn’t pare service to its retailers. “With almost all the companies doing furloughs and layoffs, we took a different approach. We said we’re not going to lay off anybody. We said we’re going to add extra staff in customer service. We added 25 more.”

Twisted X granted extended payment terms to its retailers. “Our retailers are having a hard time with cash flow. They were looking for brands that support them."

Twisted X boosted its inventory 25%-30%, Reddy says. “We decided being privately held, we can take those chances. We said we’re going to increase our inventory. We tell our retailers you don’t have to carry inventory, we will.”

Twisted X kept its contract factories going. “The factories are happy, because of the brands called in March and canceled the order. We said we’re not going to cancel any orders.” The company unveiled a new fall line that “has been accepted very well by the retailers.”

The company didn’t cut staff or benefits. It secured a payroll protection loan. “Our people are very important; our team is important,” Reddy says. “Our company can’t run without them.”

Evin Sisemore | Texas Motive Solutions

Evin Sisemore was fresh out of college at LSU in 2007 and working in sales for a forklift company when she went out on a service call with a technician. “The funny thing is, the problem with the forklift was that the battery hadn’t been watered.” That may have foreshadowed a career in forklift batteries. Sisemore eventually moved into a job with Interstate Batteries. And when Interstate decided to sell its unit that sold premium Interstate-branded Hawker forklift batteries, Sisemore had already thrown her hat into the ring as a prospective buyer, having seen the indications.

In 2018, she launched Texas Motive Solutions in Fort Worth as a Hawker distributor, taking out a loan to start up. Her husband, Justin, a Fort Worth lawyer, coached her in the startup, which included picking new employees from Interstate. “I feel my strength is finding talent,” Sisemore says. “I knew we had the right people in place.” The couple had two months to put the company together, including infrastructure, fleet, uniforms, safety protocols, benefits, staff, and a culture. Texas Motive’s motto is “Christ, Family, Service.” “The coolest part about being a privately owned company is you can choose what kind of morals and values you want to instill in the company.” 

During COVID-19, Sisemore added to her staff, now 39, and took out a payroll protection loan. “Our demand went up immediately because, luckily, we’re an essential business. Our batteries are what power the forklifts and pallet jacks to get your food to grocery stores [and] move it from manufacturing facilities to distribution centers.”

Billy Rosenthal | Standard Meat Co.

Billy Rosenthal had retired from his family’s long-held Standard Meat Co. several years after it was acquired in 1983 by Consolidated Foods, when Outback Steakhouse asked him to consider supplying steaks. The rebooted Standard Meat started up in Fort Worth, serving 30 Outbacks. “My objective was to earn 25% of their business,” Rosenthal says. As of five years ago, Standard Meat supplied 100% of Outbacks – 700 today. Last year, Rosenthal and his family bought out a 50% partner.

Today, the company is held by Rosenthal; his children, Ashli and Ben; longtime business partner Howard Katz; and a few small investors. Ashli and Ben Rosenthal became co-presidents last year and run the company today. Ashli Rosenthal’s background is in marketing; her brother’s in finance. Today, Standard Meat has a diverse business in meal kits, retail, and restaurants. Its Dallas plant is dedicated to the Outback business. The largest customer of the Fort Worth plant is Hello Fresh, a popular meal kit business.

During COVID-19, Outback’s business fell 75% early on. “It started to come back almost immediately because they were so prepared for curbside and delivery,” Rosenthal said in mid-August. “It slowly built back up to where it’s now, down 10% or 15%.” Hello Fresh’s business, meanwhile, more than doubled, Rosenthal says. The company won a payroll protection loan but decided against accepting it. “We’re paying our loans; we didn’t need the PPP.”

Energy Category Winner

Ryan Vinson | MineralWare

MineralWare co-founder Ryan Vinson continues to spin new energy companies from the digital foundation he launched MineralWare — a platform for managing minerals, royalties, and nonoperating working interests — from in 2014.

Vinson and his partner, Larry Brogdon, a partner in the Four Sevens Oil Co. in Fort Worth, have targeted early 2021 as the launch date for Energy Domain, an app investors can use to buy and sell minerals and royalties. Vinson says Energy Domain likely has significantly greater potential than MineralWare. And he and Brogdon are working on a third company they’ve kept under wraps.

“We’re bringing the latest technology to the forefront,” says Vinson, the former head of oil and gas advisory at Bessemer Trust, who quit his job to launch MineralWare. The firm grew quickly in an arcane space not known for transparency, outgrowing office space and becoming the largest tenant in the Fort Worth Club Tower. Last year, the company triggered an employee bonus of up to 50% of salary by reaching a monthly revenue target of $250,000.

