Adam Hatcher: Hello and welcome to the 21 Clear Podcast where we talk about
anything to help you chaos, proof your family business so you can build a great
company with a healthy family around it.
I am your host, Adam Hatcher, and today our guest is, uh,
me, Adam Hatcher and producing.
And joining me today is Brandon Yello, the co-founder of Snap Market.
Brandon, how are you?
Brandon Giella: Hey man.
Thanks for having me.
I'm really excited to be here because I think we're gonna have a lot of fun.
So thanks for having me.
Adam Hatcher: Adam, absolutely.
Thank you for being here too.
Uh, so Brandon, I am starting this podcast.
It's interesting.
I grew up in a successful family business.
I spent 13 years scaling that alongside my cousin, my
grandfather, my father, my brother.
And in doing that, and really in the last two years of reflecting on it, I learned
that you never have a family business.
you have a family business.
Inside a company, imagine two boxes.
There's the company on the outside and the family business on the inside.
And when I decided to start this podcast, what I wanted to do is every episode's
gonna be about 20 to 25 minutes.
We're typically gonna have a guest and we're gonna touch an issue that is
specific to people who audaciously choose to work together with their family.
And if you're a trusted advisor to a family business,
it may be interesting to you.
But really for those of us that chose to do that, and that's what I chose to
do for 13 years and what I realized in scaling a business, you've heard that
phrase, what does it take to work in the business versus on the business?
So it's hard enough to just work in the business, but then in a company,
working on the company is really hard, making the time for that.
But then when I realized working in a family business.
Is almost none of us ever get the time to actually work on
that inner family business.
Remember, the first family that I've talked to since starting 21?
Clear.
Uh, it was a mother and father who were scaling their company.
They had several of their sons and daughters working with them, and we spent
90 minutes on the phone with each other, and by the time we hung up, it hit me
that that was probably the most time in several decades that they had spent.
Dedicated to working and thinking about just that inner family business.
And so that's why this podcast exists.
I hope every time someone tunes in by the, they get 20 to 25 minutes where all
they have to do is think about the family business and just get a little bit better.
Brandon Giella: I can relate to that because you need time to work on the
business and I can't imagine working on the business and having a family
associated with that business as well.
'cause that's a whole other thing and you're not gonna do
it in over Thanksgiving, so.
Adam Hatcher: not do it over Thanksgiving.
Brandon Giella: right.
Exactly.
Adam Hatcher: That's actually, I think that's chapter seven, Brandon.
Brandon Giella: Okay.
Yeah, I haven't read the book yet.
I'm, I'm only in the first chapter, so, um, but, but I'm curious, so
why, why did you, what, what's like driving you to wanna start
21 Clear and start this podcast in addition to creating that space?
I mean, what was like, surely you've seen some of these things go wrong before.
I mean, you grew up in a family business, you've been an advisor to
family businesses, you have seen it go really well and you've seen it
maybe, uh, have room for improvement.
So what, is there something in there that you've seen?
Like if you get this wrong, it's really difficult, what is that like?
Adam Hatcher: Well, let me start with, may I start with the light side first?
All right.
Brandon Giella: Oh gosh, yes, please.
Adam Hatcher: So when you work together with family, all of
us really want two things.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Adam Hatcher: We want to build a great company, whatever that
means to the family, and you want to healthy family around it.
And over the last year and a half, as I've started looking back on
my own career to this point, I.
My time around our family's company.
In our family's company, and then all the stories that people have
shared with me along the way.
And then the things I've researched and read, I've wondered.
So if our goal is to build a great company and have a healthy family,
why does the opposite happen so often?
But then I, Brenda, and that's what I call chaos.
Like why do family businesses succumb to chaos?
That ultimately can rock the family and drive the value down of the
company or even eliminate it.
Brandon Giella: Mm-hmm.
Adam Hatcher: And then I have this belief that it's not inevitable.
So why does the opposite happen?
And then what can you do about it?
