Category: Finance News Network

• William Stapleton, President and CEO of Iron Rock Payments in Frisco, Texas, shares how early work shaped his path from private banking to entrepreneurship.

How did working from age 14 influence your career?

Texas, USA, Sep 22, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — “I have worked since I was 14 years old to support myself and used this work ethic into college,” Stapleton says. He grew up in a working-class household in Long Beach, California. His mother is from Ecuador and his father is of German and Polish descent. Starting work young built financial responsibility and shaped his approach to business.

He played varsity baseball and water polo while working through high school. He graduated with honors from Long Beach Wilson Classical High School near the top of his class. In college, he took an unpaid internship at Salomon Brothers while balancing his studies. “I graduated college with full honors, top of my class academically,” he says. He earned a double major in Rhetorical Theory and Global Economics from California State University, Long Beach in 2006.

What did you learn in private banking that helped you as an entrepreneur?

After graduation, Morgan Stanley Private Bank recruited Stapleton to work in New York. He later joined JPMorgan Chase, where he contributed to building what is now known as the Chase Private Client program. He spent approximately seven years in private banking and advisory roles.

Working with high-net-worth clients taught him how to manage relationships, assess risk, and structure solutions. Those skills transferred directly to running a business. Understanding client needs and delivering value became the foundation of his entrepreneurial approach.

How did you transition from banking to payments?

Stapleton founded PayFacto, a credit card processing company based in Montreal. He built the company from the ground up and grew it until Visa acquired it in 2019. The sale carried an estimated valuation of $300 million.

He did not wait long to start again. In 2012, he founded Iron Rock Payments, a credit card processing company based in Frisco, Texas. The company has been recognized as an Inc. 5000 company and employs 15 people. Stapleton serves as President and CEO.

What do businesses get wrong about payment processing?

Many businesses treat payment processing as a commodity. They focus only on rates and miss the bigger picture. The right processor can improve cash flow, reduce chargebacks, and provide data that drives decisions.

Stapleton emphasizes that service matters as much as price. Businesses need a partner who understands their industry and responds quickly when issues arise. A few basis points saved on fees mean nothing if downtime costs thousands in lost sales.

What lessons from your first exit did you apply to Iron Rock Payments?

Selling PayFacto taught Stapleton the importance of building systems that scale. He learned to hire people who are better than him in specific areas and to trust them. He also realized that culture drives retention and retention drives growth.

At Iron Rock Payments, he focused on creating processes that work whether the company has 5 employees or 50. He invests in technology that automates repetitive tasks so his team can focus on client relationships. He also prioritizes transparency with clients and employees.

What advice do you give to people thinking about starting a business?

Start before you feel ready. Waiting for the perfect moment means you will never start. Stapleton began working at 14 and took an unpaid internship in college because he wanted experience more than money.

He also advises entrepreneurs to stay close to their customers. The best product ideas come from listening to what clients actually need, not from guessing. Finally, he says to protect your reputation. Trust takes years to build and seconds to destroy.

If you do nothing else

1. Start working as early as you can to build a strong work ethic and financial discipline.

2. Take internships or entry-level roles that teach you skills, even if the pay is low or nonexistent.

3. Spend time in an industry before you try to disrupt it so you understand how it really works.

4. Build systems and processes that can scale as your business grows.

5. Hire people who are stronger than you in areas where you are weak and trust them to do their jobs.

6. Listen to your clients and let their needs guide your product and service decisions.

7. Protect your reputation by delivering on promises and treating people with respect.

Share this Q&A with someone who is thinking about making the leap from employee to entrepreneur or who wants to understand how early work experience shapes long-term success.

About William Stapleton

William Stapleton is President and CEO of Iron Rock Payments, a credit card processing company based in Frisco, Texas. He founded the company in 2012 after selling his previous venture, PayFacto, to Visa in 2019 at an estimated valuation of $300 million. Before entering entrepreneurship, he worked in private banking at Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, where he contributed to creating the Chase Private Client program. He graduated with full honors from California State University, Long Beach with a double major in Rhetorical Theory and Global Economics.

• Orange County Music & Dance will open a second, 25,000-square-foot campus on Cowan Avenue in Irvine this November, adding conservatory and pre-conservatory programs and early childhood classes under new CEO Ralph Opacic.

A second building, a bigger promise

Santa Ana, California, Sep 22, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Orange County Music & Dance has bought a 25,000-square-foot building for $10.8 million to serve as its second campus. The purchase doubles the nonprofit’s footprint to nearly 50,000 square feet. It is scheduled to open in November, after renovations, minutes from OCMD’s current Irvine headquarters.

Ralph Opacic, who became OCMD’s chief executive last October, says the new space solves a problem the organization could not solve with its original building alone.

