Ground Zero Growth

A kid from the projects of Cleveland sat in a window one Christmas waiting for a father who never pulled into the driveway. Thirty-plus years later, that same kid had played college basketball at Ohio State, signed with the Harlem Globetrotters, eaten dinner with Muhammad Ali, and been waved through a traffic stop in Sydney by an officer who couldn't see a seven-foot driver folded into the back of the car. Derek Polk tells Sam Sapp how all of that fits inside one life, and what it took to hold it together.

Tate Fisher has opened a lot of stores. The fastest brand his team ever supported was opening 3.5 locations a week for almost two years. The one that almost broke his business went the other direction. A commitment to open 90 stores turned into 11, a $600,000 hole, and a choice: file bankruptcy and walk, or spend the next several years paying vendors back a dollar at a time. Tate chose the second option. This episode is about why, and what the hole taught him about partnerships, family, and saying no.

At eleven-thirty at night, in a guest room turned study space, Megan Brenner sat crying over her CFP books. Her dad was in an assisted living facility after a massive stroke. Two small kids were asleep down the hall. A full-time job waited the next morning. She asked herself why she was doing this to herself, then remembered exactly why. Megan, co-founder of Craft and Sage Wealth in Kansas City, walks Sam through how a small-town upbringing, a stubborn streak, and the hardest season of her life shaped the values she runs her firm by.

Hiba Rosace walked Sam through a year that would have broken most business owners. Her boutique marketing firm had been pulling in six figures a month when a string of client buy-sells cut her revenue in half almost overnight. What she talks about on this episode is not the playbook she ran to recover it. It's the mental work underneath. How a pastor's daughter who grew up on mission trips learned to treat her business like a calling, set boundaries with male-dominated rooms, and pace herself through burnout without walking away.

John Hall grew up riding in rodeos in West Texas oil country. At 12 he moved to Coronado, California and became a surfer. By his 30s he was running rooms at Madison Square Garden, holding two VP roles and a GM seat while the NFL, NHL, and NBA all paid for his time. Then in August 1999, at 40 years old, a former quarterback named James Gidry stopped him in a crowded hospitality room and told him they needed to pray. John walked out of that event a different person. This conversation is about the transitions that followed.