In this episode, Chris sits down with John Owen, President and CEO of Airshare, one of the largest private jet operators in the country.

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In this episode, Chris sits down with Josh Zegen, Co-Founder & Managing Principal of Madison Realty Capital, a $25 billion real estate private credit firm he started with his college roommate in 2004. They dig into how he built one of the largest private lenders in the country starting from a desk in his dad's law office - and why he still thinks of himself as a businessman first and a real estate guy second.

Josh got into lending almost by accident. Laid off from a VC firm at 26 when the dot-com bubble burst, he took one mortgage deal nobody else would do, saw how fragmented and non-institutional the market was, and built a fund around it before "private credit" meant anything. Chris and Josh go deep on surviving '08, reinventing the business when capital dried up, and how Madison grew into a platform that now lends to other lenders.

They discuss:

Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:52) Rate Volatility and a Stalled CRE Investment Market
(09:44) What's Getting Done Today: Construction, Conversions, and Recaps
(18:49) Founding Madison: Seeing Opportunity in a Fragmented Market
(23:10) The GFC: Gating Investors and Going Vertically Integrated
(29:17) The $50M REIT Deal That Nearly Ended Madison—And the Door It Opened
(42:19) Why Borrowers Now Prefer Private Credit Over Banks
(45:08) In-House Loan Servicing as Madison's Competitive Edge
(46:57) The Back Leverage Business: Lending to Private Lenders
(53:26) Capital Markets Expansion and Staying True to Real Estate
(1:03:46) The Pfizer Deal, Lifecycle Lending, and Madison's Road Ahead
(1:12:57) Staying Relevant by Constantly Innovating and Looking for Acquisition Opportunities

Presented by Airshare:

Trusted across the country for fractional ownership, jet cards, charter, and aircraft management, Airshare gives you a smarter way to fly private - over 25 years of experience, operating their own fleet, with the top safety ratings in the industry. Drive up to the FBO, walk on, and go. Go to flyairshare.com to learn more.

Sponsored by:

Collateral Partners builds institutional-grade investor materials for private credit, private equity, real estate, and family office firms - the kind of marketing collateral that helps you close capital. Learn more at collateral.com/fort.

Relay Human Cloud helps you build a highly skilled global team that operates as a true part of your business - not an outsourced vendor. From accounting to operations, Relay's talent works inside your systems and alongside your local team, unlocking 24-hour productivity and significant cost savings. Learn more at https://www.relayhumancloud.com/powers-podcast/

Chris on Social Media:

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In this episode, Chris sits down with John McQueeney, State Representative for House District 97 in Tarrant County, Texas and member of the State Affairs Committee covering power grid and electric policy.

In the last six weeks alone, John's committee has run three interim data center hearings. He is also drafting the Data Center Responsibility Act for the January 2027 session - the bill that will set the framework for how Texas handles the data center build-out for a generation. Texas has 440 gigawatts of applications in the queue against roughly 110 gigawatts of current peak capacity. Someone has to sort out what's real, what's speculative, and who pays for the grid when it all comes online. John is one of the people doing that work.

They discuss:

Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(02:27) Why Data Centers Are a "12 Out of 10" for Texas
(08:17) A Day Without a Data Center
(09:34) Inside Stargate: Lancium, Crusoe, Oracle & OpenAI
(14:34) When One Data Center Funds 30% of a City's Budget
(17:03) The Vicious Restudy Cycle & the Batch Zero Fix
(28:55) 440 GW of Applications Chasing 105 GW of Capacity
(35:53) The 75 MW Threshold & Going Behind the Meter
(48:36) Drafting the Data Center Responsibility Act
(54:19) North Texas's Hidden Risk in Batch Zero
(01:08:35) Who Actually Pays for the Grid Buildout?
(01:14:32) Data Centers Are a National Security Issue
(01:18:12) Data Centers in Space & the Long Arc

Presented by Airshare:

Trusted across the country for fractional ownership, jet cards, charter, and aircraft management, Airshare gives you a smarter way to fly private - over 25 years of experience, operating their own fleet, with the top safety ratings in the industry. Drive up to the FBO, walk on, and go. Go to flyairshare.com to learn more.

Sponsored by Collateral Partners:

Collateral Partners builds institutional-grade investor materials for private credit, private equity, real estate, and family office firms - the kind of marketing collateral that helps you close capital. Learn more at collateral.com/fort.

Chris on Social Media:

Visit our website: https://www.powerspod.com/
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In this episode, Chris sits down with Bryan Perkins, Founder & CEO of Novaria Group, a Fort Worth-based aerospace manufacturer he started in 2011 and sold to Arcline last November for $2.2 billion.

