The Deal Podcast

He borrowed $500 for a computer, started in his bedroom, and quickly learned he wasn't a remote worker. What made the leap work was everything he learned first.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA, Managing Partner at FA Mergers, sit down with Todd Schoeffler, founder of Schoeffler Energy Group, a Lafayette, Louisiana land services firm for oil, gas, and midstream companies. Todd shares why he spent more than a decade mastering land work before starting his own company, how the Haynesville Shale boom let him prove his...

"Would I put my brother or son on this crew?" When his family's oil field construction company was growing faster than its crews could safely keep up, Brennan Castille made that question the hiring rule, and rebuilt the culture around it.

Host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA, Managing Partner of FA Mergers, sit down with Brennan Castille, Chief Talent Officer of DMR Technologies, a U.S. drone manufacturer building its first full-scale plant in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana. Brennan traces a career built on the people side of growth: joining his father's company after...

What do you do when the organization you work for asks you to do something you won't do? For Dr. Damon Cudihy, the answer was to leave a hospital job and build his own practice.

Host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA, Managing Partner of FA Mergers, sit down with Dr. Damon Cudihy, an OB/GYN who has run a private practice in Lafayette, Louisiana for more than 13 years. After four years as an employed physician in Pennsylvania, Damon reached a point where staying meant compromising his Catholic convictions, so he moved his family...

Elise Colomb was a nurse, a pharma rep, and a stay-at-home mom who sold art for fun. Then a friend saw her paintings and said, "We need to put these on products."

Host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA, Managing Partner of FA Mergers, sit down with Elise Colomb, Co-Founder, Designer, and Creative Director of Sorority and Sisterhood, the hand-drawn luxury pajama brand she built with co-founders Virginia and Kait. With zero outside investors, the three funded the business from their own earnings and reinvested every dollar back in. Elise explains how university and...

What happens to everything you've built after you sell — and after you're gone? Two Catholic foundation leaders share how owners turn a lifetime of work into a legacy that lasts.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA, Managing Partner at FA Mergers, sit down with Monica Zuschlag, Board Chairman, and Margaret Trahan, Executive Director, of the Catholic Legacy Foundation of Acadiana. Monica shares the calling that led her to help launch the foundation, and Margaret draws on two decades leading United Way of Acadiana. Together they explain ho...

Landing a two-year contract felt like a win. Aaron Travasos saw a deadline: "We have one to two years to replace this customer."

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA, Managing Partner of FA Mergers, sit down with Aaron Travasos, P.E., Principal at Gregory Consulting and Controls in Lafayette, Louisiana. Aaron left a steady engineering career during the COVID slowdown to join a partner's firm, and together they grew it into a team with its own managers and business development. He shares why relationships are the...

She built her app with one end in mind from day one: get acquired. And she did it while owning 100% of the company and raising two kids under two.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-hosts Scott Shea and Jeremy Beyt sit down with Kelly Hebert, VP of Design & Media at Robert Hebert Media and co-founder of Project Dryve, a navigation app built to solve the messy, real-world problem of finding food and stops along a route. Recorded at ThreeSixtyEight in Baton Rouge, Kelly walks through the five-year journey of bootstrapping a...

He built Lego-verifying software with his daughter and an AI chief of staff named Carl who texts his wife. Justin Obney has strong opinions about what founders keep getting wrong.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Scott Shea sit down with Justin Obney, CEO of Obney AI, for a candid conversation on how business owners should actually think about artificial intelligence. Recorded in Baton Rouge at ThreeSixtyEight, the discussion cuts past the hype to a simpler frame: AI is just systems that execute your intent. Justin unpacks what AI transformation really...

33 years behind the microphone in Baton Rouge — and a master class on how college sports quietly became one of the biggest deal-making machines in America.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, hosts Joshua Wilson and Scott Shea sit down with Charles Hanagriff — veteran sports broadcaster, co-host of "Live at Lunch" on 104.5 ESPN, and the voice of Eagle 98.1 Gameday for over two decades — recorded on the Baton Rouge Podcast Tour. Charles unpacks how sports betting, NIL, revenue sharing, and the transfer portal reshaped college athletics, and why private equity is now circling conferences and programs. From a $125,000 wager...