“We needed the space to truly be a comprehensive pre-K to 12 arts community music and dance school,” Opacic said.

What moves, what stays, what’s new

The Cowan Avenue campus will hold four new dance facilities, a large rehearsal space for ensembles such as band, orchestra, and musical theater, a second piano lab, a music production studio, and about 15 flexible rehearsal rooms.

Two new programs will launch there, starting a couple of months before the building opens. The first is a conservatory program: college preparatory, pre-professional training for high school students performing at an intermediate to advanced level. The second is a pre-conservatory program for sixth through eighth graders, built as a feeder into the high school track.

“It further strengthens the pathways available for those students who, at an early age, are seeking a premier experience that supports their goals,” Opacic said.

Early childhood music and dance programs for children 6 months to 5 years old will also open at the new site, along with OCMD’s adult evening programs. Discovery programs for kindergarten through fifth grade will stay at the existing Irvine headquarters. OCMD expects enrollment to grow by 400 students once the second campus is running.

Buying instead of building

OCMD had spent time planning a larger project at the Great Park before shifting course this year. Buying an existing building instead of constructing a new one cut an 18-month timeline down to six, according to Opacic, and let OCMD acquire the property without taking on debt.

That change in plan is why the Cowan Avenue building is opening this fall rather than years from now. Opacic points to the shorter timeline as the reason the new conservatory programs can start enrolling students this year instead of waiting for a multi-year build.

A pathway with no gap in it

Opacic has spent decades building programs for young performers, first at Orange County School of the Arts and now at OCMD. The phrase he uses for what the Cowan Avenue campus is meant to do is “womb to tomb.”

“The program is going to be a one-stop shop to serve families that have children, from womb to tomb,” Opacic said.

In practice, that means a child can start in an infant music class, move into discovery programs in elementary school, enter the pre-conservatory track in middle school, and finish in the conservatory program through high school, all inside one organization. Adult classes mean the pathway does not stop at graduation either.

Opacic has hired several new staff members for the conservatory programs, including some who previously worked with him at his former school.

What the expansion is meant to fix

The new building is not simply more room. It lets OCMD run programs it could not run before: specialized group and technique classes, musicianship and theory training, rehearsal and repertoire-based work, individualized coaching, and performance opportunities across music genres and dance styles. Those are the pieces that turn private lessons into a conservatory track, and OCMD did not have the space to offer them until now.

Opacic says the timing matters because families are asking for exactly this kind of continuous program, one that does not force a student to leave for a different school once they outgrow beginner classes.

“How fantastic would it be to start getting kids engaged and involved in music as infants or toddlers, and then be involved in their full music development?” Opacic said.

To read more, visit the website here.

About Ralph Opacic

Ralph S. Opacic, Ed.D. is chief executive of Orange County Music & Dance, a performing arts nonprofit headquartered in Irvine, California. He founded and previously led Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana, California, and has spent more than 25 years building arts education and training programs for young performers.

California, USA, Sep 22, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — David Wayne Fish is putting a specific commitment on the record. With six kids moving through baseball, football, and tennis across overlapping seasons, he says the easiest thing to let slip is presence. So he is naming the standard out loud.

“If one of my kids has a game or a practice, someone from this family is there,” Fish says. “That’s the whole pledge. It sounds simple because it should be simple. The hard part is building a life where you can actually keep it.”

Fish runs healthcare and wellness companies as a consultant and CEO, work that does not pause for a Tuesday scrimmage. He is not pretending otherwise. The pledge is not about having endless free time. It is about deciding in advance what wins when a calendar conflict shows up.

Why he is saying it publicly

Fish has coached football, baseball, and helped organize tennis for years. He says most parents do not fail their kids through some dramatic absence. They fail them through a hundred small ones that never get flagged as decisions at all.

“Nobody skips a game and thinks of it as a broken promise,” he says. “It just looks like a scheduling problem. I wanted to write my own rule down so it stops being negotiable case by case.”

He credits his own father, and the model of family life he grew up with in Michigan, for the instinct behind this. Fish says he was raised around the idea that a father’s job includes showing up, not just providing.

What the commitment actually covers

The pledge Fish is making has a few concrete parts:

Every game gets a family face in the stands. Not every game gets David personally, with six kids and overlapping seasons that is not realistic, but every game gets someone: him, his wife, or another family member who can stand in.

Coaching commitments get finished, not started. Fish says he does not sign up to coach a season and then quietly hand it off when work gets busy. If he takes a team, he finishes the season.

Conflicts get resolved before the week starts, not during it. Fish says he sits down weekly and maps which kid has what, so trade-offs get made on a Sunday with a clear head instead of on a Wednesday in a parking lot.