Even with negative oil prices earlier this year, MineralWare saw virtually no attrition among account holders at just 1.14%, Vinson says. Through the MineralWare platform, the firm has uncovered $2.9 million in account holders’ revenue in suspense in the last six months, Vinson says. “We have a 93% success rate in finding revenue that’s in suspense.”

The firm has 30 employees and avoided layoffs during COVID-19, Vinson says. Like most other EOE finalists this year, Vinson says MineralWare sought and received a payroll protection loan. “We went back and forth on it; we decided to take it, considering the economic impact.”

Vinson co-founded the firm with ex-TCU Energy Institute associate director John Baum. Brogdon came on later as an investor; he and Vinson subsequently bought out Baum and are partners in MineralWare, Energy Domain, and the third company.

Using the Energy Domain app, you’ll be able to find a property; perform due diligence; send messages between buyer and seller; get alerts on properties of interest; negotiate transactions securely; and use simple buttons like “accept,” “reject,” and “counter”; and use a “buy now” feature to execute a deal immediately.

Energy Domain has integrated the past six years of MineralWare data, including well, permit, production, and oil and gas check stub and revenue data.

“Historically, a lot of the oil and gas companies are really behind on their technology,” Vinson says. “You think of Zillow. You can pull up what a house is worth on your phone. Essentially, that’s our vision, to bring more transparency to the acquisition and divestiture space.”

Todd Fitzgerald | ROXO Energy

Todd Fitzgerald and his ROXO co-founders, J.W. Wilson and James Vess, have been on a nice run since launching the Fort Worth oil and gas firm in 2015. The trio, former TCU football players, acquired 5,300 acres in the Permian Basin. In 2018, they sold the leasehold and surface rights to Murchison Oil and Gas when oil was at about $65 per barrel, and retained the minerals.

There are now 40 wells on the acreage today, including four uncompleted, from no wells at the time of the sale. “We are cash-flowing that position,” Fitzgerald says. The acreage had about 100 wells within five miles around it; today, there’s about 250, Fitzgerald says. The group, which remains backed by Vortus Investments L.L.C.,  is on the lookout for similar assets, and also wants to work in renewable assets.

“We are an oil and gas company; that’s our history,” Fitzgerald says. “But we realize there’s a transition that’s coming down the road, and that’s going to transition into renewable. It’s going to happen. You need oil and gas to get there.” Fitzgerald, who has a finance background, launched his entrepreneurial journey with an athletics company he, his brother, and their parents started. He moved into energy, working in the backroom of a company and moving up to chief financial officer before starting ROXO with friends Wilson and Vess.

Health Care & Life Sciences Category Winner

Dr. Jawad Qureshi | Retina Center of Texas

Dr. Jawad Qureshi built himself some foundation for a career in medicine with an entrepreneurial flair. Qureshi grew up in Denton, where his father was a cardiologist. He attended Duke University, where he double-majored in biology and economics, becoming interested in business alongside medicine. He remained at Duke for medical school and an MBA. “The thought process was originally that I was going to manage a medical center,” he says.

Qureshi was accepted into Johns Hopkins University for his residency in ophthalmology. “A number of academic sites had a chairman who worked from Johns Hopkins, so I was kind of following on that plan.” Qureshi and his wife, Dr. Aaleya Koreishi, also a finalist in the 2020 Entrepreneur of Excellence competition, returned later to North Texas and family, when they learned they were having twins.

Qureshi ultimately started his own practice, Retina Center of Texas, starting in Grapevine in a small office. The practice today has offices in Fort Worth, Plano, and Dallas, and is preparing to move the Grapevine office into a new clinic and practice headquarters in Southlake this fall.

The 10,400-square-foot building – Retina Center’s new home base — will include a clinic, management, billing, and support services. A third physician — a subspecialist in tumors and ocular oncology — is joining the practice in October. And a fourth physician will join next summer, Qureshi says.

Qureshi brought his broad interests to bear in opening the Fort Worth office, looking to create a medical facility that would optimize certain treatments in ophthalmology, such as laser treatments and diabetic retinopathy. He bought a site on Fort Worth’s West Side, off of Interstate 30, West Vickery Boulevard, Montgomery Street, and the future Chisholm Trail Parkway entry. Qureshi and a developer financed the $16.5 million building.

A group of 18 physicians built the $7 million surgery center in the building. Qureshi and Koreishi committed to locating their offices in the building as tenants, taking the building to 70% full. Texas Health Resources subsequently bought 50% of the value of the surgery center and rebranded it THR. “They just simply have more purchasing power, and they’re able to bring efficiency to the surgery center by decreasing costs,” Qureshi says.

