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Texas’ Brightest Business Stars Share their Secrets: ‘The Key to Success Is Daring to Fail’

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1 month ago

November 16, 2024

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Texas’ Brightest Business Stars Share their Secrets: ‘The Key to Success Is Daring to Fail’

Like Rip Wheeler coolly dispatching a Dutton family adversary on TV’s “Yellowstone” program, the show’s creator and Weatherford resident Taylor Sheridan put the Hollywood establishment in his crosshairs Wednesday when he and five others were inducted into the Texas Business Hall of Fame.

Accepting his honor in front of a crowd of 1,100 at a gala dinner at the Omni Dallas Hotel, the film and TV hitmaker, rancher, and restaurateur didn’t mince words about achieving success in those three very challenging arenas.

“Success came in the movie business by applying something that is completely nonexistent in Los Angeles, and that is logic,” Sheridan said. “I wish it was more complicated than that, but in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. So—Yay me!”

Taylor Sheridan [Image: Glenn Hunter]

He found success in the cattle business with vertical integration, he said. “Eliminate the middleman by delivering the product directly to the consumer, eliminating the rancher’s success becoming dependent on commodity prices beyond the rancher’s control. Success in the restaurant business is symbiotic with the cattle business, as restaurants are the delivery system for our beef.

“And I achieved all of this with a paycheck from a bunch of Hollywood vegans,” Sheridan said, as the audience clapped and roared with laughter.

Then he added: “The attorneys in the room really appreciate that.”

Sheridan and the others had gathered at the Omni because, every year, the Houston-based Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation honors six “transformative entrepreneurs and innovators” at an induction dinner that rotates among Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. The dinner was last held in Dallas in 2021.

Besides Sheridan, this year’s honorees included three other North Texans: Michael M. “Mike” Boone, co-founder and senior counsel at Dallas’ Haynes Boone law firm; Kathleen S. Hildreth, co-founder of M1 Support Services, a military-aviation defense contractor in Denton; and David B. Miller, co-founder and managing partner of Dallas-based EnCap Investments, which provides growth capital to independent energy companies.

Also honored at the induction dinner were San Antonio’s David Robinson, a former NBA standout, co-founder of Admiral Capital Group and The Carver Academy, and minority owner of the San Antonio Spurs; and Austin-based Joe Gebbia, who co-founded Airbnb as well as Samara, a new company producing accessory dwelling units (or ADUs).

‘Challenge yourself, and give back to the community’

A number of North Texas heavyweights attended, or participated in, the event as well.

They included previous Hall of Fame inductees—the Hall of Fame group calls them “Legends”—like former Dallas Cowboys quarterback/real estate entrepreneur Roger Staubach and Trevor Rees-Jones, founder of Chief Oil and Gas.

Among other Legends attending were Billingsley Company co-founder Lucy Billingsley; former AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson; Richard W. Fisher, former Dallas Federal Reserve Bank president and CEO; Doug Hawthorne, founding CEO Emeritus at Texas Health Resources; and philanthropist and oil-and-gas magnate Forrest Hoglund.

Legends and the Class of 2024 gathered on the Omni stage. [Photo: Grant Miller Photography/TBHF]

Even with all the star power in the room, much of the attention seemed to be focused on Sheridan, the white-hot writer/producer/director whose new “Landman” series—about the West Texas oil business—will premiere Nov. 17 on Paramount Plus. Sheridan also owns two Texas ranches, including the legendary Four Sixes, and the Four Sixes Ranch Steakhouse in Las Vegas, a pop-up restaurant serving his own Four Sixes Ranch Brand Beef.

During the cocktail reception at the Nov. 13 event, Sheridan had been standing in the drinks line with everyone else, chatting with admirers, and posing obligingly for cellphone photos. Meantime, his fellow honorees were threading their way through the crowd, or standing locked in conversation with small circles of friends. I asked Boone how business is going—he said his law firm had had five straight record-breaking revenue years—and how he thinks Dallas is doing in general.

“We’re on top of the mountain and we’re blessed, but any day you can get knocked off the mountain,” he said. “New York was on top of the mountain at one time, and so were L.A. and Chicago and San Francisco, and they all fell off. The real question is, what have we learned from them that keeps us from falling into the same traps or shortfalls that they did?”

Did he have any advice for up-and-coming entrepreneurs? “Dare to be great,” Boone replied. “You have to challenge yourself and dare to excel—and give back to the community that gives to you.”

Mike Boone [Image: Glenn Hunter]

The benefits of a glass-half-full attitude

Gebbia had some counsel for the next generation, too. “If you really believe in what your idea is, and if you’re really solving a problem that’s personal to you, don’t take no for answer,” he said.

He said his most recent brainchild—Samara’s fully customized, factory-made ADUs—are being built in Mexico, “where we can do up to 1,000 modules a year.” The product is for sale now only in California, which offers incentives and relaxed regulations for ADUs, but will be rolled out to other states as they implement “policies to enable ADU adoption,” Gebbia said.

Kathleen Hildreth, co-founder of M1 Support Services speaking at the Texas Business Hall of Fame dinner on November 14, 2024 in Dallas. [Photo: Grant Miller Photography/TBHF]

Across the way, Hildreth was saying that she still owns 10% of M1 Support Services, and remains on its board, following its sale to Cerberus in May. What was her philosophy for managing the company, which in 21 years has grown to 7,000 employees and just shy of $1 billion in revenue?

