Par Excellence: 2022 Entrepreneurs of Excellence

These 40 entrepreneurs stand out as preeminent innovators with a knack for can-doism

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Fort Worth Inc.’s 2022 Entrepreneurs of Excellence is a portrait of innovative, visionary risk-takers who identified a niche or filled a void in the marketplace.

All of them scratched that itch to go it alone.

These 40 entrepreneurs are in commercial and residential construction, consumer and durable goods, health care and life sciences, hospitality, private equity, professional services, real estate, tech and e-commerce, and four who lead up-and-coming companies.

This is Fort Worth Inc.’s sixth 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 10 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. 3 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, co-ownership, or lead of a privately owned business in the Greater Fort Worth area, at least two years in business, and $2 million in annual sales, except for the new Up-and-Coming category for businesses that don’t quite meet the annual sales threshold.

Commercial Construction

CATEGORY WINNER: Scott Price Fort Construction

Scott Price says the 2005 founding of Fort Construction can best be summarized using the maxim “Crisis is the mother of all invention.” 

“I founded Fort Construction out of necessity,” he says. “Having moved to Fort Worth for a job opportunity that turned out badly, I found myself unemployed in a new town with a wife and two kids who wanted to stay here. Our family decided to stay and start our own company.”

It took about eight months to raise capital to get off the ground, he says. “I rented an executive suite and started making phone calls to prospective clients.”

The first year was spent on two projects for a bonding company for a total of $450,000.

“With controlled growth, we now average $35 million per year,” he says.

“I always wanted to run my own small company and am extremely fortunate to be in Fort Worth. There is no other city in the country that could have supported the success we’ve achieved over the past 16 years.”

Category Finalist: Jonathan Gaspardand Sonny Menon Restoration Roofing

Jonathan Gaspard, a fifth-generation roofer, likes to tell the story of beginning his company with $50 in 2014. Over the past three years, it has navigated the potholes of supply chain snarls and price increases to experience “dynamic growth” that has led to capital investment opportunities. Sonny Menon joined the company as a partner this year. 

The two have a goal of reaching $100 million in contracts over the next five years. 

“Our team is clear about our goal to reach $100 million over the next five years,” says Gaspard, a graduate of Dallas Baptist. “We will accomplish this by offering unique and cutting-edge solutions to our clients, from carbon neutral roofing products to preventative maintenance allowing our clients investments to last much longer, providing a measurable ROI and delivering our promise to be a partner, not just a transaction.”

Gaspard grew up installing roofs with his father and grandfather. 

“Our vision is to be a premier contractor in the private and public sector, and an innovator among our peers in the industry.”

Category Finalist: John Avila Byrne Construction Services

John Avila, a decorated Vietnam veteran who has a degree in architectural engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and is a graduate of the United States Army War College, had an early rise in the construction industry. A retired reserve brigadier general, Avila at age 32 was appointed vice president of operations for Linbeck Construction. He also served as metroplex division manager for Manhattan Construction Company, eventually being promoted to executive vice president with oversight of national projects totaling more than $600 million per year.

In 1995, Avila purchased Thos. S. Byrne, the oldest active, continuous operating general contractor, founded in 1923. At that time the firm was a shadow of its former self, down in volume and brand recognition.

Under his leadership over the course of 21 years, Byrne has returned to prominence, providing construction services throughout the Southwest, its versatility exemplified by its range of construction, from high-rise office buildings, complex hospitals and related health care facilities, data and call centers, aviation facilities, sophisticated educational and institutional buildings, major retail centers, distribution and manufacturing facilities to world-renowned museums, historical renovation/restoration, performing arts centers, high-end residences, and high-quality, high-finish specialty projects.

Consumer & Durable Goods

CATEGORY WINNER: Evin Sisemore Texas Motive Solutions

Evin Sisemore’s expedition in entrepreneurism in forklift batteries began with first learning what a forklift was. She got that job right out of college at LSU, and a few years later Interstate Batteries came calling with a job offer in its Motive Power division, selling power primarily in the industrial battery space. 

She says she was one of the first females in such a role and, moreover, developed into one of the top sales professionals in the company. Awards from her employer and the battery and charger manufacturer followed. 

Fast-forward five years: She was laid off after Interstate Batteries closed her division. 

