Fort Worth Inc.’s Fastest-Growing Companies 2020

Fort Worth Inc.’s Fastest-Growing Companies 2020, the magazine’s second annual class of companies, represents a big swath of the region’s entrepreneurial landscape: financial services, marketing, construction, investment management, law, philanthropy, manufacturing, information technology, salon services and restaurants.

The list is ranked by three-year revenue growth between 2015 and 2018. Companies were eligible to compete if they’re for-profit; generated revenue by March 31, 2015; had at least $50,000 in 2015 revenue and completed or billed at least $1.5 million in 2018 revenue; and are based in Greater Fort Worth, including several surrounding counties; or their audited, provided financials are based on the performance of a subsidiary in the area.

1 Coinsource

What they do: Bitcoin ATM network

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 16,923.6%

Sheffield Clark was a history major at the University of Central Arkansas when he happened into a convenience store one evening and made conversation with a man who was servicing an ATM. That led to his $20,000 purchase of several machines, which led to the 300-machine network Clark had by the time he sold the network after college. “I probably sold it too early,” he says.

That put Clark into convenience stores and ATMs, which led to a business he founded and still owns selling pump-top video advertising; the Dallas Cowboys are one partner and producer of content. In 2015, Clark ran across an article about a successful operator of ATMs for bitcoin, the digital currency launched in 2009 that’s traded peer-to-peer, not through a trusted third party. That year, Clark, who graduated from Boswell High School in Saginaw before he headed off to college, launched Coinsource in a downtown Fort Worth office building with two partners and other investors.

Today, Coinsource, which Clark subsequently moved onto the 14th floor of the Wells Fargo Tower in Fort Worth’s Sundance Square, has more than 400 bitcoin ATMs in 42 states. Coinsource launched about 100 of those ATMs for third parties in the fall, a new expansion strategy. Coinsource is also poised to take the company international when opportunities arise, Clark says. “It’s a quick software update” that would allow the ATMs to accept currency other than U.S. dollars.

Coinsource is the fastest-growing company on Fort Worth Inc.’s 2020 ranking, posting $25.19 million in 2018 revenue, up 16,923.6% since 2015. There are about 4,000 bitcoin ATMs in the U.S. and 6,100 worldwide. Customers can buy bitcoin with cash using the ATMs. Coinsource, a seller of bitcoin, makes its money by charging a 10% markup, compared to what Clark says is a 15% to 20% markup by most of his competitors. If you put $1,000 into the ATM, it sends $900 worth of bitcoin into your digital wallet. You can convert your bitcoin to cash, use it to make digital purchases at outlets that accept it, such as ecommerce marketplaces and the computer giant Dell, or sit on it as an investment. Only 5% of customer transactions have been sales, Clark says. Many of Coinsource’s customers are millennials and baby boomers who like the ease and convenience of trading peer to peer. “They have to give a Social Security number to an exchange.”

Bitcoin has become similar to gold in the position it holds in many investors’ portfolios. When Coinsource got into it, Bitcoin was trading at $170 per bitcoin, Clark says. The currency surged to a value of nearly $20,000 per bitcoin in 2017, then settled, finishing 2019 at around $7,500. The founders of bitcoin set 21 million bitcoins as a finite maximum supply that can be “mined.” Most of Coinsource’s customers buy bitcoin as an investment, rather than viewing it as a liquid asset, Clark says. “I would analogize it to gold. It’s volatile, and it’s risky. But it’s got staying power.”

Coinsource set itself up immediately as a credible player to dispel any concerns in the mysterious financial world of bitcoin, Clark says. The company recruited its general counsel from a major law firm, where he specialized in money laundering. At Coinsource, he’s helped the firm negotiate a maze of federal and state regulations. “We needed somebody with incredible credibility,” Clark says.

Coinsource has 40 employees today, including 10 in compliance. It has six full-time compliance investigators. Prospective customers must first enroll in Coinsource, where they submit a self-portrait and scan their identification. Coinsource’s facial recognition system looks for matches on various government watch lists. The system blocks transactions to so-called “dark wallets” whose users are anonymous or to other wallets known to support illegal activity, Clark says.

Going forward, Clark wants the company to be in all 50 states and to continue expanding by selling ATMs to other operators. Coinsource charges a fee for management, or the operator can assume management. "We see our market share growing exponentially."

2 iCare Emergency Room and Urgent Care

What they do: Run emergency room and urgent care centers

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 14,117.03%

Dr. Shane Cole was an emergency room physician working for a group at Arlington Memorial Hospital when he and a number of other ER doctors decided to go out on their own with a new model: a hybrid free-standing emergency room and urgent care center.