The surgery center is also in the middle of a continued trend in health care to push more surgeries into outpatient centers and out of more expensive acute care hospitals. “We do total knees now” at the surgery center, Qureshi says. “It saves [the insurance companies] thousands of dollars.”

Elyse Dickerson | Eosera

Elyse Dickerson’s Eosera, a Fort Worth biotech firm she and partner Joe Griffin launched in 2017 with its first products, a line for compacted earwax called Earwax MD, rocketed out to a fast start. It has chainwide distribution in CVS and Rite Aid stores, and its products are sold on Amazon. “In January, everything was on fire,” Dickerson, Eosera’s CEO, says. She and Griffin had also received word from Walmart that the company would take its products in September this year. Eosera grew its warehouse and manufacturing space in a south Fort Worth industrial complex to close to 20,000 square feet from 12,000 square feet, brought in two more management positions and seven more manufacturing associates. “Then Walmart called and said we got you confused with another manufacturer; we will work you in for 2021. This was after we built 100,000 products for them.” The company had to quickly adapt, and it laid off the seven new manufacturing associates. "You want the good, the bad and the ugly?" she says.

Then COVID-19 hit. Sales grew during March and April; Eosera received a payroll protection program loan as a hedge. Sales continued strong during the summer, Dickerson says. “People continue to not want to be going out of their houses to their doctors. They’re searching for at-home remedies.” Eosera secured a new 418-store East Coast retailer, Stop & Shop, that it will begin shipping to in October. Eosera also is preparing this fall to launch an earbud cleaning kit and a new kit expanding its Wax Blaster MD irrigation system.

The company’s expectation for Walmart is national distribution, Dickerson says, but that’s not clear yet. “This is just sort of the ebb and flow of being able to pivot,” she says. “That’s what we’ve been focused on — control what we can control and work around everything else.”

Dr. Aaleya Koreishi | Cornea Consultants of Texas

Dr. Aaleya Koreishi doesn’t remember wanting to be anything in her life other than a physician. She’s had a few role models. “My father is actually a retina specialist. My mom was a pediatrician. They’re both retired now. My twin sister’s a pathologist. My little sister and her husband are pathologists; my little sister is a family medicine public health doctor. And my brother is an ophthalmologist. And my cousins are doctors, too. It runs in the family.” And her husband, Dr. Jawad Qureshi, also a finalist in this year’s Entrepreneur of Excellence, is a physician. She found ophthalmology while in medical school at the University of Michigan. Koreishi and her husband, a retina specialist who grew up in Denton, both went to work for large groups in the DFW area.

Her husband left and started his own practice. Once that was established, Koreishi in 2013 started her own Cornea Consultants of Texas, with offices in Arlington, Fort Worth, and Plano. The practice, which has two physicians, probably will look for a fourth location within the next four years or so. “Before you hire another doctor, you want the one you just hired to have a good base so they don’t feel like their revenue stream is getting taken from, split to another person,” Koreishi says. “I like the idea of being a small company, as opposed to joining. There’s a lot of selling to private equity and that kind of thing lately. And I’m really not interested in that. I like to be in charge of our destiny.”

Hospitality Category Winner

Jon Bonnell | Bonnell’s Restaurant Group

Jon Bonnell’s influences in food go back to growing up in a family of cooks. “My mom and dad both loved to cook,” he says. “They were always entertaining. Whether it’s mom trying to throw a fancy dinner party or dad cooking at the lake house. My mom could cook anything she had a recipe for. She had really classic technique. My dad was more seat-of-the-pants approach, like ‘Let’s cook a whole pig.’”

Hunting and fishing led to “cooking from the outdoors.” And “every Monday was cook-with-mom night. She wanted to make sure we really understand what cooking was, from start to finish. We would start by going to the fish market or the meat market or the grocery store.”

Bonnell graduated from Vanderbilt University, intending to go into teaching and getting a job in Dallas as a middle and high school math and science teacher for two years. “Cooking is really just taking biology and applying physics and chemistry.”

His first summer off, “I didn’t know what to do with myself.” Bonnell found himself drawn to The Food Network, which had just started on cable TV. One of the chefs he saw had attended culinary school. He started researching culinary schools, and he and his dog took off to visit three. “I didn’t tell my family. It was just me and the dog.”

The New England Culinary Institute offered what he calls “the best advice ever”: Before diving into culinary school, work for an independent restaurant, experience the hours and work flow. He spent the summer working at the grand Riviera in Dallas. “First day, I was just plating salads and desserts. Before you know it, you’re learning how to torch a crème brûlée. Then there’s a job nobody wants to do, so I was cleaning calamari.”