The manufacturer of the batteries and chargers Interstate distributed, however, sought out her interest in starting a business of her own, taking over territories serviced by Interstate. 

Texas Motive Solutions was born, today a premier forklift battery and charger service and sales company.

In four years, “we have shown a substantial amount of both growth and profitability,” Sisemore says. “We have built a great culture and reputation while setting record sales targets.”

Sisemore recently sold her company, but she is staying on as its leader.

Category Finalist: Cori Eckley NATCO Transport

It wasn’t football the family talked about at the Thanksgiving supper table. No, the topic was transportation, Cori Eckley says. 

“I’ve really had this industry flowing through my DNA since before I was born,” she says. “My family has long been involved in the transportation industry. My grandfather owned his own truck line, with my grandmother taking care of the office and the bookkeeping. My father apprenticed with him and began his own business in 1982, when I was a year old. My aunt and uncle were also in the business of brokerage and dispatch.”

She had planned to be the generation that skipped the industry, but her father made a deal with her: If she agreed to come back and work for him, he would send her to graduate school. She worked there by day and went to school at night. 

“I was intrigued by all the hard work of being self-employed and my dad’s entrepreneurial spirit. When my father passed, I dove into the nuances of the business and quickly grew to appreciate how much time, effort, and sacrifice was involved in making it a success.”

As vice president and co-owner of North American Transport Concepts (NATCO Transport), a third-party, nationwide logistics broker, she is now more than just along for the ride. 

“We continue to grow each year, always looking to enhance our efficiency and delivering the highest level of customer service to both our customers and carriers.”

Category Finalist: Colby Baskin and Raegan Baskin Cowtown Express Logistics

Cowtown Express is a freight company founded more than 35 years ago by a man with a truck, a pager, and a Mapsco. Under the current leadership, today the company serves all 48 contiguous states and Canada. 

Sales has grown by $8 million over the past three years under the CEO-COO husband-wife team of Baskin and Baskin — Colby and Raegan.

“This has come through the hard work of Colby; by surrounding himself with top-tier talent, Cowtown has been able to capitalize on this growth,” reads the EOE application. “One of the messages that Cowtown continues to preach and practice is, ‘We hire for the person, not the position.’ This has enhanced the stability throughout the company over every department. Cowtown continues to build people and promote within. This is the aspect that makes leadership special within Cowtown. They truly care about the people who are making the wheels turn day to day.”

Woven into the fabric of the company culture is that beginning all those years ago. 

“I truly have never met someone who immediately can see the good in people and challenge them,” reads Baskin’s application. “Try to push them in a constructive way and make them see what they can become. It’s this type of leadership that I think is lacking today in society, but this is the leadership that Cowtown adheres to.”

Health Care & Life Sciences

CATEGORY WINNER: Luke Hejl TimelyMD

Luke Hejl is the co-founder and CEO of TimelyMD, which in five years has become the leading virtual health and well-being solution for higher education at nearly 250 colleges and universities. 

“My co-founders and I identified higher education as an underserved market where students often waited weeks for campus health center appointments,” Hejl says. “With the increased adoption of virtual care and my previous health care experience, I understood a looming national shortage of primary care providers created a huge market opportunity for a telehealth company focused exclusively on college students.

Financial growth has been exponential, including 573% from 2019 to 2020, 98% from 2020 to 2021, and the company expects 66% from 2021 to 2022. 

“Five years ago, TimelyMD pioneered the first telehealth program that offered students access to virtual health care at no cost,” Hejl says. “We were selling a concept that had never been done in higher education to people who initially thought we were trying to replace campus health centers. One of the first challenges we overcame was to quickly refine our messaging to make it clear that we wanted to work with campus professionals to take great care of students together. This partnership message remains central to our business and has been critical to our success.”

Category Finalist: Ezra Kuenzi and Gina Kuenzi Connect Pediatrics

In 2006, Ezra and Gina Kuenzi’s nephew suffered severe brain damage because of complications in birth. So much was the struggle to find a reliable, caring home health company that the Kuenzis set out to start a patient-centered pediatric home health care company.

With no industry connections, operations experience, or outside advisers, Gina says, “there was a huge learning curve.”

However, the couple did it, all while Ezra, a Fort Worth Magazine Top Attorney, kept working, creating and fostering those relationships with patients and clinicians even as demand for the company’s services increased.