He got told no 2,000 times before Wall Street said yes. Rip Reeves cold-called his way off a borrowed New York City phone book — and four decades later runs the company whose magazine first taught him the business.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, recorded on the Baton Rouge Podcast Tour, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Scott Shea sit down with Rip Reeves, CEO of Institutional Investor and former CIO of AEGIS Insurance Services. Rip walks through how global capital actually moves — the allocator-manager ecosystem, why insurance companies, endowments, and family offices invest so differently, and the conv...

He cashed out everything during the pandemic — left a guaranteed paycheck to raise $30M and buy a bank that didn't exist yet. Five years later, it's quadrupled.

In this episode, recorded live in Baton Rouge on our Louisiana Podcast Tour, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Scott Shea sit down with Scott Gaudin, President & CEO of Currency Bank. Scott traces his path from folding towels and parking cars under Nick Saban at LSU to acquiring a community bank charter and building it into a $260M concierge business bank owned by 143 shareholders. It's a story about mentorship, "the process," an...

Should you grow your business or protect it? The answer depends on one number — and most owners don't know theirs.

In this episode, Joshua Wilson and co-hosts Scott Shea (FA Mergers) and Jeremy Beyt (CEO, ThreeSixtyEight) sit down with Ben Vance, CPA, Director at Faulk & Winkler, who brings nearly 20 years in business valuation, transaction advisory, and family office work. Ben unpacks the difference between "playing offense" and "playing defense" with enterprise value, why the legacy bill-by-the-hour CPA model leaves owners exposed, and how starting the exit-planning process seven years out beats scrambling at the ninth hour. A ca...

He built a national construction firm out of a town of fewer than 1,000 people — then sold it without feeling like he sold out.

In this episode, Joshua Wilson and co-host Scott Shea sit down with Lenny Lemoine, founder of LEMOINE, the Louisiana services company he and his brother Tim grew from a family lumberyard into a 1,500-person leader in building, infrastructure, and disaster response. Lenny walks through decades of building enterprise value: the early hard-bid years, the choice to drop hard-bid work to protect culture, the Bernhard Capital Partners deal that let him scale through M&A, an...

What separates the PE firms that build lasting companies from the ones that destroy them? Jeff Koonce says it comes down to one asset that never shows up cleanly on a balance sheet.

Jeffrey Koonce is a Partner at Bernhard Capital Partners, a Baton Rouge-based services and infrastructure-focused private equity firm with more than $6 billion in AUM. A recovering CPA and former tax attorney at Phelps Dunbar, Jeff joined BCP as General Counsel and has been part of the firm's growth from its first fund close through its fifth. Co-host Scott Shea and special guest co-host Jeremy...

Erik Billet and Jude David built a family office that's done 12 acquisitions in five years — without outside investors, without a fund clock, and without ever planning to flip a single company.

In this episode, Erik Billet, CFO of Kin Capital Partners and CEO of Stately Doors and Windows, joins Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA, Managing Partner at FA Mergers, to walk through how a two-man partnership grew into a multifamily office acquiring lower middle market businesses. Erik shares the operating playbook behind their model — why they evaluate 1,000 companies to buy one, why control matt...

What happens when a buyer looks at your business and says, "The owner is too involved — we can't pluck him out"? That's the moment your exit value collapses. And it's the moment Jeff Martin has spent a career helping founders avoid.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA and Managing Partner at FA Mergers, sit down with Jeff Martin — serial entrepreneur, four-time exiter, and founder of Company Growth Academy. Jeff shares hard-won lessons from building and selling companies across real estate, paramedical services, and DNA testing (where he w...