In 1997-98, he attended the New England institute. He did a six-month externship in Vermont while in school and, in the second, worked for the famed Brennan’s in New Orleans’ French Quarter. Back in Fort Worth, Bonnell got a job working for the Randall’s Gourmet Cheesecake Co., a downtown fine dining restaurant, where he met another employee, Ed McOwen. Bonnell and McOwen started Bonnell’s Fine Texas Cuisine a few years later and today are the partners in all four restaurants in the Bonnell’s group, including Waters Restaurant downtown and two Buffalo Bros Pizza Wings & Subs.

Bonnell and McOwen added catering, including a stint as caterers to the clubs and suites at TCU football games. “Five thousand fans within three hours,” Bonnell says. But the experience proved valuable when COVID-19 hit. COVID-19 wiped out Bonnell’s robust catering orders virtually overnight. But to keep the restaurants afloat and as many people employed as possible, Bonnell and McOwen switched to $40 family four-packs. 

Fans of Bonnell — long known for generosity to community causes and helping fellow restaurateurs — packed the Southwest Boulevard frontage road outside Bonnell’s for the daily 4 p.m. drive-through. Bonnell’s restaurants are operating at 50% capacity for dine-in service. Some small caterings are beginning to come in.

“Restaurants write a business plan based on Friday and Saturday nights full,” he says. “You hope you do pretty well during the week, and then Friday and Saturday night, you pack the house. Right now, even if they said go, 100%, people aren’t ready.”

Brent Johnson | Rio Mambo, The Rim

Here’s one for the COVID-19 annals: Sales at Brent Johnson’s restaurants have done better with curbside and takeout, and limited dine-in service, than they did before. “Fortunately, I’ve got drive-through and curbside in my background,” says Johnson, who opened his first Rio Mambo in Fort Worth’s Cityview Center on Sept. 11, 2001, and today has five Rio Mambos and one new restaurant concept called The Rim. “I was familiar with some of the behaviors.” Johnson used cones and orange Home Depot buckets to convert his restaurant parking lots to drive-throughs, letting the landlords figure out later. His daughter turned the switch onto an online ordering system the company already had in the works. Johnson put off proceeding with a couple of restaurants he was planning. “COVID didn’t necessarily stop us,” he says, “but the impact on so many other operations gave us pause. I’ve taken a wait-and-see position because there’s so many new areas that are available to us, where I don’t have to hang a Vent-A-Hood or cut concrete.” 

Johnson’s already scouting some potential new locations. “My approach is probably way too honest. We show them, this is what our operation looks like. Here’s what our business plan looks like. You don’t want us to fail.”

Nafees Alam | DRG Concepts

Nafees Alam happened into restaurants by accident. After earning his bachelor’s in information science from the University of Texas at Arlington, he went to work for a tech company and was visiting a friend in Atlanta where he ended up sitting next to a Waffle House executive at a baseball game. Fast forward, Alam, who had no interest in restaurants, worked his way up the company to a portfolio of Waffle Houses he ran in Dallas. Dallas restaurateur Mike Hoque recruited Alam 15 years ago, and the two co-founded DRG Concepts, which opened and today runs Dallas Fish Market, Dallas Chop House, Chop House Burger, and Wild Salsa, restaurants that reinvigorated a dormant piece of downtown Dallas’ Main Street. DRG also opened Chop House Burger and Wild Salsa in downtown Fort Worth’s City Place and recently opened the Wicked Butcher steakhouse in The Sinclair hotel in downtown Fort Worth. All of the restaurants except Chop House Burger in Dallas are temporarily closed due to COVID-19.

Alam, who later earned his MBA at SMU and is DRG’s chief executive, says Waffle House’s attention to detail stuck with him. “Their attention to detail means you are chasing every dollar that comes through your door. Every cost line, every revenue line.”

Waffle House’s cultlike customer experience has stuck with him, too. “Everybody knows you by your name.” DRG is watching the COVID-19 data in hopes of starting to reopen restaurants one by one beginning in September or October, Alam says. It’s renovating some of its older restaurants. It’s also used its Chop House Burger in Dallas to serve meals to first responders at local hospitals. “We’re past the initial shock; we have a plan.”

Professional Services Category Winner

Red Sanders | Red Productions

Red Sanders likes to say he could have moved to Los Angeles after he graduated from TCU, but a mentor suggested he stay in Fort Worth where he could make a bigger impact. Sanders, who started his first successful entertainment company at 14, has combined his entrepreneurial spirit, media expertise, and love of visual storytelling to create one of the premier media companies in North Texas. His Red Productions, founded in 2005, does commercials and brand films. Red Entertainment, which he founded in 1995, develops original content, including TV series and feature films.

