Meet Our 2021 Entrepreneurs of Excellence

Fort Worth Inc.’s annual entrepreneur class is in, and it’s laden with stories of persistence and can-do in uncertain times.

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Fort Worth Inc.’s 2021 Entrepreneur of Excellence class is chock-full of stories of persistence. These 20 entrepreneurs are in commercial and residential construction, consumer and durable goods, health care, hospitality, professional services, real estate, and tech and e-commerce.

This is Fort Worth Inc.’s fifth annual Entrepreneur of Excellence edition. As in past years, 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 this summer, choosing finalists and winners in each of eight 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 Nov. 11 at a gala 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.

Commercial Construction

category winner | Michael Freeman - Steele & Freeman

Michael Freeman joined his father’s construction company, Steele & Freeman, in 1992 after graduation from Texas A&M. In 2005, his father retired, and Freeman, at 35, bought the company. With $34.2 million in sales in 1999, the company grew to $175.3 million in 2020 and is on track this year for more than $250 million in revenue, according to the company. Over the years, the Fort Worth firm has changed its model to construction management and long-term partnerships with clients, rather than pursuing traditional bid work. Much of its work is from repeat clients. The firm implemented 23 “Fundamentals” that comprise the “Steele & Freeman Way.” One of Freeman’s favorite fundamentals: “Ride for the Brand. We are successful because of people like you who have been dedicated to our work. You are an ambassador of the Steele & Freeman family. Continue our legacy and enhance our reputation.” Steele & Freeman has been recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of America’s 5,000 fastest-growing companies. It has also received the Aggie 100 award five times as one of the 100 fastest-growing Aggie-owned or -led businesses in the world.

category finalist | Brandon Flowers - WeatherShield Roofing & Sheet Metal

Business has nearly tripled in three years at WeatherShield, a company based in Aledo. Sales reached more than $30 million in 2020, according to the company. “We set a goal this year to become a $100 million-a-year roofing company in three to five years,” says Brandon Flowers, the company’s owner. “With the people, equipment, and tools we have invested in, I’m confident we will obtain our goal.” Flowers attributes the fast scaling to key hires. “We have hired some people that have really let us expand on our capabilities,” he says. “I’ve always known how to put on a roof; I just didn’t always know the kind of support I need to be able to do it on a bigger and bigger scale.” Like others, the company faces numerous near-term challenges as it concerns the supply chain. “We have had to be very creative and proactive in procuring materials to meet project deadlines. We started bulk buying roofing materials back in the spring as soon as word got out that shortages were coming. That, combined with a lot of material prices almost doubling in the past eight to 10 months, has created a very challenging time in our industry. The work is there, we have the people to do it, we just can’t get material when our customers need it all the time.”

Consumer and Durable Goods

category winner | Marcelle LeBlanc - The Velvet Box

Marcelle LeBlanc majored in ornamental horticulture at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, but quickly decided that wasn’t a career for her. She got a job as a buyer of adult DVDs out of school. That “gave me the opportunity to travel all over the U.S. and Europe, which allowed me to see successful retail operations of all kinds.” LeBlanc watched as adult products reached new levels in design and appeal and went mainstream in stores like Brookstone and Spencer’s Gifts. “I asked myself, ‘Why not curate a beautiful store in an upscale location with highly trained people that can answer anyone’s questions?’ I wanted to take on the stigma of seedy 18-and-up pornographic stores and create a luxury, comfortable shopping experience that would change the lives of the people who need it the most, helping people connect with themselves and their partners.” In 2009, LeBlanc founded The Velvet Box in Fort Worth. A legal dispute with her first landlord impeded growth early. Today, the company has five boutiques in North Texas. “We have shown consistent year-over-year growth for all five locations, ranging from 14% to 38%,” LeBlanc says. “The focus on maintaining and growing profitability during expansion of additional stores is proven by the increase from 6% to 15% profitability.” Velvet Box closed 2020 with 1.3% growth, “even though we were shut down for an entire month.” LeBlanc’s growth goals: Expand to 10 stores over the next five years; hone the staff training program, Velvet Box University; and multiply customers’ viewership of its popular online courses by five times.