Today, Connect Pediatrics, which provides pediatric home health care to children throughout Texas, is among the fastest-growing companies in the country, ranked so by Inc. Magazine in 2021 and No. 18 in the Southwest region in 2022. 

“Being in the health care industry, there’s always new challenges, but our challenges pale in comparison to the challenges that the families we serve face each and every day,” says Gina. “With that perspective in mind, we view each challenge as an opportunity to grow and improve as an organization.”

Category Finalist: Sara Camp Steven Camp MD Plastic Surgery & Aesthetics

Don’t tell Sara Camp she can’t. A partner with her husband in the practice of Steven Camp MD Plastic Surgery & Aesthetics in Fort Worth, Camp fell behind in school as a teen because of a struggle with meningitis and encephalitis. She wanted to become a nurse, inspired by those who cared for her, but doctors and schools said don’t bother because of brain injuries and poor grades. 

She did finally get accepted to a university, TCU. Her chance to pursue nursing, “just like my heroes,” was in her reach. However, her adviser there told her to find something else, that her dream was impossible to achieve, and, furthermore, that she had only been accepted “due to family connections.”

Well, mark it down as Sara Camp 1, College Advisers 0. Camp earned a nursing degree and then went on to earn two master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution, mind you. She worked as an RN and acute care nurse practitioner for almost 10 years. After a stint in the health care corporate world, she joined her husband in the founding of their practice, which has been open for almost six years.

“We have seen strong growth each year, ranging from 16% to 86% growth year over year,” she says. 

The practice will move to a new building, featuring two operating rooms, this year. 

Hospitality

CATEGORY WINNER: Nafees Alam DRG Concepts

Nafees Alam grew up a witness to the Third World as a son of Bangladesh. He has taken full advantage of the chances afforded in the land of opportunity. He earned a bachelor’s in business from UT Arlington and an MBA with a focus on entrepreneurial studies from SMU. He learned the restaurant business with Waffle House, where he directed regional operations. 

In 2005, Alam and Mike Hoque founded DRG Concepts. Alam became CEO in 2015. DRG has built profitable brands in Dallas and Fort Worth while, like everyone else, running a pandemic obstacle course of lousy labor, supply, and marketplace conditions. 

The Wicked Butcher brand at The Sinclair in Fort Worth has been successful since opening and reopening in 2020. Wild Salsa in downtown Fort Worth and Dallas both closed but will soon reopen, he says. Oven and Cellar will also soon open to guests in downtown Fort Worth. 

Sales are on an uptick. 

“Even throughout these current challenging market conditions, Nafees has been able to be an industry standard-setting steward of financial resources to reopen his restaurants, when others have had to permanently shutter their businesses,” reads his EOE application. 

Category Finalist: David “Rex” Benson Ol’ South Pancake House

Rex Benson took over the fabled restaurant his father David Benson and aunt Bette Brozgoldin opened in 1962. The Ol’ South Pancake House turned 60 this year and is stronger than ever, pandemic shutdowns be damned. 

Since 2011, when Benson took on operations, Ol’ South has witnessed sales growth of 67% in those 10 years, thanks to technology (point-of-sale, instead of pen and paper), new trends, and new menu items. 

He expanded into Burleson in January 2021, the first of what Benson envisions as Ol’ South restaurants dotting GPS devices across North Texas in the years to come. Benson says sales at the Burleson store exceeded expectations for year one. 

All of this coming on the heels of lockdowns. 

“Going from 8,000 guests a week to zero was like running full speed into a brick wall,” Benson says. “Ol’ South wasn’t built on to-go and delivery. Ol’ South’s success was built on a family-friendly environment, great customer service, and face-to-face interactions for over 50 years. We made a plan and quickly shifted into a to-go business. It wasn’t always pretty, but we kept going, and the guests we had spent the last 58 years serving supported us through it all.”

Category Finalist: Juan Rodriguez Magdalena’s

Magdalena’s today is a preferred caterer at many top venues across DFW. It took a trip through the hottest oven to get there. 

Chef Juan Rodriguez started Magdalena’s catering and events company on a $30,000 loan from his great uncle, who lives in Mexico. “It’s going to be named after my grandma — Magdalena — your sister!” he remembers telling the uncle. “He said, ‘Claro que si.’”

Of course. 