In February 2019, Sanders opened a big new production space in the South Main Village, moving from Foch Street in the West Seventh corridor. It’s a goal he set 10 years earlier when the company moved onto Foch Street.

“We wanted to build something for the creative community to have a space to work in and create in,” says Sanders, whose companies occupy just one part of the backlot. “We didn’t want it to feel like people were coming into Red Productions. People can pop in if they’re in town shooting a film or if they’re starting a new creative business. Or if you need to rent a studio for the day. What I’ve always loved about Fort Worth is the community feel in our industry. It doesn’t feel competitive. There’s so much demand for quality video content at all levels. Since we built an open backlot space, seeing all the creators has been inspiring.”

Most recently, Sanders announced he’s executive producer and creator of an eight-to-10-episode TV series set to debut on Chip and Joanna Gaines’ new Magnolia Network, which launches early next year. The series will feature the Fort Worth entrepreneur Jonathan Morris, who will interview entrepreneurs nationally. Magnolia is a new collaboration with Discovery and will replace the DIY Network, a Discovery property.

“As we move down the road we want to have multiple TV series going on at the same time,” says Sanders, who pitched 10 ideas to Discovery before they gravitated to Morris.

The company has made multiple feature films, but “feature films are really hard to make. We started looking into unscripted TV.”

During COVID-19, Red has offered discounted livestream packages for nonprofits and businesses. The company also created a content automation platform that companies can use to create social media commercials from their own creative components. “They can all have their own unique logins. It doesn’t have to go through us. They don’t need to do video editing. For $20 or $60, they get this commercial. What might have been a $5,000 spot might cost $50. It allows them flexibility without having to have the knowledge of how to edit automation software.”

Susan Semmelmann | Susan Semmelmann Interiors

Susan Semmelmann, in the interiors business for 25 years, left a partnership and launched her own brand in March 2019. She signed up 11 jobs within a few months and, today, has 38. Semmelmann is under construction on a new design center at 4372 W. Vickery Blvd., due to open in December. “We have all of our interior selections done now, and it’s gorgeous. Lots of chandeliers and white marble floors. We did full turnkey finishings. I wanted it to feel more residential. I wanted you to walk in and actually see it as if you were in a home setting. It’s going to be very inviting and very unique.” Semmelmann’s also started the Susan Semmelmann Interiors Foundation. Her causes include a Wish with Wings, for which she does the décor for the nonprofit’s annual Butterfly Wishes gala. Semmelmann and her husband built homes together for a dozen years and were in an interiors partnership for 18 years. 

Home improvement has surged amid COVID-19, with more people at home, and Semmelmann says her business has benefited, even though she says she’s had difficulty securing products on a timely basis. “Our business is at an all-time high right now. We are getting calls daily for us to go in and renovate, design, furnish — updates, upgrades, everything.”

Travis Patterson | Patterson Law Group

Fort Worth’s Patterson Law Group was set up well to handle the disruption caused by COVID-19. The personal injury firm built its case management software over 20 years. It’s paperless, client can access case files from their phones, and the firm built in ability to have virtual meetings long ago, Travis Patterson, principal, says. “Our firm embraced technology a long time ago, and sometimes, I probably drove people crazy with how much I wanted them to learn the technology and to be flexible, but it came in handy. When the government shut down everything that first time around, we went home, and we were ready to go. We didn’t miss a beat, and then the rest of the industry had to scramble and catch up.” Patterson, who earned his business and law degrees from the University of Texas, says COVID-19 created a dip in new cases, but the firm and its 20-plus lawyers and staff have stayed busy working on cases it started within the last two years. “We’ve stayed busy throughout all of this.”

The firm has expanded into its first new market, San Antonio, by signing on a local lawyer familiar with the market. Patterson says the firm wants that to start expansion into other Texas cities. “You kind of think of a wheel — you have the spokes of a wheel and a hub. We think of Fort Worth as our hub. We are locating really good lawyers in other markets around Texas who are starting silo offices for us.”

Real Estate Category Winner

Michael Crain | Williams Northern Crain

Michael Crain continues to build his entrepreneurial resume, most recently joining the newly merged Fort Worth real estate firm Williams Northern Crain as a partner with Ty Williams and Will Northern. Crain’s also the District 3 director for the Fort Worth City Councilman Brian Byrd, continuing his interests in public affairs.

