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My industry often treats business owners as customers, but I prefer to think of them as partners.
I founded Fox & Partners with a mission not only to provide excellent controller and CFO services to entrepreneurs (my favorite group of people), but also to truly help them navigate the business world.
And while others may be focused only on the bottom line, I’m more passionate about making finance easy to understand and creating clear reports with insights to guide decisions for those I work with. I believe that entrepreneurs should get practical help that’s effective and provides value to their companies.
My approach is unique because my background is unique. I am a licensed teacher, but my path changed when I realized I could combine education, business, and finance.
I use my teaching skills to help entrepreneurs learn accounting, understand their financials, and develop solutions for their problems. It sometimes feels like being in the classroom again, whiteboard and all.
I’ve worked in a variety of fields, from construction to accounting, so I have an eclectic mix of experience and skills. Fox & Partners is the result of everything I’ve learned along the way.
Every experience and bit of knowledge I’ve gained allows me to support businesses by introducing fresh ideas to help them succeed.
Because my team and I truly want to forge a partnership with those we work with, I don’t lock anyone into contracts, I’m easy to reach, and I’m always looking to improve. I make it a point to assist in any way I can.
That’s why Fox & Partners goes beyond just business help; it’s proof that great guidance can turn dreams into success.
Outside of the business, I’m on the board of two non-profit organizations (OVC and HTOC) and take my faith and family seriously. I enjoy taking walks and fun trips with my greyhound, diving into books (follow me on GoodReads!), spending quality time with my wife, and good food.
Let’s chat and explore opportunities together! Please feel free to connect.
With 19 years of entrepreneurial experience, Mitch has successfully owned and operated multiple multi-seven-figure eCommerce stores, selling two of them. Today, he is the CEO of Barham Marketing. Mitch’s journey has been marked by both significant achievements and enlightening mistakes, providing him with a deep well of knowledge as an entrepreneur. These experiences have finely honed his skills, allowing him to propel projects to success much faster and more efficiently.
Tyler McBroom, CPA, MBA is a tax professional, speaker, and bestselling author with a great passion for helping entrepreneurs understand their numbers and pay as little tax as legally possible while they grow their businesses. As the Tax Partner at MMC, CPAs, he works with business owners to increase their cash flow by thousands of dollars per year, through proactive tax planning strategies, getting their books on auto-pilot, and making their businesses more profitable. Whether it’s discussing tax and business strategies or the fundamentals of personal finance, Tyler also has a passion for teaching others. His Instagram page was listed as one of Student Loan Hero’s “& Instagram Accounts that will Inspire you to be Better with Money,” he is a member of the Forbes Finance Council, and regularly contributes articles for the publication. Outside of the accounting world, Tyler loves to cook, spend time traveling with his wife and two kids, and get outdoors as much as possible.
The modern CFO is even more critical to manage the intersection of financial strategic planning and growth milestones for a small to medium-sized business. Jeff’s first-hand experiences as a leading figure in a multi-million-dollar acquisition of a two-store furniture dealer network in NYC in 2010, as the Finance & Business Development Manager for two smaller companies, and as a Financial Advisor at Wells Fargo have helped to give Jeff a clear understanding of how to manage people’s expectations and many of the financial and operational hoops that small businesses must jump through to achieve growth in their competitive markets.
Jeff is a happily married, father of three (one boy and two girls). Not only does he come from the Entrepreneur world himself, but continues to manage his growth along with determining the needs of the many small business owners have day to day. In our world, being there for family is even more critical as the pressure of being judged day in and day out is ever more real. The psychology of this truism topped with the growing intensity of managing the growth of a business is a critical part of the WHYs of these owners. Jeff founded YoCFO with the goal of not only supporting the financial goals of the owners, but making sure to tie in all of these pressures for their decision making.
Cesar Quintero’s purpose is to empower leaders to build a business by design so that they live a life by design. His core values are to Share Vulnerably, Spark Action, Spot individuality, and Spread Passion.
