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Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Business Leader of the Month: Daniel Klapper of Fox & Chester 5-14-26
00:21:33
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- [00:00]
A
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- [00:27]
B
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity Podcast. I'm joined today by a brilliant entrepreneur and advisor and leader. We're joined today by Dan Clapper. Dan's the founder of a firm called Fox and Chester. They've had tremendous rapid growth in serving clients both nationally and internationally. They offer a broad range of outsourced services, fractional executive services. They have an affiliated law firm. They're also building a multifamily office and services, two family offices. A remarkable entrepreneurial story. Dan, I'm going to ask you a few questions to get you started. First, take one moment and just introduce yourself and tell us what you do. Just give us a quick start there. And then we're going to talk about Starting this at 27, building a client base. Then we'll talk about what did you have to do to move this so fast? What did you have to give up? Did you have to, you know, to, to move and so fast? Did you have to not sleep? What did you have to do to get this going so well? And then we'll move on to several other questions. But, but take a moment, just introduce yourself and then we'll talk about how you started this at 27 and how you got going so fast.
- [01:39]
C
Thank you, Scott. My name is Dan Clapper. I'm the founder of Fox and Chester and as Scott introduced, we are now an integrated professional service firm. We started as a consulting firm for startups and founders and the idea being how can we serve them with the same level of talent that senior teams and larger companies get, but in an area that they can afford wherever they may be across the world. So it evolved very quickly to follow the needs in the market, bringing on more team members who had experience in these professional services, who were excited about helping founders, who many cases were founders themselves. In fact, a lot of my team are entrepreneurs and I really liked that because they had the passion and the drive to work with founders.
- [02:30]
B
Thank you. Take a second. You built a national team and a client base in the first 90 days and then started to go international not long after that. Just tell us how that happened a little bit. Give us A little bit of the sense of how did you start to pick up clients, how did you start to provide services and what was the first international effort that you started to work with?
- [02:51]
C
Absolutely. Initially it started and I'm based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So it initially started with friends of mine who had startups at Carnegie Mellon and I thought that would be my entire client base would be Pittsburgh based people and that would be the market I was serving from. One client leads to more connections, to friends who need more help, to accelerators. I'm invited on and the more that things just snowballed, the more connections I made, the more people found out what we were doing, found it interesting, found it helpful, found it valuable. It was actually the international connection was totally unexpected. But I'm sure everybody's wondering about that because again, I didn't expect it. I truly thought it would just be a national company. At most it was one of the accelerators. I sit on one of the mentors. We really, really connected on what they were doing, what I was doing and they got really excited and they, they, they gave me five clients right off the bat that they thought, let me just, I think this is something Dan can do. And I was really excited because it's no different than the needs locally except with some international considerations, a lot of it legal, but some logistical. Otherwise that was pretty straightforward. And that was something that just quickly entered us into the market. And I honestly thought it was just going to be a one off. But those five led to more five and it ballooned. One country led to over 80 countries that we're now in just from that. So it's an inorganic and not a sexy answer, Scott, but that is the truthful answer.
- [04:32]
B
No, it's a great answer. And talk a little bit about, you started this at 27, you've expanded really quickly. It's going great. What do you have to give up to do that? How does that work? What do you have to do? How much focus did this take to really get this going and then serve clients really well? Because part of it of course is bringing clients in, but that's no good if you're not actually taking great cure them, which you're doing. What did you have to give up at that age to try and start to move this forward how you wanted to?
