Fervent Four

"Sure there's a financial risk, but what's my risk? I get to go be a doctor again."

Dr. Kirk Heath spent about 15 years as a general surgeon in Virginia Beach, and he kept walking away from that safety to build something new. He has started three healthcare companies. The first was sold to a competitor. The second, Modio, was acquired by CHG Healthcare. The third is Apios Health, where he is today.

In this conversation he explains why running a startup wore him out more than surgery ever did, why he swore he'd never do another startup and then left a comfortable executive job to start one anyway, and why he says everyone in business is in sales.

Kirk joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan on Fervent Four to talk about betting on yourself, what he'd do differently the second time around, and how Apios gives employers' families a doctor by text with no app, no login and no copay.

In this episode:

• Why a startup was more exhausting than surgery
• Why surgeons make good salespeople, and why everyone is in sales
• Why the risk of leaving medicine never scared him
• Swearing off startups, then starting Apios anyway
• What he'd do differently the second time around
• Why co-founder relationships can destroy a company
• How Apios Health gives a family a doctor by text
• The 10x rule for founders
• What food represents Hampton Roads?

ABOUT KIRK

Dr. Kirk Heath is a general surgeon turned founder in Virginia Beach. He co-founded Modio and Apios Health, which gives employer teams text access to physicians. Learn more at https://www.apioshealth.com Connect with Kirk: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirkwheath

Subscribe to Fervent Four for conversations with the people building businesses, creating opportunities, and doing remarkable things.

"Are you in a position where what you've built is protected?"

That's the question Al MacIsaac asks business owners, and most of them answer, "I think so." Then he and his partner review the plan and start looking for the gaps.

Al spent 21 years in professional hockey front offices, from running the Norfolk Admirals to the Chicago Blackhawks, where the team won three Stanley Cups in six years, and he watched what separates teams that win from teams that don't. In this conversation he explains why the most talented player on a roster can be the biggest trap, what happened when an entire organization was asked to name its "one goal," and why an NHL president said a championship ring wouldn't mean much.

Al joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan on Fervent Four to talk about the meeting he flew to knowing he had no job, the money mistakes young athletes make, how NIL is changing college and junior hockey, the story behind one very expensive Maserati, and where he thinks most businesses leave gaps.

In this episode: - Why the most talented player on a roster can be the biggest trap - The culture fit matrix: talent on one axis, character on the other - Talent gets you to the floor, character gets you to the ceiling - How the Chicago Blackhawks won three Stanley Cups in six years - A hockey team that went from 5,000 fans a game to a 10,000-person waitlist - Why values on a wall don't work unless the leader lives them - The slogan every employee had to answer: "one goal" - The money mistakes young athletes make, and how NIL is changing college and junior hockey - What food represents Hampton Roads?

ABOUT AL Al MacIsaac is a financial representative with LifeTime Financial Growth in Virginia Beach, where he helps business owners look for the gaps in what they've built. Before that, he spent 21 years in professional hockey, starting as general manager of the Norfolk Admirals and later helping lead the Chicago Blackhawks' front office. He also runs Bench and Boards, a company that represents hockey coaches, and Champions Edge Leadership Group, which teaches leadership and culture. Connect with Al: https://www.linkedin.com/in/al-macisaac/

Subscribe to Fervent Four for conversations with the people building businesses, creating opportunities, and doing remarkable things.

They cashed in everything they had to start a business. No investors. No borrowed money. Then one of the world's largest investment banks came calling.

Justin Askew and Stephanie McLane took a gamble on themselves and built AREMCO, a Virginia Beach-based company that now manages real estate assets nationwide and ranks No. 313 on the Inc. 5000.

Now they're chasing an even bigger goal, a $250 million company valuation.

In this episode of Fervent Four, Justin and Stephanie join Zack Miller and Tim Ryan to share what it took to build their business, why they haven't accepted outside investment, and how they balance rapid growth with protecting what they've built.

They also reveal how they met, why working together as a couple requires boundaries, and what really happens behind the scenes when homeowners fall behind on mortgage payments.

From launching around the beginning of COVID to navigating dangerous situations in the field, their story is about taking risks, making difficult decisions, and betting on yourself.

Subscribe to Fervent Four for more conversations with people building extraordinary businesses.