At age 24, in 2004, Quintero moved to Miami given the economic turmoil in Venezuela to pursue his dream of starting a business and helping others achieve a healthier lifestyle by founding Fit2Go.(The first corporate healthy meal delivery service in Miami). In 2013, Quintero graduated from the MIT Entrepreneurship Masters Program and founded two new companies: RawBar2Go (the first licensed food boats in Florida) and The Profit Recipe, a coaching firm that focuses on empowering entrepreneurs through a journey of focus ON the business and not IN the business by implementing best practices and the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS).
Cesar has been an active Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) member for over 10 years and has held multiple volunteer leadership positions at the chapter, regional and global level for the organization.
His passion for teaching and business have also compelled him to get certified as a Trainer for Traction implementation, Why Discoveries, EO Accelerator Program and EO Forum.
Nick Berendt is a self-professed Guns N’ Roses fan with tattoos and RV mud in his blood. He built his Rheem HVAC business out of sheer force and determination. But, then he discovered something more powerful than force and quickly tripled his sole proprietorship into a full-fledged, thriving business. “I can easily help other small service businesses get that first step into the 500 – 750k area.”
Nick compares business to playing hockey. It’s looks like force, but when you play it, you realize it’s a mental sport. You just need sharper tools. Most people don’t lack talent or skills. What they need is a better business foundation to understand how to determine where the most profitable customers from, where the marketing dollars could be better spent, how to keep track of customers and build a good CRM. Learning these kinds of tools from other successful people was the lightbulb for Nick. Now he’s turning on the light for others to grow their businesses.
They say hard work pays off, and Joel Gandara is the definition of this statement. Born in Cuba, he came to the U.S. in 1980, arriving on an overcrowded boat full of hopes and dreams.
Joel grew up with a work ethic that was unmatched. While other kids were handed money, Joel had to go out and earn it…and that he did, netting $30 a day by organizing his own arbitrage operation. As a fourth grader, he would buy things like stamps and trading cards, and sell them to his classmates.
The hustling never halted, in fact it did quite the opposite. After high school, Joel worked up to 109 hours a week, leaving himself just enough time each day to eat and sleep. Joel went on to start his own apparel company, where he was able to turn a profit at flea markets and eventually on Ebay. His business, however, was not enough to count on, and Joel found a steady job with Carnival Cruise lines. Joel enjoyed his job and was on a clear path to a promising career, but felt that something was missing.
Joel’s entrepreneurial spirit spoke to him, and he made a life-altering decision. Joel decided to go full steam ahead with his apparel company. The decision was risky without a steady income, but this never stopped him.
Joel found a brand from Mexico who offered him distributor pricing, which helped his bottom line tremendously. He would take samples to Las Vegas and began doing tradeshows, offering products to various companies. Over the years, Joel built a following, and began increasing his sales. After years of selling other people’s brands, he successfully created his own underwear brand. Within his first 13 months of business, the brand retailed $1,000,000.
From that success, he and his growing team continued to create and develop more brands. Today, they own 21 men’s apparel brands. In October of 2013, Joel made another impactful decision. His company began to acquire their ecommerce customers and competitors, and pivoted from a wholesale company to a direct to consumer brand. Now, forming his own capital company, Morro Capital has acquired 9 businesses to date and is in talks to procure more.
They say hard work pays off…and Joel has proved that time and time again, ultimately with creating a company that profits over a million dollars a year, whose inception was in a flea market!
Joel and his wife Jessica married in 2002, and together have four children and live in Weston, Florida. After achieving semi-retirement, Joel now has time to do the things he enjoys, such as lifting weights, running, and continuing his education.
Kael Campbell is a father, husband, and entrepreneur that helps clients in the manufacturing and construction industries find the people needed to service customers and grow. He has over 20 years of experience starting companies and serving on corporate, charity, and non-profit boards.