He spent over two decades as a full-time Catholic minister. Then four kids, a tight bank account, and a global pandemic forced a pivot that would reshape everything.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA and Managing Partner at FA Mergers, sit down with John Ray Perkins, a top-producing Realtor with Keller Williams Realty of Acadiana in Lafayette, Louisiana. After 20+ years in youth and parish ministry at St. Peter's in Carencro and St. Pius X, John Ray launched a real estate side hustle in late 2019 — just months be...

What does it take to scale a plaintiff's law firm to 17 attorneys across three offices — without losing the mission, the culture, or your sanity? Blake David has done it, and he's still trying cases.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson sits down with Blake R. David, founding partner of Broussard, David & Moroux in Lafayette, Louisiana, alongside co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA, Managing Partner at FA Mergers — and Blake's younger brother. Blake is one of the most decorated trial lawyers in the country: ranked #3 on the 2026 Top 10 Louisiana Super Lawyers list out of more...

What if the smartest move before your liquidity event isn't talking to your banker — it's talking to a community foundation?

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Scott Shea sit down with Missy Andrade, President & CEO of the Community Foundation of Acadiana (CFA), to unpack one of the most overlooked tools in middle market dealmaking: the community foundation. Missy leads a 26-year-old organization stewarding more than $253 million in assets across roughly 1,000 component funds, working alongside CPAs, attorneys, and wealth advisors to turn liquidity events into multi-generational legacies. From donor-advised funds and complex as...

Mark Weber made $12,000 his first year in business. He never hired an employee. Three decades later, he's built a portfolio across life insurance, real estate, and mortgage lending — all on strategic partnerships and commission-only hustle.

Mark Weber is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, and CEO of Mark Weber Enterprises — a multi-layered company spanning real estate, investments, insurance, and mortgage lending. In this episode, Mark sits down with host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, Managing Partner at FA Mergers, to break down the "eat what you kill" operating model that's carried him through 30+ years of entrepreneurship without a sing...

What if the smartest growth strategy in your community wasn't being run by a private equity firm — it was being run by a charity?

Kim Boudreaux and Sarah Clement of Catholic Charities of Acadiana have spent the last two decades quietly executing one of the most disciplined nonprofit roll-up strategies in Louisiana — growing from a $1.2M agency with 23 employees into a $15M, 90-person, 14-organization platform serving eight civil parishes.

In this episode, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA and Managing Partner at FA Mergers, sit down with Kim Boudreaux, Chief Executive Offi...

What if the Lord interrupted your career at the peak of the American dream? Saul Keeton walked away from 25 years in commercial real estate. Kevin Granger left nursing and music behind. Both said yes to something bigger.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson sits down with Saul Keeton and Kevin Granger of Family Missions Company — the largest lay Catholic foreign missionary organization in the world — alongside co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA and Managing Partner at FA Mergers. 

Saul and Kevin share how the Lord rerouted their lives, what it takes to ru...

What does it actually take to walk away from a thriving career at the top of your game — and how do you do it without leaving wreckage behind?

In this special episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA — Managing Partner at FA Mergers — sit down with Father Jim Brady, JCL, Pastor of St. Pius X Catholic Church in Lafayette, Louisiana. Before entering the priesthood, Father Brady spent eleven years building a regional law practice as a litigation partner. He earned a BS in Accounting from Spring Hill College, a JD fro...

What happens when a former musician with degrees in graphic design and public relations becomes the executive director of one of Louisiana's most important startup engines? You get Destin Ortego — and a playbook that's helped founders raise $116M in venture capital and drive over $2 billion in economic impact since 2018.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Scott Shea sit down with Destin Ortego, Executive Director of Opportunity Machine, the Lafayette-based nonprofit turning aspiring entrepreneurs into fundable, scalable founders. Destin shares how Opportunity Machine evolved from an LITE-backed initiative in 2009 into a membership-based no...

What does it actually take to land a $1.4 billion manufacturing deal in a parish of 70,000 people? Mike Tarantino has the playbook — and he's running it in real time.

