The High Performance Herd

Leaders who refuse to get comfortable build teams that keep growing. Sean Farrell, CEO of Quality Data Systems, shows you how to do it. This episode covers leadership lessons from sports, family business succession, talent development, emotional intelligence and radical candor. Learn how to build a high performing team, scale a family business, implement processes for sustainable growth and shape...

From a personal need for trailer rentals to a nationwide logistics powerhouse, John Brooks, CEO of Warehouse on Wheels, built an empire on trust, extreme ownership and emotional intelligence, proving that empowered leadership scales faster than control ever could. This conversation unpacks leadership lessons from private equity, the realities of scaling a founder led business, and how employee eng...

Melissa Niebes turned Federal Package, now FP Labs, from a hidden industry secret into a thriving skincare and personal care manufacturing powerhouse, proving that bold leadership can rewrite any company’s future story. In this episode of High Performance Herd, explore how this CEO rebuilt culture, walked away from risky customer concentration and scaled innovation inside contract manufacturing, p...

From furniture warehouses to power plant floors, one leader kept asking the same dangerous question: what if we stopped assigning blame and started fixing forward? Nathan Sanders, CEO of Industrial Air Flow Dynamics, built his career on that curiosity, and it took him from sales operations to running a private equity backed industrial powerhouse. This is a masterclass in leadership development, bu...

High performing teams beat bigger budgets, and Reza Mirza of Icelandic Glacial proves it. He grew a five million dollar water brand from a Culver City storefront into a top three import through leadership, company culture and fearless debate. Learn how to build a high performing team and how to scale a company without burning cash. 🔹 Giants Fall Slowly: How to compete against bigger brands 🔹 Spa...

Ramin Mousavi, President and CEO of CathWorks, did not build just a medical technology company. He built a cardiovascular innovation movement so unstoppable that Medtronic acquired it for $585 million, powered by radical trust, relentless teamwork, and a leadership culture that accepted nothing below extraordinary. This is the leadership playbook the medical device world was not ready for. 🔬 The...

From football fields to boardrooms, Brandon Ansley, CEO of Carter and Clark, turned a culture in crisis into a company doubling revenue and tripling EBITDA in a construction market down 7%. This is not a comeback story. This is a masterclass in what happens when the right leader walks into a room full of A players who were one resignation letter away from walking out. 📐 The Citadel Blueprint: For...

Ray Titus, CEO of United Franchise Group, has spent decades proving that franchise growth starts with people, culture and relentless execution. His philosophy is simple but demanding: build great teams, develop franchise owners, protect the culture and never confuse support with enabling. In this episode, Ray reveals the leadership principles behind a global franchise organisation, from hiring for...

He walked into Shanghai at 26 with zero playbook, zero brand recognition, zero safety net and turned a failing startup into the foundation of one of the most compelling CEO careers in global business today. David Hewitt, CEO of Hyperion Solutions, has led across five countries, multiple industries, every ownership structure imaginable and built high performance cultures from the ground up. This is...

Danny Schnaars did not simply inherit a business. He inherited a standard, and at AmeriGlobe LLC, he is quietly rewriting what a 30 year manufacturing company looks like when relentless conviction meets radical innovation. 📦 From Plant Floor to Patent Powerhouse How working the grind shaped a CEO who leads without authority and still wins every room. ⚙️ The Fusion Revolution Challenging 60 Years...

AI and fleet utilization are reshaping modern trucking. Marc El Khoury, Co Founder and CEO of aifleet, explores how artificial intelligence can help trucking companies unlock more capacity, improve operational efficiency, and build a more intelligent freight network. This conversation goes beyond AI hype to examine the real operational challenges facing trucking fleets. Marc shares insights into f...

James Freeman stepped into PJ Fitzpatrick at the peak of a global pandemic with zero hesitation and a single audacious conviction: belief, not budget, is what builds extraordinary companies. Today, the nation's number one ranked home improvement CEO has scaled PJ Fitzpatrick from $25 million to over $150 million and is locked on $800 million by 2030. In this episode, James unpacks the frameworks,...