category finalist | Evin Sisemore - Texas Motive Solutions, LLC

Since graduating LSU in 2007, Evin Sisemore’s career has been about forklift batteries. Her first job was for a forklift battery firm. “I didn’t even know what a forklift was,” she recalls. That led her to a post at Interstate Batteries. And when Interstate decided to sell its unit that sold premium Hawker forklift batteries, Sisemore, who had foreseen the sale and already indicated her interest, took out a loan to start Texas Motive Solutions in 2018 in Fort Worth as a Hawker distributor. Her vision: “Over the last several years, the motive power industry has been relatively stagnant, with little to no changes or improvements. My vision was to truly shake up the industry by providing great improvements in service offerings, industry expertise, account management, and product quality.” In 2019, Motive maintained its target profit margins while increasing sales to nearly $18 million, eclipsing its initial year’s $7.5 million, Sisemore says. The company saw a slight sales increase in 2020 “while also achieving our profitability goals. 2021 has been a great year, where we have already exceeded last year’s performance only eight months into the year, and we are on target to exceed our 2021 revenue goals.” Texas Motive has also grown to more than 40 full-time employees from 18.

category finalist | Vince Puente Sr. - Southwest Office Systems

The typewriter has gone the way of the Dodo bird (that is, extinct), but Southwest Office Systems Inc., which began as a two-person typewriter repair operation in 1964, is alive and well and flourishing despite the hardships of recent times. That is largely due to the innovation and adaptability of leaders such as Vince Puente Sr., who in 1972 joined the company his father founded and eventually became co-owner and president of marketing and sales. Since 2001, SOS has operated debt-free, according to Puente, nothing less than a godsend for any company living through a pandemic. While 2020 was supposed to be the peak of what has become a typical four-year revenue cycle, it became the low point. “The Lord continues to bless us. Even though business life is challenging, even though revenues are down. On the flip side, we’re comfortable in profit,” he says. “We’ve got tons of cash available, and we’ve got, I think for the most part, a happy staff. The one thing that has not changed at all is our level of service to our clients.” The most significant challenge facing SOS now is staffing. Puente, a proud product of the Fort Worth school district, reached beyond the world of document imaging in 2016, being appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott to the Finance Commission of Texas and reappointed in 2018, a term that is set to run through 2024.

Health Care and Life Sciences

category winner | Elyse Dickerson - Eosera

Elyse Dickerson’s Eosera, a fast-growing Fort Worth biotech firm, has watched revenue grow 657% over the last three years, she says. The company was ranked 753rd on the 2021 Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies. Dickerson and partner Joe Griffin started Eosera after losing their jobs at Alcon. The two spent nine months formulating their first product, EARWAX MD, for compacted earwax. Six years later, Eosera has more than 10 products in drugstores nationally that help consumers care for their ears. Supply chain disruptions during COVID caused problems for Eosera. But COVID and the resulting boom of Zoom meetings have boosted sales, Dickerson says, “because everyone is wearing earbuds for work meetings and school. Sticking devices in their ear causes the ear to produce more wax.” A voluntary recall last year related to expiration dates was a hit but reinforced the company’s commitment to safety, Dickerson says. “I knew it was the right thing to do.” Biggest challenges today: widening distribution amid COVID, navigating changing dates for retailers’ annual “resets,” and finding and hiring talent. Eosera is working to get its products into every major retailer and is investing in a bigger, better marketing plan to include more digital and targeting.

category finalist | Mike Williams - ExelHealth dba iReliev & PlayMakar Inc.

Mike Williams is a 25-year veteran of medical-device distribution. He launched ExcelHealth, dba iReliev, in 2014 with a single Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation pain relief system. iReliev now sells more than 30 doctor-recommended and FDA-approved muscle stimulators, hot and cold therapies, massage devices, and topical analgesics directly to consumers worldwide. Williams says the company had grown exponentially, bringing in $6 million in revenue each year since 2018, and he projected revenue to surpass 2020’s sales by $2 million. Consistent growth is the objective for Williams. “I have a strong desire for both my team and me to accomplish meaningful tasks every day. It is what fuels me. I make a point to recalibrate daily based on the activities that contribute to our companies’ sales growth,” he says. “I do my best to always balance the day-to-day operational activities and redirect my activities that are tied to both immediate and more long-term growth.” In 2017, Williams launched a second company, PlayMakar, focusing on movement optimization to help athletes reach their fitness and performance goals. Because the pandemic kept more people at home, the company adapted its supply orders to refocus on products adapted to customers spending more time at home. Ultimately, iReliev’s goal is to become the household name for pain relief and relaxation products.