Brandon Giella: So you, you've seen that where chaos is sort of like a, a default
mode, you know, entropy in the universe and in a business it inevitably feels
as though it's going to be chaotic, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Um, but I'm curious, like, what is it where you've seen, uh, you've got
some experiences, you've got a story where it actually did go that direction
and it was very painful and you're.
In part this podcast is to provide, um, expertise and stories and
guidance to avoid this kind of end.
And so tell me about this.
I, I think you've got a story in mind.
I know there's some in your book.
Um, yeah.
Talk about that.
Adam Hatcher: Well, and also empathy, Brandon, for someone
who could say, I know, and there's no story that's gonna be surprising
once you've worked with family.
No one else is.
I have had the opportunity to sit with family businesses.
That did a couple million dollars and that did tens of billions.
And what has amazed me is we all tell the same stories.
Some people get to their vacation destinations in faster ways, but all the
stories are, all the stories are the same.
And just like running a great company doesn't happen by accident,
you might come across a great product or a service.
Uh, by, by accident or happenstance, but actually building a great
company takes a lot of effort.
Likewise, a family business is not healthy, is not good.
Just by accident.
Just 'cause you grew up together doesn't mean you can work together and you
can build a great company together and keep good relationships between you.
I remember when I first started working in our family's comp company, I went
to an industry conference and I got to meet Jim Collins who wrote Good to
Great and Great by Choice, and he was always fascinated and still seems to be
fascinated by this question of chaos.
Like how do some businesses go through chaotic times, which are inevitable?
But seem to make it out better than their comparison companies.
Well, family businesses are the same way, but the problem when you have that
family business inside your company is the things that can rock you and test.
You can either come from the company, it can be the loss of a key executive, it can
be tariffs, it can be a sudden recession, it can be the loss of a major client.
Those things can reverberate back into the family business.
Or it can be things that are specific to the family business.
It can be personal issues like death and divorce, or it can be these moments that
are inevitable in a family business.
It can,
and they are inevitable in that if you're not prepared for them, they will start.
What can be a chaotic cycle, for example, uh, when a family
member wants to join the company?
On its face.
That doesn't seem, particularly if you are just starting to work with
your family, or if you're starting a business and maybe your sons and
daughters are starting to get to an age where they're expressing interest, that
may not seem like a critical moment.
Hey, you grew up together, you supported each other.
Um, they even maybe came to the Christmas gatherings for the company.
Clearly, you can work together.
That's actually a major, a major moment.
I talked to Brandon.
I still remember.
I talked to a guy who destroyed, who lost a 30-year-old family business
over an argument with his brother about whether or not their nephew, the nephew,
was qualified to join the company.
They didn't have any criteria for how a family member might join.
They built a successful business for almost 30 years,
had hired plenty of people.
But there was something different when that family business moment came
along and that issue in itself and being unprepared for it, put chaos in.
'cause imagine those two squares put chaos right into the center of the company.
It ended up reverberating out and not only did it rip up the relationship between
the two brothers, but ultimately it drove down the value of the company and
ended the ownership of it in the family.
Brandon Giella: That's amazing because when you're running a a, a company with
your family, you would think this has gotta be the best thing in the world.
Who wouldn't wanna work with their family, provided that they love
their family and get along with them, and all that sort of thing.
And so there's that.
And then there's also, yeah, you gotta hire people.
We've got a process for that.
We've hired a tons of people like that.
But when those two things come together.
It is a a different dynamic that from your experience, people are not prepared for.
Adam Hatcher: You are mixing, you're mixing the forever with the temporary,
uh, or the really, maybe think of it like the conditional with the unconditional.
Because family
Brandon Giella: it.
Yeah.
Adam Hatcher: family's unconditional.
They even think about, think about a wedding photo.
So in a wedding photo, you think of the, the bridesmaids and
the groomsmen on either side.
If you take that picture, my wife and I just celebrated our 20th anniversary.
Take that.
Well, thank you.
Take that picture.
20 years later, there may be.
Some people who have faded, those relationships
have faded.
There may be new people to add, like those always change.
