EP51 - Interview with Certified EO's CEO - Thomas Dudley from Oakland, CA

Good afternoon. Thank you guys for joining. I, I am the ESOP guy and we are continuing on this journey to an ESOP. So for those that are joining for the first time today, I want to say thank you for joining and welcome. If you have an interest in our other episodes, please go to our website at journey to an ESOP.com. For those that have been continuing, today is gonna be an exciting day. We're gonna explore a completely new topic. And what we're going to talk about is in the ESOP world, certified EO. And to do that, we're going to interview the CEO of Certified EEO. His name's Thomas Dudley from Oakland, California. Thomas is coming to the ESOP marketplace with a valuable tool that could really do a lot of good when it comes to helping a company with limited resources, really leverage the ESOP message to all of its participants. So with that, we're gonna go right into the podcast. Thomas, thanks for joining us today. Thanks for having me. Great. So, um, I got your name from um a potential new client who will potentially be a new ESOP. And so I went on your website I started kind of just looking to see what you guys do and I was very impressed. Can you give us, as we start off the, this episode, can you give us a good overview, a brief overview of your background and the background of certified EO? Absolutely. So our big mission is creating national recognition for employee owned business. We really want everyone in America to see the value of this model and to recognize the benefits. And I mean, ultimately the goal is to have a majority of businesses in America be employee owned, which is obviously a long way off. So we're really focused kind of initially about, about creating that visibility and really just helping millions of people see the advantages. That job seekers want to go work at employee owned companies. Business owners recognize the opportunity and what converting to employership can do for their legacy and their company and help reward the people who help make them successful, even just make it really simple for employee owned businesses to find one another to maybe do business or partner, um. So that's our direction and where we're headed. The idea for this came out of some work I was doing as a PhD student at Stanford Business School. Um, I was in the organizational behavior department, had been interested in employee owned business for a while, and actually, part of the reason I wanted to go to graduate school and study organizations was, was to learn more about employee-owned businesses. When I started there, I got plugged into the academic community on uh focused on employee owned business, so met Joseph Blazy and started going to the uh the vicester Fellows program, actually got a a um A fellowship from the Employee ownership Foundation, the Kelso Fellowship. Um, so I was getting interested in the academic side, started reading all these papers on the wealth building and the performance advantages for businesses, um, the stability related to to jobs and how employee owned companies handle recessions. So I I was reading all this great academic research with all these wonderful findings demonstrating all the great things that employee owned businesses do, but it was kind of struck that I'd never heard about this before. And if this is so great, why isn't this more common? And the more I dug into the research, the more I started looking for employee owned companies and kind of realized how hard it is to find employee owned businesses and just the complete lack of visibility there because it's a, it's a The nature of business ownership is a very private thing. And so talking about this with a friend of mine who became my co-founder of Certified, we realized that there seemed like a great opportunity here. If more people knew about this model, there could be a lot of excitement. It would obviously help a lot of people plug into this space and it would also benefit employee owned companies quite a bit. So we started getting interested in this model of the certification program, started talking to people in the space of 2016. We did some research, some public opinion polling on what people in America think about employee owned business. Is this positive, is this negative, what sort of aspects stand out to people, found some really strong support there both in the public opinion research and also talking to people in the community. So we officially launched CertifiedO September 2017. A little over 3 years ago today we have 220 members, all employee owned companies that have signed up, some to support our mission, some to tap into some of the tools and resources we built to help them communicate the value of this. That's awesome. Now, so one of the things that you've mentioned, uh, you know, as you do your research in terms of, and I'm gonna make sure I'm clear on this, um, looking for employee owned companies, it's kind of difficult to find them, is that what you were saying? That's correct, yeah. And I think that one of the problems, uh, and this is one of the things I wanted to bring up in the early part of this episode is, is, is there's really only like 6600 ESOPs in the entire country, the United States. And there's so, obviously there's so many more companies around. And so one of the things that I've seen early on and just kind of helping my clients or, you know, people that I know go towards