The Deal Table

Margot Carter has worked on hundreds of deals and can count the bad ones on one hand. Her rule: the best deal is sometimes the one you don't do. More on Margot Carter and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/margot-carter Carter was chief legal officer of FYI, later Sourcecorp, at 27, after helping it merge its first eight companies and go public. It went on to buy two or three businesse...

Beth Van Duyne ran a city before she ran for Congress. She says the mayor's office moves an economy more than Washington does. More on Beth Van Duyne and this episode: https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/beth-van-duyne Van Duyne moved out on her own at 17 and worked two and three jobs at a time to pay rent, then went to Cornell on loans that took her 10 years to pay off. She got into...

Jonathan Lusk gives away the hunting marketplace for free. BirdDog makes its money on ranch taxes, loans and insurance instead. More on Jonathan Lusk and this episode: https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/jonathan-luskLusk spent his early career in wealth management, at Goldman Sachs and then at his own firm running money for 25 Texas families. One of those clients, ICON CEO Jason Ballard,...

Donna Letier built the first gardening company insurance will pay for. More than 500 organizations use it, and 85 percent come back. More on Donna Letier and this episode: https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/donna-letierLetier spent three decades in retail marketing, starting at Neiman Marcus under Stanley Marcus, before co-founding Gardenuity with Julie Eggers. Gardenuity runs gardening...

"If we owned this company, we wrote the $50 million check to control this business, is that who you would hire to put in that job?" Bill Rowe is founder, chairman and CEO of Rowe Global, a retained executive search firm that recruits CEOs, CFOs and presidents for private equity portfolio companies, PE funds, family offices and private companies. He went into retained search straight out...

"People thought I was crazy 12 years ago. You're going to ask people to spend $99 to ride a bus. They thought I was nuts. And I thought I was nuts a little bit."Alex Danza is the founder and CEO of Vonlane, the premium motorcoach company he launched in Dallas in May 2014 with two coaches and a single route to Austin. Twelve years on, Vonlane runs more than 500 weekly departures acros...

His P&L was measured in lives, not dollars. Allen West commanded 650 soldiers in Iraq, then carried the same leadership system into Congress and into business. More on Allen West and this episode: https://www.thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/allen-west West spent 22 years in the U.S. Army, commanded an artillery battalion out of Fort Hood, and advised the Afghan National Army in Kandahar. He t...

"Private equity rarely loses." George Baker says it as a director of the company he founded, watching his own shareholder value climb. Lane Carrick, who sells founder-owned businesses to private equity for a living, pushes back: you think it's about the math? "I know it's about the math." George Baker Sr. is the founder of ParkHub, now JustPark, and the founder and mana...

Private equity principals do not say this out loud: "We need to sell this company before something bad happens." Ralph Manning did it for years, not because the market was right, but because he could not see far enough into his own businesses to know what was hiding. Edward Crawford and Ralph Manning are co-founders and co-CEOs of Coltala Holdings, a permanent capital holding company in...

At 20 she was teaching high school Spanish. Today she runs Bank of America in North Texas and an $86 billion practice for foundations. More on Jennifer Chandler and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/jennifer-chandler Jennifer Chandler holds two jobs most banks split between two executives: North Texas president, with roughly 14,000 colleagues, and head of the bank's national endowment...

Google's AI answers took 60 to 80% of the clicks businesses used to get. Rex Kurzius rebuilt his entire company around the thing that did it. More on Rex Kurzius and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/rex-kurzius Kurzius founded Asset Panda in 2012 to solve the least glamorous problem in business, knowing where your stuff is. It now tracks assets for customers including Amazon, Toyota,...

Every buyer says culture is everything. No buyer puts culture in diligence. Tony Bridwell has spent 25 years inside that gap. More on Tony Bridwell and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/tony-bridwell Lane Carrick opens with the paradox he has watched his whole career on the sellside: every buyer says culture makes or breaks an acquisition, and no buyer ever builds a process around it....

A private jet is not a luxury purchase, it is a time-value-of-money decision. Here is what flying private actually costs, all in. More on David Henry and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/david-henry David Henry spent 18 years at CBS Radio in Dallas-Fort Worth, ultimately as senior vice president, before he started selling aircraft. He is not a pilot. He left after a student in the cl...