The company iCare ER & Urgent Care was born with Cole as CEO and numbers of ER physicians as partners. A group opened its first ER and urgent care in December 2015 in Frisco. In September 2017, another iCare group headed by Cole opened the company’s second location on Sycamore School Road in southwest Fort Worth’s Chisholm Trail corridor. In 2018, iCare partnered with the Wise Health System in Wise County and entered a free-standing ER and urgent care in Argyle, assuming management of the ER and ownership of the urgent care clinic.

The ER and urgent care centers are in fast-growing corridors like the vast Chisholm Trail highway corridor. The emergency rooms have handled everything from strokes to heart attacks and gunshot wounds, Cole says. The urgent care clinics are in the same building, but separate from the ER to maintain branding and patient confidence that urgent care cases won’t be billed like expensive ER visits.

Where the centers “really shine” are Level 3 complaints such as belly pains, relatively minor fractures, pneumonia and kidney infections, Cole says. At iCare, those patients can be treated and going home within an hour, he says.

“All [of iCare’s physicians] are board-certified ER doctors, which differentiates us,” Cole says. iCare’s revenue grew 14,117.03% to $7.13 million in 2018, up from just $50,123 in 2015, the company reported.

The company wants to continue to open new centers but is taking a conservative posture. Each costs about $5 million, paid for with cash and debt financing, and requires partners. “We feel our model is the right model,” Cole says. “But to get big quickly, you need a helping hand. The helping hand comes with a cost.”

3 Koddi

What they do: Advertising technology for the travel industry

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 1,261.35%

Koddi, whose advertising technology uses data gleaned from consumers’ web searches for hotels to match them to the right properties worldwide, has been a growth run since it was founded by George Popstefanov and Nicholas Ward in 2013. The company made the Inc. 5000 ranking of fastest-growing U.S. companies for the second year in a row in 2019, at No. 328, after seeing revenue shoot to $27.3 million in 2018 from $2 million just three years earlier.

“We should get a third year, too,” Ward says. Koddi powered $20 billion in transactions in 2019, compared to the $1 trillion in total global digital travel transactions annually. “Two percent starts to sound really impressive,” Ward says.

Koddi’s employee count has grown with revenue, surpassing 150 in late fall, after starting the year at 99, and 2018 at 34 employees. The company has six offices in Fort Worth; Austin; New York; Ann Arbor, Michigan; San Francisco; and Dusseldorf, offering employees opportunity to relocate or to do stints.

4 WinterGreen Synthetic Grass LLC

What they do: Synthetic grass sales and installation

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 878.6%

Winter Moore was working for a pest control company, working at a home in Southlake when he noticed the artificial grass in the yard. “I’d seen it in football fields, but never in a residential application,” he says. Doing his research, he found synthetic grass was popular in states like California and Arizona, but not in Texas.

Moore and his wife, Ashley, founded WinterGreen Synthetic Grass in September 2014, with Ashley Moore retaining her full-time job at a Sherwin-Williams store for two years to ease the transition.

The company posted $1.6 million in 2018 revenue, up 878.6% over 2015. It has 25 employees, with three in sales and three crews, and Moore says he expects to add a fourth crew this spring. “By spring, we’ll be at 30 employees,” Moore says. The company last year bought, rehabbed and moved into a 10,000-square-foot industrial building east of downtown Fort Worth.

The firm sells to commercial contractors, landscapers, homebuilders and retail customers, offering more than 100 kinds of artificial grass from various manufacturers and selling and installing for $8-$10 per square foot. Applications range from putting greens to commercial landscape, recreation fields, playgrounds, dog runs, pool decks, rooftops, and play areas. WinterGreen has developed its own triple-layer base system to facilitate drainage. 

Moore says he considered buying a synthetic grass franchise but opted to start his company from scratch so he could offer any product. The Moores bootstrapped the launch.

Because suppliers can get the product to him typically within a day, Moore doesn’t invest in inventory. With few competitors, Moore says the company sees plenty of potential in Tarrant County. Growth will slow at some point, but “we really don’t know when it’s going to plateau.”

5 Fort Capital

What they do: Real estate investments

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 739.04%

Fort Capital’s burgeoning River District mixed-use development in west Fort Worth has created a live-work-play district for the West Side. With the company substantially done, CEO Chris Powers says Fort Capital’s done with ground-up development. “We’ve just found other, better ways to use our time and our investor dollars.”

The company recently purchased an old family farm fronting the Trinity River off of White Settlement Road near the River District and is taking on a partner that will redevelop the land into mixed-use.