the, the thought process of ESOP is, is the educational side is so important and, and it's not only educating once they become ESOPs, I mean mostly it's, it's kind of the, the grassroots efforts of really educating companies that this is really a viable option. And so that's kind of the You know, the whole, the inspiration that I had when I was doing was creating this podcast. And I think what, what's nice about talking to you, Thomas, is that, that, that's kind of where you are in looking at the potential for what you're able to do and not just um helping other companies know who ESOP companies are. really getting the participants to know, um, but really educating everybody about ESOPs. And so, when you look at that, what does certified EO kind of do? Let's talk, let's talk a little bit about the, the program itself and, and what it does for the companies and members that you have. Yeah, absolutely. So there's two kind of broad camps of of benefits or what we do with members. So there's like the big picture, so building that national recognition, combining the reach of all the different employee owned companies, because as you mentioned there, the ESO community and really the broader employee owned community, including like worker cooperatives, perpetual trusts, and we've actually met a lot of companies doing this through like a stock option or equity comp. Plan as well. So if you kind of draw a circle around those companies, on the one hand, like you're saying it's 6, maybe 7000 businesses in America out of like 1.2 million um companies with at least 10 employees according to the Census Bureau. So you're looking at about 0.5% of American business. So on the one hand, kind of a small um niche community, but at the same time, All sorts of different companies, right? Pretty much every industry, anywhere from like 10 people to 180,000. So all over the place, and I think that every time you go into the grocery store there are employee owned products on the shelves, probably drive by employee owned companies in, in your town. You don't even know about it. So if everyone, if we kind of created that that national recognition around employee owned businesses. And we had that sort of visibility. I think a lot more business owners would be interested in doing this as well, because they've realized, hey, like, this is a pretty small community, but there are a ton of companies and you might even know or do business with, with a company that's employee owned today and talking to that business, talking to the leadership there or maybe the founder who did the sale. I mean, that's really the best way to figure. Figure out if this is the right thing for you, and I think there are so many positive examples and there are so many great, great success stories out there. And without that visibility, it's hard to find those companies. So that's a little bit of a, of an aside there, but I just totally agree with you, and I think that um one effect of what we're doing in terms of creating that visibility will be to help more business owners see that this is actually a great option and a great opportunity for what they're, they're looking for in their succession. Um, as far as our, our the way we work with people, so there are sort of those those things we can do as a group that we can accomplish together by combining the reach of every employee on business with a common brand, a common mark, so that we combine all our different voices, start this drumbeat, and ultimately kind of create that mash recognition in this brand that we can all tap into. So there are some of these big picture. Things that we're doing or we're actually launching in January a directory of all employee owned businesses in America. So you can actually see kind of a work in progress version on our website right now, certifiedO.com/shop. We're calling it ShoppeO. Um, we originally had envisioned it as like a tool for consumers, but now we're expanding it to a directory of every employee owned business. So if you do want to go find employee owned companies near you, we'll help you do that. So one thing is kind of tapping into these network effects. But a lot of what we do with our members is actually work one on one. So our background is in research and our focus is on, on kind of the typical person in America. And we spent about a year doing tons of public opinion surveys on, do people find this idea interesting? Do people want to work. employee owned companies. We found really strong, strong interest there. And so why? What is it about being employee owned that's compelling to people? So our, our, our roots are very much in thinking about how to frame this and explain it to people who don't have a deep financial background who are just kind of Living their lives and thinking about this more in passing and so based on that, that sort of solid research foundation we've been working with our members over the past 3 years to basically build all the tools and resources that they need. What we've seen is that employment companies are all kind of facing a lot of the same issues, so you're doing this deal, you're converting to an ESOP. OK, how do you explain this to people? How do you roll this out? How do you help people see that not only are they an employee now that they're an owner, they have an extra reason to care about, about making the company more successful. And this is something that can benefit them, but of course, it's going to