From solving equations to solving one of healthcare's toughest problems, Jill Pellegrino, CEO of AutoCruitment, reveals how a lifelong love of mathematics became the foundation for leadership, clinical trials innovation and patient recruitment at scale. She unpacks her rise from Acurian to CVS Health to AutoCruitment, sharing hard won lessons on healthcare leadership, growth strategy, team buildin...

He started on a forklift. He rose through Fortune 100 logistics. He turned around a failing freight company, rebranded it, sold it into a $900M Maersk deal, and then walked away from $5 million in annual revenue to start from zero again. Not because he had to. Because he saw the thing the entire $270 billion air freight industry was too comfortable to admit: the quote was never the product. The co...

David Clifton walked into CIP Retail two years ago expecting to close a 50 year old retail design and manufacturing business for good. What he built from the wreckage is one of the most compelling CEO turnaround stories in American small business history. Today CIP Retail is profitable, process driven and built for scale. 🎬 The CEO Seat Nobody Warned Him About 🔥 The Fridge Analogy That Turned a...

From sorting nuts and bolts on a factory floor at age four to commanding a 100 million dollar retail empire, Brett Nelson, CEO of The Peggs Company, proves that legacy is built, not inherited. This episode of High Performance Heard unpacks raw, unfiltered leadership lessons on family business succession, CEO transition, and scaling a third generation manufacturing company into retail's most truste...

In this episode, Ryan Getz shares his leadership journey, the lessons learned from scaling a growing organization, and the principles behind building high-performing teams. He discusses how purpose, values, trust, and self-awareness shape strong leadership and sustainable company culture. Ryan explains the importance of developing future leaders, empowering employees, and creating an environment w...

From a town of 4,500 people in Ontario to the CEO chair of Mackage, one of luxury fashion's most electrifying transformation stories, Tanya Golesic proves that relentless work ethic and radical brand authenticity are the only credentials that truly matter when building a billion dollar global empire. Tanya Golesic, CEO of Mackage, carried the precision of Ralph Lauren, the global sophistication of...

 From learning what leadership truly means by watching his father succeed, to building a software empire across an entire continent, Justin Newell, CEO of Inform North America, is proof that extraordinary authority is not given. It is engineered, role by role, decision by decision, and market by market. 📍 The Trench Blueprint for Tech Leadership How mastering every organizational role builds unsh...

From a single mother's household with four kids doing laundry at age 10, to leading a defence manufacturing powerhouse trusted with bringing US troops safely to the ground 100% of the time, John Oswald, President and CEO of Mills Manufacturing, proves that real leadership is never chosen. It chooses you. What you will discover in this episode: 🪖 The Reluctant Leader Blueprint: How a youth hockey...

From the rubble of a Pentagon under attack on 9/11 to commanding 4,000 Marines across 67 locations, Rich Brady, President and CEO of the Society of Defense Financial Management (SDFM), forged a leadership philosophy that no business school on earth could teach. In this high voltage episode of High Performance Herd, Marine Colonel turned CEO Rich Brady strips away every illusion of what it truly ta...

Bankrupt twice, sleeping in his truck, $762 paychecks as a firefighter - Jeremy Barker, Founder and CEO of Murphy Door Inc., turned a 9x11 theater room project for his daughters into a hidden door empire generating $60 million a year, Made in America, and scaling toward a billion. This is not a rags to riches fairy tale. This is a masterclass in grit, category creation, financial discipline, and w...

Most companies are scaling fast and quietly building a broken culture that top talent will eventually run from. Cheryl Patnick, Chief Administrative Officer of Tris Pharma, has lived the uncomfortable reality of growing a pharma company from under 50 people to over 600, and she is here to reveal the hidden truths that most leaders refuse to talk about. What does it actually take to keep culture al...

The uncomfortable reality of leadership, broken scaling systems, and the hidden truth about building high performance teams—what nobody tells you about entrepreneurship, AI disruption, and surviving multiple business crashes in a volatile global market. This episode exposes the outdated strategies killing growth and reveals what actually works in modern business leadership, renewable energy, and s...

The outdated leadership playbook in logistics is quietly destroying companies — and most leaders are too deep in the weeds to see it. Joe Myers, President and Partner at Lighthouse Transportation Services, LLC, built a $70 to $80 million freight brokerage from a ten person hot dog stand operation by doing what most leaders refuse to do — ask for help, delegate ruthlessly, and let great people run....