Fort Capital is focused on buying industrial and urban commercial property throughout Texas, Powers says. “I am very bullish that the world will keep moving online,” creating the need for warehouse and distribution, Powers says. The firm also is investing substantially in its own technology to improve processes.

Fort Capital owns and operates more than $250 million worth of property in Tarrant County and surrounding markets. The firm posted 2018 revenue of $25.5 million, up from $3 million in 2015. Fort Capital has about 20 employees and may bring on another two or three in 2020.

Powers is concerned about the economy’s strength, seeing signs in mixed results for new tech initial public offerings, higher costs, and the scuttled WeWork IPO. “These are signs of a very frothy market.”

6 Construction Cost Management, Inc.

What they do: Construction cost estimation

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 358.57%

Construction Cost Management’s headquarters — above PR’s Saloon in a historic building in the Fort Worth Stockyards — belies the company’s steam. Keith Kothmann co-founded the firm in 1979, and his daughter, Katy Abraham, took it over in 2012 and set the company on a growth path. Sales reached $2 million in 2018, up 358.6% from 2015. Employees reached 16 today, up from two. The company placed No. 1,129 on the 2019 Inc. 5000 fastest-growing U.S. companies ranking.

The firm does independent cost estimations for architects and engineers working big projects in the justice, government, health care, science and technology, education, commercial/industrial, aviation, historic restoration, water, railroad, utilities and civil infrastructure, and national parks markets. Most of those projects require a third-party estimator, where Abraham steps in.

“Our pipeline is pretty long,” Abraham says. “The government continues to have to build things; they have to continue to remodel.”

Abraham has built the firm’s staff through an internship pipeline with the University of Texas at Arlington’s construction management master’s program. The staff today has five UTA graduates, Abraham says. The pitch to them: “If you are a budding architect or engineer, you work on a project for a whole year. What we showed them was you can work on four or five projects in a month.”

7 Thrive Internet Marketing Agency

What they do: Digital marketing

Headquarters: Arlington

3-year revenue growth: 289.5%

Thrive continues to find new growth avenues. Newest, in 2019: The company began offering search engine optimization for Amazon products. “It has huge potential for us,” Matt Bowman, the Thrive founder and CEO, says.

The company in early 2020 will move its headquarters from an office building in south Arlington to a business park nearby, where it’s building a new headquarters building for itself and renting out two existing buildings to tenants. Thrive will occupy 7,000 square feet of the 26,000, moving out of 5,500 square feet. Thrive has 115 employees, with as many as 50 added during 2019, but almost all work by remote, and only a dozen or so come in regularly into the Arlington office.

The company sells search engine optimization, pay per click, social media, and a service called RIZE, launched in 2018, that lets businesses manage reviews and online reputation.

Thrive has been increasing its business with franchises and multilocation businesses. “We’re getting some great results,” Bowman says. For one 35-location restaurant chain that signed up for RIZE, Thrive generated 50,000 reviews in the last year. In December, Thrive signed up a 200-location franchise.

The company posted $6.3 million in 2018 sales, up 289.5% from 2015. In 2019, sales were on track to finish between $10.5 million and $11 million, Bowman says. Thrive has a 96% monthly client retention rate, Bowman says. The company also appeared on the 2019 Inc. 5000 at No. 1,200.

Thrive has been significantly boosting its investment in employee benefits. One coming: a program that will help employees get out of debt. “I have a real heart for helping people,” Bowman says. The program will include grants to employees who apply and agree to education in personal finance. “We’ll come alongside them and make the final payment on some of their personal debt,” Bowman says.

8 The Medlin Law Firm, PLLC

What they do: Criminal defense

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 160.4%

Gary Medlin, managing partner of The Medlin Firm, has been in criminal practice for more than 30 years. His practice runs the gamut, from airport crimes, such as possession of a firearm, to domestic violence, drug, DWI, expungement, failure to appear, fraud, gun, and murder. The firm posted $1.66 million in 2018 revenue, up 160.4% over 2015.

9 M. Gale & Associates, LLC

What they do: Fundraising consulting

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 115.3%

Two years ago, Missy Gale’s small Fort Worth fundraising consulting firm was a two-woman shop, bringing in subcontractors to work on projects and running a virtual office in the cloud, a familiar industry model. 

That’s when she brought in an advisor who suggested she adopt a hybrid model of employees and subcontractors, with the firm developing systems and materials that could be used from campaign to campaign, enabling a greater project volume. “In the subcontractor model, there’s a lot of reinventing the wheel,” she says.