Hospitality

category winner | Brent Johnson - The RM Restaurant Group

Brent Johnson realized that for him there was more to life than military life. He only discovered his true calling after returning home from the United States Military Academy at West Point and taking a job in the food service industry. “I immediately became attracted to every aspect of the industry. Competitiveness, business strategy, team building, training, development, and creativity,” Johnson says. He eventually became disillusioned with the business-first mentality of the industry and developed a people-first business philosophy. “The fact that I could pay someone to wash dishes for $6 per hour did not mean that I should, no more than charging someone $10 for a margarita when everyone still wins by charging $7.50,” he says. “I wanted to create a company where relationships mattered. First, last, and always.” To pursue his unique business philosophy, Johnson in 2001 opened Rio Mambo, which has become a Tex-Mex restaurant staple. When the pandemic shut down restaurants, Johnson adapted quickly, converting his restaurants to a to-go format by adding drive-thru lanes, online order lanes, and pickup parking spaces. Coming out of the pandemic, RM Restaurant Group experienced a 25% sales increase across its four Rio Mambo locations, including a 60% increase at the Burleson store and more employees than they have ever had. Moving forward, RM Restaurant Group has finished the design phase for a new Rio Mambo at the Hard Rock Casino and Resort in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which has a targeted opening date of spring 2022.

category finalist | Nafees Alam - DRG Concepts

Nafees Alam started young, trading and selling sports cards with his pals while growing up. This entrepreneurial spirit only continued to grow as he went through high school and college, studying computer science and technology. But he was hungry — pun intended — for something more. Alam’s entrepreneurialism met up with a love of food and a “fascination with what makes something especially delicious and enjoyable to a growing market,” he says. Alam’s career started at Nokia, but when an opportunity to step into the hospitality and culinary field presented itself, he took it, a leadership position with Waffle House. While working at Waffle House, he and his business partner Mike Hoque founded DRG Concepts, a “successful and dynamic family of restaurant concepts across diverse cuisines and experiences — all with excellence,” Alam says. DRG Concepts was on track to have its most successful year in 2020, and as the pandemic wanes (we hope), DRG will reopen carefully as the market and business climate allow. Alam says he is grateful his business can withstand the pandemic, and DRG Concepts has built back slowly. “Given the current immediate dynamics and business travel not being quite at the expected levels, we will be timing our next openings over the next six months with careful discernment,” he says. Alam’s immediate goal is to rebuild the team and business to pre-pandemic levels and continue the tradition of bringing fresh and innovative ideas to Dallas and Fort Worth.

Professional Services

category winner | John Loyd - The Wealth Planner

John Loyd, a first-generation college student in his family, remembers asking his father at age 12 what it meant that the “Dow Jones went up or down?” For his 13th birthday, Loyd requested and received a subscription to a money management newsletter. Loyd learned the value of goals when, as a teen, he started a lawncare business and motivated himself with handmade messages such as “Work your,” ahem, tail, “off!” that he posted in his bedroom. At 18, Loyd walked into a Dean Witter (now Morgan Stanley) office and opened an investment account. And when he was in college, he wrote to Warren Buffett, asking for copies of his annual report, including a $5 McDonald’s gift certificate (a Buffett fave) and two $1 bills to cover postage. Buffett signed one of the bills and returned it, “which I have hanging on my office wall.” After college, Loyd, who went on to earn an MBA from Purdue University, was working for a major financial services firm. In 2004, he went out on his own. Loyd recalls attending a meeting in the 1990s when the presenter asked the participants to state why they entered the investment business. “I was shocked to hear many participants say, ‘to make money.’ I started in this business over 20 years ago to help people, and that has never changed. Before I started my own wealth management firm, the company I worked for out of college had sales quotas. I always felt that was a conflict of interest, and it’s one of the reasons I branched off on my own.” 

category finalist | Travis Patterson - Patterson Law Group

Travis Patterson has had some role models for his journey through the law. His father was a lawyer, specializing in real estate but also with a personal injury pre-litigation practice, helping clients resolve cases without filing lawsuits. “I always knew I wanted to be a lawyer like Dad, but I wanted to go to court,” Patterson says. “And that’s what I did.” After graduating law school in 2012 from UT Austin, he worked for firms in Dallas and Fort Worth, which gave him a “crash course” in Texas litigation. “But I wasn’t happy. I wanted to help people, not corporations.” That’s when he, his father, and wife Anna, also a lawyer, decided to go in on a one-stop-shop personal injury firm, representing clients who’ve been injured through “no fault of their own.” “We’ve enjoyed steady growth for a while now. Not just revenue growth, but growth in happiness, fulfillment, capabilities, reach, talent, technology, clients.”