He and his wife set up meetings with prospective clients to pitch their services. “I was giving it my all,” he remembers. “Many doors closed; many people ghosted us.” Others took ideas and asked others to recreate them at a lower price.

“In October 2015, I looked at our bank account and saw we were coming down to our last $1,000,” he says. “We thought about closing it down. It was horrible. I was crying on the stairs and just freaking out. We had events booked up. We thought about asking for more money but didn’t know who to ask. My wife said, ‘Just wait. We might have a client pay upfront for her event in January.’ That was a Saturday. On Monday, we got a check for $20,000. We never looked back.”

The company has 38 employees and, Rodriguez says, is on track to reach a goal of $3 million in sales.

Private Equity Portfolio Company

CATEGORY WINNER: Michael McCracken Flat Creek Resources

Michael McCracken, an oil and gas industry veteran with a bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. from Purdue, is CEO of Fort Worth-based Flat Creek Resources, which manages oil and gas assets in West Texas and New Mexico.

Battling out of the COVID-era catastrophe in the industry, the McCracken-led team formed a joint venture company, Stateline Operating, in partnership with Vortus Investments. Vortus committed capital to Stateline and Flat Creek contributed assets and capital. The assets contributed by Flat Creek were undeveloped with no preexisting cash flow. They called capital and began developing a tract in the Northern Delaware Basin in New Mexico. They were able to bring wells online in October 2021 through creative, capital-efficient solutions. 

“These efforts bridged Stateline from a greenfield operation to one that is now self-funded from operating cash flow,” McCracken says. “In Q4 2021, we generated $18 million of revenue from our first four well program. The four well pad paid out in approximately six months and as of April 2022 had a forecasted PDP [proved developed producing] cash flow stream of $45 million,” three times the invested capital.

The company recommenced development drilling in January 2022, six months ahead of schedule because of the strong financial performance from the initial wells.  

“By reinvesting Stateline’s operating cash flow into the drill bit, we were able to drill and complete the second round of development without calling additional equity capital.”

Category Finalist:  Russell English Trailhead Exploration

Fort Worth-based Trailhead Exploration, LLC, an upstream oil and gas exploration and production company focused in the Midcontinent Region, has grown from a small investor in other operators’ wells into an operator generating meaningful investment project returns. Revenue from crude and natural gas production has grown from $68,000 for 2019 to a projection of more than $2.5 million in 2022.

It is the life’s work of Russell English, CEO, a former football player at the Oklahoma University who earned an MBA at TCU. 

English cut his teeth at XTO, “a fantastic place to learn,” as the shale boom rose like a Bezos rocket ship. He stayed onboard through the transition with ExxonMobil but began to rethink after the company’s move to Houston.

“I determined it was time to scratch my entrepreneurial itch,” English says. 

The company accomplished an “outstanding exit result” from the Permian Basin in a partnership with Silver Hill Energy Partners of Dallas in 2016. With Silver Hill’s input and support, Trailhead was able to begin acquiring leasehold to participate in its own project area and subsequently raise a substantial private equity commitment from Old Ironsides Energy.  

As with many, COVID required creative strategies to stay alive and position the company for ultimate value-creation. But, as a result, “we are now well-positioned to capitalize on the opportunity with industry resurgence.”

Category Finalist: Apurva Mehta and Patrick O’Connor Summit Peak Investments

Summit Peak Investments, LLC, is an SEC registered investment adviser, managing roughly $676 million in regulatory assets, which are invested in a diversified manner, across different vintage years, sectors, and fund managers that have a large amount of growth potential. 

Co-founders and managing partners Apurva Mehta, pictured, and Patrick O’Connor write that they came from humble backgrounds and when starting Summit Peak “bootstrapped the business the first two years without knowing if it would ultimately succeed.” As the former Deputy CIO for Cook Children’s Medical Center, O’Connor helped grow the endowment specifically in early stage venture capital in which he deployed more than $250 million and generated more than $1 billion in venture returns. In 2018, Summit Peak was founded replicating the investment strategy the founders had at the endowment.

Starting out, the founders committed a significant amount of capital to investments without having raised capital from investors yet. Today, the founders say they “bite off more than they can chew and then chew like hell.” 

“It was a stressful journey,” they say, “one with many sleepless nights.”

