Building a business with family sounds great until you're in the room together.

Ryan Miller helps lead a $47 million manufacturing company with 190 team members.

It's a second generation business and he runs it alongside his two brothers.

They're competitive, they're intense, they're passionate, and they all care deeply about the company.

But when strong personalities share ownership, alignment isn't automatic.

As the CEO and the oldest brother, Ryan feels the weight of keeping both the business

and the relationships healthy.

And lately, those lines have started to blur.

Today, Ontario Leadership's head coach John Falcons sits down with Ryan to unpack what

it takes to lead well when the people across the table share your last name.

If you run a business with partners, especially family, this conversation will hit close to home.

Listen in.

So thanks, Dave. Well, let's dive right in. Tell me what's on your mind and what's going on.

Hey John, good to be here with you today. Family business. I have two brothers that are partners with me in the business. And, you know, I always say we're highly passionate brothers. So I just got to ask you, you always say we're very passionate. What's that code for? Oh, boy. We argue sometimes. Is that fair? Yeah, yeah, that's fair. That's how we do it. We're overly passionate maybe sometimes, which means we argue sometimes, and especially

when it's just the three of us.

We have an eight-man executive team, John, and a great team.

My two brothers sit on that team and we run the company.

But we're trying to meet monthly as just partners and talk about the higher level things

and maybe kind of de-escalate some of the

conversations before they get to my team. Make sure we're actually aligned. What are some thoughts

that you have about how can I lead those better? I'm leading my brothers in those meetings.

One idea is getting our spouses in the room, just adding three plus three. The other idea is I have two sons that are 20 and almost 18, bringing them in the room to kind of change the, let me the atmosphere a bit. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just, we do struggle with our, with our partners meetings. Our normal meetings with the executive team is great. Everybody, you know, controls themselves just fine. But we get a little overly passionate and tend to argue a bit in those meetings. I just, I want some input on what,

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