- [05:00]
C
It's a very good question and I would say there are three big things that I use to kind of move this quickly may sound goofy and this one usually gets people laughing, but first off, I treat time like currency. So imagine every minute of the day is a dollar. You have 1440 minutes in every day. To me, that's $1440 to spend every day. A third of that's going to be sleeping. So really you have like $960 or something like that. And I spend my minutes on things that matter, things that are going to progress my business, things that I. People I care about, whatever it is. I learned that the wealthy spend money to buy back time. Everyone else spends time to earn money. But for me, treating every minute like a dollar that I couldn't get back really changed my perspective. I mean, it changes what you say yes to. It changes how fast you move, just changes everything. Now, the second is how to actually make those minutes count. Every morning or sometimes the night before for the next morning, I write down three to five things that have to happen that day to move the business forward. Not two, not 10, just three to five. Because that's what we have. The, like, just enough that you can make some real change. Not too little, that you're doing nothing, not too much, that you're overwhelmed. Now you're going to have other things that do need to get done in the day. But for me, these three to five things are three to five things that move the business forward. And the day doesn't end until those things are done. So maybe that gets done in an hour, maybe that gets done in 18 hours. Whatever it is they have to get done. And the last thing or the third thing, I promise what I deliver on and I deliver what I promise. No over committing, no hedging, no pretty words, just straightforward. Clients know exactly what they're getting from you every single day. They stop looking for alternatives. They send their friends they trust. It builds trust. All these things. Build trust with clients, build trust with your team, and it also forces you to be diligent about how you're using your time. And that's consistency. Being able to say, I know exactly what this person, this product, what Fox and Chester Brand is going to give me. That's invaluable. So those are the three big things. That's what I essentially maybe what I gave up. But that's the focus and that's the. That's the strategy.
- [07:19]
B
But I love that discipline and that thoughtfulness to how you're going about things and how you're looking at how you're allocating your time. Because you're absolutely right. That's all you have is time. And you got to use it smartly and intelligently. And I love that focus. And most People think of consulting firms as advice businesses. They're getting advice. It sounds like you're doing something much more than that. Advisory, legal, software, import, export, fractional executive teams, and now a multifamily office. How do you talk about what you're building and what you built?
- [07:52]
C
It's very good. And I laugh only because it's a thought and a conversation we've had internally with the team many times because initially the idea was consulting. But I think one of the lessons I've learned from all the books I've read from any of the founders that I've learned from, one of the key things was you need to be rigid on your mission, but flexible on how you achieve that. So for the initial idea of the consulting firm, the consulting firm wasn't the mission serving the founders in the way that they need us to be there. That's my mission. How I do it is much more flexible. Although we started there, we've adapted. And so now the new term and the new phrase, which may change, but I think it truly is a professional services firm in the sense that we can offer the CPAs, the HR people, the IT, the lawyers that sometimes when they need, not for medical treatment, but for advisory or in some capacity, maybe medical or physician or nurse trainer, sometimes for like, you know, MedSpa products or our device product companies. And being able to do that, I actually, I jokingly call it kind of, I guess you would say, a monetized network. Essentially, I turned my network that I had all these people that I knew and that continues to grow into something that can serve a problem in the market. And so no, it's not traditional consulting, because consulting will make a PowerPoint and hand it off. We never do that. We will form a company for an international client and actually run it in the US or for a client already here. We'll go into their team and actually embed ourselves and be there day to day for daily decisions if we have to. Kind of like a fractional in house counsel would, but for everything else that they may need.
- [09:43]
B
So lawyer beyond, literally amazing what you're doing. Talk for a moment about some of the sort of business trends that you're watching. Is you work with business leaders. What should they be thinking about paying attention to? And then when we get to the next step, I'm going to ask you, what do most founders and operators get wrong when they tried to build something with this much scope? I love your concept of rigid on mission, but trying to also be flexible in what customers need and what has to Be done. Take a second Don, what trends you're watching currently? What should business leaders be paying attention to and what do sometimes founders operators get wrong when they're trying to scale?