Their first fund ultimately did get off the ground, and they’d raised enough capital only to be back in a less than ideal fundraising environment at the start of the pandemic. Yet, despite the challenges from 2020 to 2021, the firm not only raised capital but were able to grow the team and further institutionalize the business.

Professional Services

CATEGORY WINNER: Travis Patterson Patterson Law Group

Travis Patterson says he became a lawyer to help people.

Patterson Law Group, headed by the family triumvirate of Patterson, his wife, Anna Patterson, and his father, Mike Patterson, has grown into the largest personal injury firm in Tarrant County and is expanding across the state with offices open or soon to open in El Paso, Lubbock, Midland, Plano, and Austin. 

The firm’s mantra: “Work hard. Be nice.”

“They say when you own your own business, you get to decide which hours of the day you work, but you still have to work 16 hours a day,” Travis Patterson says. “That’s pretty much how it was in the beginning as we were learning what it would take to build a different type of law firm in a class of its own. From day one, we have been laser-focused on our financial performance but never at the expense of our customer service. We have grown through high-level service, strategic partnerships with other community leaders and professionals, and our public reputation. That is the model that has supported our organic growth and sustainability.”

Gross revenue and profits at the firm have risen each of the past three years. 

“We have steady revenue and profitability each and every quarter. We utilize debt very minimally to invest in our cases.”

Twice a finalist, Patterson is now an Entrepreneur of Excellence.

Category Finalist: E. Kim Dignum Dignum Financial Partners

E. Kim Dignum and her Dignum Financial Partners made a strategic decision long ago that seemed counterintuitive to building a business: purposely limiting the clients served. 

“What differentiates us from most financial service companies is that we work on a referral-only basis,” Dignum says. “We do not advertise. We recognized that putting our focus of our clients’ needs above ours gives us the time to do what we do best and ultimately accomplishes our vision — helping our clients realize their dreams. We’ve never looked back.”

She says her profit margins are “regarded as the best in the industry,” the strategic processes the “secret sauce.” The staff, lean with three full-time employees, including Dignum, and one part-time assistant, managed 376 households, according to the firm, founded in 1986.

The paradigm has been successful. The average client has a tenure of more than 25 years. 

And that is what has taken Dignum Financial Partners from startup to multimillion-dollar company. 

Facing the obstacles of any new business, she managed to build it without any outside financing; capitalizing it entirely herself as the company grew.

Dignum, author of Perfect Makes Practice, was selected a Top Women Wealth Adviser by Forbes in 2020, ’21, and ’22, as well as a Forbes Best in State Wealth Adviser from 2019-22. 

Category Finalist: Jon Vidaurri and Kim Vidaurri Vidaurri Management Group

Jon and Kim Vidaurri’s Vidaurri Management Group, a real estate and project management firm, was founded in 2016 on the precept that “the success of the client comes first through servant leadership.”

That has taken them places. Since 2016, the firm’s revenue has grown 1,130%. Profit has never been below 34% over the past six years. 

That’s even through pandemic lockdowns and associated downturns. 

VMG’s journey started in 2015, when after spending the previous 12 years working for a publicly traded, global real estate and project management firm with more than 55,000 employees, Jon realized “he was spending an increasing amount of time writing reports, tracking metrics, attending nonproject client-related meetings, and using cumbersome electronic project management systems that did not support the clients’ needs or create tangible value for the client.”

In other words, Jon was spending more time managing corporate compliance requirements versus serving his clients’ needs. 

“He saw there was a need in the market for a nimble, entrepreneurial, client-centric firm that could differentiate itself with a servant-leader culture and have the ability to pivot in order to meet the client’s evolving needs.”

This year, they both say, they have decided “it’s time to deploy a website.”

That’s movin’ on up.

Real Estate

CATEGORY WINNER: Donnie Siratt and Colby Siratt Montserrat Hills, LLC

In 2003, the Siratt family, headed by patriarch and entrepreneur Don Siratt, purchased the first piece of property that would become the highly successful gated community of Montserrat. The plan was for all of the Siratts to live there as a sort of ranch or family compound. 

That plan, the family soon discovered, would be too costly and impractical. “Plus, as we showed friends and family members our plans, they started expressing interest in living up on ‘the hill’ with us.”

Fast-forward to 2017, just a few months after Don Siratt had passed away, the Siratts were approached about buying the property just west of Montserrat.  