Guests Justin Askew and Stephanie McLane, AREMCO

Hosts Zack Miller and Tim Ryan

#Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #FerventFour

00:00 Risking Everything to Build AREMCO 00:46 How a 20-Year Business Connection Came Full Circle 03:11 Why Justin Avoids Social Media 04:57 Building a Reputation Without Big Marketing Budgets 07:17 Why Justin's Kids Want Him on TikTok 09:23 Are We Losing Human Connection? 11:52 Is a Generation Turning Against AI? 13:26 How Justin and Stephanie Met 17:24 How Their Relationship Became a Business 18:45 When It's Time to Bet on Yourself 20:10 The Giddy Up and the Whoa 21:32 The $250 Million Ambition 22:44 Risking Everything Without Investors 24:34 Why AREMCO Hasn't Taken Outside Investment 26:30 Why They Deliberately Slowed Growth 27:54 Managing Thousands of Contractors Nationwide 28:08 The $30 Billion Investment Bank Conversation 31:56 Reaching No. 313 on the Inc. 5000 32:56 How AREMCO Got Its Name 35:06 How AI Is Changing the Mortgage Industry 38:08 Has the American Dream Changed? 39:10 Why First-Time Homebuyers Are Getting Older 40:21 Will We Ever See 3% Mortgage Rates Again? 42:11 The 92-Year-Old Who Received a 30-Year Mortgage 43:38 What Happens When You Miss a Mortgage Payment? 46:36 The Dangerous Reality of Property Management 48:36 Setting Boundaries as Married Business Partners 49:43 Why Virginia Beach Will Always Be Home

At 60, Marsha Hudgins thought she was headed toward retirement. Instead, she was about to take over a construction company in an industry where few people expected her to lead.

Her husband, the founder of Hudgins Contracting, was battling pancreatic cancer. Before he died, he made her promise not to shut down the business.

She kept that promise.

But taking over was anything but easy. Longtime employees questioned her involvement. She had to learn the construction industry, protect her financial future, and figure out how to grow a company she had never expected to run.

Fifteen years later, she's tripled the company's revenue.

On this episode of Fervent Four, Marsha joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan to discuss taking over at 60, challenging old-school construction practices, building a stronger workforce, and why knowing how to run a business matters more than knowing everything about an industry.

They also explore the lessons she learned from opening her first retail store at 25, her perspective on MBA programs, the opportunities in Hampton Roads construction, and why she's not ready to stop working.

Subscribe to Fervent Four for conversations with the people building businesses, creating opportunities, and doing remarkable things.

00:00 The Promise That Changed Everything 00:52 Meet Marsha Hudgins 01:56 How Hudgins Contracting Started 07:46 Starting Her First Business at 25 10:11 Is an MBA Worth It? 14:47 From Retail to Healthcare to Construction 21:56 Taking Over in a Male-Dominated Industry 23:22 How She Tripled the Business 24:37 Where Hudgins Contracting Works 30:29 Will Marsha Ever Retire? 31:16 Growing Revenue With Fewer Employees 34:09 Changing Old-School Construction Practices 36:17 The Pressure of Running a Business 40:15 Developing Employees and Leading Teams 46:52 Life Outside the Business

With $50,000 in the bank, Alexis Perkins bet on herself and invested it in a new website and app for Chair One Fitness. The app went on to become her company's largest revenue source.

In episode 330 of Fervent Four, Alexis joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan to share how she turned canceled bookings into international growth, got in front of hard to reach buyers, and expanded her seated fitness business into corporate wellness.

A conversation about backing yourself, creating opportunities, and following through.

Mike Van Sickel offered two trucking brokers a share of $25 million in work. Both turned him down.

They were already spending their weekends collecting paper tickets, tracking changes on legal pads and trying to produce invoices that matched the contractor's records. More work would only make that problem bigger.

Mike had spent decades in construction watching dispatchers, drivers and brokers manage major projects this way. He left an executive role to build Iron Sheepdog, a platform for managing short haul trucking jobs, tickets and payments.

Mike joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan on Fervent Four to explain why earning brokers' and drivers' trust was harder than building the software, how the platform helps small trucking businesses grow, and why he still found handwritten tickets at a major AI data center project.

