The challenges, successes, and lessons learned operating and growing small and medium-sized businesses.
Microcap Moments
October 26, 2026
Staying the Same Was the Bigger Risk: Why Pinnacle Care Chose a Partner
In this episode, Dr. Brian McClain, founder and managing partner of Pinnacle Care Providers in Ohio, and Emily Rafferty, CEO of the new platform bringing Pinnacle together with Preferred Podiatry Group, share how a model of post-acute care built over decades became the foundation for a multi-state platform. Dr. McClain explains why staying the same was the bigger risk for a practice that had always improved, and how unscripted conversations with chief clinical officers across the Shore portfolio answered his concerns before he said yes. Emily describes why the work is personal for her and for most of the team, and how the platform plans to multiply the clinical model’s impact through provider recruiting, technology, and relationships with the communities it serves. They also explain how physicians keep leading the clinical model through a clinical advisory board, and why growth in this business means more time with patients, not less. Finally, they look five years out, to a day when coordinated care delivered where people live is the standard rather than the exception.
- Weigh the risk of staying the same against the risk of changing, because with an aging population and fast-moving technology, a practice that improves slowly gets left behind
- Vet a partner by talking unscripted with leaders already inside the portfolio and asking them anything, because trust built that way is what lets a mission-driven practice say yes
- Keep physicians leading the clinical model and give them a clinical advisory board, so practices in different markets learn from each other instead of being standardized from above
- Buy time for patients by stripping out work that adds no value, because proactive care drives both quality outcomes and financial results
October 19, 2026
Drive the Standard: Jimmy St. Louis on Building Trust
In this episode, Jimmy St. Louis, CEO of Agentis Longevity, a national brand of longevity centers, returns for the third conversation in an annual series that began in the platform’s first year. Year one was about vision and year two about lessons learned; year three, in Jimmy’s words, is about driving the standard in a corner of healthcare that does not yet have one. He walks through the work behind that goal, from a world-class physician advisory board and appearances before Congress and the FDA to the Longevity Quotient, a fifteen-minute assessment that distills five clinical tests and sixty-five blood markers into a single health score tied to treatment protocols in every clinic. He also reflects on why the company’s vision statement hinges on the word drive rather than set, how a team doing many things at once stays focused on four big rocks, and what makes sellers want to join the platform. He closes with three questions any consumer should ask before trusting a longevity clinic.
- Choose the words of your vision deliberately, because a single word like drive instead of set tells the team whether the organization is finished or in constant motion
- Build trust before scale by giving every stakeholder, from regulators to sellers to patients, a framework they can point to for what high-quality care looks like
- Standardize the core and let the edges vary: run the four core services exactly the same way in every clinic, and allow adjacent modalities to differ by market and customer base
- Prioritize visibly, so that every person in the company can name the quarter’s four big rocks even when the organization is doing many things at once
September 29, 2026
A Good Business Isn’t Enough: Jamie Cusack on Choosing the Right Partners
In this episode, Jamie Cusack, CEO of Keystone Access Partners, Shore Capital’s entrance and access control platform built on Dillard Companies and The Ritchie Group, shares how he came to the CEO seat by watching the Shore model work from the inside as a board member of another Shore company before betting his own career on it. He walks through what a growth-based partnership looks like from the founder’s side of the table: the open conversation about what each owner wants next, the leadership training his teams had never had access to before, and the promise that a process that works in the field is something to learn from rather than replace. Jamie also takes on the biggest assumption he hears in the market, that owners running on spreadsheets or pen and paper aren’t ready to sell, and explains why most are more ready than they think. Finally, he is direct about what Keystone looks for in a partner and why a good business isn’t enough: the people have to be good too.
September 2, 2026
Telling Stories Through Bread: 33 Years of Companion Baking
In this episode, Josh Allen, founder of Companion Baking in St. Louis, Missouri, shares how he turned a love of baking discovered in the Bay Area into a frozen artisan bread manufacturer shipping custom products across all 48 contiguous states. Guided by his grandfather’s advice to listen to his customers, Josh built the business one customer and one product at a time, pivoted from wholesale to frozen manufacturing, and made helping customers tell their stories through bread the heart of what Companion does. He also reflects on why he always took the private equity calls out of curiosity, what made Shore different, and why partnering now rather than later lets him stay part of the journey as Companion builds its platform.
August 21, 2026
The Network Effect: Building H2O Care Partners
In this episode, Keith Caldwell, CEO of H2O Care Partners, and Sarah Longstreet, the company’s Chief Marketing Officer, share the story of building a national water treatment platform. It began in 2021 when Keith met Mark St. Hilaire, founder of H2O Care in Massachusetts, and saw an opportunity to combine doing good with the growth potential of a fragmented, family-run industry. Today the platform spans more than thirty brands across nearly twenty states, supported by a Boston-based resource team of over forty across marketing, finance, hiring, technology, and operations. Keith and Sarah reflect on the network effect that emerges when great local businesses come together, how each new partner brings superpowers that get shared across the platform, and why preserving local brands, community ties, and long-tenured teams is central to how they scale. They also discuss what makes the right partner, from founders approaching retirement to those just getting started, and what’s next as the platform continues to grow.
June 17, 2026
Building Trust at Scale: Joe Rice and the CXponent Story
In this episode, Joe Rice, CEO of CXponent, shares how watching his father run a business sparked a lifelong pull toward entrepreneurship and building something of his own. He describes how CXponent cuts through the overwhelming noise of technology vendors and AI tools to help mid-market companies make better decisions, and why trust, not technology, remains the foundation of every client relationship. Joe reflects on his first company, what he learned from that exit, and what drew him back to build again. He talks candidly about what founders should weigh before joining a platform, the importance of readiness and timing, and why Shore’s focus on stacking talent and investing in organic growth made it the right fit. Throughout the conversation, Joe makes clear that even in a market being reshaped by AI, the work still comes down to people, presence, and being a partner clients can count on.
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