“I’d rather lose an hour on Sunday mapping the week than lose a moment at my kid’s game because I’m distracted by something I should have planned around,” he says.

What he is asking of himself, not other parents

Fish is careful to frame this as his own standard, not a lecture. He is not telling other families how to run their weeks.

“I’m not in a position to tell another parent what their life allows,” he says. “I know what mine allows, and I know where I’ve cut corners before without meaning to. This is me closing that gap for myself.”

He says the pledge will get tested immediately, since his kids’ seasons rarely line up cleanly. Two games at the same hour, in two different towns, is not a hypothetical for his family. It happens.

“When that comes up, the answer isn’t ‘we’ll figure it out.’ The answer is already written down: someone from this family goes to each one,” Fish says. “I’d rather have made that call in October than try to make it in the car in March.”

Holding himself to it

Fish says he plans to track the pledge the same plain way he tracks anything else he takes seriously: a simple log of games, and who from the family was there. No app, no public scoreboard, just a habit he intends to keep himself honest about.

“If I say I’m going to do something for my kids, I want a way to check whether I actually did it,” he says. “That’s the only accountability that’s ever mattered to me.”

To read more, visit the website here.

About David Wayne Fish

David Wayne Fish is an entrepreneur based in Laguna Niguel, California. He works as a CEO and consultant to healthcare and wellness companies. Outside that work, he coaches youth football and baseball, helps organize tennis programs, and is the father of six children active in sports.

• Honnas Veterinary is releasing a short self-check list to help Austin pet owners decide when a visit is worth scheduling, built around the same questions its team asks during exams.

A simple set of questions before the appointment

Texas, USA, Sep 22, 2026, ZEX PR WIRE — Honnas Veterinary, a female-owned veterinary practice in Austin, Texas, is publishing a self-check list for pet owners. The list is meant to be used at home, before a call to the clinic, so owners can organize what they have noticed and share it clearly with a doctor.

The practice built the list from the questions its veterinarians already ask new and returning patients. Dr. Cheri Honnas, founder of Honnas Veterinary, said the goal is to give owners a starting point rather than a diagnosis.

“Owners usually know something is different about their pet before they can put it into words,” Dr. Honnas said. “This list helps them organize what they are seeing so our team can act on it faster.”

What the self-check covers

The list is organized into four short sections:

Eating and drinking. Has the amount changed in either direction over the past week? Has the pet stopped finishing meals it used to eat without trouble?

Energy and movement. Is the pet resting more than usual? Is it slower to get up, reluctant to jump, or limping on and off?

Bathroom habits. Any change in frequency, color, or straining should be written down, including the day it started.

Coat, skin, and weight. Owners are asked to run a hand along the pet’s back and sides. New lumps, bald patches, or a change in body shape are worth noting even if the pet seems otherwise fine.

Each section asks the owner to write down when the change started and whether it has gotten better, worse, or stayed the same. That timeline is often more useful to a veterinarian than a single description of symptoms.

Why the practice built it this way

Honnas Veterinary sees over 1,500 patients a month across a team of five doctors. That volume has shown the practice which details tend to matter most in an exam room and which ones owners often leave out until asked directly.

“We hear a lot of ‘he’s just been off lately,’” Dr. Honnas said. “That is a real observation, but it is not something we can act on right away. The self-check gives owners a way to turn ‘off’ into specifics.”

The clinic is Fear Free certified, and its staff apply Fear Free handling techniques during visits to help reduce stress for pets. The self-check list is meant to work alongside that approach: the more clearly an owner can describe what changed at home, the shorter and calmer the exam can be.

How the list will be used

Honnas Veterinary plans to make the self-check available to clients as a printed handout and as part of new patient materials. Owners can also use it on their own, whether or not they are due for a visit, as a way to keep a running record between checkups.

The practice is not positioning the list as a replacement for an exam. Instead, it is meant to make the conversation with a veterinarian more direct.

“None of this replaces a hands-on exam,” Dr. Honnas said. “But when an owner walks in with a clear timeline instead of a vague feeling, we can usually get to an answer faster. That matters for the pet and for the family.”

Availability

Honnas Veterinary offers free new patient exams for pet owners in the Austin area. The self-check list is part of the practice’s broader effort to make veterinary care more accessible, alongside its existing scheduling and exam options.

To read more, visit the website here.

About Honnas Veterinary

Honnas Veterinary is a locally owned, female-owned veterinary practice in Austin, Texas, founded by Dr. Cheri Honnas in 2023. The practice has grown to a team of five veterinarians and sees more than 1,500 patients each month. Honnas Veterinary is Fear Free certified and offers wellness exams, vaccinations, surgery, dental care, diagnostics, and emergency treatment from its clinic in Austin.