“With land and construction prices dramatically higher than 2003, we knew it would be a huge risk but also an opportunity that we couldn’t pass up,” the Siratts say. 

After a couple years of planning, brothers Donnie and Colby Sirrat, head of Montserrat Hills, LLC, broke ground in early 2020 on Montrachet. Despite the pandemic and fearing an economic downturn, the brothers pressed forward. 

“We are currently way ahead of schedule, with approximately 75% of our homesites accounted for,” they say. 

Montserrat Hills was formed to develop the Montrachet neighborhood which consists of 169 lots on 255 acres in west Fort Worth. Originally projected to take up to 10 years to sell out, it is significantly ahead of schedule, and all investor capital returned in less than a year after the first lot was sold.

Category Finalist: Ronald Sturgeon Salon Professionals

As self-made as a self-made man can be, Ron Sturgeon began a life of entrepreneurism at the tender age of 17, left on his own and nowhere to go and with no money after the death of his father. He opened an auto repair shop in Haltom City, leading to his developing a chain of high-tech salvage yards, which he sold to Greenleaf Acquisitions, a wholly owned Ford Motor Co. subsidiary, in 1999.

He bought it back and sold it again, at which point he pivoted to the world of real estate as an investor, landlord, and developer. 

He is the author of 10 books, all on Amazon, the most recent, Keeping the Lights on Downtown in America’s Small Cities — the Struggle Is Real. 

Sturgeon is a finalist as founder of Salon Professionals, which leases space to independent beauty and wellness professionals. For 2021, its revenues represented a 79% increase over 2020. Salon Professionals has 476 tenants in 17 locations, including three that opened or will open in 2022. 

“The vision of Salon Professionals is to give ambitious beauty professionals all the tools they need to become successful independent business owners and help them uncap their earnings through turnkey salon spaces,” Sturgeon says.

Category Finalist: Thomas Black and Tim Black Napali Capital

Thomas Black, pictured above, was a medical doctor with a thriving practice but who discovered he would never find fulfillment in the profession. Namely, the financial freedom that only comes through ownership. That’s not to say he doesn’t love it. He still practices emergency medicine.

However, with his brother, Tim, he co-founded Napali Capital, a real estate investment company that partners with physicians to increase their wealth beyond traditional investment platforms. The company was founded in 2016 by the Blacks, brothers with a passion for real estate. 

In addition to medicine, Thomas is a 13-year veteran and author who was looking for a way to provide alternative income streams for himself and colleagues. Tim spent 30 years as an executive in hospitality, operations, and real estate development. 

The Black brothers have built a brand providing profitable opportunities for investors. Napali Capital works with more than 2,000 investors in 40 states.

The firm has more than $500 million in assets under management

“We have seen year over year sales and profit growth,” Thomas says. “Each of our properties has experienced equity growth [between 24% and 160%] during their hold periods. Hold periods have ranged from 22 to 42 months.”

Residential Construction

CATEGORY WINNER: Jason Webber JWC General Contractors

Jason Webber, a finalist in this category a year ago, is a testament to what can be despite starting life in a hole. Born to parents who were addicts and drug dealers, it was no surprise that Webber, too, tried his hand at it. 

Too many times, it ended as one would expect, including encounters with the law. It took a while, but Webber finally adopted the First Law of Holes: If you find yourself in a hole, quit digging.

His first positive step was meeting his wife, 15 years ago. They got out of the environment, moving to California and surrounding themselves with the right people. 

“I started living my life for the right reasons: God and family,” he says. “I moved to Texas and started working for a friend’s company.”

Four years later, he started his own company, JWC General Contractors. Alongside the construction company, Webber opened other businesses, including a commercial construction division and a disaster restoration company, ADH Disaster Restoration.

In 2021, Webber’s company witnessed a 250% growth in business over the first four years and increased his team to more than 30 people. 

“We are well above the industry standards as far as growth and profitability,” he says. “We are so thankful to our growing customer base as well, who have given us an ‘A’ rating on BBB.”

Category Finalist: Chris Lee and Zac Chaffin EarthWorks, Inc.

EarthWorks, Inc., was started in the late 1970s with a $1,000 loan to Mark Chaffin and his wife, Mana, from his parents. With that, he purchased equipment, a truck, and a trailer. 