Today, the firm has six employees and several subcontractors who work largely with it. The firm a year ago moved into offices on Fort Worth’s Race Street. It recently completed a campaign for the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and is working on a project for Texas Health Resources and a feasibility study for the Salvation Army in Dallas. Revenue reached $1.6 million in 2018, up 115.3% over three years.

The firm works for small nonprofits, all the way up to major campaigns. It helps nonprofits develop staff and board strength and business savvy, determine strategy, recognize prospects, and build relationships.

It focuses on Fort Worth. “I felt there was enough business here, and we could be stronger if we knew the community well,” Gale says. “We want to be the strongest firm in North Texas. We should see the business double over the next three to five years.”

10 Stanton & Co.

What they do: Residential renovation 

Headquarters: Aledo and Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 114.2%

Stanton Pearce occupies a difficult niche in construction: jobs where the client is living in the space Pearce and his crews are working on. “Almost all of our business is repeat or referral,” Pearce says, citing Dalworthington Gardens, where he’s been working on a string of jobs.

Pearce has been in the business for 23 years, finding it coming out of junior college. He founded the latest of several companies, Stanton & Co., in 2013 in Aledo. Pearce specializes in flooring and kitchen and bath renovations in homes and businesses. “I started off in flooring,” which led to granite, he says. “Then my clients needed paint.”

Revenue rose 114.2 percent to $1.8 million in 2018, compared to 2015. Sales went sideways in 2018, as Pearce grew a new Fort Worth showroom. In 2019, they surged again to about $2.5 million. In 2020, he figures he’ll hit $3.5 million. Pearce, whose 22-year-old son has joined the business, figures $4 million in annual revenue is their top goal. Any bigger, “you can’t do the quality control.”

The company has 10 employees, including two construction managers, two in quality control, and four working with clients and arraying materials. Pearce says he won’t start a job until all products are in hand and in the company’s Aledo warehouse.

The firm sticks to Parker County and Fort Worth, doing in 2019 what Pearce estimated was 80 master bath renovations and 40 kitchens. Pearce estimates he once did a third of his business in Dallas. “There was a time I was driving to Dallas every day.”

11 Twisted X

What they do: Footwear

Headquarters: Decatur

3-year revenue growth: 103.1%

Twisted X, the fast-growing casual footwear designer, continues its fast growth. The company received another boost in the fall when it learned it’s one of Footwear Plus Magazine’s 2020 sustainability award nominees, nominated with the footwear giants Adidas, Sperry, and Timberland. “To be nominated is a great honor,” Prasad Reddy, Twisted X’s CEO, says.

The company’s ecoTWX line of shoes, made of recycled plastic bottles, has sold 200,000 pairs and recycled 13 million bottles, Reddy says. The company’s goal is to reach 1 million pairs sold by the end of 2020; Reddy thinks Twisted X will near 750,000. “When we started [ecoTWX] three years ago, nobody paid any attention to us.”

Through the One Tree Planted nonprofit, Twisted X plants a tree for every pair of shoes it sells, reaching 150,000 last year, with trees planted in California, Oregon and Colorado. The company mixes sugar cane molasses with petroleum compound in producing midsoles. It has a near-100% plastic-free workplace, and offers an interest-free loan of up to $10,000 to any employee who buys an electric car. The company wants to have a carbon-neutral footprint by the end of 2020. “I’m not so sure we’ll achieve it, but we’re trying,” Reddy says.

Sales reached $72.15 million by the end of 2018, up 103.1% over 2015. In 2019, the company was nearing $83 million in sales by early December. It appeared on the 2019 Inc. 5000 at No. 3,424. It has 48 U.S. employees at its Decatur offices, and 14 in China, where two contract manufacturers make Twisted X shoes.

Twisted X continues its drive to be product-centered, constantly pushing for new technology, merchandise categories, and construction techniques. One of its newest-technologies: comfort cells that bounce back in insertable insoles or built into the shoe.

The company sells to 3,000 retailers, adding 20 to 30 each month. Besides the Chinese factories, it produces shoes through two exclusive contract factories in Mexico. Margins have been under pressure, given the U.S. trade battle with China. Where Twisted X was paying an extra 10% to 20% tariff based on product classification to buy products from China, it’s now paying 35% to 45% under the tariffs President Trump has added, Reddy says.

He’s been able to get much of that through price reductions from his manufacturers, but the tariffs have cut into margins, he says. “So far, we haven’t passed any cost increase” to retailers, he says.

One of the Chinese factories Twisted X uses has a partner factory in Myanmar, and Twisted X transferred some production there in 2018. “Otherwise, it is extremely hard to transfer from one country to another.”

