Brandon Hatton is the President and Chief Investment Officer of Conscious Wealth, a values-driven wealth management firm dedicated to helping clients achieve financial well-being while fostering meaningful family connections, personal health, and perspective. He brings a diverse background in international education and finance, having begun his career at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management before continuing at Raymond James. Brandon is also the author of Conscious Wealth: Money, Investing, and a Financial Awakening for the Person Who Has It All and holds certifications as a Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy® and a Chartered Retirement Planning Counselor®.
Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:34] Brandon Hatton’s entrepreneurial hustle as a teenager chartering buses to Jimmy Buffett concerts
- [4:28] What working on a cruise ship taught Brandon about global diversity and inequality
- [6:31] How a spontaneous decision led Brandon to open a school in Egypt
- [11:30] The vital importance of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed
- [13:44] How a health scare pushed Brandon to reevaluate traditional success and wealth
- [17:47] Starting Conscious Wealth to break away from cookie-cutter financial planning models
- [20:51] The Four Pillars of Conscious Wealth
- [25:40] Navigating post-exit identity crises for entrepreneurs and business owners
- [30:15] Rewards of building a company that prioritizes both financial success and social impact
In this episode…
Financial success doesn’t always equal fulfillment. Many high-achievers accumulate wealth only to find themselves feeling disconnected, stressed, and unsure of how to preserve both their assets and their family’s values. What does it really take to create a life of abundance, meaning, and legacy?
Brandon Hatton shares the powerful journey that led him from international classrooms to Wall Street boardrooms — and eventually to founding Conscious Wealth. Through personal upheaval and a reawakening of purpose, Brandon has built a new framework for wealth that integrates health, connection, mindset, and finances. He unpacks how families can communicate more effectively about money, how to transition wealth between generations, and why traditional financial planning misses key emotional and relational dynamics.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Brandon Hatton, President and CIO of Conscious Wealth, about redefining what it means to be truly wealthy. Brandon discusses his global experiences, his four-pillar philosophy, and how wealthy families can foster connection, resilience, and long-term meaning. This conversation provides an enlightening perspective for anyone looking to reimagine the purpose and impact of their financial resources.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Brandon Hatton on LinkedIn
- Conscious Wealth
- Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire
- Conscious Wealth: Money, Investing, and a Financial Awakening for the Person Who Has It All by Brandon Hatton
Special Mention(s):
Related episode(s):
Quotable Moments:
- “Change occurs not by becoming someone different, but by becoming who you already are.”
- “You can have all the money in the world, but without health and connection, it means very little.”
- “I think we can build a system where money supports purpose, not just accumulation.”
- “Our clients don’t have to be like-minded, just light-hearted with a desire to do good.”
- “The healthy person has a million wishes; the unhealthy person has only one.”
Action Steps:
- Redefine your wealth framework: Look beyond financial assets and assess your overall well-being, including your health, relationships, and mindset. This holistic view helps ensure your wealth supports your well-being, not undermines it.
- Engage your family in open dialogue: Start conversations about values, legacy, and expectations. These discussions prevent confusion and reduce the risk of entitlement or resentment among heirs.
- Pause after major transitions: If you’ve sold a business or come into significant wealth, take a year before making big decisions. This reflection period allows emotions to settle and clarity to emerge.
- Invest in support that matches your values: Consider wealth managers who prioritize emotional intelligence and family dynamics. Their approach can align your money with your mission and relationships.
- Practice gratitude as a financial habit: Incorporate daily moments of gratitude to shift perspective on what’s “enough.” A mindset of abundance leads to wiser spending, investing, and giving.
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Episode Transcript
Intro: 00:00
All right. Today we’re talking about how to build Conscious Wealth by creating a life filled with abundance and impact, and how to really redefine how you think about money. My guest today is Brandon Hatton. I’ll tell you more about him in a second, so stay tuned.
John Corcoran: 00:16
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:33
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran here, I am, the host of this show. And you know, every week we feature smart CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. And if you check out the archives, we’ve got Netflix and Grubhub, Redfin, Gusto, Kinkos, Activision Blizzard, Blizzard, LendingTree, OpenTable and many more.
So check those out. This episode is brought to you by Rise25 and Rise25. We help businesses to give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. How do we do that? We do that by helping you to run and launch a podcast.
We are the easy button for companies to launch and run a podcast. We do three things: strategy, accountability, and full execution. And we even invented the platform that people are calling the Wix of B2B podcasting. It’s our platform Podcast Copilot. So if you want to learn more about that, go to Rise25.com or you can email us at [email protected]. All right. Quick shout out to previous guest Miren Oca of Ocaquatics Swim School in South Florida. She was a guest on this show and I always ask my guests, hey, who would you recommend that I have on this show?
And she recommended today’s guest who is Brandon Hatton. He’s the President and Chief Investment Officer of Conscious Wealth. He began his career in financial services at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, where he worked for a number of years, worked on worked at Raymond James as well. But his story is an interesting one because he had a health scare along the way. He worked abroad, he saw the slums.
He’s also experienced a lot of people that have a lot of wealth, and he’s going to talk about what builds happiness, and it might not be what you think it is. So we’re going to talk about that here as well. But Brandon, hey, cool to have you here. And I love to get to know my guests a little bit about what they were like when they were younger and how that shapes who they are today. And you had quite the work ethic.
