POWERS

Chris Powers
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Conversations with the best founders, entrepreneurs, and investors.

  1. From One $3M Loan to a $25B Firm - How Madison Realty Capital Was Built with Josh Zegen (# 417)

    hace 5 h

    From One $3M Loan to a $25B Firm - How Madison Realty Capital Was Built with Josh Zegen (# 417)

    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: How Josh went from a laid-off VC associate living back home to founding a $25B firm Surviving '09 - including giving up 50% of the company for a $50M anchor that collapsed at the last minute Why he built servicing, asset management, and capital raising in-house instead of outsourcing The $10B back-leverage book that makes Madison the lender to ~100 other private lenders The $720M single loan behind the largest office-to-residential conversion in NYC Where he sees real estate credit headed - and why he stays away from office, data centers, and anything "binary" 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(25:19) The GFC: Gating Investors and Going Vertically Integrated(31:26) The $50M REIT Deal That Nearly Ended Madison—And the Door It Opened(44:28) Why Borrowers Now Prefer Private Credit Over Banks(47:17) In-House Loan Servicing as Madison's Competitive Edge(49:06) The Back Leverage Business: Lending to Private Lenders(55:35) Capital Markets Expansion and Staying True to Real Estate(1:05:55) The Pfizer Deal, Lifecycle Lending, and Madison's Road Ahead(1:15:06) 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: X: https://x.com/fortworthchris Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ Visit our website: https://www.powerspod.com/Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO

    1 h 25 min
  2. The Texas Power Grid, AI, and the Race for Data Centers with Rep. John McQueeney (# 416)

    26 may

    The Texas Power Grid, AI, and the Race for Data Centers with Rep. John McQueeney (# 416)

    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: Why the data center industry is losing a PR battle it should be winning The tax story hyperscalers haven't been telling How the large load approval process works in Texas, end to end - from TSP submission to ERCOT study to Approved to Energize What's real vs. speculative in the 440 GW pipeline Behind-the-meter data centers as grid stabilizers What the Data Center Responsibility Act will cover The railroad analogy: why communities that miss this build-out will fall behind for decades 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: X: https://x.com/fortworthchris Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ Visit our website: https://www.powerspod.com/Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO

    1 h 21 min
  3. Building a $2.2B Aerospace Business From Scratch with Bryan Perkins (#415)

    19 may

    Building a $2.2B Aerospace Business From Scratch with Bryan Perkins (#415)

    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: Why you can't outmanage a bad capital structure - and what most lower middle market PE gets wrong about underwriting How Bryan built a roll-up that produces 80-90% proprietary deal flow, and the patience it takes to do that Why commoditization is an immediate no, and how the "layer cake" of process IP, material science, and unit economics creates moats most people can't see What an arranged marriage with private equity actually looks like, across three different capital partners Why he thinks the world still won't have enough airplanes by 2030, and how the new space economy is reshaping demand The decadal-thinking, "win the day" mindset behind a 15-year compounding machine 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: X: https://x.com/fortworthchris Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ Visit our website: https://www.powerspod.com/Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO

    1 h 23 min
  4. The Most Powerful Land Broker in North Texas

    12 may

    The Most Powerful Land Broker in North Texas

    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: How Rex originated the Star deal in 60 days - and why Frisco won the Cowboys instead of Irving His foundational theory: why every American city grows north (with one exception) 40 years of plowing every dollar back into dirt Why he believes DFW becomes "Y'all Street" Why he never scaled past three brokers His read on where we are in the cycle Timestamps: (05:20) Learning When to Shut Up in Business and Life(08:53) Growing Up Rural in Salina & the Work Ethic It Built(11:02) Why Every City in America Grows North(14:18) Betting on the Pandemic: $1 Billion in Deals with Just His Wife(23:38) The Star Deal: How Rex Helped Move the Dallas Cowboys to Frisco(30:23) Small Towns vs. Big Cities: The Public-Private Partnership Advantage(40:24) DFW Airport as the Hidden Engine of North Texas Growth(44:06) The H-1B Visa Pullback & Its Real Impact on the Housing Market(48:11) How Rex Thinks About Surviving a Recession(56:23) Will an "Artery Pop" in '26 or '27?(01:00:26) Why Rex Is Worth 6%: Full-Service vs. Order-Taking Brokers(01:04:43) Selling the Same Ranch 7 Times Over 40 Years(01:19:03) What Keeps Rex Up at Night: Reading the Current Market Cycle Support our SponsorsCollateral Partners: https://collateral.com/fort Chris on Social Media:X: https://x.com/fortworthchrisInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcastLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ Visit our website: https://www.powerspod.com/Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO

    1 h 23 min
  5. Building a $100M CPG Brand With Only 10 Employees - James Beshara (# 413)

    5 may

    Building a $100M CPG Brand With Only 10 Employees - James Beshara (# 413)

    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. James spent two years tinkering with Magic Mind before he ever called it a business. Today it's a $100M CPG brand and the #1 health shot in natural retail - run with 10 employees, no Slack, almost no meetings, and a founder-CEO split he calls the Palmer Lucky lane. He is also one of the more thoughtful voices on the question every operator eventually wrestles with: what to build, when to build it, and how to know whether you are actually wired for it. They discuss: - How Magic Mind got to $100M with 10 employees, no Slack, and almost no meetings - The Palmer Lucky lane - how to be a founder without being the CEO - Why scratching your own itch beats chasing big ideas on a notepad - His biggest miss as an angel investor - the OpenAI seed round, what one investor calculated as the equivalent of 30 Googles - Wave selection - why standing still is sometimes the highest-leverage move in business - The Bhagavad Gita and surrendering into a duty-bound existence - Apt - the new company he sat on for seven years before building it Timestamps: (04:30) Where Can You Be Most Uniquely Useful? (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 You can receive 50% using the code POWERS50 at Magic Mind: https://magicmind.com/ Apt: https://www.tryapt.ai/ Support our Sponsors Collateral Partners: https://collateral.com/fort Chris on Social Media: X: https://x.com/fortworthchris Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ 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