But in that wedding photo, there's forever a spot that is only for my father-in-law
Brandon Giella: Hmm
Adam Hatcher: like that is he is my father-in-law unconditionally.
Brandon Giella: mm-hmm.
Adam Hatcher: And that's the unconditional nature of family.
Even if those relationships, and I love my father-in-law, even if
those
relationships, even if those relationships in your family change or get
difficult, they're always, that spot's always for your mother, your
father-in-law, your sister, your cousin, your brother, and in family businesses,
when you put those inside of a company, you have mixed the conditional nature
of business with the unconditional.
There's this, Brandon, it is on day one.
There is an inherent tension that comes with that.
And just because you grew up together, just because, uh, you, you heard the
family talk about the company does not prepare you for living with that tension.
And by the way, it shows up on the first day.
I, I, I tell the story in the book and my grandparents worked together.
Uh, the family's company was started in 1973.
Uh, they worked together for one day.
My grand, my grandfather and my grandmother got into an argument on
the first day that most employee, employer relationships would not have
gotten into, but it ended, it ended their working relationship on the
first day because it's just different.
Um, and it exists on the first day, if I could tell family.
People who are considering having family work with them.
One thing is that you can never start working on that family business
inside the company soon enough.
I remember talking to someone who, their family had a company
that was a couple of decades old.
They had an in-law who was running the company and the person I was talking
to, their children were younger.
Um.
Yeah, and yet they were starting to wonder if their children might
have a future in the family company.
It's never too early to start the conversation because
you are inevitably moving.
When you have a family business, you're inevitably moving toward a
healthy place or a chaotic place.
A lot like a, company.
I remember my father taught me this right when I started
working in the family company.
He said, Adam, the business is either growing or shrinking.
If it's holding still, that's just a precursor to shrinking.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Adam Hatcher: And in the same way, that's the company, the family business
is either getting better or putting itself into danger of sliding into chaos.
And so that's why I started Twenty One Clear to help people that take
this audacious challenge of working together, build a great company with a
healthy family, and in building out a process for helping people walk through
and see how they're making progress at creating a great family business.
And then the podcast is again, it's just supposed to be 20, 25 minutes, and we'll
constantly bring guests on who are gonna touch something about a family business
to help you make a little bit of progress.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
I wonder if.
So, of course this is not like a hard sales pitch in talking about 21 Clear, but
I wonder if you could provide listeners like a, uh, some takeaways or some things
that you've learned, like what is not necessarily the process, but what are some
things that maybe their principles, maybe they're like focus areas or something
like that, that you have learned that.
Gives you a really good setup for running a very healthy family business.
So I know you've talked about trust, you know, communication, things like that.
Like what is some things that you are advising people about that
they should keep in mind and listen for in future episodes and, and
guest stories and things like that?
Adam Hatcher: The first thing you need to know, you have a
family business inside your
Brandon Giella: Mm-hmm.
Adam Hatcher: I have, I remember getting to, one of the early families
I talked to got into an argument with the majority shareholder about
whether or not they actually had a family business des, despite their
daughter working in the company,
Brandon Giella: Wow.
Yeah.
Adam Hatcher: they looked at other family companies that family owned
companies they knew and they said, we're not that big or that complicated.
But the moment, the moment you have family members working together in a company that
family owns, you have a family business.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Adam Hatcher: And you have to start working on it because again, you're either
getting better or you're putting yourself at risk of chaos and vulnerability.
So that's the first one.
Uh, then second, you need to know how you're doing.
I got challenged by a few of the first several of the families
I talked to at the beginning.
I got challenged when they said, well, how are we doing?
Uh, I talked to one of 'em and several of the family members
like playing golf and, and I.
I'm recording this from Augusta, Georgia, uh,
Brandon Giella: Right after the masters,
Adam Hatcher: right after the Masters.
Ray's Creek actually runs through, uh, my backyard.
Uh, and, and so they were a family and they played golf and they said, well,
how do you show us how we're doing?
Kind of like if we played golf, we knew how well we played that day.