“I approach everything with an attitude of, ‘We can do this,’ rather than, ‘It can’t be done,’” Hildreth said. “Having a positive attitude—a glass-half-full attitude—is half the battle, because a lot of people will pass on doing a job by saying, ‘We don’t have the experience, we don’t have the expertise.’ I would look at it and say, ‘Well, how do we make [our] experience relevant, so we can bid on it and be successful?’ And that’s how we grew. A lot of small companies and even mid-size businesses get stuck and can never make that next leap to being a large business.”

From left, David S. Huntley of the Foundation, emcee Richard W. Fisher, Kathleen Hildreth, and “Pete” Geren. [Photo: Grant Miller Photography/TBHF]

The formal induction ceremony, which came as the guests chowed down on a dinner of meat and fish, featured these high points:

Rees-Jones gave a rollicking introduction for Boone, whose firm now has 700 employees, 19 offices and nearly $600 million in annual revenue. Rees-Jones cited Boone’s integrity, honesty, ethics, and commitment to public education reform—and to Dallas’ Southern Methodist University, where Boone chaired the board of trustees. The Chief founder said his relationship with Boone began when a mutual friend “persuaded him to take me on as a client, to help me recover from a terrible legal problem that had left me bleeding out in a ditch.” Needless to say, the lawyer got his new client out of the ditch.
Gebbia was introduced by Legend Daniel Lubetzkey, founder of Austin-based Kind Snacks and Camino Partners. Accepting the award, the Airbnb founder told the crowd: “The spirit of Texas is more than geography. As represented by this group, you personify its unique blend of daring and generosity, integrity and vision, and independence and collaboration, embracing the challenges with a healthy dose of swagger. I consider myself not just a resident, but a citizen of Texas.”
Introduced by Preston “Pete” Geren III, a former Texas congressman and U.S. Secretary of the Army from 2007 to 2009, M1’s Hildreth said the “secret sauce” for company founders includes talented people, a shared culture, a shared vision of success—and grit. “There’s nothing more motivating to me than someone telling me it can’t be done,” said Hildreth, an Army veteran who graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1983. “If you surround yourself with the right people, build a culture that supports your mission, and never let setbacks define you, there’s nothing you can’t achieve.”
Miller was introduced by Ray L. Hunt, chairman emeritus of Hunt Consolidated, and another Hall of Fame Legend. Hunt said that, while he’s met a lot of successful businesspeople over the years, “what sets apart the truly successful business leaders of the world from everyone else is … what he or she has done and is doing with the fruits of their success after their accomplishments have been noticed. By that standard, David Miller is truly a remarkable man.” Miller’s currently the chair of SMU’s board of trustees, Hunt noted, and his accomplishments there with university president R. Gerald Turner—Turner was in the audience—are “absolutely remarkable.” While Miller is well known for his support of SMU athletics, Hunt said, what’s not as well-known is that he’s matched almost dollar for dollar his athletic contributions with contributions to SMU academic programs.
Staubach introduced Robinson, a fellow graduate of the United States Naval Academy. During his talk, the San Antonio entrepreneur recalled partnering with IDEA Public Schools to build 20 new schools in San Antonio. “I told them, ‘I’ll help you raise $50M and we’ll build 20 new schools.’ Well, last year we ended up 29 and 30 in San Antonio,” Robinson said. “IDEA has 145 schools and 80,000 students, and our goal has been to send every single one of them to college. … My guiding light for my career has been my faith in Jesus Christ,” he went on. “My goal as an educator has been to show young people that their lives are not some random collection of events and people, but that they are uniquely created and uniquely empowered to do great things.”

The 42-year-old Texas Business Hall of Fame Foundation, which also supports entrepreneurial-minded students and military veterans with cash prizes and networking opportunities, had hosted a luncheon earlier in the day for this year’s crop of what it calls “Future Texas Business Legends” at SMU. It was that group that Sheridan had in mind as he concluded his portion of the program, which had kicked off with an introduction by his friend John C. Goff, managing partner at Fort Worth-based Goff Capital Partners and another Hall of Fame Legend.

“While being recognized for my achievements is a great honor, it’s not the purpose of this organization, I am learning,” Sheridan told the crowd, as the 4-hour event neared an end. “Its purpose is to offer mentors an example to the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs.

“I hope that that next generation notices that everyone receiving an induction tonight earned this recognition standing on the shoulders of an idea that lives at the cliff’s edge of failure,” he said. “Without exception, each of these inductees was warned against their endeavors, told all the reasons that they wouldn’t work, or all the reasons they weren’t the individual suited to see those endeavors through.

“And to me, that’s the first rule of business,” Sheridan said. “When everyone around you tells you all the reasons you can’t do a thing you deserve doing, you’re on the right track. Because what that really means is, your detractors don’t believe they themselves can do it, or they’re underestimating your determination to achieve it. And that means, they’re not going to see you coming.

“This is a room full of achievers who have learned the key to success is daring to fail, and the one ingredient you and you alone control is how hard you work at it,” Sheridan said. “So, if I can give any advice to the future business leaders that are in this room, it’s this:

“Let them say whatever they want. Then outwork them.”

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