Reddy says he’s considering doing some final assembly in the U.S. “You need stitching skills. We’re looking at it.”

12 Steele & Freeman Construction Managers

What they do: Commercial construction

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 99.07%

Steele & Freeman’s $380 million estimated business backlog comes largely from repeat customers. One of its recently completed construction projects, a new Roanoke City Hall, was the latest of several major projects the company has done for the city. Two Roanoke city executives have moved to Flower Mound, creating a Steele & Freeman conduit there. “We do no bid work,” CEO Michael Freeman says. “It’s really mostly repeat clients.”

Revenue reached $87.2 million in 2018, up 99.07% from $43.8 million in 2015, and the firm placed No. 3,536 on the 2019 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies. The firm starts working on projects nine months to a year before construction, creating added stability. The firm promulgates 23 values called the Steele & Freeman Way to employees, clients and subcontractors, and makes sure it keeps its subs quickly and on time to retain their loyalty. The firm has 60 employees.

“We’ve got more work than we’ve ever had before,” Freeman says. “It’s very important to keep the positive vibe going on.”

The firm pairs its younger employees with more experienced mentors. Steele & Freeman’s also made sure to maintain a diverse array of industries in its portfolio. “Some markets are stronger than others, and it changes all the time,” Freeman says. “We need to build that resume in every pot.”

13 Muckleroy & Falls

What they do: Commercial construction

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 87.44%

Muckleroy & Falls has historically been strong in corporate office, retail, bank, medical and light industrial construction projects through its four decades. The company in recent years has become active in K-12 school construction, municipal work, hospitality, auto dealerships and churches. The expanded portfolio has provided more stability for the Fort Worth firm. And “it’s provided an environment for our employees to grow,” Harold Muckleroy, the CEO and co-founder, says.

Muckleroy and partner Max Falls several years ago repositioned the company for growth, as new partners and successors came aboard, including Muckleroy’s son, Zach. Revenue reached $86 million in 2018, up 87.44 percent from $45.9 million in 2015.

The firm has outgrown its corporate office building, which it built five years ago in the Clearfork development in southwest Fort Worth. Last fall, it purchased an office building at 3200 Riverfront Drive off of the Trinity River at South University Drive in Fort Worth, with plans to renovate it and move in April or May. The firm has more than 60 employees.

Five years ago, the firm set a 10-year growth goal to become one of the five largest firms in Tarrant County. The firm was 18th then; it’s now seventh. 

The firm is comfortable with the economy and recently hired a development officer to cover Dallas County, Muckleroy says. “The DFW market is still growing very dynamically,” Muckleroy says. “There may be some kind of national slowdown, but we don’t have any signals that we need to start paring back.”

14 ISHIR

What they do: IT outsourcing

Headquarters: Plano

3-year revenue growth: 84.9%

Rishi Khanna’s ISHIR — his first name spelled backwards — continues its aggressive growth. Revenue rose 84.9% to $2.5 million in 2018 from 2015. But in 2019, the company doubled, Khanna says. “It’s going to be crazier” in 2020, says Khanna, who estimated in late November he’d spent 100 days in hotels worldwide during 2019. The company ranked 3,611 on the 2019 Inc. 5000.

ISHIR provides IT outsourcing to consulting firms, software companies, newly funded startups that need to scale up, and enterprises short of IT talent and knowledge, with clients in industries such as insurance, financial services, e-commerce and government, although Khanna says the firm’s strategy is “more horizontally focused than vertically focused.”

The firm, founded in 1999, this fall celebrated its 20th anniversary. The firm has 21 U.S. employees and contractors, with eight in its Plano headquarters, as many in Denver, and the remainder scattered. In its separate India unit, it has 60 employees and contractors, including programmers, developers, project managers and marketers.

15 Comprehensive Finance, Inc.

What they do: Health care payment platforms and plans for providers and patients through Compassionate Finance and Abella brands

Headquarters: Grapevine

3-year revenue growth: 68%

There’s little pretense about Comprehensive Finance, which sits in 7,000 square feet on the second floor of a building in a bland logistics park near DFW Airport. The space is cheap, at $4,000 a month, great for a fast-growing small company, Michael Brown, the CEO, says.

Brown, hired in 2015 as the company’s third CEO since the Granbury dentist Bruce Baird founded the company in 2011 to provide payment plans to patients, has kicked the firm into higher gear. Baird launched the company with its Compassionate Finance unit, setting payment plans and processing for dentists to use with patients. In 2019, the firm added its Abella brand, which automates the Compassionate process and offers services like electronic invoicing. The firm in 2019 also added a white label business when a client asked CFI to create a loan processing system that Compassionate Finance manages.