You were out there in the hot sun doing landscaping jobs as a kid and also chartering buses to Jimmy Buffett concerts, which is wildly specific. So I want to know about this. What, how do you get into chartering buses to Jimmy Buffett concerts?
Brandon Hatton: 02:35
You know, I’m gonna just say one thing, though. You said you bring on smart CEOs, and I never thought I was smart as a kid. I really never felt that way. By the way, thank you, John, for having me. And so when somebody said you should open up a landscaping company, one of my closest friends to this day, I just did it and I would like I was just really excited about making money.
Like, because I just wanted my own money as a kid. I mean, I’m sure we got an allowance. It wasn’t substantial. And then with that same friend, we just saw a need. Everybody wanted to go to the concert. So we rented a bus, we sold 50 seats and we bought two kegs. And I think we were 16 years old. Drinking age was 21. It wasn’t 18. We weren’t even close. And we had so much fun that the next year we had three buses, 150 people.
John Corcoran: 03:31
Wow.
Brandon Hatton: 03:31
And by the time we had our third bus, there was a rule instituted in my high school handout that you could get expelled for renting buses.
John Corcoran: 03:42
And was this a profitable endeavor or all the profits got drunk?
Brandon Hatton: 03:47
Oh, no, it was quite profitable. I made more than I made in that one day. Enough so that I didn’t have to do a full-time job at this. I could work 20 hours a week and then spend the rest of the time in the gym and running, getting ready for sports and stuff.
John Corcoran: 04:03
Wow. Wow. So, yeah. So? So it’s just once a year doing these Jimmy Buffett concerts. That’s really cool. Now I want to ask you if you have an interesting background. So you started off working on a cruise ship. That was one of the first jobs you had as a youth activities director. I’ve been on cruises before. They’re super fun. I’m always curious about what life is like working on a cruise ship. So what was that like for you?
Brandon Hatton: 04:28
It was the most fun I’ve ever had. Yeah, I worked 18 hours a week. When I did work. I was playing bingo with kids, or I had a pool party, and before I went on cruise ships, I kind of just grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. I went to Miami, Ohio, which is not known as a very diverse school.
And now I’m on a floating vessel of 1400 passengers, maybe 800 crew from all over the world. And so different Nationalities, a lot of different sexual orientation or different ways of looking at sexual orientation that I had never experienced firsthand. All these different cultures and customs. It was just so eye opening for me to just see how everybody was different and to feel it, to know it. It was amazing.
John Corcoran: 05:19
Yeah. Because I remember, you know, on cruises, we went on a lot of times. They have their home country underneath their name. So you have people from all over the globe. Of course, you know, a lot of the people who work in cruise ships come from, you know, third world countries, from countries that are impoverished, you know, and they don’t have a lot of opportunity. And this is kind of a way up for them.
Brandon Hatton: 05:41
It is a very segregated society underneath. You know, at least it was I wouldn’t be surprised if it still is. It’s very classist. I mean, I had an easy job. I was an American having, you know, doing youth activities.
The people who are fixing the beds or making the food are working a lot harder than me and are away a year at a time where I was gone three months back, and then I have like six weeks off and go back and forth.
John Corcoran: 06:10
Yeah, I’ve heard it’s very tough on those folks working on the ships. And so after this experience, you say you weren’t done traveling. You wanted to keep traveling some more. So naturally, you open a school in Egypt which is an interesting jump from youth activities director to opening a school in Egypt. How did that come about?
Brandon Hatton: 06:31
So I was on a cruise ship and I was tired of visiting places. You know, we just spent two days in Istanbul. Very cool. Spent two days in Moscow. Really neat.
But then I never really got to feel a place, never got to get to really know it. And so I was telling this to a fellow teammate on the ship and they said, well, why don’t you sign up to be a teacher? You have a teaching degree. And I said, well, I’ve already tried that, but nobody wants a teacher with no experience. And she said, well, just call the recruiter, tell them you’re willing to go anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice if anybody breaks a contract. And I did that and they called me and said, how about Egypt? We’re opening a new school. And I said, what am I leaving? And they said, A week. And so I knew I was going to go somewhere I didn’t know where.
I also knew I was tired of being in the same place. And as fun as being on a ship was really wasn’t that fulfilling. I wanted to do something that was like I wanted my life to start, really, because it’s kind of purgatory.
John Corcoran: 07:36
You just kind of feel like you’re in a suspended animation kind of thing. You haven’t started your life. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brandon Hatton: 07:42
Yeah.
John Corcoran: 07:43
And so you go to Egypt. Now this is well before the Arab Spring. What was it like living there as an American?
Brandon Hatton: 07:53
As an American? I don’t think it was any different than any other foreigner. It was busy. There was an overwhelming sense of noise and traffic. A full time job as a teacher.
It was my first time having my own apartment. It was my first time doing anything. And it was a lot. It was a bit overwhelming and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. As much as I loved the culture and the people.
They were very welcoming. And somehow I got a job in Lebanon, where my great grandfather was from. Well, all of my great grandparents, all eight of them were born in Lebanon. And I’m forever grateful for them making a decision to come to the United States. So I wanted to see where my grandparents and great grandparents came from. So I went there for two years and taught after that.