benefit them over the long term, and people don't really have that intuitive understanding of compound interest and compound growth. So people can't really see that opportunity, even though it's a very real, very transformative opportunity, um. Even when you get down to like having that one on one conversation, every employment company is kind of encountering the same misunderstandings and misconceptions. We've even seen different companies building some of the exact same handouts and tools. And so what we've done is started to develop this content library. And this playbook where we take all that work off people's plates, we've been centralizing that effort. We've been investing in the design, figuring out the language that makes this clear and simple. We've even been building custom handouts for one of our members, then rolling that out as a template to the whole network. So what our members get is this great set of tools that have been proven in other companies and they save time. They're spending 10 or 15 minutes tailoring one of our. Templates instead of 10 hours starting from a blank page and we've seen a lot of success there. So at this point we've kind of zeroed in on this train the trainer model. We've seen in order to really build that culture companies need that internal champion. Maybe it's one person, maybe it's a whole committee, but it's very important to have those people inside the business that understand the culture. But there's a lot we can provide to help make them successful, so tools. Like handouts, infographics, we've got this great online interactive wealth calculator, posters, social media content, all sorts of different tools, maybe 70 or 80 templates at this point, as well as a playbook, so regular webinars on the big issues you'll face, help building a 12 month plan and some very hands on support with our team who spend their entire day working with employee owned companies on these issues. It's so cool. Um, so we're gonna, we're gonna get into the, the tools in a little bit. Um, I want to go into the idea behind an employee owned company. And one of the things that I, you know, I love talking about it with new companies that aren't not ESOPs because, you know, the excitement is, hey, we can do, you know, we get through the the tax benefits of an ESOP, it's, you know, which is pretty cool. Um, but when you get to the idea that, hey, we can help your company retain key people, we can help motivate your people and, and really get them to start thinking more like owners. Um, it becomes super compelling to a lot of business owners, like, how do we, how do we make a transition like that, whether they go impartial or 100% ESOP. So what I, what I love about your, your company, and I want to get into this a little deeper, is because when, when you set up an ESOP company, there's, you know, there's a lot of work and there's a lot of time that goes into it. But once it's all done, there's gonna be this kickoff meeting and I'm actually gonna do one with a client Wednesday. And it's gonna be fun. Now we're gonna go, we're gonna talk about the company and we're gonna talk about the, the with the employees, we're gonna talk about how cool this is that they just now are, are, you know, the owners of this company. Um, but then after that, like, you know, because everybody's super busy, after that, you know, what happens and how do you maintain the momentum of what you basically bought into, which was, hey, I want to motivate my employees. And that's really where, you know, as Thomas was getting into the what they're, what they've created, that's really, and he talked. about training the trainer, um, and having a champion in your company. I think that's really the, um, you know, the engine of what you guys are doing and, and really what I want to kind of express in this, in this episode is how important that is for every company that goes ESOP and then existing ESOPs. So talk a little bit more about that, like motivating and rewarding employees, getting them on the bus or getting them excited about what's happening. Yeah, yeah, that's great. I mean, that's a huge challenge. Tons of people are thinking about that. Um, new ESOPs especially, I'll just talk about a new ESOP in particular because I think that really kind of is the best. I think every ESOP that is starting out, well, every ESOP thinks about these things like you were saying, but with the new ESOP, it's like kind of, it really highlights it. You'll have that kickoff meeting. It can be really exciting, really high energy. It's this big sort of dramatic in person, it's, you know, at least it used to be in person, so now I don't know, remote or maybe even in person still. Um, this big dramatic kind of event, it gets people really excited. Um, but that's kind of where the work begins. It can be tempting to think about that as the end because it's the end of the transaction and obviously all the work that goes in there. But it's kind of the beginning as well. And, and we've seen a lot of companies will have some challenges. They'll do the kickoff meeting. The kickoff meeting is super successful. People are really excited, but then it takes like a year or two to get that first statement, and that first statement tends not to be that can be. A little underwhelming if the company is taking on debt to finance the transaction. And so really it maybe it needs to be that second statement and so it quickly becomes like it