    1 h 35 min
  6. The High School That Refunds Your Tuition If You Don't Make $1M with Nat Eliason (#412)

    28 abr

    The High School That Refunds Your Tuition If You Don't Make $1M with Nat Eliason (#412)

    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. Tuition is $150K a year. The promise: every student hits a million dollars in gross profit by graduation, or the family gets their tuition refunded. The first class is around 20 freshmen. The day is split between AI-driven academics in the morning and business building the rest of the day. This is also the same Nat Eliason who in his spare time built Felix - an AI agent he gave a Stripe account, an email, and an X handle, then told to launch a business overnight. Felix has done $60+K in sales since. Nat has not touched the code. They discuss: - Why the "game of school" is kayfabe and what's finally breaking it - The 16-year-old flying out to California to run short-form video for Al Pacino's new movie - The Munger inversion behind Alpha's curriculum: "why would these kids fail?" - What businesses a 14-year-old should and shouldn't build (and the $500/month software budget) - How Nat masters a new domain every two or three years, and why his $35K smart-contract loss accelerated him faster than caution would have - Felix - what "zero human" actually looks like, and the rules Nat set up to keep himself out of it - The day Anthropic shut off Open Claw and Alpha students reverse-engineered a proxy workaround in hours - Why the founding fathers wrote the Declaration in their early 20s, and what we forgot about teenagers Timestamps (05:55) What Alpha Does Differently From Conventional Schools (11:48) Playing the Fake Game of School (21:46) How Nat Masters New Domains (32:18) Open Claw Deep Dive (43:50) Building the Alpha Entrepreneurship Program (51:43) Freshman Year Structure at Alpha School (1:00:23) How Students Can Pitch for Equity or Debt Funding (1:04:08) Why Establish a New York Location for Year One (1:11:15) Nat’s 10-Year Vision (1:15:11) AI as a Force Multiplier for Teenage Founders (1:16:15) How Alpha Students Quickly Reverse-Engineered a Workaround After Open Claw Went Down (1:24:13) Teen-Parent Conflict as a Symptom of Infantilization Support our Sponsors Collateral Partners: https://collateral.com/fort Chris on Social Media: X: https://x.com/fortworthchris Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ 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

    1 h 28 min
  7. Building a $3B Family Office From Scratch with Matthew Ogle, Co-founder & CEO of Legacy Knight (#411)

    21 abr

    Building a $3B Family Office From Scratch with Matthew Ogle, Co-founder & CEO of Legacy Knight (#411)

    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: Why every hire at Legacy Knight comes out of the family office world, not from the bulge brackets How most $100M+ families are still running their wealth on a Google Doc and a handshake with their accountant Why "do nothing in the year after a liquidity event" is half good advice and half terrible advice The most creative things Matthew has seen ultra-wealthy families do with their capital How Matthew thinks about his own kids, legacy, and when to start the wealth conversation Links: Legacy Knight - https://legacyknight.com/ Matthew on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-ogle-ab11873/ Topics: (02:01) Matthew’s First Exposure to Wealth Management (07:58) Joining Credit Suisse (Pre-GFC): Why the "Bulge Bracket" Mattered, How the Private Banking Associate Model Works (13:08) Why Credit Suisse Failed to Serve Ultra-High-Net-Worth Families (20:07) The First Client Meeting: Soft-Tissue Questions (28:57) Tax Timing and Mitigation Strategies (37:57) The Founding Thesis: People and Platform (Building Legacy Knight) (44:46) The Decision to Launch Legacy Knight Independently (54:43) Fundraising Lessons: Managing Expectations and The Importance of Pitch Order (01:01:18) The Full-Service Family Office Model (01:06:24) What a Vertically Integrated Family Office Actually Includes (01:09:07) Proactive Investment Sourcing (01:13:02) Next-Gen Engagement and Family Legacy Planning: How to Involve Children Appropriately (01:21:46) Matthew’s Hiring Philosophy (01:30:05) Time as the Hidden Cost of Unstructured Wealth Support our Sponsors: Collateral Partners: https://collateral.com/fort Chris on Social Media: X: https://x.com/fortworthchris Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thepowerspodcast LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrispowersjr/ 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

    1 h 33 min
  8. #410 - Austin Tunnell - Founder of Building Culture - The Power of Developing Beautiful Buildings

    14 abr

    #410 - Austin Tunnell - Founder of Building Culture - The Power of Developing Beautiful Buildings

    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 Support our Sponsors Collateral Partners: https://collateral.com/fort Chris on Social Media: Chris on 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

    1 h 22 min
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Conversations with the best founders, entrepreneurs, and investors.

Información

  • Creador
    Chris Powers
  • Años de actividad
    2018 - 2026
  • Episodios
    414
  • Clasificación
    Explícito
  • Copyright
    © 2026
  • Mostrar sitio web
    POWERS

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