The husband and wife steadily built the company over the course of 20 years, to the point they needed help. So, they asked their son, Chris Lee, then in Wyoming working as a loan officer for a car dealership, to move to Texas to join the company. 

Over the next 15 years, those three had grown the company to more than $10 million in revenue, more than 200 employees, expansion to two locations, and more than 600 pieces of equipment and 60 vehicles in the company fleet. 

Mark and Mana’s youngest son, Zac, an Aggie with a business degree from A&M, joined the company shortly after that. In the past nine years, the brothers — “with a lot of help and great employees” — have taken the company to more than $30 million in revenue, more than 350 employees, offices in Irving, Garland, and Houston, and more than 100 vehicles in the fleet. 

EarthWorks is one of the largest landscape companies in the country, according to Lawn and Landscape. 

That’s quite a return on a $1,000 loan. 

“While today Mark and Mana would say they are not active members of EarthWorks, they still serve as a compass and sound voice when the team has to make big decisions,” according to the brothers.

Category Finalist: Ginger Curtis Urbanology Designs

Ginger Curtis’ Urbanology Designs, a luxury design firm based in North Richland Hills, was birthed in the aftermath of grueling chemotherapy treatment seven years ago. With no formal training in design but what she calls a “surplus of raw talent and a fiery entrepreneurial spirit,” she went to work. 

She hired her first employee in less than a year. 

“I knew I needed to put the right people around me with the strengths and skills that complemented my own gaps and weaknesses,” she writes. 

In 2017, she purchased an abandoned fire station in North Richland Hills and renovated it into a multipurpose office space. The office building is now home base of Urbanology Designs. It also leases executive offices to other local entrepreneurs and doubles as an event center during nights and weekends. The space is affectionately named the Urban Fire House. 

Urbanology Designs offers a walk-through consultation service for clients who prefer advice only for a do-it-yourself project. That service accounted for 13% of revenue in 2021. The rest of revenue comes from full-service design, which covers design, procurement of furnishings and décor, and any necessary construction.

The firm has already reached its highest sales goals in three years and on pace to reach its goal for 2022.

Tech & E-commerce

CATEGORY WINNER: Gary Tonniges Jr. and Cyndy Tonniges TriQuest Technologies

The tornado on March 28, 2000, that rolled in from the West Side and into downtown destroyed the offices of TriQuest Technologies in mere seconds. It took well over a year to finalize the insurance claims and rebuild. 

“It destroyed everything we had,” Gary Tonniges says. “But in retrospect, it was one of the greatest things that happened to us. It was the catalyst for us to figure out who we are and how we want to do business.”

Gary and Cyndy Tonniges’ TriQuest Technologies, Inc., for 25 years has offered specialized IT support for business customers. The company helps customers utilize technology and be more effective in their work — while keeping their critical systems and data safe and secure — by consistently delivering reliable IT solutions. 

Starting a family business was never the plan for Gary and Cyndy, who stumbled into working together. They first discovered they could work together while remodeling a house built in 1947. 

“At the time, we had more money and determination than time or skill,” says Cyndy. “We learned project management, scarcity of resources, [that] it is worth subcontracting out jobs that require expertise, and sometimes you are caught unprepared.”

Like when an F3 rolls into town.

Category Finalist: Efrin “EJ” Carrion Student Success Agency

EJ Carrion’s Student Success Agency, a leading provider of digital student support services to school districts nationwide, grew by 73% in 2021 and is projected to double its 2020 revenue in 2022. The company has been profitable for the last two years and has expanded its employee count by 69%. 

With a 97% renewal rate, Student Success Agency, founded in 2012, is positioned to accelerate as a world-class solution for schools managing the new normal and needs of students, post-pandemic.

“I started Student Success Agency after becoming the first of my family to graduate from college,” Carrion says. “I am the classic underrepresented minority founder who did not graduate with a business degree and had very little access to capital or mentors. SSA’s first capital investment was from customers who took a chance on us after a PowerPoint deck pitch. Today, we are a growing and profitable software company. If I get awarded, I hope my story inspires other minority entrepreneurs to dream big and for Fort Worth to do the same.”

Student Success Agency works with more than 500 schools across 20 states. Agents support students from many types of backgrounds and offer students specialized access to mental health, tutoring, and postsecondary advising.