Revenue rose 76.8% to $4.19 million in 2018 over 2015’s $2.37 million. The company, which was No. 4,403 on the 2019 Inc. 5000, has been growing at about 20% annually, and Brown says that’s the goal for 2020. The firm has self-funded all of its growth, he says.

The firm is investing in training infrastructure for employees, important given the company hires a lot of younger employees, Brown says. CFI has 22 staff members and will likely hire another five in 2020, he says.

The firm has client health providers in all 50 states, with Texas representing 22% of the business. Dentists represent 90% of the network, but CFI wants to grow other segments.

CFI’s benefits package includes options and equity grants to all employees. New employees receive grants and are eligible to participate in options. “Coming from a Fortune 50 company, I realized how important great benefits are,” Brown says.

16 DV8 The Salon

What they do: Hair salon

Headquarters: Grapevine

3-year revenue growth: 65.59%

Lisa Justiss and Candice Hammit were working as hairdressers at a popular salon in Arlington when they decided it was time to go into business for themselves. They learned a small salon on Main Street in downtown Grapevine was for sale, and they purchased it 12 years ago.

They later moved it across the street to its current location in a mixed-use residential and commercial development. And in 2016, they expanded it to 5,000 square feet from 1,800, after considering opening another location in Euless. In 2021, they plan to open a second location in a mixed-use commercial and residential building under construction in Roanoke’s rapidly expanding downtown.

Revenue reached $1.7 million in 2018, up 65.6% over three years. The salon has 16 chairs and employs 18 hairdressers, giving them freedom in setting hours across a Monday-Friday workweek; the salon is closed weekends.

Nine years ago, Justiss and Hammit brought in an accountant as a contractor; he installed sophisticated budgeting, profit and loss accounting, forecasting and planning. Justiss and Hammit established an apprenticeship program they use to develop and hire licensed hairdressers. One such apprentice: Kirbi James, now the salon’s third partner. DV8 — “deviate from the norm” — sticks to hairdressing, with no side services. “We’ve kept it very basic and simple,” Justiss says.

17 Whitley Penn

What they do: Accounting and audit

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 56.6%

Just within the last five years, Whitley Penn’s headquarters was in a bank building it owned at West Seventh Street near downtown, and the firm’s principals were discussing the possibility of building on a second lot they owned nearby to expand. The firm ultimately took over two floors in the newly built Frost Tower a year ago and sold its old headquarters.

Whitley Penn, founded in 1983, has tentacles in corporate tax and audit; business valuation; wealth management; business consulting; financial and retirement planning; insurance; and asset management. The firm continues to grow, with revenue reaching $114.1 million in 2018, 56.6% over 2015. Whitley Penn ended 2019 at about $130 million in revenue for the year and expects to hit $145 million to $150 million in 2020, Larry Autrey, managing partner, says.

“We keep setting conservative growth goals,  thinking the economy’s going to slow down,” Autrey says. The firm sees signs of slowing among clients who are wary of factors like trade — “all of our clients are doing something internationally” — and banks’ conservative lending posture. Private equity and “nonbank” lenders are popular sources of capital for oil and gas firms, viewing their assets as a backstop against the uncertainty of energy prices.

Whitley Penn has staked out differentiation as the local firm, as big firms vie for business in the region, Autrey says. It welcomes clients ranging from small firms to public companies, Autrey says. The firm finds efficiencies in use of its technology, he says.

Whitley Penn has also become an outsource provider of services to firms in segments like oil and gas that farm out work, instead of staffing up internally for it and risking layoffs when prices decline. For that business, Whitley Penn’s staff includes controllers, assistant controllers and, recently, a new landman. And if prices decline? “We’ve got long-term holding people who are able to use those services,” Autrey says.

The firm sees a similar opportunity in oil services, he says. “We’ll ramp up into that.” Whitley Penn’s due diligence segment remains strong. “We’re doing a bunch of due diligence.”

Whitley Penn, in the tight labor market, has established a reliable stream of accounting students from universities in Texas and surrounding states, a pool Whitley Penn uses to develop future full-time employees. “We’re on nine college campuses,” Autrey says. “Nobody hires like we do. When people come in the door, they understand it’s a firm that grows and hires well.”

