The Twenty One Clear Podcast

The benefits of working with family include mutual trust, a shared long-term outlook, and quick decision making. However, your inner family business relationships can also cause chaos for the company and family.What can you do?Join us as we explore chaos proofing your family business so you can build a great company with a strong family around it.21clear.com

The Twenty One Clear Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Adam Hatcher, with 14 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Adam Hatcher hosts The Twenty One Clear Podcast, a business show with 14 episodes published.

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  Episode #15

  Tony Simmons - Part 1: "Do Not Plan Your Life On It"

  Oct 2, 202628 min

  For 25 years, Tony Simmons sold construction cranes. Then a phone call brought him home to Avery Island, Louisiana, and into McIlhenny Company, his family's company and the maker of Tabasco, where he became the seventh family CEO. In part one of our three-part conversation, Tony walks me through the basics of a 158-year-old family company, from Edmund McIlhenny's start as a destitute banker after the Civil War to a family home kept for 208 years. Then we turn to his own path: being told not to plan his life on joining the business, a board seat he never asked for, 12 years as his cousin Paul's understudy, and why he thought about the job the way a physician does: First, do no harm. 21C Links Twenty One Clear website: https://www.21clear.com?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=ep-15-do-not-plan-your-life-on-it&utm_content=show-notes Adam Hatcher on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamhatcher Subscribe to the Twenty One Clear newsletter: https://21clear.substack.com/ Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fIBHaZJ5oEk Bumper Music Still Hot by Nic D, Connor Price (c) Lossless, 2023 Episode Produced By https://snapmarket.co Chapter Timestamps (00:00) Cold Open: One Red Thing, a Million Red Things (00:15) Welcome and Introduction: Meet Tony Simmons (02:44) McIlhenny Company by the Numbers (04:34) Edmund McIlhenny, From Destitute Banker to Founder (06:35) Avery Island, McIlhenny Company and Tabasco (10:15) "Don't Plan Your Life On It" (12:16) Twenty-Five Years in Cranes (15:16) A Surprise Board Seat and 12 Years as an Understudy (17:29) What an Outside Career Teaches (19:10) The Seventh Family CEO: First, Do No Harm (21:15) The Burlesque Opera of Tabasco (25:34) Drift and the Long Horizon (26:31) Coming Up in Parts Two and Three

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  Episode #14

  The Company and Your Inner-Family Business: Norm Smallwood interviews Adam Hatcher

  Aug 27, 202635 min

  The script flips. After two episodes of Adam interviewing Norm Smallwood — co-founder of The RBL Group and Adam's collaborator in restructuring his own family's company — Norm turns the tables and interviews Adam. They cover why Adam started Twenty One Clear, the inner family business hiding inside every family company, why succession is nothing like a baton handoff, and the two words Adam gives every family that works together: Do Not Drift. The episode closes with an impromptu case study from Norm's own consulting work, where an HR leadership succession project took a sudden inner family business turn. 21C links Twenty One Clear website: https://www.21clear.com?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=ep-14-the-company-and-your-inner-family-business&utm_content=show-notes Adam Hatcher on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamhatcher?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=ep-14-the-company-and-your-inner-family-business&utm_content=show-notes Subscribe to the Twenty One Clear newsletter: https://21clear.substack.com/?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ep-14-the-company-and-your-inner-family-business&utm_content=show-notes The RBL Group (Norm Smallwood): https://www.rbl.net/?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=ep-14-the-company-and-your-inner-family-business&utm_content=show-notes Episode 12, Four Stages of Leadership, Part 1: https://21clear.transistor.fm/episodes/four-stages-of-leadership-part-1-stages-1-3?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=ep-14-the-company-and-your-inner-family-business&utm_content=show-notes Episode 13, Four Stages of Leadership, Part 2: https://21clear.transistor.fm/episodes/four-stages-of-leadership-part-2-stage-4-and-the-stages-importance?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=ep-14-the-company-and-your-inner-family-business&utm_content=show-notes Bumper music : "Still Hot" by Nic D, Connor Price © Lossless, 2023 Episode produced by : https://snapmarket.co Chapters [00:00] Welcome and Setup — Adam flips the script: after two episodes interviewing Norm Smallwood, Norm interviews him [02:29] What Makes a Great Family Company — Full valuation for your size and industry, plus real impact, at any scale [03:47] Why "Twenty One Clear" — A 70-year-old family company, and mixing the unconditional with the conditional [07:59] The Question Behind the Firm — Why some family companies seem chaos proof and others lose value and relationships [09:30] Inside "Chaos Proof Your Business" — Who the book is for and the question it wrestles with [11:59] The Inner Family Business — One box inside another, and what the Chick-fil-A thought experiment reveals [13:51] The Hardest Management Job on Earth — Why a family exit is fundamentally different from any other departure [15:15] Norm's Case Study — A chairman's succession plan for a son who never wanted the job [17:38] Succession Is Not a Baton Handoff — Two archers, 50 yards apart, and why the arrows must meet mid-air [18:49] Do Not Drift — The one concept Adam gives every family company [19:33] The Family Is a System — How one raise reaches every family member, inside the company and out [21:41] The Headlines Exercise — Surfacing unsaid expectations before they walk into the boardroom [23:24] Twenty One Clear in Five Years — The roadmap families need and the chaos proof framework [26:31] Why a Template Is Not a Facilitator — What AI can draft and what it can never do in a family meeting [28:53] Final Advice — Do Not Drift, and open the lens as wide as you can [30:54] The Third Word — What Adam's sister and the family council gave back to the company [33:24] Closing — Continue to write your story