And he and his wife, Joanna, are expanding their Fort Worth nonprofit Foodie Philanthropy, which partners with chefs to raise money for a selected charity each year, an idea they originally launched when they lived in Beijing, where Crain was chief of staff at the U.S. Embassy under President George W. Bush. In 2020, Foodie Philanthropy raised $55,000 for The Jordan Elizabeth Harris Foundation for suicide awareness, outreach and research, and the 2021 beneficiary is the Taste Project nonprofit restaurant. Foodie Philanthropy, in its sixth year in Fort Worth, has raised about $150,000 for five charities.

The well-traveled Crain, who holds a bachelor’s in business from Texas A&M, law degree from Texas Wesleyan University, and MBA from Rutgers, hit the road for Washington after graduating from A&M. “I’d always had a fascination with politics,” he says. “Our government’s not perfect. It’s not designed to be perfect; it’s run by people who are imperfect at their core.”

He sees his experience in politics — advance for the White House and Commerce Department, U.S. Embassy in Beijing under the Bush Administration, and senior managing director of the 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee — through the same lens as he views entrepreneurship. “Everything can be better,” he says. After the Bush Administration, Crain worked several years as a consultant in Beijing before he and his family moved back to Texas in 2014, where Crain worked as a public policy manager for Uber before he went into real estate in 2015.

The Crains had a months-long stint as a franchise pizza restaurant owner in 2018 in Fort Worth’s high-end Left Bank that ended amid management problems and a new development that wasn’t generating enough traffic. “I would say biggest thing I probably learned is, people are either your greatest asset or your greatest liability,” Crain says. 

In bringing Foodie Philanthropy to Fort Worth, the Crains are pitching chefs and restaurant owners with a different way to give. A community panel selects a charity each year as beneficiary from applications. Chefs are asked to donate tables of 10 in their restaurants with a fixed menu and wine pairings. The tables are sold to raise money, with the meals served up on a single night each year.

With galas off the table because of COVID-19, Crain believes Foodie Philanthropy could pick up more steam. “You see a lot of nonprofits struggling because they’ve had this [gala] model, but now you can’t have events.”

Branson Blackburn | Trinity Real Estate Investment Services

Branson Blackburn and several partners co-founded Trinity Real Estate Investment Services in 2017, specializing in investment sales of single-tenant, commercial net lease properties nationally. The firm has done $1.1 billion in total volume through 730 transactions, including $370 million in closings this year. The firm’s listings are typically retail buildings under lease by tenants such as Dollar General, 7-Eleven, and Walgreens, with time remaining on the leases. “We have been very blessed in that the assets we sell are all essential retailers,” Blackburn says. “The asset we have done the majority of our business in has done well during COVID. A lot of investors have flocked to these investments.” Blackburn, who earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Abilene Christian University, worked several years for KW Net Lease Advisors before launching Trinity REIS. The firm today has six partners and 19 associates. The firm wants eventually to grow into a national footprint, Blackburn says.

Luke Syres | League Real Estate

Luke Syres and his business partners, Matt Lewis and Jeff Anderson, friends, came up with the idea for League Real Estate over lunch at Central Market. “I’ll never forget it,” Syres says. The three founded the residential real estate agency in Fort Worth in 2017, offering agents — and clients — a range of digital and print collateral choices, including still photo, video and drone photography, custom social campaigns, and direct mail. Today, it also has offices in Johnson and Parker counties. Since inception, Syres estimates the firm has done $500 million in sales volume, $160 million this year. Syres previously worked for a large independent brokerage in Texas in IT and marketing. He met Anderson, an agent, there. Lewis, the firm’s broker, was selling a business and looking for the next thing.

The firm today has 60 agents. The three one-third partners focused on a collaborative culture, eschewing, for one, publication of internal sales numbers. The firm has a marketing unit that supports its agents, boosts listings, and creates consistency, Syres says. “We pay for all of it upfront for the agent. They reimburse us at a discounted rate at closing if the property sells. If it doesn’t sell, we just eat that as a marketing cost.”

Rogers Healy | Rogers Healy and Associates Real Estate

Rogers Healy says his entrepreneurial story is straight-forward enough: “lovable loser figured it out in real estate.” After a short and unsuccessful run at trying to become an actor in Los Angeles, Healy went full time into real estate at 23. “I failed at acting,” he says. “There was really nothing else left. I didn’t pay attention in college.” While at SMU, he helped friends arrange apartment rentals. “I was a Realtor by proxy.” The firm has three offices today, a few hundred agents, and placed among the nation’s fastest-growing companies from 2017 to 2019 on the Inc. 5000. COVID-19 has prompted Healy to review his business model, de-emphasizing face time in the office. “The cream always rises to the top, and right now, I think people have something to prove to themselves. On the residential front, it’s been crazy; it’s gangbusters. People want to be home; they want space.” Even though real estate activity has been strong through COVID-19, Healy worries the economy isn’t being tracked by surging stock prices. “Literally, it doesn’t make sense on paper that our economy is the strongest it’s ever been.”

