Fervent Four goes inside the decisions, risks, failures and breakthroughs behind the people building what's next.
Each week, Zack Miller and Tim Ryan sit down with entrepreneurs, executives, investors and industry leaders to unpack how businesses are built, how big bets get made and what it really takes to lead through uncertainty.
From billion-dollar companies and emerging technologies to AI, healthcare, consumer brands, manufacturing and more, Fervent Four finds the business stories worth knowing — and the lessons behind them.
New episodes every Tuesday.
Would You Bet Your Entire Bank Account on Yourself?
With $50,000 in the bank, Alexis Perkins bet on herself and invested it in a new website and app for Chair One Fitness. The app went on to become her company's largest revenue source.
In episode 330 of Fervent Four, Alexis joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan to share how she turned canceled bookings into international growth, got in front of hard to reach buyers, and expanded her seated fitness business into corporate wellness.
A conversation about backing yourself, creating opportunities, and following through.
29 Sept 2026
The AI Boom Runs on Handwritten Tickets
Mike Van Sickel offered two trucking brokers a share of $25 million in work. Both turned him down.
They were already spending their weekends collecting paper tickets, tracking changes on legal pads and trying to produce invoices that matched the contractor's records. More work would only make that problem bigger.
Mike had spent decades in construction watching dispatchers, drivers and brokers manage major projects this way. He left an executive role to build Iron Sheepdog, a platform for managing short haul trucking jobs, tickets and payments.
Mike joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan on Fervent Four to explain why earning brokers' and drivers' trust was harder than building the software, how the platform helps small trucking businesses grow, and why he still found handwritten tickets at a major AI data center project.
Learn more about Iron Sheepdog at https://www.ironsheepdog.com/
00:00 Handwritten tickets at an AI data center project
00:39 Meet Mike Van Sickel
01:07 How Iron Sheepdog got its name
04:28 Why dump trucks needed software
06:40 The problem Mike saw inside a construction company
08:06 Two brokers turn down millions in work
12:06 Why trust mattered more than the app
13:36 How jobs and payments work on the platform
15:44 Making better use of every truck
20:28 The logistics behind building anything
23:26 Helping small trucking businesses grow
28:21 Leaving an executive job and raising money
33:39 Iron Sheepdog's reach across the country
35:15 The paper tickets behind an AI data center
37:24 Where AI helps and where people still matter
40:33 Finding out a job is losing money too late
42:36 What drivers need to know before entering a site
45:17 Competition and the future of construction logistics
49:32 The customer support call Mike still remembers
52:38 Does Mike want to sell Iron Sheepdog?
54:39 What food represents Hampton Roads?
22 Sept 2026
She Built a Global Brand Without a Plan
Paula Short didn't set out to build a global beauty brand.
She and her business partner created a glitter lip product to get more customers through the door of their salon. Then people started buying it.
They took the product to London. Landed Topshop. Expanded internationally. Supplied major retailers and airlines. Paula appeared on BBC Dragons' Den. And somewhere along the way, the small idea became a very real business.
But growth came with another side.
The fun disappeared. The pressure increased. Paula eventually sold the company and found herself confronting a question many entrepreneurs eventually face: if the business has become part of your identity, who are you when it's gone?
Then she made another unexpected decision.
In her 50s, Paula packed two suitcases and moved to the United States.
Today she works with entrepreneurs and leadership teams, helping them recognize opportunities, avoid expensive mistakes and build on what is already working.
In Episode 328 of Fervent Four, Paula joins Zack Miller and Tim Ryan to talk about saying yes before you have everything figured out, building Beauty Boulevard, Dragons' Den, burnout, selling a company, negotiation, moving to America and why entrepreneurs need people willing to tell them what they don't want to hear.
Inside a recent episode
The Makerspace Movement in the 757
Published 29 Jun 2023 · Transcript excerpt
[…] We get more businesses that start to form or create or prototype those ideas out of this base here now, right? In the beginning, it was more artists and now we've got more businesses that form out of that art or that region. So, given people a stadium and a home base to be able to build out of and for us, the ultimate sign of success is, it's like a reverse funnel. It's what we call a graduation day. When a business is formed and they have employees inside of here and they grow too big to be inside the space and they grow up and they grow out and they take over these other warehouses. I'm looking outside my window now and I can tell you a couple of businesses that have formed from the space that are occupying these other locations here. […]
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