CASE STUDIES

Brian Murphy spent thirty years building Portfolio Advisors from a bare office with no furniture into a firm that raised roughly $90 billion and delivered an 18.4% compounded return to its clients. In this episode of Case Studies, Brian sits down with Casey to trace that arc, from selling bootleg fireworks as a kid to restructuring a broken $395 million portfolio at twenty-nine years old, and ultimately building one of the most creative fund structures in private equity.

The conversation moves well beyond deal mechanics. Brian unpacks the mindset behind solving problems no one else would touch, the discipline of building partnerships instead of hierarchies, and why he and his wife, Louise, chose to fund college educations for the children of their employees rather than keep more for themselves.

What emerges is a meditation on identity as much as investing: how a chip on your shoulder becomes fuel, how creativity compounds like capital, and how success without a plan for what it's for can quietly hollow a life out.

[00:00] Introducing Brian Murphy
[02:15] Childhood hustles and mopeds
[05:35] Born with the entrepreneurial bug
[10:34] Choosing business over dentistry
[13:26] Painting crews and street credit
[20:36] Landing at Columbia Business School
[25:04] Restructuring, Blackstone, and Gibson Greetings
[26:04] Kansas portfolio turnaround at 29
[33:21] Founding Portfolio Advisors
[39:33] Building the umbrella fund structure
[43:09] Ninety billion and an 18.4% return
[45:33] Sharing equity with employees
[52:00] The scholarship gift to staff
[59:01] The Lego set theory of creativity
[1:13:31] The Murphy family bank
[1:29:56] Lessons from every market crash

Compliance Document
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In this episode of Case Studies, Casey sits down with Adam Edmunds, CEO of Entrada and former executive behind companies like Podium, Allegiance, and SilentWhistle, for an honest conversation about ambition, identity, and the emotional weight that often comes with high performance.

Adam opens up about the hidden struggle behind outward success; building and selling companies, chasing relevance, and quietly battling depression while leading at the highest levels of Utah tech. He reflects on the pressure to prove himself, the danger of tying self-worth to achievement, and the wake up call that forced him to reevaluate everything from leadership to relationships to personal fulfillment.

The conversation explores entrepreneurship, product-market fit, burnout, divorce, fatherhood, reinvention, and what it means to build a life rooted in gratitude instead of validation. Adam also shares lessons from scaling Entrada into one of the most important software companies in the country and why creating meaningful impact now matters more to him than titles or recognition.

This episode is a powerful listen for founders, leaders, and anyone learning that success without alignment eventually comes at a cost.

[00:00] Meeting face to face, finally
[01:34] Gratitude for where he stands now
[03:49] Blending two families
[07:40] Losing his edge on a bike climb
[10:29] High-functioning, undiagnosed depression
[14:19] Facing the silence after leaving Podium
[23:39] Spring, summer, fall, and winter
[27:56] Never feeling like enough
[35:18] SilentWhistle and cold-emailing CEOs
[43:48] Allegiance and a broken cap table
[52:17] Podium, product-market fit, and burnout
[58:00] Dave's call and joining Entrada
[01:07:48] Rules he broke to meet Alli
[01:17:52] Faith, spirituality, and showing up
[01:20:31] Basketball cards for foster kids
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In this episode of Case Studies, Casey sits down again with David Butler, a teacher of world religions and guide of immersive faith based trips, for the second installment of their four part series.

The discussion moves from the Maasai tribes of Tanzania to a mosque in Turkey to the streets of first century Jerusalem, tracing a consistent idea. Across every culture, language, and tradition, people are reaching for the same thing. David unpacks why grace only exists in a messy world, why failure is often the doorway rather than the disqualifier, and why Jesus's ministry ran on a kind of inefficiency that modern leaders are trained to avoid: one-on-one presence over scale.

For founders and leaders who default to optimization, this is a case for slowing down, sitting with the outlier, and finding meaning in what looks unproductive. David also shares how to join him on a future Jerusalem trip.

This episode is for anyone rethinking how faith, leadership, and human connection intersect, especially those wrestling with how ambition and presence coexist.

Connect with David on Instagram at @mrdavebutler, or sign up to be notified about upcoming trips here
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In this episode of Case Studies, Casey sits down with Jeanette Bennett – award-winning journalist, founder of Utah Valley Magazine, and now a rising leader in commercial real estate; for a compelling conversation about reinvention, resilience, and the power of quiet ambition.

Jeanette opens up about her early days growing up in Idaho, her fierce internal drive that led her to become valedictorian, and how motherhood sparked the entrepreneurial fire that would define her career. With no outside funding, she sold her home to launch her first magazine; a move that would go on to shape the voice of Utah’s business community for over two decades.

They explore the realities of building a company from scratch, navigating gender dynamics in leadership, and what it looks like to gracefully transition into a new chapter of influence and impact. Through it all, Jeanette reflects on listening as a superpower, the art of celebrating others, and the quiet strength it takes to lead with both confidence and humility.

This conversation is packed with insight for anyone building a business, a life, or both.

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In this episode of Case Studies, Casey welcomes back David Butler for the first of a four-part series exploring faith ahead of a group pilgrimage to Jerusalem. David, who leads pilgrimage experiences to the Holy Land, joins Casey to unpack what it means to know God more deeply, starting with creation itself.

The conversation moves from a desert night in the Sahara staring through a telescope at two billion solar systems, to the story of Job being pointed toward the stars, to why scripture's purpose isn't a history lesson but a portrait of God's character. David and Casey talk about the strange comfort of feeling small against something vast, why the wealthy and powerful become less accessible while God becomes more so, and how a friend's grief after unexpected loss became an unexpected testimony of connection beyond death.

They also get personal, about the pull toward something bigger than daily life, the discipline of belief that lets you actually move forward instead of staying stuck in fear, and what it's like walking through the literal places where these ancient stories happened. David closes by sharing how listeners can put together their own custom trip to experience it firsthand.

00:00 | Intro: Recapping the last episode and the road to Jerusalem
02:27 | Setting the scene: what Jerusalem actually looks like
03:38 | Why Jerusalem captures the imagination
04:59 | Faith as a driving force in history — for good and for harm
05:41 | A night in the Sahara and 2 billion solar systems
08:49 | The two creation accounts: scripture and the stars
10:45 | SpaceX, the moon race, and our pull toward something bigger
19:58 | Covenant Mountain: God initiating a relationship with Abraham
25:08 | The Todd Peterson story: what real leadership looks like
28:41 | God's promises to Abraham and the origin of "believe"
32:00 | What "amen" really means
36:43 | The Alex and Grant story: playing the long game as a parent
38:51 | "You've been God for a long time"
42:52 | Do the dead still show up? A friend's stage-four cancer and a dream
52:41 | Bethlehem, the Jordan River, and the name Joshua/Jesus
55:23 | Reading scripture to learn God's character, not just how to act
59:10 | Tying the Old Testament to the New: Jesus as the God who heals
1:03:48 | Doing his best work in ordinary, unremarkable places
1:06:27 | Capernaum: the city Christ's miracles kept returning to
1:09:28 | The paralyzed man lowered through the roof — healing the soul first
1:14:53 | The woman with the issue of blood — 12 years overlooked
1:22:09 | "Who God is, is who he'll always be" — reading scripture as pattern
1:24:07 | Wrapping up: Jehovah, Jesus, and what it means for the Jerusalem trip

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