Advertise on podcast: How to Wake Up Your Business

In 2001, after twenty-seven years at his family's hosiery company in Newton, Hugh Gaither walked through Valley Hills Mall in Hickory, looked at the sock wall, and saw three or four familiar brands that had not changed in years. He wrote a business plan built on four points: be a brand, make a premium product, price it to reinvest, and launch with small retailers rather than the national chains. He flew to Korea to find someone who could produce a seamless toe, which at the time had to be done by hand, met with five factories, and came home with a partner his company still works with today. He called his son John, then waiting tables in Huntington Beach, and asked him to come help. The name came from his son Joe, in tenth grade, without looking up from his homework at the kitchen table. In this episode Dana Alligood sits down in Charlotte with Hugh, John, and Joe Gaither to trace what happened after the launch, and what it took to keep the family working together through it. They talk about how complementary temperaments became an asset rather than a source of friction, and about the value Hugh instilled early, treat people the way we want to be treated, that they credit for the trust the company runs on. John and Joe describe the family business consultant, the executive coach, and the Center for Private Business forums they brought in because they did not always have good ways of handling friction in the early years. Hugh walks through the succession he planned rather than postponed: stepping back to chairman, learning to stay quiet until John called and asked him to weigh in, and building a board with three outside members that meets quarterly. The family also discusses hiring their sister Cat as Golf Channel Sales Specialist, and their sister Liz as VP of Sales through a process that brought five candidates to Charlotte at the company's expense before the team recommended her, the decision to buy out original investors rather than take on an outside partner, the family business charter John recently put together, and how they are approaching AI as Feetures enters its twenty-fifth year.

In 1979, John and Faye Cooper sold everything they owned in Winter Park, Florida, bought a shuttered general store in Valle Crucis, North Carolina, and moved their family into an apartment they built above it. Recorded in Asheville at The Velvet Wind, this conversation with Dana Alligood traces how the store that refused to close became a family of 11 stores. And why Lisa Cooper still insists it is not a chain. She recounts the two questions her parents asked when they reopened in 1980, what the community wanted and what a general store needed to be in the modern era, which is how Valle Crucis got its ZIP code and its post office back. She also explains why nothing was handed to her, and what it meant to be asked by her own leadership team to step up as president. Thirty years ago the Coopers moved the company into an ESOP. But when the advisers in the room explained how the family could benefit financially, her parents said that was not the point. Today roughly 250 employee owners share in a business whose stock value has risen every year but one. Lisa describes leading through the excruciating decision of furloughing more than 500 people in March of 2020, drawing the line of credit, and finally building the ship-from-store capability her operations team had called a logistical nightmare. The region at large then faced Hurricane Helene. Nearly half the Mast General stores went offline and one employee was unreachable for ten days. Lisa tells us her mission behind reopening the doors was so employees had consistent work, not because there was business to do.

Woody Player started Queen City Television Service Company in Charlotte in 1952, driving a van and charging about five dollars a service call. In this episode Dana Alligood sits down with three generations of the Player family Woody’s son Roddey, CEO and second generation, along with Roddey’s children Kate and Roddey Jr, to trace how a repair shop became a top-25 appliance retailer with 17 stores across the Carolinas. The Players are candid about both directions the economy can move. The Great Recession took the company from 16 stores to four as the housing market fell 75 percent, and Roddey Sr. credits survival to three groups sticking with them: customers, suppliers, and employees. The pandemic ran the other way, and a deliberate bet on inventory led to a 100,000-square-foot consolidated warehouse and a run of quarter-over-quarter growth. Kate and Roddey Jr. explain why they each built careers elsewhere before coming back, so no one on the floor had to wonder how they got the job, and Roddey Sr. talks openly about what he still needs to put in place: a real process for decisions when consensus among three owners no longer holds. As Queen City Homestore heads into its 75th anniversary, the family discusses their thinking on how to implement an AI strategy year without losing the personality that keeps guests satisfies.

Great Outdoor Provision Company started in 1972 as a 200-square-foot trail shop tucked into the back of a Carrboro bike shop. More than five decades later it employs over 200 people across the state, and Chuck Millsaps, known internally as the minister of culture, tells Dana Alligood that the non-negotiable has never changed: people make the place. Chuck walks through communicating across five generations of employees, the practice of "clearing gaps" by asking a colleague to repeat back what they heard, and the employee handbook the team finally built after a Center for Private Business workshop. The conversation then turns to resilience. In July 2025, Tropical Storm Chantal put more than five feet of water inside the Eastgate store in Chapel Hill, a self-insured location in a floodplain, while Chuck was a day and a half away working remotely. He explains the decisions that had to be made without time to confer; restoration contractors, the lease, keeping the Chapel Hill staff employed, and how the team salvaged the store to reopen in October. Chuck also shares why he attended his Center forum retreat ten days after the flood instead of canceling, how the company gives back through Land Trust Day, its annual coat drive, and Habitat Day, and what he hopes for the business as we all navigate the increasingly technologically driven retail world.

Every great company has a story. In this introduction to How to Wake Up Your Business, Dana Alligood, executive director of the Wake Forest University Center for Private Business, invites listeners into a series built around the conversations she had with leaders of six of North Carolina's most respected private businesses. Each episode takes up a challenge that every privately held business eventually faces: succession planning, governance, culture, strategy, family harmony, and leadership development. The Center exists to be a catalyst for economic growth and social prosperity across our region and beyond, and this series shares that work in the words of the owners and operators living it. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.