Kael’s expertise in recruitment, running remote teams, and B2B sales/marketing is something he shares through blogging and YouTube, however, is happy to share with startups, corporate clients, and seasoned entrepreneurs.
Health, family, and business are things Kael prioritizes in that order and as a result, will often be found outdoors sharing his passions for watersports, cycling and fishing with his family and friends.
As a woman-owned small business, Shelley Merrell’s company knows the territory of oil platforms, big business, and government agencies, and how to fight and prevent fires. Her company deals with special hazards such as protecting vulnerable computer networks and marine systems. Her background in fire and safety was in developing the government contracts and relationships that continue to sustain the business. Now, she is being considered as a sole source supplier for contracts which takes a lot of expertise in the world of government contracting.
Shelley has been tested by fire and offers her own experience to others. If you create a business that’s process driven, you can take risks with clarity. She became a believer when she learned the hard way not to take your eyes off the daily operations. Now she audits and updates processes continually. She also shares the importance of sticking together with like-minded people, and finding opportunities and insights from women’s business networks, entrepreneurs and small business owners who can share mutually beneficial growth. Opportunities are risks that you can learn to navigate.
Paul David is the founder & CEO of Identified Talent Solutions, an Irvine, California-based staffing and talent acquisition consulting firm.
Born in Manila, Philippines, Paul immigrated to the United States at the age of five. Raised in Orange County, California, he graduated from Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Ca and attended California State University, Fullerton. He earned his bachelor’s degree along with his MBA at the Pepperdine Graziadio School of Business and Management. From 2005 to 2014 Paul worked in the field of talent acquisition and recruitment. He worked for large organizations such as Cox Enterprises, First American Title and ADP.
In 2007 Paul married is wife, Desiree and in 2010 they had their daughter, Chloe. During the time of their marriage Paul and Desiree experienced the most difficult times of their lives from losing their jobs to homelessness to eventually the death of Desiree from a four and half year battle of breast cancer. Desiree died at the age of 36 and Paul was widowed with their four-year-old daughter. Buried in $150,000 of debt and no longer being able to travel for work to care for Chloe, Paul founded Identified Talent Solutions and turned to entrepreneurship to change his life.
Today, Identified Talent Solution has been named one of the “Best Places to Work” by the Orange County Business Journal and listed on the “Inc. 500” by Inc. Magazine as part of its annual list of “America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies.” Paul employs 20 internal employees and over 50 field-based staff.
Paul remarried in 2017 and his wife Kathie legally adopted Chloe later that same year. In 2005, Kathie was Paul’s manager when he was a loan officer. Paul saw a recruiter opening at the company they worked for and Kathie wrote a recommendation for him. This was the start of Paul’s recruitment career. Kathie also wrote his recommendation to business school. They stayed friends throughout the years which eventually brought them full circle.
Between 2009 to 2013 Paul completed two Ironman Triathlons which is a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike and a full 26.2-mile marathon. He has done over 10 marathons and raced in serval 200-mile cycling events. In the process Paul completely revamped his life and lost 92 pounds and stopped smoking a pack a day. Paul no longer races and puts most of his attention on his family, business and helping others succeed through his mentorship.
Heather is the CEO of Heather’s Mobile Pet Salon. She began her journey of entrepreneurship at the age of 21 and grew her company from herself and 1 van to a fleet of 8 with 19 employees and still growing. Along her journey, she learned the importance of processes and communication when she was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer and forced to leave her company unexpectedly to fight the biggest battle of her life. Although retired from grooming, she continues to stay involved in the day to day activities and places a strong emphasis on company processes and a healthy work life balance. She takes the approach of mental health very seriously and uses the lessons learned during her Cancer journey to help others stay as positive and focused on manifesting their dreams and goals as possible.
Marcia Zaruba O’Connor is CEO and Founder of The O’Connor Group, a leading provider of Human Resources and Talent Acquisition Solutions for the life sciences, healthcare, professional services, and manufacturing sectors based in King of Prussia, PA. The O’Connor Group is also a Top 100 Woman-Owned Business and has been certified by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council. The O’Connor Group recently won the Philadelphia Business Journals’ Best Places to Work and Healthiest Places to Work in 2020.