Category Finalist: John Clay Wolfe GiveMeTheVin.com

John Clay Wolfe has created a platform to sell your car so easy you can do it in your underwear. Well, so says a very catchy jingle I hear on the radio. Wolfe has built a little auto wholesale empire through GiveMeTheVin.com and a nationally syndicated radio show, on which he makes on-the-spot offers.

Wolfe began life as a serial entrepreneur — he admits working for someone else isn’t a good idea for anybody — owning bars catering to the TCU college market. He was an SMU student at the time. That evolved into car dealerships.

A motocross accident left him paralyzed and at a crossroads. 

He needed a new plan to market his dealerships: a radio show, which he could do sitting in a wheelchair. 

“No one on air knew I was in a wheelchair,” he says. “Today, I walk, unassisted, with a limp, but so fortunate to recover from that accident. I had had much success in the auto wholesale business during those 10 [previous] years, then had to start over financially and mentally. The good news is I had that radio show to springboard back from. Without that, I doubt we’d be having this conversation right now.”

Up-and-Coming

CATEGORY WINNER: Dacia Coffey The Marketing Blender

Dacia Coffey went back into the corporate world working in marketing after she and her husband moved on from a successful entrepreneurial run in the trucking business. 

“The type of clients I attracted were all B2B — very unusual in the agency world — and I realized this was an underserved market where I had both the sales experience and entrepreneurial point of view to serve them well,” Coffey says. 

In 2013, she introduced The Marketing Blender, a firm that crafts and executes marketing plans to build brands in highly competitive markets. 

“Business grew slowly but steadily over the first six years, but I seemed to be unable to break that $1 million mark,” she says.

She thought she might lose the business turning a figurative ankle in a figurative pothole, plus the pandemic. “I had to not only get as lean as possible financially and operationally to save the rest of the team and our future, but I had to do loads of soul searching about the blind spots I was functioning in that caused the damage.”

She adapted, creating a fractional chief marketing officer format and outsource marketing team services. That model resonated with the market, she says. The firm eclipsed the $1 million mark in 2021 with a 24% profit margin, and it will creep ever closer to $2 million in 2022.

Category Finalist: Christie K. Moore Mansfield Funeral Home

Christie Moore says she knew as a 9-year-old that she would be a mortician when she grew up. She honored her parents’ wishes by first attending a university. Bachelor’s and master’s degrees followed. 

Having then obtained her licensing as an embalmer and funeral director, she went to work for several funeral homes around the country. Along the way, she discovered something else about herself: “I constantly saw gaps and missed opportunities to effect change in the communities and decided to begin the journey towards entrepreneurship.”

To that end, she purchased the Mansfield Funeral Home and became its CEO. 

“Several underwriters privately told me my gender, ethnicity, and age would prevent me from successfully building or acquiring a business until a woman decided to believe in my passion for people. I purchased a funeral home that was generating minimal income, no profits and was thought to have been a lost cause.

“Within five and a half years, I have attained national recognition for the lives touched through our service. This phenomenal change was because of my ability to see past what’s immediately in front of me and always serve in the spirit of excellence.”

Category Finalist: Sheryle Gillihan and Michael Gillihan CauseLabs

CauseLabs, led by social entrepreneurs Sheryle Gillihan and Michael Gillihan, is a company whose mission is to use technology as a means to an end, advancing the well-being of humanity. 

“Our company’s mission is growing positive impact,” says Sheryle. “Our vision is to do this by using technology and business as a force for good. Our core values relate to this mission and vision, and we use this to make all of our decisions. By doing this, we not only work on projects that grow positive impact and use technology to make a difference in the world, but we also make operational decisions that make a difference.”

The company’s core market is in the social/nonprofit sector, but it serves all companies that aim to create positive impact in their communities. 

Sheryle Gillihan, an Arabic translator during a career in the U.S. Army, joined the company, then HiDef Web Solutions founded by Azin Mehrnoosh, as a project manager in 2010. She and her husband purchased the company in 2018 under the rebranded CauseLabs.

“I will always admire Azin for what he built, and now I am forging my own path, turning CauseLabs into a family-owned, family-led company that is becoming my legacy.”

Whitley Penn is Presenting Sponsor, Independent Financial is Gold Sponsor, and TCU Neeley School of Business — Graduate Programs and Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is Silver Sponsor. Justin Boot Co. is Boot Sponsor.