In this episode, Joshua Wilson and co-host Scott Shea sit down with Mike Tarantino, President and CEO of the Iberia Industrial Development Foundation, to break down the mechanics of modern economic development dealmaking. Mike walks through how Iberia Parish, Louisiana beat out 15+ competing communities to land First Solar's 2.3 million square foot facility — now employing over 825 people and anchoring an entirely new advanced manufacturing ecosystem in Cajun country. From building the...

What if the same company could give you four bites of the apple? Steven Pivnik did exactly that — and nearly lost it all in between.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson sits down with Steven Pivnik, serial founder, endurance athlete, and exit advisor who built and monetized the same software company four separate times before finally selling to a $4 billion competitor. Steven shares the real story behind the wins — and the gut-punch in the middle when he came back from a two-year contract to find fraud, falsified financials, and a company one month from...

What does it take to turn a text message into a viral brand? Bryan McGehee, founder of Gatr Coolers, did exactly that — starting from a camper with his wife and kids, betting his house on a cooler company, and going full-time the same month COVID shut the world down.

Bryan McGehee is the founder of Gatr Coolers, a premium customizable cooler and drinkware brand built out of Thibodaux, Louisiana. Bryan spent years working pipeline jobs, living in hotels and campers, before a text from his brother Mitch sparked an idea that became a decade-long entrepreneurial ride. Joining ho...

What if the biggest mistake you're making isn't a bad deal or a wrong hire — but spending your life doing things you're capable of instead of things you were made for?

Dominic Dupré grew up watching four cousins build successful companies in Louisiana's energy corridor. He graduated into the shale boom, swung sledgehammers on a workover rig, and had his entrepreneurial dreams derailed by the 2014 oil bust — only to be called back into the family business to turn around a failing crude hauling division. What followed was one of the most clarifying journeys we've heard on this show...

What if the thing slowing your growth isn't what's missing — it's what you refuse to cut?

Yarin Gaon sold his fourth company at 28, ran turnarounds as an Entrepreneur in Residence at a venture capital firm, mentored 400+ founders through the University of Chicago and SCORE, and has earned an MBA along the way. Today he runs Fractional Partners, where he applies a private equity-style operating playbook to lower middle market businesses stuck in what he calls the "messy middle" — the $2M to $20M range where founders have product-market fit but haven't decided what's actually worth scaling.

In t...

He was drowning in investor debt, swinging a hammer in Houston just to make payroll — and still found a way to build something worth fighting for. This is a story about grit, partnership, and what it really takes to grow a trade business from the inside out.

George Boudreaux founded Pelican Roofing Company in Lafayette, Louisiana on July 4th, 2014 — not from a place of momentum, but from a burning need to survive. After a real estate venture in Houston went sideways and left him half a million dollars in the hole, he bootstrapped a roofing company and grew...

She thought it was total BS. Then they built a company together — and haven't looked back since. Kenny and Stacy Maggard turned a margarita-fueled conversation into Azalea Health Services, a mission-driven mental health company serving seniors in long-term care settings across Louisiana and Texas.

Kenny Maggard spent 15 years as a middle market banker at Capital One before stepping into private equity and ultimately taking the leap into entrepreneurship. Stacy Maggard brought a background in marketing and public relations and traded in the stay-at-home season of life for a co-founder title she never expected — and wouldn't trade for anyt...

What happens when you hand the keys to an $850 million government operation to someone who thinks like an operator? You get fewer barriers, faster decisions, and a city that starts acting like it has a balance sheet to protect.

In this episode of The Deal Podcast, host Joshua Wilson and co-host Jude David, JD, DCL, MBA and Managing Partner at FA Mergers, sit down with Mayor-President Monique Boulet of Lafayette, Louisiana. Monique walks through how she's running Lafayette Consolidated Government like a turnaround — stabilizing day-one operations, reorganizing a 2,000-employee workforce, and stripping out the drama that was ke...

What happens to your business if you don't make it home today?

Taylor Davis watched his father — a top vascular surgeon making great money — die at 48 with almost no coverage after a business partnership dissolved and the insurance went with it. His mother sold her dream home and went back to work. That experience became his life's mission.

