Industry veteran aims to protect local business legacies and create new opportunities for the next generation of landscape professionals

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Landscape industry veteran Richard Sperber has partnered with American Operator to help preserve independent landscape businesses and make business ownership more accessible to the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Drawing on decades of experience building and leading some of the nation’s largest landscape companies, Sperber will advise on buying and selling landscape businesses, identify acquisition opportunities and connect interested parties with American Operator.

As consolidation reshapes the landscape industry, the partnership offers business owners another option for succession while helping experienced professionals take the next step toward owning a company.

“Small, local businesses are often the toughest competitors in any market,” said Sperber. “They’re the heart of their communities, but too many are disappearing. This partnership is about creating opportunities for people who have spent their careers building successful businesses but haven’t had the opportunity to own one, while preserving the businesses and legacies that make our industry special.”

American Operator buys established businesses while keeping their names, employees and local identities intact. Through its Operate-to-Own model, the company acquires small businesses alongside experienced industry professionals, providing the operator the opportunity to run these businesses as CEO, earn an ownership stake and eventually become the majority owners. With this approach, every business stays locally owned and operated, creating opportunities for local leaders to become owners, preserving jobs for employees, and strengthening the communities they serve.

The partnership is designed to benefit three groups:

Business owners considering succession: Sell their businesses while preserving their legacy and local identity.Aspiring business owners: Take the reins of an established company without having to finance an entire acquisition.Industry advisors: Share their expertise, support new business owners and potentially receive an equity stake.

“Richard brings extraordinary industry expertise and a trusted network of relationships built over decades,” said Dan Long, Chief Investment Officer at American Operator. “Together, we can help retiring owners preserve what they’ve built and give the next generation of landscape leaders the opportunity to become business owners.”

Sperber will attend NALP Elevate, November 8–11, to connect with landscape business owners and industry professionals interested in the partnership.

For more information, visit https://www.americanoperator.com/richard-sperber.

About Richard Sperber

Richard Sperber is a landscape industry entrepreneur who helped grow his family’s business, ValleyCrest, founded by his father, Burt Sperber, into one of the nation’s largest landscape services companies. Today, he is focused on preserving independent businesses and creating new opportunities for the next generation of industry leaders.

About American Operator

Based in Austin, Texas, American Operator acquires established small businesses and partners with experienced industry professionals to lead them through its Operate-to-Own model. The company focuses on preserving local business identities, supporting employees and creating pathways to majority ownership for qualified operators.

For more information, visit www.americanoperator.com.

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SOURCE Richard Sperber

SEOUL, South Korea, Nov. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Creator marketing reports are full of follower counts and view numbers, yet they rarely show who actually sold the product. Hyperstar CEO Euychul Shin aims to fill that gap with data, and the company has launched an AI agent that selects influencers based on sales.

Shin is a serial entrepreneur. His first company, which he co-founded, was sold to a KOSDAQ-listed firm in 2023, and he spent two years there running creator campaigns firsthand. “We worked with a lot of creators, but right to the end it was hard to know who actually sold anything,” Shin said. “The numbers didn’t connect to revenue, so we had no choice but to pick creators for the next campaign on gut feeling.” He targeted the global market from the start because he had seen in the field how hard it is for Korean brands going abroad to judge which local creators can sell for them.

A third of the followers, 35 times the sales

On the Hyperstar platform, an account with 235,000 followers generated 35 times the sales of an account with 797,000 followers, a sign that bigger accounts do not necessarily sell more. The company ranks creators by looking first at their actual sales, active follower ratio and sales history. Selection, outreach, contracting, campaign operation and performance verification all run in a single flow.

The rankings rest on real brand order data. Hyperstar connects orders from eight sales channels, including Amazon, Shopify, TikTok Shop, Coupang and Naver Shopping, and tracks revenue post by post. It has built a database of 10 million creators across 133 countries and holds a patent on its sales-based matching method. Users can ask Claude or ChatGPT in a single sentence to “find creators who can sell our product well in the U.S.” and receive answers ranked by sales.

The results are starting to show. In the U.S., one K-beauty shampoo brand saw its revenue grow more than tenfold after connecting its Amazon orders and reselecting creators based on sales. For K-EXPO Mexico, a government-hosted event held in September, Hyperstar recruited 122 local creators over seven weeks and generated a cumulative 10.8 million views. Fifty-nine creators posted proof of their on-site visits, and the event drew 48,000 visitors over three days. Hyperstar also runs its own beauty brand, LAB09, where it tests new features and campaign methods first.

Singapore as a base for Southeast Asia

Growth has been steep. Revenue was $30,000 last year, and this year it had already passed 1.1 billion won by October. Of this year’s $1 million target (about 1.4 billion won), 95% is already secured through contracts, and the company has 19 paying customers.

Hyperstar chose Singapore as its first base in Southeast Asia. It established a Singapore entity in January and, starting in November, will spend a month in a local acceleration program with Plug and Play. The goal is to serve 10 Singapore brands by the first half of 2027. Over the long term, it plans to extend the approach proven in beauty to health supplements and the home and pet categories.