Bryan didn't set out to be in aerospace. He needed a job. But once he was in, he saw a niche nobody else wanted - high-mix, low-volume, esoteric parts that go under the radar - and spent 15 years rolling up 27 companies into one of the biggest businesses most people have never heard of. His North Star from the start was TransDigm, a company he'd been studying since his 20s.

Chris and Bryan unpack the full operator's playbook behind that arc, how his thinking has evolved across a family office, KKR, and now Arcline, and where the entire aerospace ecosystem is headed by 2030.

They discuss:

Timestamps:
(0:00) Intro
(01:22) "You Can't Outmanage a Bad Capital Structure"
(05:00) Underwriting Deals
(12:17) Novaria's Strategy in Plain English
(15:04) IP Moats Over Commoditization
(17:04) Why Making an Aerospace Washer Is Harder Than You Think
(21:56) Business Model Business vs. Single-Product Business
(27:07) Patience and Decadal Thinking as a Proprietary Deal Flow Strategy
(30:49) How Unglamorous Early Jobs Build Real Credibility
(38:01) Centralized Controls, Decentralized Operations
(44:44) Leveling Up: Founders Who Start with the End in Mind
(55:11) What Is an Institutional Compounder?
(1:03:05) TransDigm as North Star - Carving a Differentiated Strategy
(1:08:41) Why Aerospace and Automotive Factory Playbooks Don't Transfer
(1:14:10) The Road to 2030: Demand Surge, Space Economy & New Aircraft Design

Presented by Airshare:

Trusted across the country for fractional ownership, jet cards, charter, and aircraft management, Airshare gives you a smarter way to fly private - over 25 years of experience, operating their own fleet, with the top safety ratings in the industry. Drive up to the FBO, walk on, and go. Go to flyairshare.com to learn more.

Sponsored by Collateral Partners:

Collateral Partners builds institutional-grade investor materials for private credit, private equity, real estate, and family office firms - the kind of marketing collateral that helps you close capital. Learn more at collateral.com/fort.

Chris on Social Media:

Visit our website: https://www.powerspod.com/
Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0
Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO

In this episode, Chris sits down with Rex Glendenning, founder of REX Real Estate and the man known across North Texas as the "King of Dirt." Rex is a fourth-generation Celina native whose great-grandfather homesteaded 160 acres in 1887. Over the last four decades he's brokered billions in DFW land deals - including the $130M public-private partnership that brought the Cowboys to Frisco - while quietly running a 4-broker shop out of his hometown.

Chris and Rex unpack his patience-and-dirt playbook, why he believes DFW is becoming the financial epicenter of America, and how he reads a real estate cycle years ahead of the rest of the industry.

They discuss:

Timestamps:

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In this episode, Chris sits down with James Beshara - founder of Magic Mind, angel investor in 150+ companies (Mercury, Alchemy, Gusto, Halo Top), and a Dallas native who built Tilt and sold it to Airbnb.

Timestamps:

(10:02) The Nootropics Rabbit Hole(15:49) Wave Selection as a Business Philosophy

(18:14) Retention is King

(29:02) Asynchronous-First Company Culture

(41:30) Magic Mind's Core Values

(45:53) Cracking the Meta/Instagram Algorithm

(52:22) Scaling Beyond E-Commerce

(1:07:29) Founders are Sleeping on the Power of Encouragement

(1:20:28) The Bhagavad Gita, Lion King & Duty

(1:30:10) Surrendering to a Duty-Bound Existence

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In this episode, Chris sits down with Nat Eliason - founder, writer, and now launching Founders School, a new entrepreneur high school in New York City.

In this episode, Chris sits down with Matthew Ogle, Co-founder & CEO of Legacy Knight, a $2.8B multi-family office in Dallas, TX that he co-founded in 2019. We dig into how you build a world-class multi-family office from scratch - and why so many wealthy families out there don't actually have one yet.

Matthew's path into wealth management didn't start in a boardroom - it started on a tennis court. A summer teaching tennis to a CIO's family at Cape Cod opened the first door, which led him to Credit Suisse's private bank through the GFC and then five years at the Crow family office, helping transform it into one of the first true multi-family offices in Dallas. He opened Legacy Knight's doors in October 2019 with $2.5M of operating capital, 14 seed families, and a contrarian bet - that the new generation of sub-50-year-old entrepreneurs hitting their first liquidity event needed something the bulge brackets couldn't offer. Six years later, Legacy Knight manages over $3B and was named the fastest-growing RIA in Texas.

Chris and Matthew go deep on what it actually takes to build a multi-family office the right way - the technology, the hiring, the legacy conversations with families, and why Matthew refuses to grow by acquiring other books of business.

They discuss:

Links:

Legacy Knight - https://legacyknight.com/

Matthew on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-ogle-ab11873/

(02:01) Matthew’s First Exposure to Wealth Management

In this episode, Chris sits down with Austin Tunnell, founder of Building Culture - a real estate development and design-build company based in Oklahoma City specializing in structural masonry construction and walkable, mixed-use urban infill.