can be 2 or 3 years for a brand new ESOP before people can really see that value directly on the statement and not everyone can even read their statement or we'll, we'll take that close look at it. And so one of the biggest best practices, just the most important thing is to have this, this plan for consistent communications. And really having something set in place, it doesn't need to be every week. It doesn't even necessarily need to be every month. We've seen companies do it successfully every quarter, maybe even every other month, but getting something in front of people. It could be like a handout. It could be a whole company-wide presentation. It could be, uh, you know, at your annual meeting, doing some sort of like. Owner update, shareholder update, it could even be as small as like social media posts recognizing like an employer of the month, employer of the year, something like that. Just having some sort of plan that you can stick to to get this in front of people on a consistent basis and keep it top of mind. And that's probably the work we do with like half of our, our members is just build that plan, provide the content for them, and then also. Check in and make sure they're sticking with it, because, of course, you start with good intentions, but the most important thing is having a plan you're actually going to execute on and, and follow through on. Um, and we've seen with people is building this understanding it What's interesting about employee ownership is it it it it's like it can seem like a small change, but it's actually this deep fundamental change when you think about the ownership of the business being spread among among all the employees. Like it really has all these deep implications, but one of the big advantages of of the model is the ESOP model and one of the reasons it's so successful is you can pretty easily take a well functioning business and and kind of shift it over to this to this model without there being a lot of interruptions or changes on a day to day basis. So you take something that's working and you and you transition it over to this very powerful model of employee ownership, but on a day to day level, you can have people not really even notice the difference, right? Like, OK, I'm an owner. Does that mean I get to vote to fire people? Does that mean I get to set my own schedule? Like, no, of course not, because that's, that's not what ownership is about. That's about day to day decision making and control, not necessarily the more high level like financial and shareholder level responsibilities that you might have. And so, What is the challenge along with that is that companies can go become an ESOP and since not much has changed on a day to day level, people can just kind of I don't know, just, just not, not be aware of the value or the benefit and not really see the the the deep sort of shift that's happened in in more of an abstract level that will have very, very positive implications for them, but those things are 5 or 10 years down the road or maybe 15 years down the road. And so that's like the biggest challenge is helping people see that and in line with those sort of long term. Those long-term benefits, it does take a few years to really start start that rumbeat and build that that understanding and that culture. But as you mentioned, once you have it, the benefits, the upside from a business perspective are, are tremendous. And so it's really worth the investment and the patience, but it's not something you can necessarily rush, which is another thing we'll do with a lot of our members is just kind of help them stay focused and, and really think about. This is a long term multiyear kind of commitment in terms of that culture. Yeah, by itself is multi-year in consistency and as soon as you, you know, culture, as soon as you back away, it's like it starts to gravitate towards whatever else it wants to. So, you know, I don't care if you're an ESOP or anything, whatever culture you do in your company, you really have to be continually working on it. Um, and the one thing I'll I'll point out, as you said, when we talk about the employees of an ESOP, they're what we call a beneficial owner. They don't have the right to go do the thing that the owner originally had. So they have this, it's like they own it in retirement, not in in an active. of leadership. Um, but they, they have a stake in it. And I think that's what happens is they, once they start to realize that they actually have a valuable stake in the business that really matters, the work that they're doing really matters at the end of the day towards their wealth creation. Um, then I think the light bulbs can go on and, and that does take time, especially, you know, the larger the company and, you know, the maybe the more spread out the company geographically, um, a lot of challenges will, and now with COVID, of course, you know, we've got all kinds of other challenges to get people together and make sure that the message is being, you know, correctly, um, you know, sent out and then also continually followed up on. So, so anyway. Good. Well, just to jump, jump on that, I mean something you mentioned there, the beneficial ownership piece. I think you really hit on it. That's it. Like, when you tell someone they're an owner, they think about it as like the sole proprietor of a small business, like the CEO 100% owner, right? And they, they kind of mix up all the different Rights