Residential Construction Category Winner

Robert Whittaker | Magnolia Fence & Patio

Robert Whittaker saw his 2019 revenue drop 22% from the mark he hit the prior year. But that was the plan. “It was definitely strategic. We intended on not growing anything other than process and our profits.”

The reason for the repositioning at the premium fence and outdoor company: “I woke up [one day] and realized we were not working for an end user that week,” Whittaker says. Rather, Magnolia had let itself move too far into working as a subcontractor. “People were subcontracting us out; we were not actually touching our end user.”

Magnolia has now rebalanced at 60% working for homeowners and 40% subcontract, compared to the opposite the prior year, Whittaker says. Revenue is the same through mid-August as it was for all of 2019, and “we have four months left.” Working for end users is more profitable than as a subcontractor, but that wasn’t the point, Whittaker says.

“You can become profitable scaling anything,” Whittaker says. “The objective was to control our brand. Every single person who subcontracts us out has got the same objective we do. We’re happy to work for those people. But we also want to stay in front of the purchaser.”

Managing through COVID-19 has been touch-and-go. “At first, with everybody stuck at home, I was slightly concerned that people would be doing their own projects,” Whittaker says. But supply chain disruptions meant difficulty getting materials for the DIYer.

“I’m one of the largest in the business,” he says. “I buy way out. I have a $100,000 commitment that I won’t see for six, seven weeks. People were almost forced to go with me because they couldn’t get the materials.”

But the upside, at least: “People were at home, and people wanted to do home projects, whether or not they paid someone else.”

Magnolia has experienced no confirmed cases of COVID-19 among its employees, Whittaker says. “COVID scared the heck out of us. We run a lot of guys. We tend to be as safe as possible. We work in close proximity. We try not to oversize crews, and we don’t bump crews around. We don’t share employees. We’re blessed because we work outdoors. That helps substantially. Our guys are obviously very conscious and aware of being safe.” 

Jason Webber | JWC General Contractors

Jason Webber has done what few entrepreneurs have pulled off during COVID-19: He launched a new business. Webber, owner of JWC General Contractors of Southlake, a firm he founded in January 2018, in July started ADH Disaster Restoration alongside, selling fire and flood mitigation. “I think we can ride our reputation through JWC,” Webber says. Webber and his wife, Jaime Webber, owner of the Floral Bar in Roanoke, are both entrepreneurs. The couple also owns Webber Family Investments, a real estate company they started in 2019 to buy multifamily property; the couple is in due diligence on a townhome in Roanoke. The Webbers also plan to start a nonprofit in 2021 that will invest in or build affordable housing. “The heart has always been to give back to people,” Webber says. JWC has 30 employees today, retaining everyone through COVID-19 and hiring more. “I told the sales guys, don’t worry about your job; I’m not laying anybody off,” Webber says. “It kept the morale where there was a lot of uncertainty.”

Webber says he plans conservatively — “I’m a worst-case scenario guy” — but the company continues to beat its goals. In JWC’s first year, he wanted to build a $1 million backlog within a couple of months. He ended up with a $3 million to $4 million pipeline the first year and $1.9 million in revenue. In the second year, JWC had a $6 million-plus pipeline and $4.9 million in revenue. This year, he expects $20 million in revenue. 

Shayne Morrissey | Morrissey Home Solutions

Shayne Morrissey had a good model — his remodeler dad — for an entrepreneurial career in designing interiors. “I was one of those really lucky people who knew what I wanted to do at a really young age,” he says. “My dad owned a small-scale residential remodeling company. I would help him during the summers. I was interested in construction but much more in interior design.” With a BFA in interior design from the Art Institute of Dallas, in 2015, Morrissey and his father formed Morrissey Home Solutions, a construction company with design services integrated into the fee structure. His father retired in 2018, and Morrissey and his sister run the business today.

The company reached $3.5 million in revenue last year, and its goal was $4.5 million this year. During the summer, with COVID-19 disrupting the business, Morrissey changed gears. “This is our plan for 2021,” he said of the 2020 goal. He kept on his five employees, but everybody agreed to take 20% pay cuts. Morrissey also obtained a payroll protection program loan.