Taylor Davis is a Wealth Management Advisor with Northwestern Mutual, approaching 34 years in the business. He works with individuals and closely held businesses on succession planning, buy-sell agreements, life insurance, long-term care, and charitable giving strategies. A mult...

What does it take to turn a family baking legacy into a viral sensation? Billy and Denny, aka "The Gingerbread Twins", have been proving that faith, hard work, and butter cookies can build something extraordinary.

Billy and Denny are the identical twin founders of Gingerbread Twins, a Lafayette, Louisiana bakery rooted in three generations of baking tradition. In this episode, they share one of the most inspiring entrepreneurial stories we've had on The Deal Podcast — a journey that runs from selling cookies out of a shoebox in high school, to building a factory, to a Mardi Gras ki...

Most financial advisors are sitting on their biggest asset and don't even know it. Dr. Jon Randall breaks down exactly what your practice is worth — and how to build it so buyers are lined up when you're ready.

In this episode, Joshua Wilson sits down with Dr. Jon Randall, founder of eXtraordinary Financial Advisors (XFA) and author of The Extraordinary Financial Advisor Practice. With over 25 years of experience coaching financial advisors from $250K to $10M+ in revenue, Dr. Jon unpacks the operational, psychological, and strategic levers that separate stagnant practices from firms that scale to 10X — and even...

He was the only survivor of a plane crash that killed five people — burned on 80% of his body, pulled from a coma, and given little chance of a full recovery. What Wade Berzas discovered in that hospital room became the foundation for everything he now teaches entrepreneurs.

Wade Berzas is an EOS Implementer, business coach, and speaker who works with privately held entrepreneurial companies of 10 to 250 employees. After a decade as VP of Sales at Global Data Systems — a $40M IT company — and surviving a catastrophic 2019 plane crash that took the lives of his closest colleagues, Wade rebuil...

Most companies are spending money on marketing without knowing if it's working. Jeremy Beyt has built a career proving there's a better way — and it starts long before you run a single ad.

Jeremy Beyt is the CEO and Co-Founder of ThreeSixtyEight, a full-service creative agency based in Louisiana known as the Challenger Agency. In this episode, Jeremy joins hosts Joshua Wilson and Scott Shea for a wide-ranging conversation on what most businesses get wrong about marketing, why creativity alone isn't enough, and how he built and merged a company that turned down both a private equity ac...

Before Scott Rainey owned a safety consulting company, he was getting bit by dogs in North Louisiana — knocking on doors as a landman, trying to convince hostile landowners to let oil companies onto their property. That pivot into entrepreneurship wasn't clean. It nearly ended in bankruptcy. Here's how he got out, started over, and built something worth selling.

Scott Rainey is the founder and President of Quest Safety Solutions, a safety consulting firm serving oil and gas service companies across New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. With over 20 years of oil field experience — 15 of them in safety — Scott...

She spent thousands of dollars on wedding flowers she didn't even love — and watched them end up in the trash by the end of the night. That experience became the blueprint for a business that has now served over 60,000 weddings and helped couples save more than $100 million on flowers.

Lauren Bercier is the Co-Founder and CEO of Something Borrowed Blooms, the leading silk floral rental company disrupting the traditional wedding flower industry. In this episode, Lauren joins hosts Joshua Wilson and Jude David to walk through the full entrepreneurial arc — from a bootstrapped idea born in a man...

What if you could invest like the Hilton family — without having $100 million in the bank? Mark Miller has spent nearly 40 years making that possible, and in this episode, he pulls back the curtain on exactly how it works. The strategies, the philosophy, the network — and the surprising backstory of how the Hilton family fortune ended up in a foundation instead of the family's hands.

Mark Miller is the Managing Director of the Hilton Family Office and CEO of Hilton Tax and Wealth Advisors, built in direct partnership with J. Bradley Hilton, grandson of legendary hotelier Conrad Hilton. A be...