The outlook for K-beauty is bright, but Shin expects the market to change. “We’re moving past the stage where products sell just because they’re K-beauty,” he said. “Bringing in people who can explain a product’s strengths well in the local language will matter more.” That is why Hyperstar directly hires local staff in the U.S., Europe and Southeast Asia to build strategies for each market.

Residency at SVC Seoul has helped the team work in overseas markets. “For an early-stage startup, an overseas trip is something you think over several times because of the cost,” Shin said. “Thanks to the global expansion program, we could go to LA, Mexico and Paris right when we needed to and meet brands and creators.”

Shin believes SaaS alone will struggle to win over the market, since brand managers would rather get answers inside the AI they use every day than learn new software. “As more brands join, campaign data builds up and recommendations get more accurate,” he said. “Whatever country we enter, we want brands to start out knowing from the data that this creator will sell this product.”

Hyperstar is a resident of SVC Seoul, a global startup hub in Seoul’s Hongdae area. The hub was established to connect startups with strong overseas growth potential to companies, universities, and investors in Korea and abroad.

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SOURCE Hyperstar

The world’s largest celebration of veteran talent lands in Dallas, Texas, on December 10 to spotlight outstanding former service members driving American business forward.

CHICAGO, Nov. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Morgan Conque, Vice President of Go-to-Market at Ashling, a leading global provider of AI and Automation consulting and development services, has been named a finalist for SMB Leader of the Year at the 2026 U.S. Forces in Business Awards. Now in its ninth year, the program is the world’s largest celebration of military veterans in the civilian workforce, with this year’s shortlist selected from hundreds of nominations.

A U.S. Army officer commissioned through ROTC, Morgan served with NATO forces in Germany, ran personnel operations in South Korea, and advised an Afghan army hospital, where she helped cut the medical evacuation cycle from 17 hours to 3. She concluded her service as the Medical Operations and Logistics Officer for the First Cavalry Division, supporting more than 18,000 soldiers.

Morgan’s military experience translated into business leadership from the start. Following her service, she led branch operations for a large specialty infusion pharmacy team, then moved into intelligent automation and rapidly expanded her scope from bid manager to leading sales platforms, enablement, content, and strategy. Her education supports that trajectory, including a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Seattle University, a Master of Science in Biosecurity and Disaster Preparedness from Saint Louis University, and an Executive MBA from Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business.

Today, Morgan leads go-to-market strategy at Ashling, aligning sales, marketing, and partnership teams to drive the fast-paced growth and navigate the ever evolving market landscape. “I look back on my transition into AI and automation as serendipitous,” Conque said. “The discipline I built in the Army, leading teams, making decisions with incomplete information, and staying accountable to the mission, carried directly into this field and suited me well. I remain fascinated by the conversations I’m part of and excited about where the industry is headed.”

More than 200,000 service members leave active duty in the United States each year, yet research by ZipRecruiter and the Call of Duty Endowment found that almost one-third of veterans are underemployed, a rate 15.6% higher than among their non-veteran peers. Morgan’s career is a testament to what that talent can achieve. Established in 2018, the Forces in Business Awards celebrate veteran role models like her, reflecting the breadth of industries and professional disciplines where former service members are making their mark.

Rear Admiral (Ret.) Milton “Jamie” Sands III, President and CEO of Special Operations Warrior Foundation, official charity partner of the U.S. Forces in Business Awards, said: “Congratulations to this year’s finalists, whose achievements demonstrate the value military experience brings to business. Service develops leaders who take responsibility, build strong teams, and deliver under pressure. These finalists are putting those qualities to work in new ways, strengthening their organizations and communities while helping others see what is possible after military service.”

Marshall Sied, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Ashling, said: “Morgan’s experience as a military veteran has clearly laid a strong foundation for the evolution of her career.  At Ashling, she balances our fast-paced industry and constantly evolving capabilities with enthusiasm and clarity.  Morgan has the unique ability of being a creative thinker, inspiring team leader, and strong operational executor all at once. We are honored to have Morgan help lead the charge on many of our most mission-critical initiatives. She is a very deserving finalist.”

Winners will be announced on December 10, 2026, at a black-tie gala in the Lincoln Ballroom at the Hilton Dallas Lincoln Centre, hosted by longtime CBS News anchor and Gold Star son Doug Dunbar.

About Ashling

Ashling is a global AI and automation consulting and development firm specializing in digital process transformation. They align on what value means for enterprises, design, build and manage solutions that work from pilot to production, and architect an operating model designed for rapid deployment and compounding success.

Ashling’s delivery accelerators get clients to production 5x faster and prove ROI sooner, backed by a delivery team of forward-deployed AI pods and award-winning innovation. Ashling is the firm enterprise clients trust, with over 400 clients across industries, an 86 NPS, and an unwavering commitment to the business outcomes they deliver.

About the Forces in Business Awards

The Forces in Business Awards is the world’s largest business celebration of the military community. Taking place in the United States and United Kingdom, the Awards program is the leading platform for uncovering and showcasing the achievements and talents of veterans, presenting them as visible role models for transitioning service members and recognizing aspirational employers for current and former servicemen and women. The prestigious events promote the value that veterans add to the economy after service.

Media Contact

Madison Ramsay, Senior Marketing Manager, Ashling madison.ramsay@ashlingpartners.com

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SOURCE Ashling Partners