So I actually created an assessment, a a, a family business specific assessment.
So you need to know if you have a family business, then you
need to know how it's doing.
And then from there, any of us are gonna want to get better.
How do we in?
You can never stop hard moments and storms from blowing in, but
you can prevent yourself from being exposed to, to chaos in it.
And imagine the center of a wheel and spokes at the center of it.
There's trust between the family members, whether you're a family owner,
a family employee, or some combination of family owner-employee family
member who's just around the company.
Do you trust each other?
Both the ability and the character of the different family members who are engaged
in the company, if that's the center, and then off of that put a few spokes.
'cause that's building trust and that's important.
That holds everything together.
But you've gotta compliment that with some key decisions.
A family has to decide how are people gonna join, how are they
gonna stay, how are they gonna exit?
And that can be mid-career or succession.
And then regardless of whether you're working in the company, how
does the family co-exist around it?
So you've got trust that holds all of that together, but then families have to make
key decisions around those four buckets.
It's
do you have a family business?
How's it doing?
And then that's a, framework for making decisions and building
trust to improve wherever you are.
Brandon Giella: What I love about you is that you have the experience and then
you also have a process of going through this that anybody can go through, and
that's different from what I gather is the things that you've told me before.
That you can try to assess some of these things with others that are
close to the family, like a wealth advisor, an accountant, a lawyer.
Um, and you have talked to me in the past about like, that may not go well for you.
Can you talk to me about that a little bit?
Like, what do you mean by that?
Because I, I find that a fascinating insight.
Adam Hatcher: a I tell an embarrassing story on myself?
Brandon Giella: Please do.
Yes.
Adam Hatcher: A good friend of mine, and I hope after this story
he'll still be a podcast guest.
So, uh, his name's Shane Arthur and he runs an executive
coaching company outta Raleigh.
He's great at what he does and Shane put up, uh, so we're recording this in April.
So we just came through March Madness and, uh, I don't know when people
are listening to this, but Duke University was a one seed in that.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Adam Hatcher: Their number one player, probably the number one draft pick
had turned out is gonna go pro.
And Shane put up a post on his LinkedIn about this person's decision
should he have stayed in college
or not.
It was that decision and I actually made a comment on what I thought
he should do, and I thought it was a pretty educated comment.
Brandon, I spent seven years as a head of human resources.
I, I have known athletes
and
then.
Edge.
Yeah.
And, but then the next two people that commented on Shane's Post had
both been high level college athletes who had an opportunity to turn pro
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Adam Hatcher: and the perspective they gave on, uh, Cooper Flag is the name
of the athlete on, on Cooper Flag's decision whether or not to go pro.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I had a point, but they had a point and experience.
And actually brought perspective.
I could have never had, 'cause I had never played, I've never played high
level college athletics or been recruited.
I've seen the same thing in family businesses.
There are a lot of people when you have a family business inside a company
that want to talk to you about it.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Adam Hatcher: Uh, and I, it can be an accountant, an attorney, a wealth manager,
and it could be people that have worked with other family owned companies as well.
And they do have a place.
But there is something that is totally different when you have
been the one that worked in it.
It, I was at a conference of some wealth managers, and these were people who worked
with phenomenal family owned companies, families of tremendous wealth, and it was
a couple a day conference and somewhere in the second day, if you wanted, if you want
an example, somewhere in the second day, uh, I, I put my hand up and I said, Hey.
And it had about 20 people in the room.
Uh.
And I was the only one in the room who had ever worked with their own family.
They were all advisors.
So I was very junior to them in advising families.
But I was the only one who had actually worked in a company.
And I said, Hey, I've noticed over the last couple days, anytime we,
anyone in the room has talked about the next generation, so not the owning
or controlling generation, but that next or rising generation, we've
called them boys, girls, and kids.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Adam Hatcher: Someone had just told a story.
I said the story you just told.
I think the boy was 53 years old.
Brandon Giella: Wow.
Adam Hatcher: And when you're working with, when you haven't
worked with your own family, you don't know what that feels like.