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  Episode #13

  Four Stages of Leadership - Part 2: Stage 4 and the Stages' Importance

  Jul 30, 202632 min

  Part two of Adam's conversation with Norm Smallwood, co-founder of The RBL Group, picking up where Episode 12 left off. Norm and Adam move into stage four, otherwise known as "power", of Norm's four-stage leadership model. They then work through what it costs a family business when people are operating below the stage their role requires, why self-diagnosis of your own stage almost never works, and what it looks like to build a great career and a great company without ever needing to become stage four yourself. 21C links Website: https://www.21clear.com?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=ep-13-four-stages-of-leadership-part-2&utm_content=show-notes Adam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamhatcher?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=ep-13-four-stages-of-leadership-part-2&utm_content=show-notes Newsletter: https://21clear.substack.com/?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ep-13-four-stages-of-leadership-part-2&utm_content=show-notes The RBL Group (Norm Smallwood): https://www.rbl.net/?utm_source=twenty-one-clear&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=ep-13-four-stages-of-leadership-part-2&utm_content=show-notes Episode 12, Part 1: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-twenty-one-clear-podcast/id1811403547 Ask Adam for Norm's Four Stages assessment. Email: adam.hatcher@21clear.com Bumper music : "Still Hot" by Nic D, Connor Price © Lossless, 2023 Episode produced by : https://snapmarket.co Chapters [00:00] Welcome and Recap [03:09] Naming Stage Four [06:23] When Stage Fours Collide [08:53] You Can't See Your Own Stage [13:12] The Real Cost Isn't Bob's [16:15] Succeeding at Every Stage but One [17:32] What Makes a "Sue" [20:45] What Buyers Are Actually Buying [23:28] Quality of Leadership as a Line Item [25:22] Willie G. Davidson and "Sounded Like a Harley" [26:00] Julian Van Winkle and Making It "Taste Like Pappy" [28:35] You Don't Have to Be Stage Four to Win [29:45] Where to find Norm's four-stages assessment and how to reach Adam

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  Episode #11

  Hosting Family Meetings and Leaving the Company

  May 14, 202627 minS0

  <p>Following on from last month's panel from Kennesaw State's Family Enterprise Center, Adam returns to have a conversation with Andrea Carpenter of The Transition Strategists. And this time they get practical: how to take a pulse on your life in the family company, the three questions every family member should keep asking, the headlines exercise that opened the door to Adam's own transition, and a LinkedIn story from a former CEO that shows the cost of an abrupt exit.</p><p>Episode links</p>Andrea Carpenter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreakcarpenter/Your Next Gen Friend Podcast: https://open...

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  Episode #10

  Leaving Your Family Company

  Mar 26, 202630 minS0

  <p>In this latest episode of the Twenty One Clear Podcast, Adam Hatcher joins a Kennesaw State University Family Enterprise Center panel hosted by Stephanie Davis. Adam's fellow panelists were Jacqueline Jensen and Leslie Oubre, both of whom left their family companies mid-career. </p><p>Together they answer three questions: </p>Was leaving a gradual or acute process? What was the emotional impact? And what would they do differently or tell someone else going through it?<p><br>Links from the Episode</p>Please note that when the full webinar recording comes out, it will be here on KSW's YouTube chan...

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