category finalist | Edward Crawford - Coltala Holdings

Edward Crawford and partner Ralph Manning launched Coltala in 2017 and set up its headquarters in Fort Worth. Coltala Holdings is a holding company focused on acquiring majority ownership in stable U.S. businesses in health care, manufacturing, and business services. Its Trüdela Partners is a DFW-based company specializing in home-service repairs and maintenance. Its Choice Health at Home is a leading regional provider of health care services, including home health, hospice, rehabilitation therapy, and chart-coding services. And Coltala’s Revere Packaging is a provider of single-use aluminum and plastic packaging solutions to food service. Crawford holds a bachelor’s degree in English from TCU and two master’s degrees, including an MBA from MIT. Crawford’s mother was an entrepreneur who built a Suzuki violin school from scratch. “She was very mission-oriented in her approach.” Crawford’s grandfather was an Austrian Jew who immigrated to the U.S. after escaping the Holocaust. “I started my first profitable business venture in high school, then started a successful coffee business in Dominican Republic while in the Peace Corps. I also built a business internally at Goldman Sachs and helped build a real estate company in Florida and Texas.” He and Manning “believe in improving the lives of others through business. Our mission and margin approach at Coltala help us both live our mission through building sustainable companies that make a difference in the world.”

Real Estate

category winner | Branson Blackburn - Trinity Real Estate Investment Services

Branson Blackburn started chasing the entrepreneurial dream in high school, selling discounted snacks from his locker and cruising around town on a moped, selling Cutco knives. Ultimately, real estate offered the perfect career path and competitive challenge for the business-minded young man. The first five years in real estate were challenging until Blackburn refocused from multifamily investment properties to the triple net lease sector, taking an interest in the large buyer pool of the dollar store market. Fort Worth-based Trinity Real Estate Investment Services has grown over 50% in revenue each year for the past three years, earning $3.5 million in 2018 and being on track to pull in $11 million for 2021. Trinity has also grown from a team of 12 to 35. The company had its challenges through the pandemic, but business increased. “The majority of the single-tenant net lease properties we sell were designated as ‘essential businesses’ during the pandemic, so activity increased dramatically,” Blackburn says. “Businesses like dollar stores are especially recession-proof and generally fare better during economic crises like the one the pandemic created.” Moving forward, Trinity wants to continue its growth and expansion with a “nationwide footprint” and offices in the key investment regions. “Our goal is to increase our revenue by 50% every year and continue to expand the team. Currently, 3,300 square feet of the space we’ve leased is empty, but we intend to fill that space with new folks by the end of 2023,” Blackburn says. “Committing to Proof [new company headquarters] in this way has been a great reminder for us of the importance of investing in growth opportunities.”

category finalist | Thomas Black - Napali Capital

Dr. Thomas Black, reviewing the past two decades, asserts that his “greatest attributes have arisen from my greatest failures.” An admitted bad high school student, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy after graduating. “My Navy experience awoke in me a sense of responsibility in my future — it was up to me.” He ended up going to college on a full scholarship and then to medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. While in his medical residency program, Black began reading about finance and real estate. After becoming a board-certified emergency physician and being married with children, he began rethinking his future and started buying rent houses as an investment. “After obtaining a portfolio of 10 or so homes, I decided to develop a small 20-unit apartment community, which only served to accelerate participation requests from colleagues and further drive my passion and knowledge.” From this, he founded Napali Capital, resigned from a private physician group, and moved to the DFW area to build Napali. “The guiding principles of the platform were to educate other doctors on private equity investing and to provide investment opportunities in various real estate assets.” In the past six years, the firm has acquired $500 billion in assets under management, he says. “We have grown to over 2,000 investors in 40 states with a stellar track record of returns having raised over $100 million in equity.”

category finalist | Matt Lewis - League Real Estate

The last three years for League Real Estate, broker and partner Matt Lewis says, “have been quite a ride.” At the start of 2019, the Fort Worth firm had just moved to new 2,200-square-foot offices on the West Side from a small co-working space. In January 2022, League will make another move, this time into a 6,000-square-foot home on Interstate 30. They have also added two satellite offices in Johnson and Parker counties to, in the words of Lewis, “better serve our clients and agents in that market.” The Johnson County office has tripled in size in the last six months, Lewis says. In 2019, League had three staff members. League now has 10 staff supporting its 80-plus agents. In 2019, it had 40 agents. League is now the seventh-highest producing brokerage in Fort Worth, Lewis says. “One of our bedrocks was being Fort Worth first, and the city has accepted us and put their trust in us.” Growing up in Midland, Lewis remembers accompanying his dad in checking on the family’s rental properties on Saturdays. Lewis was a double major at Baylor, earning degrees in 2002 in real estate and finance. He quickly obtained his real estate and broker’s licenses and dove into buying investment property.

Residential Construction

category winner | Susan Semmelmann - Susan Semmelmann Interiors Inc.