As COVID-19 progressed, Morrissey saw construction revenue drop 50%, but furniture revenue grew 200%. “I think it’s because people are spending a lot of time [at home], and they want to live in well-appointed spaces. Maybe somebody doesn’t want to live in a chaotic remodel right now, but they want to make changes in their spaces.”

Tech & E-commerce Category Winner

Rishi Khanna | ISHIR

Rishi Khanna’s ISHIR IT outsourcing firm has seen its growth rocket, doubling revenue in 2019 from the $2.5 million it reached in 2018. The 2019 mark was up 71% over three years, good for a repeat appearance on this year’s Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies. “It’s going to be even crazier in 2020,” Khanna, who spent more than 100 days in hotels in 2019, predicted in an interview with Fort Worth Inc. late last year. Khanna probably wasn’t foreseeing 2020’s brand of crazy.

“This year started off pretty strong, and then we got hit by COVID end of February,” Khanna says. “We had to do some adjustments in the organization with the amount of work we foresaw happening.”

ISHIR on March 3 let its employees begin working from home, earlier than a statewide order. Khanna traveled to India and Hong Kong in January, and February to Australia, and witnessed their aggressive early responses to COVID-19. “I felt we needed to keep our people safe. We didn’t necessarily need to be at the office every day.”

Demand in March and April was “super slow. People are still getting used to the changes that are happening. May, more activity. June and July, we started building a new pipeline. The pipeline we had prior to the pandemic, everyone put everything on hold.”

ISHIR laid off one employee, and everybody else took a pay cut, Khanna says. The company also obtained a payroll protection program loan.

In the spring, the company initiated fresh conversations with customers. “We have seen a lot more companies figuring out how they need to look at the future and what the future holds for them.”

Of the company’s business segments, travel and retail are down, health care dropped, but “then picked up,” Khanna says. e-commerce and logistics are up. “Anywhere we saw customers looking to leverage automation and leverage artificial intelligence is where we saw a little bit of uptick.”

One client in the business of luxury travel and events like weddings “figured out their technology is more relevant to real estate,” Khanna says. Where the company would use its virtual reality technology to provide tours of a wedding space or yacht, “they realized their technology could be used to provide a view of a house” for sale.

Another ISHIR client, focused previously on restaurant loyalty programs, revisited its offering and began offering it to the medical and wellness industry for uses such as communicating with patients, Khanna says. “They felt they were going to lose a lot of customer base in the short term, and they needed to be industries that were not going to go away.”

Nikole Dickman | Envoy Managed Services, LLC

Nikole Dickman had been a longtime corporate finance manager when her company announced she’d need to move to Atlanta. “It would be a lot of time on the road,” she says. “I had a really good support system around me.” So, she took her severance and started a consulting company in 2014. The next year, with her ex-employer’s tech team under mandatory relocation, Dickman started Envoy Managed Services, selling tech services back to the company. Envoy has two sides: traditional IT and managed services, working for a range of clients, from clients to her former multinational employer, with 260 job sites. Envoy also installs wire and wired systems for large buildings.

Envoy has seven employees and a bench of contractors. Dickman doesn’t have an IT background, so she hired it. “The majority of our tech team from our old employer all came from day one.” Through COVID-19, Envoy has been helping its clients make the transition to a hybrid environment, accelerating some projects. The company’s old employer pared its budget coming into 2020, and “we have very little contractual revenue related to the company we used to work for,” Dickman says. She views it as a “silver lining.” “Given all of the infrastructure projects, given what we’re doing on the project side, I would like to see us surpass the revenue in our best year 2016 and 2017 with our old employer.”

Gary Tonniges, Jr. | TriQuest Technologies, Inc.

Gary Tonniges started TriQuest Technologies in 1997, looking to combine the background and integrity of a certified public account with an information technology company. His view: The company should approach IT problem-solving for clients with the same fiduciary duty as a CPA. Tonniges is a CPA and a self-professed lover of technology. “That was really the essence of TriQuest, to be that company that you could trust even though you didn’t understand what they were doing,” Tonniges says.

Tonniges started the company out of his pickup and a plastic box that contained company files. “I had two customers, and I would go out on-site to the first customer and then occasionally go to Dallas to the other customer.” The company has since outgrown three offices, and in 2005, Tonniges bought a building off the Trinity River near Interstate 30 and has remade it into a modern headquarters. The company has 10 employees today, down from 14 in March. “The COVID stuff has knocked down a lot of the project work that we do.” The company shed one position when automation replaced the need for a clerk, and three left to take other jobs.

What COVID-19 knocked down is beginning to get back up, Tonniges says. “A lot of the discretionary projects and things that were postponed are coming back on slate. In IT, you never really get out of something; you just delay it.”