Learn more about Iron Sheepdog at https://www.ironsheepdog.com/

00:00 Handwritten tickets at an AI data center project 00:39 Meet Mike Van Sickel 01:07 How Iron Sheepdog got its name 04:28 Why dump trucks needed software 06:40 The problem Mike saw inside a construction company 08:06 Two brokers turn down millions in work 12:06 Why trust mattered more than the app 13:36 How jobs and payments work on the platform 15:44 Making better use of every truck 20:28 The logistics behind building anything 23:26 Helping small trucking businesses grow 28:21 Leaving an executive job and raising money 33:39 Iron Sheepdog's reach across the country 35:15 The paper tickets behind an AI data center 37:24 Where AI helps and where people still matter 40:33 Finding out a job is losing money too late 42:36 What drivers need to know before entering a site 45:17 Competition and the future of construction logistics 49:32 The customer support call Mike still remembers 52:38 Does Mike want to sell Iron Sheepdog? 54:39 What food represents Hampton Roads?

Paula Short didn't set out to build a global beauty brand.

She and her business partner created a glitter lip product to get more customers through the door of their salon. Then people started buying it.

They took the product to London. Landed Topshop. Expanded internationally. Supplied major retailers and airlines. Paula appeared on BBC Dragons' Den. And somewhere along the way, the small idea became a very real business.

But growth came with another side.

The fun disappeared. The pressure increased. Paula eventually sold the company and found herself confronting a question many entrepreneurs eventually face: if the business has become part of your identity, who are you when it's gone?

Then she made another unexpected decision.

In her 50s, Paula packed two suitcases and moved to the United States.

Today she works with entrepreneurs and leadership teams, helping them recognize opportunities, avoid expensive mistakes and build on what is already working.

In Episode 328 of Fervent Four, Paula joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan to talk about saying yes before you have everything figured out, building Beauty Boulevard, Dragons' Den, burnout, selling a company, negotiation, moving to America and why entrepreneurs need people willing to tell them what they don't want to hear.

Greg Tomchick has been through enough over the last few years to completely change how he thinks about business, success and himself.

The founder of Valor Cybersecurity returns to Fervent Four more than three years after his first appearance. Since then, he found Valor's market serving defense contractors, endured an investor falling out, a divorce and a painful split with a business partner, and came out of it with a very different definition of winning.

Greg joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan to talk about why pain can become your greatest superpower, why confidence comes from reps, what baseball taught him about handling pressure, and why confronting what you're avoiding can be the quickest path toward peace.

They also dig into vulnerability, seeking approval, asking better questions, finding intrinsic value instead of chasing external validation, and Greg's upcoming book, 27 Ideals of Connection.

Plus, Greg explains where he believes cybersecurity is heading as AI becomes ubiquitous and why Valor is betting on private, compartmentalized AI environments that give companies greater control over their data and intellectual property.

Timestamps

00:00 Pain is your greatest superpower 00:42 The Greg Tomchick origin story 05:41 Building Valor Cybersecurity 10:05 Four years searching for product market fit 13:08 Learning what you're worth 14:33 Where confidence actually comes from 18:30 Why Greg breathes OUT under pressure 20:48 Baseball and cybersecurity have more in common than you think 21:09 The meaning behind 27 Ideals of Connection 22:43 Living outside your comfort zone 25:26 Stop assuming. Ask the question. 30:09 Knowing what to care about 34:14 Why people need honest feedback 36:36 Greg's darkest stretch 38:00 Pain is your greatest superpower 41:24 The transformation since Greg's first appearance 43:37 Learning that you are enough 45:29 Intrinsic vs. extrinsic success 50:56 Vulnerability creates connection 53:44 What happens to cybersecurity in the AI era? 56:37 Valor's move into private AI 59:18 What food represents Hampton Roads?

https://valor-cybersecurity.com/

Joe Benedetto spent his career in an industry most people rarely think about: recycling.

His family has been in the business for more than 100 years. Joe started working in recycling at 13, eventually launched Recycling & Disposal Solutions (RDS) in 2004, and grew the company to five locations and roughly 80 employees.

But this conversation goes well beyond recycling.

Joe joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan to break down how technology and AI are transforming one of the oldest industries around, why automation can create higher-paying technical jobs, what he learned scaling a company across multiple states, and why building a business that can operate without its owner matters long before an acquisition.

Then the conversation turns to the exit.