Currently, Marcia is on the Board for HealthWorks Academies and is the Chair of the Engagement Team for the Philadelphia Chapter for the Entrepreneur Organization. She is also the Membership Board Chair for the Alliance for Women Entrepreneurs and the Vice-Chair for Programming for Women in Bio.
Marcia earned her MS degree in Human Organization Development from Villanova and her BS degree in Accounting from Widener University. Marcia is also a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10K Small Business Program. She and her husband live in King of Prussia and her son is a sophomore at Penn State University.
Peter Kozodoy is an author, keynote speaker, Inc. 5000 serial entrepreneur and business growth consultant. In his largest company, Peter serves as the Partner and Chief Strategy Officer of GEM Advertising – a full-service strategic communications agency. His articles regularly appear in Forbes, Inc. and more, and he has spoken at Microsoft, CEO Clubs of America and other organizations. He is a member of both Entrepreneur’s Organization and the Young Entrepreneur Council and graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Economics from Brandeis University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Jonathan Haberkorn is a visionary enterprise solutions architect who guides clients through high-impact enterprise transformations. He has over a decade of experience creating fully integrated enterprise solutions and transforming enterprise vision into actionable full lifecycle implementations. His approach to is to create systems and process that reduce friction, increase connection, and breathe life into the people and culture of an organization.
Jonathan helps industry leaders become change-makers for the highest good and has been the beacon for many of his past clients: Johnson & Johnson, NBC Universal, New York Life, Met Life, Allstate, Coca-Cola, American among others. He leverages creativity, forward-thinking, and strategic problem solving, to create the most positive, impactful, memorable experiences as possible. He believes that we can positively influence the world through conscious design and facilitate happier human connections. This builds the legacy footprint of our work and leaves the lasting impact on the world.
Jonathan is located in Naples, Florida.
Brad Stevens is a lifetime entrepreneur having built multiple 7 figure businesses in domestic and international markets with distribution in 18 countries. His current company is Outsource Access, an offshore virtual assistant and outsourcing firm in the Philippines, that he grew to over 100 staff in less than a year that serves small to medium businesses worldwide.
He walks-the-walk every day with expertise on scaling, automation, outsourcing and high-performance virtual teams.
For his work with startups to $100 million firms and strategic advisory to civic leaders including Martin Luther King III, he has been featured in Inc Magazine 3 times, the EO Global Innovation Forum, the Wall Street Business Network and was featured on the cover of Small Business Magazine. He is also a recipient of the Top 40 Most Innovative Businesses Award in GA.
For his philanthropic efforts, a documentary film featured his business and he was selected to run a think-tank on Economic Growth and Decent Work for All at the United Nations.
Brad is also a global advisor and keynote speaker on agility and adapting for rapid change for CEO peer groups, universities, and business organizations including Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), John Maxwell Ambassadors, SCORE, SIOR, Women Presidents’ Organization, International Entrepreneur Summit, Growth Hacking Conference, Life by Design Summit, Vistage, TAB, and the CEO Brain Trust.
Brad is incoming President of the Atlanta Chapter of the Entrepreneur’s Organization and served on the EO East Coast NERVE Committee. He has also served as a board member for Startup Atlanta.
Brad attended Harvard University and graduated from the Wharton Business School with concentrations in finance and marketing.
He lives in Atlanta, GA with his daughter Ella, son Brayden and wife Cindy.
Don started selling early, he was the #1 Sales Rep in the US at age 19 & the #1 Sales Manager at age 20. Since 1986, Don has founded a dozen companies and he’s worked with over ½ of the Fortune 500 on marketing, sales & customer experience.
He is a 4x Best Selling Author and hosts the iTunes New and Noteworthy podcast – The Proven Entrepreneur Show.