- [10:30]
C
Great question. First off on some trends and not surprising my first is probably going to be AI. Of course many people are still understanding how it changes professional services specifically and actually one of the things we sometimes find ourselves doing is on the before you're ready for developing AI in your company, we may just have to have a minute and just level set on what's the value there. In your particular case, that said, AI is not replacing advisors, it's just raising that floor. One of the statistics I saw enterprise users report saving 40 to 60 minutes per day with AI integration. About 96% of organizations are investing in AI in some way 57% calling those significant. So the numbers are there that this is not going away, but in fact it's making us better. And the way I'd often describe it to some of the AI afraid is think of it like a computer, maybe replacing the typewriter. It's not necessarily replacing that aspect of it, but it's making us faster and more skilled naturally. The second, of course being a lawyer, I'm always going to look at regulatory complexity. It is increasing in every sector we operate in and most companies still treat legal compliance like a cost center that they just tack on after. It's the ones growing fast really have it embedded from the start. And unfortunately sometimes when people find us, it's usually after our problem occurs. I'm sure you understand as well. We try to catch it before and try to work with people before to help build that up for their companies. I would say like healthcare. PE for example, hit a record $190 billion in deal value in 20252700 of those portfolio companies are still sitting with LP pressure to exit and have understaffed compliance functions. So this is not an area that we can, we can avoid or that we should avoid. So the importance is there with it, I guess. The last one naturally is cross border. So more companies are entering international markets than ever before. I think it's been there since the dot com boom. It's accelerated I believe since COVID especially since virtual work has become more popular. I mean even in my company, case in point, we don't always whether it's our Swiss clients or German or Japanese, we're not flying over there all the time and we don't need to. We can hop on a zoom call or a teams call and take 30 minutes to talk about an issue. Or I could text them on Signal or WhatsApp. We can solve this problem very quickly. And more people are comfortable doing that, I think, than even pre Covid and definitely before logistically before dot com. I would also add on the wealth side, there's just a massive generational wealth transfer underway. And we have a lot of. And by the nature of the market we're serving specifically a lot of young founders or rising founders. We typically find that the families on the receiving end are much more fit financially sophisticated than maybe prior generations. There's a lot of younger people who have the energy and the interest, sometimes the financial need, but not. Or the financial ability, but not always the understanding of how to do it. And that's really where we can embed and support. I believe the number on that was. Millennials are set to inherit $46 trillion in the U.S. i mean, that's more than any other generation in the last 25 years. So the value there is incredible. And the need to serve that market is, I believe, underutilized. And that's where we really plug in.
- [14:08]
B
Literally. Fantastic. And take a moment, Dan. When you think about what leaders get wrong, what do they get wrong? What do you see that people get wrong when they're trying to build some with this much scope? And what do you think you got right that made this go so well?
- [14:26]
C
Absolutely. I would say most founders assume scope and focus are opposites. You know, they, they build across or they think building across multiple service lines means you're not disciplined or you're overstretched. And I know sometimes that may be there are some larger corporations that may feel that or may have grown organically. I, I would say that in this day and age, in the environment that we're in, in the business world, you can grow a company much faster and much more easily than you ever could before if you're strategic about how to do it. So for me, I will obsess about solving a problem in my company or the path to get there until I figure it out and I'll work with my team to do it. And obviously, as a founder, sometimes you're alone in that. But when service lines are genuinely integrated and serve the same client through the same relationship, that's, that's focus. And for us, the client is always at the center. And what we recommend to our clients about their customers is that customer, whoever you're trying to serve, has to be at the center. It has to be a solution for a problem, not a problem finding or a solution finding. A problem. So what I got wrong early on, I think what I find somewhat common is I took on clients that I probably shouldn't have. Great people, people I really liked. And I love being around smart and passionate people. But in this particular case, or in these particular cases, it was just the wrong fit for what we. For our company. So they came in with a fundamentally different picture of what the engagement was going to be or what it could be. And when you're young and you're an early company, you're trying to serve your clients in ways that maybe your company can or cannot, or so you learn fast that misalignment at the start of a client relationship compounds if it's not fixed and it just doesn't go away on its own. Every deliverable becomes a negotiation, every invoice becomes a discussion. You end up spending more energy managing that friction and misalignment than the actual work. On the other hand, what I got right, I think almost by accident, was building the internal infrastructure before I needed it. The onboarding processes, the playbook for the sales team, the documented standards. I obsessed about every part of that aspect of IT and infrastructure. And I continually speak about it internally because you know, where you are today, it's important, but you've got to think about where you want to be and how to get there and, and speed is the game. If I do nothing else right, I mean, going back to my 14, 40 minutes and dollars a day, if I do nothing else right, but do it fast, what I may spend or my company may spend 100 hours a week doing compared to another company, let's say working 40, same problem, same issue. We spend a whole year working on it. We're going to get done in four months what it takes them to do in a year. In the next four months, I'm going to double it. In the last four months, I'm going to triple it. I learned speed was invaluable very early on. And as far as the processes and the SOPs know, you build them when the team's small enough that it's unnecessary, because by the time you need them, it's already too late.