But I've been at the chamber of it as an executive.
When someone with my brother, who's also a sales executive and had
someone look at my father and say, well, these your boys, like well.
We're married and our wives have advanced degrees, and our executive leaders, like
we have children, like my, my sister hasn't been a girl since for a long time.
Don't call her that.
And that's, it's kind of a funny example, but Brandon, I've read some
really great books by some people who have studied family businesses
and there's some stuff in the stories and examples and advice they
give that just need another click.
They need that inside perspective as well.
And you can't get it.
Just like I couldn't get it by watching sports.
I couldn't give a good advice to Cooper flag watching sports.
You need, there's something different when you've worked inside, when you've
been in the boardroom, when you've been in the executive suite, when you've
had to, my phrase is, go to the island.
When you have to have that hard family business conversation and
it's, it feels like the most lonely place you could go, but you have to
go there 'cause you owe it to the family, the company, and the clients.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
What it makes me think of is I've been to business school, I have an MBA.
Running a business is totally different experience from getting an MBA and
being in business school and doing financial models and things like that.
Like I get the gist, I get the topics, the concepts, but running
a company is totally different.
The burden, the responsibility, the, the late nights, you don't get that in school.
And so I I, it's kind of a parallel the kind of things
that you're talking about here.
Adam Hatcher: It is.
I, I told someone recently a, a, uh, I met a phenomenal executive in a
publicly traded company once, and he was the one that sat down with the CEO
and pointed out some strategic gaps in the company that he wanted to fix.
And all of his fellow execs held him up as a hero.
And, and I told him, I was like, that's great.
Now I want you to, if you wanna understand a family business, have that be your
father, have that be your grandfather.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Adam Hatcher: Uh, you may have given a performance review, but if you're
my dad, you had to give a perform.
I reported to my father for 13
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Yeah.
Adam Hatcher: He had to give a performance review to your son.
Brandon Giella: Hmm.
Adam Hatcher: It's.
There is an extra layer.
That's why it's that company and then there's that other family
business layer on the other side.
Brandon Giella: That's so powerful.
Well, I love that you have this experience and you're, you're very seasoned.
You've got like an amazing.
Uh, bio or cv.
I just love it.
Um, and so I'm really excited for you to apply that experience, tell these
stories, you know, the, the kind of thing where like you were there, you
were in the room, and have other people who are in the room and doing it and,
and the kind of things that they've learned because I think it's really key,
um, to have that kind of storytelling and that perspective with the expertise
that you have later on top of that.
So.
I'm really excited for the show and I'm excited to meet some of these guests
that are gonna be coming on because I know they're all gonna be as illustrious,
as inimitable as you're going to be.
And so I can't wait to meet them and, and hear, and I'm excited for listeners
to get, get an inside take on who is Adam Hatcher, what is 21 Clear?
And what are we doing here?
So I'm really, really stoked.
Adam Hatcher: Yeah, I, I'm excited about it too.
And we will have a diversity there.
There, there will be people that are, have worked with family businesses or
been in a family business or just worked around, worked around family companies.
But what we're gonna do, Brandon, is filter everything back through that lens.
So we'll filter everything back through that lens.
Of creating a healthy family business.
So there's a great company with a solid family around it.
Brandon Giella: Amazing.
Amazing.
Amen.
Well, Adam, thank you.
I'm excited and we'll see you next episode.
Adam Hatcher: Sounds great.
So for everybody who tuned in, thank you so much.
This is the Pilot, it's the first episode of the 21 Clear Podcast.
Uh, Brandon.
Uh, thank you so much for hosting.
This is Brandon Ello from Snap Market.
Our theme, our bumper is, uh, still hot by Nick d and Connor Drake chosen, uh,
by my son Harris, and my son Andrew.
So I look forward to, uh, the next episodes we have together.
You can subscribe to the newsletter, visit us on the website, or
looked at us on LinkedIn.
Thank you so much for joining.
We'll talk to you again soon.
Brandon Giella: Bye.