Don lives outside Ft. Worth Texas with the love of his life Leta and their two chocolate Labrador retrievers Maggie and Tess.
He speaks, facilitates and consults around the world.
Don’s favorite quote is “You are Far Better, Far Smarter and Far Stronger than You Think” (adapted from Winnie the Pooh).
Shawn is the founder of AO. After the successful sale of his previous company, Shawn dedicated his life to mentoring and coaching, small business owners.
Never one to let fear of the unknown stand in the way, at the age of 18, Shawn left a small town in Alaska where he grew up to move to sunny California. His dream as a kid was to become a rockstar and travel the country as a singer and get on MTV. Within 3 years, while working 2-3 jobs and going to college full-time, Shawn auditioned for a boy band and out of over 10,000 kids, Shawn was chosen to be in N/MOTION.
N/MOTION, signed to Warner Bros. Records, traveled the USA by train as a headlining act with Ringling Bros. & Barnum and Bailey Circus. Shawn accomplished his dream and appeared on MTV and played Madison Square Garden.
After the gig was finished, like many, Shawn decided to forego going back to college and set out to be an entrepreneur.
Ten lost years later after many failed attempts, Shawn founded Uniguest, a computer sales and service company. As CEO, Shawn grew the company to over 100 employees and $20,000,000 in annual sales and ultimately sold the company to a private equity group in December of 2013.
After taking a few years off, Shawn started Ask A Millionaire on social media to mentor start up entrepreneurs. Shawn now mentors hundreds of thousands of people through his daily live streams on Instagram.
Shawn resides in Franklin, TN and is an avid wine enthusiast, world traveler, animal lover, and avid foodie.
In college, Tom worked for the Southwestern Company of Nashville, Tennessee. Southwestern employs thousands of college students each summer to sell books door-to-door. Based on his success in sales (number one for three successive summers), Tom became a sales manager at Southwestern.
Tom then joined FISI*Madison Financial and successfully ran the sales organization. Tom grew sales to over $350 million.
Tom left FISI*Madison to start Private Business, Inc. Under his leadership as CEO, Private Business grew into the country’s leading provider of accounts receivable programs for community banks. Tom served as CEO for six years and took the company public in May of 1999. Tom was the first employee and the only CEO until the company was sold.
In January 1999, Tom purchased Tecniflex/Bancsource, Inc. Tom formed a sister company, Imagic Corporation, that develops and supports check-imaging systems to community banks. As CEO, Tom expanded both companies from small regional providers to national sales and service organizations. Imagic grew quickly, merged with OSI and went public. Under his leadership, Tecniflex/Bancsource has gone from 27 employees to almost 500 serving 4,000 banks in 49 states.
Dan Abbate is an entrepreneur, thought leader, and investor with a career-long focus in business process optimization and automation through the use of advanced technology, organizational development, and improvement. Dan has a heavy transaction background including startup financing, mergers and acquisitions, and turnarounds.
In the late ’90s, while he was still in college, Dan started an internet company which serviced and eventually sold to Wall Street-funded .coms. Between the years of 2003 and 2013, he started/developed or acquired/ improved and then sold eight companies serving various markets and industries with a total market value over $100,000,000 and were funded using private and public capital markets. He has experience in both B2B and B2C companies and enjoys advising on high-level operational initiatives, including infrastructure design, process re/engineering, and reorganization. As a silent and lead investor in a number of technology startup companies, and with a focus on cryptocurrencies and underlying blockchain technologies, Dan has a unique leadership position in the cross-section of technology, finance, and business.
Dan holds a degree from DePaul University in Philosophy and Business, has studied Operations and Financial performance at The Wharton School and Math and Physics at the University of New Mexico, will graduate with a Masters in Finance from Harvard University in 2021, presented his prophetic talk “How Not To Be Replaced By A Robot” at TedXBoca in 2015, and his book “Automation Manifesto” was published and is available via Amazon and other retail book outlets.