Austin's path to real estate is one of the more unusual ones we've had on the show. He grew up a football player in the suburbs of Houston, went to work at KPMG out of college, hated it, and joined the Peace Corps. A chance meeting with a master mason in Panama changed the trajectory of his life. He returned to the US and apprenticed for two years laying brick by hand for $12 an hour in rural Oklahoma while his wife cleaned houses to support them. Today Austin designs and develops some of the most beautiful residential and mixed-use projects being built in America, including an 18-townhome, live-work, and mixed-use commercial project currently underway in downtown Edmond, Oklahoma.

Chris and Austin go deep on Austin's philosophy of beauty, the case for building things meant to last hundreds of years, and the policy, financing, and culture obstacles standing in the way.

We discuss:

- How a chance meeting with a master mason in Panama changed the trajectory of Austin's life

- The difference between veneer brick and true structural masonry, and why almost no one in the US builds the real thing anymore

- Why Austin believes beauty is real, beauty is important, and beauty "connects us to the divine"

- Five simple brick details any developer can use to make a veneer building look dramatically better for almost no added cost

- How fire codes, building codes, and Euclidean zoning quietly destroy neighborhoods and push developers toward the same ugly apartment complexes

- Austin's long-term-hold model for funding new construction infill, inspired by Moses Kagan and ReSeed

- Missing middle housing, walkability, and why a 30-unit townhome neighborhood can feel more like home than any class-A apartment building

About the guest: Austin Tunnell is the founder of Building Culture, an Oklahoma City-based real estate development and design-build firm focused on beautiful, durable, human-scale neighborhoods. Building Culture specializes in structural masonry construction, walkable urban infill, and mixed-use development.

Links:

Building Culture - https://www.buildingculture.com/

Austin on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@austintunnell

Austin on X - https://x.com/austintunnell

Austin on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/austin-tunnell-2a41894a/

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:02:33) - Austin’s journey with the Peace Corps and how that led him to Masonry

(00:12:26) - Why we moved away from Masonry and toward wood frames

(00:15:19) - What drew Austin to Masonry

(00:19:34) - Learning the craft

(00:24:25) - Why humans gravitate toward humanely built things

(00:26:51) - What people can do with brick to get more value from a home

(00:31:23) - What to ask architects when looking for a Mason

(00:32:39) - Training Masons

(00:33:28) - Austin’s project in Edmond, OK

(00:38:17) - Defining beauty

(00:50:03) - The impact of over regulation in construction and zoning

(00:55:50) - Austin on scaling his business

(00:59:38) - Local, state, and national policies that need to change

(01:05:03) - Interior beauty in Austin’s world

(01:09:30) - Tax incentives and capital structures

(01:16:52) - Building a media business in Real Estate

(01:18:05) - Live-work real estate

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Today I sit down with Jason McCann, Co-Founder and CEO of Vari - a company that started when his business partner stood at a cardboard box complaining of back pain and turned that moment into a brand that has shipped millions of desks and transformed over a thousand offices.

Jason built Vari direct-to-consumer in an industry that had never seen it. He bootstrapped the company while every instinct in the market said raise capital and burn cash. He became the fastest-growing company in Dallas, survived COVID after just putting $15 million into a TV campaign and opening 12 showrooms, and came out the other side as a fundamentally different leader.

We go deep on what it actually takes to innovate legacy product categories, how he recruited the former Chief People Officer of Southwest Airlines over a cup of coffee, and why an introvert had to learn to over-communicate when hundreds of families were counting on him.

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did.

Links:

Vari - https://www.vari.com/

Jason on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-mccann-vari/

Support our Sponsors

Collateral Partners: https://collateral.com/fort

Ramp: https://ramp.com/powers

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro
(00:03:29) - How Vari was started
(00:08:42) - How entrepreneurs should think about product development
(00:11:24) - How Jason approaches AI
(00:24:07) - Developing the standing desk
(00:36:53) - Jason’s approach to manufacturing
(00:47:16) - How Vari develops new products and services
(00:56:59) - Bringing on the head of people of Southwest Airlines
(01:04:31) - How Vari thinks about innovation vs. leaving products alone
(01:14:55) - The future of work in 2026
(01:19:50) - The reindustrialization of America
(01:23:36) - Jason’s unique leadership style
(01:28:47) - Why Jason only wears black
(01:31:52) - What a week looks like for Jason
(01:40:46) - How vari runs exec meetings

Chris on Social Media:

X: https://x.com/fortworthchris

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcast

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/45gIkFd

Watch POWERS on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3oynxNX

Visit our website: https://www.powerspod.com/

Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0

Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO