A series on the resources, network, and know-how to help entrepreneurs to grow faster with less risk.

In this episode, we talk with Brad Morehead, Partner and Head of the Business Services Fund at Shore Capital Partners, who has also been a CEO, a CFO, a business professor, and a founder who built and sold his own company. We talk about business models: why the way a company acquires and keeps customers tells you more about how to build it than the industry it sits in, and what that means when you can group companies across a portfolio of nearly 70 by model rather than by end market. Brad walks through how models evolve, from founder-led selling to professionalized sales and from break/fix work to recurring revenue, and how a future-state org chart, the right board member, and a new set of KPIs carry a company through that shift. He also shares the lesson from a mentor that he now teaches younger investors: when someone tells you an idea didn’t work, ask why, because you cannot be wrong when you are asking a question. We close with his own experience being acquired by a buyer in the exact same industry with a completely different model, which he compares to trying to build something with Legos and an Erector Set.

• Group companies by business model, not by industry, because a pest control business and a veterinary practice that both sell direct to consumers have more to teach each other than two companies that merely share an end market
• Draw the future-state org chart before you change the model, then design the transition structure, systems, and KPIs (attach rate, cross-sell, recurring revenue) that get you there
• Ask why when a founder says “we tried that and it didn’t work,” because the question gets you to the root cause, validates the person in front of you, and cannot be wrong
• Recognize the watch-outs that come with a model alongside its upside, because negative working capital or a subsidized customer acquisition model can let a company grow itself out of cash

In this episode, I talk with Owen Miller, CEO of 360Pack, a food and beverage packaging distribution business headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Owen joined 360Pack in its first year of operations through the Shore Capital CXO Fellows Program and, in less than five years, moved from CXO to VP of Supply Chain and Operations to COO and now to the CEO seat. He shares what it took to grow into each of those roles, including learning alongside founders with decades of industry experience and what the CEO seat has taught him that he couldn’t have learned anywhere else. Owen also explains why the ambiguity of the CXO role is exactly the point: it demands intellectual curiosity, humility, and a willingness to run toward the messiest parts of the business while building influence without formal authority. Finally, he offers some straight talk for anyone considering the program: if you’re looking for a cushy, kick-your-feet-up kind of role, this is not for you; if you’re looking to be pushed and to grow like never before, there is no better place to be.

In this episode, I talk with Nick Sherrard, Chief of Staff at Thermal Shipping Solutions and a member of the CXO Fellows Program. Nick shares how an internship at a Shore portfolio company showed him just how quickly he could make a measurable difference in a microcap business, and what it means to be Chief of Staff in a fast-growing, family-founded company. An engineer by training, he reflects on thinking in inputs, outputs, and bottlenecks, finding the root causes behind recurring fire drills, and driving change without authority by making every solution a win-win-win. Nick also describes the role of the CXO cohort, part joint therapy and part best-practice sharing, and shares the best advice he’s ever gotten: don’t confuse urgency with importance.

In this episode, Anderson talks with Ryan Resch, Principal of Operations at Shore Capital Partners. Ryan spent over a decade in basketball, from student manager at Baylor to Chief of Staff with the Phoenix Suns, before joining Shore nine months ago. He shares how first-principle problem-solving became the common thread across every career he has built, why the shift from the zero-sum world of professional sports to private equity changes how teams operate, and how that same builder mindset now drives Shore’s internal AI enablement efforts. Ryan also discusses why AI is a platform-level shift, not just an operational initiative, and what it takes to build something transformational from the ground up.

In this episode, Anderson Williams talks with Cynthia Hiskes, Head of the Human Capital Center of Excellence at Shore Capital Partners. Cynthia brings deep experience building and scaling HR functions across companies of every size, and she shares why aligning your HR investment to the stage and scale of your business is one of the most important decisions a founder or CEO can make. They discuss what human capital looks like in microcap and highly acquisitive companies, why HR belongs at the strategy table from day one, and how the Center of Excellence facilitates learning across the portfolio so leaders don’t have to figure it out alone. Cynthia also walks through how to think about talent assessment, organizational design, and culture during rapid growth and acquisition integration, and why the metrics that matter at exit need to be built into the planting phase.

In this episode, I follow up with Ross Koenig, Chief Data Officer at Shore Capital Partners and one of our earliest podcast guests. Ross reflects on how his role has evolved over the past three years, from leading the Data Center of Excellence supporting portfolio companies to focusing on Shore’s own investment process data and cross-portfolio insights. He shares why Shore’s longstanding commitment to process and documentation has become a powerful foundation in the age of AI, and how nearly 1,000 codified executive hires now enable pattern recognition that few firms can match. Ross also discusses why “garbage in, garbage out” matters more than ever, how AI is breaking down walls between executives and data, and why business owners who ignore AI risk being left behind.