Written By JR Robinson

Most politicians promise you they understand hard times. David Hatley can show you the scar.

In 2008, according to his memoir Tested in Tennessee, the business he had spent years building came apart. It was not a slow fade. It was a pile-up.

The call that broke the company

Costco, his biggest customer, put a hold on two million dollars it owed him. The retailer had heard from vendors that he was not paying his bills and worried about warranties on faulty tubs. Hatley begged them not to. “If you guys hold that two million,” he told them, “you will put me out of business.”

They kept it anyway. By his account, the money was used up within six months refunding customers for cracked units he says he had not even built.

Then he names the mistake that was his own. He had let Costco account for almost eighty percent of his business. “When you let one customer dominate your output that way,” he writes, “you’re operating at their whim.”

He still owed a loan of three and a half million dollars. He offered the lender a deal: promise not to take the company, and he would pay in full. The lender, he says, refused and eventually handed control to the very person he believed had bamboozled him.

Then he did what most people would not

Hatley did not hide. He did not blame. He stood in front of his employees and told them the truth about what had happened and what he had gotten wrong.

Then he started over.

When he opened the new company, he writes, fifty employees showed up on day one, ready to work again. He says about forty of those fifty are still with him today. His explanation: they remembered how he treated them. They knew he was not hiding anything or blaming anyone, but “standing there, face to face with them, owning all my decisions, good and bad.”

The suppliers who got pennies on the dollar

Think about the suppliers. Some of them lost hundreds of thousands of dollars when his first company failed and received pennies on the dollar in bankruptcy court. They had every reason to slam the door.

Instead, when he called again, they answered. That is what makes the line in his book hit so hard: “You never lied to us. Or disappeared.” In business, that is the highest compliment there is.

The auction

A few months after launching the new company, the bank scheduled an auction to liquidate everything left from the old one. Hatley showed up in person. He wanted them to see him.

He stood tall with his bidder card and bought back nearly everything he had once owned, at a fraction of the price. “I’ll take that… and that… and that.” He had offered to pay them in full, and they had said no. Now he was buying his legacy back piece by piece while they took a loss on every pallet.

Notice what he does not do in the book. He does not pretend Costco was the only problem. He admits he skipped his due diligence on a deal and that the worst part was knowing it was his own fault. That kind of honesty is rare in any résumé, and almost unheard of in a campaign.

Why this matters for the governor’s race

Think about what a governor actually does. A governor balances a budget. A governor deals with big players who hold the leverage, and with workers who depend on the outcome. A governor has to choose between telling people what they want to hear and telling them what is true.

Hatley’s lessons from 2008 read like a governing philosophy. Never take numbers at face value; peel back the covers and ask questions. Never let one customer, or one donor, or one special interest become the bulk of what you depend on. That, he writes, is asking to be destroyed.

His critics may argue that a business that failed is not a résumé. Fair enough. But the more interesting question is what a person does after it fails. This one told the truth, started over, and rebuilt, and people chose to follow him.

Politics is full of leaders who have never lost anything. Tennessee might benefit from one who has, and who came back with his people beside him.

If you have ever lost a job, a business, or a plan you believed in, you already understand why this story lands. The question is not whether he fell. Everyone falls. The question is who stands beside you when you stand back up.

Read the whole story

The full account is in the book, and it is free. Read it, decide for yourself, and then check vote.tn.gov for early voting and your polling place. Election Day is November 3.

Paid for by Hatley for Governor, Joe Cronin, Treasurer.