After years of planning, mounting business stress and a health scare, Joe decided it was time to sell. He explains what entrepreneurs need to do years before a potential acquisition, why the legal process was more difficult than he expected, when to tell employees, and what happens when the company that gave you purpose for 20 years is suddenly no longer yours.

CHAPTERS

0:00 The moment Joe knew it was time to retire 1:13 Bringing innovation to a 100-year-old industry 2:37 What actually happens to your recycling 3:47 How recycling evolved from people to automation 5:35 How single-stream recycling changed the industry 7:21 Growing up in a 100-year family business 10:37 Building RDS 12:48 Understanding the commodity business 15:36 The future of recycling 17:01 Calculating the ROI of new technology 19:48 What contamination does to recycling 24:16 Can AI make recycling simpler? 24:23 What people get wrong about recyclables 29:20 What the future of trash could look like 32:07 Being born into the family business 32:30 Leaving the family business to build his own 33:22 Lessons in leadership and management 34:38 Growing to five locations and 80 employees 35:46 Why peer-to-peer learning matters 39:34 What entrepreneurs can learn from other industries 40:40 America's skilled labor challenge 42:01 How AI changed jobs inside RDS 43:31 What makes an employee worth investing in 44:37 How to retain talented employees 45:07 Deciding it was time to sell 46:14 How to prepare a business for acquisition 48:24 The hardest part of selling a company 50:00 When do you tell employees you're selling? 51:54 Would Joe start another business? 52:11 Finding purpose after an exit 56:08 Preparing the business to be sold 57:07 Why entrepreneurs need to ask for help 58:13 What is the food of Hampton Roads? 59:50 Closing

Building something meaningful and building something massive don't have to be opposing goals.

Adam Alphin, founder and CEO of KleerCard, joins The Fervent Four to talk about building a company on his own terms while still thinking big about where it can go.

KleerCard has grown to more than 1,250 customers while taking a deliberately disciplined approach to outside capital. Adam shares why the company raised as little as possible early on, what he learned from six years at Coupa and why founders can get a distorted view of success when every story they see is about the next massive valuation or billion-dollar exit.

The conversation gets into founder-led sales, competing against much larger companies, finding the right investors, building culture on a remote team, customer success and why taking more shots matters in both fundraising and business.

Adam also breaks down KleerCard's next chapter, including its expansion into AI-powered accounting software for nonprofits and why, despite acquisition interest, he isn't building the company just to sell it.

0:00 The dream of building a company you do not want to sell 1:14 How to pronounce Adam Alphin 2:00 Adam and Zack go back more than a decade 3:02 Adam's career before KleerCard 3:59 Stepping away from his first company after a cancer diagnosis 5:14 From an early exit to Coupa 5:49 How Adam ended up in the startup world 7:55 What Silicon Valley taught him about building companies 9:04 Why repeating your core values actually matters 10:48 What KleerCard does today 11:02 The $50 million debt facility and narrowing the company's focus 13:12 How KleerCard works beyond a traditional business credit card 14:36 Why fintech companies are out innovating banks 17:07 The importance of repeating your message 17:56 Selling the first 1,000 customers 19:23 Why getting customers fully implemented matters 21:20 How visibility into spending can save organizations money 22:40 The growing problem of AI token spending 24:13 Building a 17 person remote company 26:38 KleerCard's three core values 28:38 Fraud, nonprofits and getting a call from the FBI 31:43 Why KleerCard intentionally raised as little money as possible 34:20 How long it actually took to raise their latest round 35:10 Finding investors outside traditional venture capital 36:05 Why you should take the investor meeting 37:50 You don't become a professional athlete by taking three shots 39:11 The social media fication of startup success 40:39 Growing without a marketing team 41:05 How KleerCard got its name 42:16 Does owning the perfect dot com still matter? 44:19 Who KleerCard is built for 46:04 How do you sell something customers don't know they need? 46:34 Why word of mouth drives KleerCard 48:00 Most customers now sign up without a demo 49:10 What great customer success actually looks like 50:18 Learning leadership from bad leaders 51:05 What founders can learn from comedians 54:27 Why you should never burn a bridge 55:50 KleerCard's next big bet on AI and nonprofit accounting 58:18 You don't just attain the dream just to sell it 1:00:05 Why KleerCard isn't rushing toward an exit

Learn more about KleerCard: https://www.getkleercard.com/

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