"If the president of the United States walks in the room, what's your ask?" Bill Bradley put that question to Kneeland Youngblood decades ago. More on Kneeland Youngblood and this episode: thedealtablepodcast.com/episodes/kneeland-youngblood He did not have an answer, and it reorganized his career. Youngblood practiced emergency medicine for 12 years at Parkland and Plano before leaving the ER to...

Dallas–Fort Worth is one of the fastest-growing business regions in the U.S., driven by corporate relocations, financial services expansion, and major infrastructure investment. Ken Malcolmson, President Emeritus of the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce, explains what’s behind this growth and why companies continue moving to North Texas. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT WE COVER ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━...

Thomas Gleason built a career in oil and gas before buying two historic cowboy boot companies—Olsen-Stelzer Boot Company (1900) and Dixon (1889). These brands have been worn by U.S. presidents, Hollywood legends, and country music icons. In this conversation, he breaks down how he acquired legacy businesses, why custom boots are hard to scale, and how retail became the key to growth. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━...

Jay Young is a fourth-generation Texas oilman and the founder and CEO of King Operating Corporation, a privately held independent oil and gas operator based in Addison, Texas. Over nearly three decades, Jay has built King Operating into a platform that partners with more than 2,200 accredited investors to acquire, develop, and divest American energy projects across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorad...

Advanced tech, billion-dollar programs, and autonomous drones — but does it make us safer? Preston Dunlap, Founder and Managing Partner of Arkenstone Capital & Arkenstone Ventures, explains the hidden challenges in modern warfare, revealing the risks behind high-tech defense strategies and why smart planning alone may not be enough to protect us. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT WE COVER ━━━━━━━...

Most people think DART is just about buses and trains. They’re wrong. It’s a $1.6 billion economic engine that determines how fast your Amazon packages arrive and how long you sit in Dallas traffic. Right now, DART is at a crossroads. With 13 member cities, shifting budgets, and a "Transit 2.0" vision, Chairman Randall Bryant is sitting at the most expensive deal table in North Texas. In...

World record mountain endurance athlete Chris Fisher reveals how addiction, loss, and repeated reinvention built the mindset behind one of the most demanding feats in American climbing history. He lost close friends to overdose, had his senior football season stripped away, and found himself at the lowest point of his life before he ever set foot on a mountain. After years of addiction, a recovery...

Rogers Healy built a real estate empire by becoming a Texas household name, but his true breakthrough came when he learned how to hire himself out of his own job. Now, as the operator behind Morrison Seger Venture Capital, Rogers is deploying $2M to $10M checks into high-growth consumer brands using a strategy that prioritizes founder integrity over a polished pitch deck. In this episode of The De...

George Killebrew, Vice President of the United Pickleball Association and former Chief Revenue Officer of the Dallas Mavericks, shares why in sports, it’s better to be hated or loved than ignored—and how that mindset shaped the Mavericks’ approach to building a winning franchise. This episode explores the principles behind creating a team that drives engagement, loyalty, and long-term value, from...

Solar activity is a measurable risk variable across satellites, aviation, precision agriculture, and energy markets. Katherine Monson, CEO and co-founder of Hale SWx, explains how a physics-based solar model improves forecast accuracy beyond legacy statistical methods and enables both short-range operational decisions and long-range capital planning. For spacecraft operators, forecasting informs l...

Wyatt Smith, founder of Upsmith and former Uber executive, outlines the strategic application of agentic AI within the U.S. skilled trades and home services sectors. Modern trade businesses face a 1.5 million-person labor shortage, a gap increasingly bridged by probabilistic AI agents designed to drive 50X increases in operational productivity. Automating administrative tasks at the application la...

Southern Methodist University isn’t trying to become Wall Street—and Dean Todd Milbourn is clear about that. What SMU Cox is doing is building a modern business school designed for a fast-shifting economy where talent, adaptability, and real-world engagement matter more than tradition alone. In this episode, Milbourn breaks down how SMU Cox is operating more like a holding company than a legacy in...