Susan Semmelmann has spent a career designing and building homes. Nearly three years ago, she launched her own design brand. “I followed God’s lead to go out and give to the world. The freedom to breathe in all life has to offer is where the overwhelming blessing has arisen. I started with just wanting to do what I love to do with my clients, share and give to others. It quickly escalated into a full-blown business that has grown exponentially tenfold.” She started with a design client referred by a friend, “and it quickly turned into 11 jobs within three months, and now we are servicing over 60 projects, full turnkey homes, with 10 awaiting to construction plans.” Semmelmann started with five employees and now has 15 and is “hiring as we speak.” Semmelmann is building a design center on Fort Worth’s West Side that will house her firm, a retail space called the Fort Worth Design Studio (“this will allow the public to come in and use all of our resources, along with being able to have help from one of our designers”), and her Fort Worth Drapery store. “We are also going to be servicing other designers. We carry more lines worldwide than ever before and truly have endless possibilities.”

category finalist | Jason Webber - JWC General Contractors

JWC General Contractors, founded by Jason Webber in Southlake in 2018, has turned into a perennial bloom. The firm “has seen tremendous growth year after year,” Webber says. “From a small little executive office with a couple people to a large office with warehouses and more than 30 employees.” Last year, Webber started ADH Disaster Restoration. He and wife Jamie own Webber Family Investments, a company they started in order to buy multifamily property. In its first year, JWC had a $3 million-$4 million backlog. For 2021, “our goal is to hit $14 million,” Webber says. “Shoot for the moon and land on the stars.” Materials shortages have been a challenge. “We are still on track to move from a seven-figure company to an eight-figure company. Really, the only thing that has been challenging is the material shortage and never knowing what next week looks like with timelines.”

category finalist | Paul Ramon - Ramon Roofing

Paul Ramon learned how to run his own business by watching his father. Following in his footsteps, Ramon started his own roofing business as a 24-year-old in 1995 with $5,000 in capital he earned by working for other roofing companies. Ramon Roofing is now a full-service company specializing in metal, tile, and slate roofs. They even have a sheet metal shop for customizing copper and metalwork. Ramon says the company experienced steady growth over the past three years, and while the pandemic took a bite out of his business, Ramon Roofing weathered the downturn with a rainy-day fund and a Paycheck Protection Program loan. “One of the most import business decisions I have ever made was keeping a just-in-case fund. With the PPP loans and our backup fund, we handled COVID very well,” Ramon says. “From March of this year, we have been getting busier and busier.” The pandemic isn’t the only challenge facing Ramon Roofing and the industry at large. Staff shortage, material availability, cost increases, and the dreaded Winter Storm Uri, aka, “snowmageddon,” in February hit the industry hard. “While most people understand the reason for all the price increases and shortage of materials, some don’t,” Ramon says. “We are very fortunate that 90% of our clients like to work with us on figuring a solution. We are hopeful that things will get back to normal by next year.”

Tech and E-Commerce

category winner | Walter Monk - Pollmakers

Walter Monk has dabbled in businesses: gas stations, lobster (although he says he never caught one), bars, dating services, advertising, and another 18 ideas that failed. “It was pretty discouraging, but I had no choice but to keep trying.” A defunct dating service spawned a firm with offerings for the political, nonprofit, and marketing research industries, generally doing mass communications “on behalf of clients’ clients that are running for office.” In the fall of 2020, for one, Monk’s firm was sending millions of text messages and phone calls for both the Trump and Biden campaigns. “And we were sending messages and phone calls on thousands of smaller races throughout the U.S. and Canada. However, even though we have many clients, we never forget that every race matters a lot to the people in it.” In 2020, the firm did $14.6 million in sales, three times its previous record. Its profit was greater than the previous eight years combined. In 2020, the Arlington firm upgraded its server room and now has more than 500 servers running in that location. “In 2021, which is a year without many elections, we are on track to do $8-plus million in sales. And 2022 looks like it will be absolutely amazing.”

category finalist | Dennis Hoang - Patturn 

Dennis Hoang and his brothers Davis and Douglas came from different directions to create a solution for the reverse logistics, excess inventory, and returns management industry. In 2019 as a New Year’s Resolution, the brothers created an end-to-end platform called Patturn that enables brands and retailers to recover profits from their returns and excess inventory. “Our solution determines the best steps of finding a new home for inventory. It helps manage, track, and control every single aspect of their returns, repairs, and after-sales care to ensure that it’s reduced their operational cost and increasing their bottom line,” Dennis Hoang says. Since launching Patturn, the company doubled revenue in 2019-20. “We’re on track to doubling our revenue once again for 2020-21. We hired an additional eight employees to support our growth, and we’re looking to hire an additional 10 as well. We are also expanding into a new facility/warehouse here at the beginning of Q4 2021.”