18 Higginbotham

What they do: Insurance and benefits

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 51.68%

Higginbotham, started in 1948 by Paul Higginbotham, today is one of the nation’s largest independent brokers. The firm reached a record $200.4 million in revenue in 2018, up 51.7% over 2015. It hit another record in 2019 and will do so again in 2020, Rusty Reid, CEO, says. In 2019, it was the 24th largest independent insurance broker in the U.S., selling business and personal insurance and benefits.

The company continues to grow organically and by acquiring or merging with new partner agencies, expanding within existing geographic markets or adding new ones (most recently Atlanta), and expanding existing business segments or adding new ones (most recently, aviation and recreational vehicle dealers and owners). Higginbotham declines to team with an agency unless principals agree to stay on another five or 10 years. “If they can’t assist us in a perpetuation strategy, then we’re not interested,” Reid says.

Higginbotham has 40 offices in Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia, and 1,200 employees. The privately held firm fosters loyalty among employees by granting them stock annually after their first year of employment and, every three to four years, monetizing those grants, allowing employees to turn them into cash.

Higginbotham has also invested heavily in young employees, pairing new employees with veteran mentors and allowing them time to grow. “Our success rate is off the charts,” at about 83% to 85% when it comes to moving young people along into becoming account executives, Reid says.

Insurance is an “aging industry,” and Higginbotham wants to ensure its future with younger people, Reid says. The average age of an employee in the industry is 58. Higginbotham’s: “We’re 46 and getting younger.”

Higginbotham invests in a fun, family culture, often built around charitable involvement. The company also invests aggressively in technology, which Reid says interests younger employees.

19 M-Pak

What they do: Designer and distributor of packaging, retailer of tactical gear

Headquarters: Aledo

3-year revenue growth: 44.41%

Debbie Cooley believes her 21-year-old company M-Pak “should be a $50 million company,” she says. “We just need to stay on track.”

M-Pak designs and distributes packaging for needs ranging from aerospace helmets to calibrated equipment. Its products include custom cases, packaging supplies and shipping containers. For one, the company designed a case for the high-tech helmets that F-35 fighter pilots wear. M-Pak also retails tactical gear, including clothing, footwear and accessories, to police officers and agencies.

The company posted $12.14 million in 2018 sales, up 44.4% from 2015’s $8.4 million. M-Pak’s markets continue to grow, says Cooley, who sold packaging at another company for years before leaving to start her own firm.

The company sticks to business segments it knows it will do well in. Its federal business continues to grow, Cooley says. “We have a really good presence with the federal government, and it’s picking up.” M-Pak has a very strong 98% approval rate on its federal contracts. “Of course, in my mind, I’m worried about that 2%.”

The company today has 15 employees, primarily at its 10,000-square-foot Aledo headquarters and warehouse. It also has warehouses in South Carolina, Tennessee, and Chicago; customer support in Louisiana; and an employee in Massachusetts.

Eighty percent of the company’s business is in packaging. The firm entered tactical gear after one of its sales representatives noted some of the customers that buy packaging also buy tactical gear. “I didn’t want retail, but he kept on,” Cooley says. “We do pretty well.”

20 Baird, Hampton

& Brown

What they do: Engineering

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 42.39%

Twenty-six years after John Baird, Merlin Hampton and Les Brown founded their eponymous engineering firm in Fort Worth, it continues to quietly grow. The firm’s latest completed project: The Sinclair hotel downtown, where the company was engineer of record. Baird, Hampton & Brown is also working on TCU’s Neeley School of Business expansion.

The firm posted $16.9 million in 2018 revenue, up 42.39% from 2015. It has 110 employees, half in Fort Worth, and the others in Weatherford and Grapevine. The firm, licensed in 34 states, offers services in mechanical engineering, electrical and plumbing engineering and design, civil engineering and site development, land surveying, and landscape architecture.

Clients include ones in retail, health care, industrial and education. It added the Army Corps of Engineers last year. “We’re fortunate that we have a very broad basket,” Ken Randall, the firm’s chief operating officer, says. In recent years, the firm began re-examining relationships with all of its clients to determine whether it could offer them its other services. “That’s led to more projects,” Shonna Driver, the firm’s marketing director, says.

One example: TCU, where the firm worked on the renovation of the Daniel-Meyer Coliseum, now the Ed and Rae Schollmaier Arena, and is now working on the Neeley project.

21 Best Facility Services

What they do: Commercial janitorial services and decorative stone refurbishing

Headquarters: Hurst

3-year revenue growth: 40%

Best Facility Services is closing in on $10 million in annual revenue and, in August, enjoyed its first $1 million month. What differentiates the firm, CEO Mark Borge says: the high compensation it pays its account managers.

“We’ve had zero turnover for more than a decade,” Borge says. “And it’s due to the compensation model for account managers. They get a piece of gross profit in every building they manage, every month.”