- [17:36]
B
No, I. I love that. And I think that's right on. Because as you get bigger and bigger quickly, now all of a sudden you don't, you don't have the processes in place, the systems in place, and you end up at. At and the standards and so forth ended up, oh, my God, what am I doing now? And if you build them when you're smaller and you don't really need them because it's so easy to take care of a single client. Not so easy, but, but it's easy to understand. But if you don't do it then, then you're in trouble when you actually get bigger and bigger clients and they're dealing with bigger and bigger clients that have different needs, different demands and so forth. You know, have a process for working with them. Couple more questions, Dan?
- [18:08]
C
Sure.
- [18:08]
B
What advice would you give to a young founder and what do you want people taking away from this conversation? People that are listening? What would you want them to take away?
- [18:17]
C
Absolutely. So there are a couple things I would say get the foundation right before you need it, especially now where you can use whether it's an AI model to as a strategic partner to bounce ideas off of or you have global reach of people and access and there's tons of information out there. It's much easier to learn about how to start a business. In fact, it may actually be too much information out there. But at the very least it gives you an idea of many different ways other people have tried it and how you can do it. So the first thing I would say is get that foundation right. The problems are fixable when they are small and as you mentioned, it becomes a lot more expensive and credibility damaging when they surface mid transaction. Second I would say is people, when you're ready for it, hire for where you're going, not for where you are. Of course you have to be able to afford it. We understand most understaffed the functions that they think they can hold together themselves like legal finance operations and then it becomes too late. So, so don't wait for those kind of problems. Definitely get a little, get advanced, get ahead of those problems before they, before they happen. And please, please, please don't use like AI models for creating your legal documents. I'm not saying that for my business. I'm saying that because I've seen so many where a person didn't want to or a company didn't want to spend a few thousand on a good or finance like a good financial plan or good tax documents or a good legal document and it cost them tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or more later on. So it's, that's one of the things to definitely put your money on earlier is the right people for the right problems early on. And I would say the last one again, legal as a strategic asset, not a cost center. Those who move the fastest understand that legal infrastructure is what gets you close faster. You can raise cleaner, you can scale without structuring the debt and stops the growth companies cold. I do have some points for overall, for founders, I would say, I would say speed is going to be your friend early on, especially in this world where anyone can essentially start a company. I mean, it only takes a few hundred dollars or a few thousand through a lawyer to do it right. That part's not the hard part. To get out there on social media, to get out there on whether even print media, if you choose that, it's so much easier to do it. So speed is going to be your friend if you do nothing else. I mean, learn from the, you know, putting more effort into it. I think a lot of founders can go further with a lot less than they think financially. I know it may not be pleasant or easy early on, but bootstrapping is a great way to build your company quickly. I would say those are probably my key pieces of advice for young founders and of course, reach out to someone who's done it before. I could not have done this without my mentors and the people in my corner who you're going to have nights or days where you need to just call someone up and you need to feel stupid about something and just ask something that makes you feel dumb about it, that having those people in your corner are essential for helping you move your company forward and for building a lasting company.
- [21:19]
B
Dan, thank you so much. A remarkable success story. Incredible what you are doing and have accomplished so far. Congratulations. And Dan Clapper, founder of Fox and Chester, thank you so much for joining us on the Becker Business and the Becker Private Equity podcast. What a pleasure to visit with you.
- [21:37]
C
Thanks so much for having me. Scott.