Best Facility posted $9 million in 2018 revenue, three-year revenue growth of 40%. The company specializes in single-tenant commercial and institutional buildings. It serves about 95 properties, Borge estimates. The firm has eight W-2 employees and more than 110 subcontractors, many having their own janitorial companies.

Borge and partner Steven Nobles launched the company in 2004. Borge, a finance man, owned a Minuteman Press franchise he was exiting. Nobles once cleaned buildings himself and was working for a firm that Borge did the numbers work for. Nobles went out on his own; Borge provided the seed capital. “I moonlit a couple of years before this company could afford me,” Borge says. The company has never had debt, he says.

In 2011, the company made the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies. The company has a second operating unit, a stone refurbishing division, it launched with a partner.

Best Facility wants to be a consistent $10 million-a-year performer, and it will likely spin off the refurbishment business at some point, Borge predicts. Borge says the firm has learned a lot over the years, just from doing the monthly totes to pay account managers their shares. “I have learned the hard way the bottom line number is a lot more important than the top,” Borge says.

22 BoomerJack’s

What they do: Restaurants

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 30.4%

BoomerJack’s continues the aggressive growth path owner Brent Tipps has put it on. The company reached $35 million in 2018 revenue, up 30.4% over 2015. It likely reached $45 million in 2019 revenue, with a full year of results from a new Grapevine restaurant and four months of sales from its big new Sidecar Social venue in Addison, Tipps says. The company in early December opened a BoomerJack’s in Fairview. In 2020, the company plans to open three more BoomerJack’s in Lake Worth, Dallas and Plano.

The company today has nine big BoomerJack’s restaurants, five small locations, the Sidecar Social, and the Bedford Ice House, all in the Fort Worth-Dallas area.

The 20,000-square-foot Sidecar Social resulted from an initial plan to open a BoomerJack’s in the popular location. But the largest BoomerJack’s is 14,000 square feet. “I just couldn’t make it work,” Tipps says.

The landlord offered a strong deal for what used to be a movie theater, and Tipps set out to launch a venue similar to Punch Bowl Social, but without the bowling, and with a warmer feel and easier traffic flow. The venue, which can accommodate up to 1,000 people, has been so popular Tipps hired two salespeople to book parties and meetings, and by early December, the month’s event schedule was sold out, he says.

“I didn’t realize what a niche space we were in,” Tipps says. “If you want to throw a party for 250, 300 people, there’s not a whole lot of places.” Sidecar Social has karaoke rooms and games such as basketball, ping pong, shuffleboard, and bocce ball, and numerous big TV screens.

Tipps has added significant infrastructure to manage growth, most recently including a construction director, marketing director, training director, and office assistant. He also earlier added a CFO and, after he reached hundreds of employees, an HR director. “We’ll be looking at bringing on a culinary director,” Tipps says.

The company has more than 1,000 employees. Along the way, Tipps has built in a family culture, adding paid maternity leave of up to six weeks, paid paternity leave, liberal cash rewards, and a community-giving posture that now includes a BoomerJack’s nonprofit. “We give 10% of profit to charity,” he says. He also has a large warehouse that enables him to buy items in bulk.

Growth goals: “I want to be a $100 million company.” After 2020’s new stores, he figures that will take another 12 to 15. He’s looking at expanding to markets such as Houston. “We’re going to try to go to Houston in 2021,” where he wants to have a Sidecar Social and three to four BoomerJack’s restaurants.

23 Nix Door & Hardware

What they do: Residential doors, windows, fireplaces, hardware, home automation and security

Headquarters: Fort Worth

3-year revenue growth: 13.06%

Greg and Kathy Spears have been in numerous businesses — fishing camp, marinas, boat dealers. “And looked for value,” Greg Spears says. In 2009, the couple purchased Nix Door & Hardware in Fort Worth through their acquaintance with owner Diane Nix, whose husband had died.

The Spearses — Greg is CEO and Kathy, a CPA, is the accountant — retained Nix as brand ambassador and kept the company’s focus on its people. One of the company’s 56 employees has been with Nix 35 years. It didn’t matter that the Spearses had never been in doors. “A widget is a widget.”

The company has expanded into home security and automation, a segment Spears believes could overtake the company’s historic lines of business in prominence. Nix’s revenue rose to $12.5 million in 2018, up 13.06% over 2015.

To move into home security and automation, Spears recruited two key employees from the space. To Spears, it’s a big potential field. “If you take home security in the Metroplex, only one in five homes has a home security system,” he says.