that and and responsibilities that someone in that role has. And they don't think about it as a beneficial owner. You're an owner, but so is everyone else at the business, right? And then you layer on sort of the trust aspect and the trustee. And so all of a sudden people's mental model of what it means to be a business owner and then the reality of what they get as as an ESOP participant, there's just a little bit of a gap there. And so that's one of the big things is how do you help people understand the rights and responsibilities of ownership in a way that that kind of reflects. Something that's workable for everyone, right? Because obviously only one person can be the, the sole proprietor owner, um, and that doesn't work with a broad-based model like this. So, yeah, that's, that's a I think that's a really good insight. That's where a lot of these misconceptions, I think, where they come from. So, so going back to the idea of what you guys are, you know, what you have available, and, and I'm gonna obviously plug what you guys are doing cause I really believe in it, and I, I think it's really good. If you go to certified EO.com, that's your website, um, you're gonna find all of these tools and things. What what would you say, Thomas is, you know, when you start thinking about what people are actually using right now, you have 220 members. What, what, what would be the first thing that somebody would want to, you know, use if they're a brand new ESOP, um, in terms of your toolbase? Yeah, that's great. So obviously with 220 members, we have a lot of people doing different different things and, and joining for different reasons. Um, but with most new ESOPs, what we want to do is basically just start with those, those fundamentals, right? So what does it mean to be employee owned? What are the rights and responsibilities? What is an ESOP if you're an ESOP, like how does it work, kind of a, we have like an ESOP 101 handout. So with a new company, we kind of pick things up right after the, um, the big transaction announcement like a celebration. We'll help whoever's in charge of driving that communication and whoever's the point person might be the the selling owner, might be someone on the executive team, maybe someone on HR, um, whoever's going to be the champion. We'll help them put together a plan with a with a brand new ESOP that could be even a quarterly or every other month plan like that first year, we want to make sure we're we're really doing something achievable. Um, we'll set up. A few basic handouts, so like at ESOP 101, FAQ, um, like ownership basics, maybe rights and responsibilities, um, so we'll get a few of those things going. You want to get that right level of education. And then maybe also we have like a nice um 30 minute presentation that is really an onboarding deck for brand new employee owners, but with the new company, that can be a good company-wide presentation, maybe 6 months after the announcement. Right, so with a brand new ESOP, we'll kind of benchmark off, OK, let's get you to that first statement. Let's get 4 or 5 touch points between now and that first statement. So like lay the foundation for that first statement in the first year, focus very much on the fundamentals, and also just repeat over and over again, we're an employee owned business, we're employee owned now, and, and kind of help people think about it in a, in a long term way, so lay some of that foundation. Um, yeah, so handouts and communications plan would be the good place to start with a brand new. OK. No, I think that's very, very helpful. The, the presentation that you reference is, is that something that you guys do live or is it like a recorded presentation or how does that work? Yes, so everything we do is train the trainer and everything's fully customized. So what we have is a template presentation that's 30 slides, it's like PowerPoint. Um we thought through how you have that first conversation with people, the right level of detail, the ways to explain common things like participation, vesting, valuation, you know, every year you get a statement. Why should you look at that statement? Why do you need to read that statement. Um, so we've thought through all that sort of stuff. And then it's up there on our site for members. Members can download that and customize it. So we have called out in yellow all the things you need to do to customize it. You can obviously change the colors, add the photos. We'll also do that with you if you want to set up 30 minutes with with um if the member wants to set up time with with their contact on our team, we'll also help you customize it. So we basically get that all set for you, and then the person inside the company does the presentation. Again, we found having that internal champion, having that person who's Who really understands the company, understands the culture, knows the people, and is that visible internal champion is really the best practice in terms of, of, of building that culture or it's kind of a, it's a necessary component. And so everything we do is about equipping that champion to be successful. Um, so we have members who do that live, we have members who do that as a recorded webinar, we have people who do it like once a month for all the new employees, uh, virtually. There's a few different ways you can, can roll that out. Yeah, no, that makes sense. You know, I guess, everybody's got to figure out who that champion is and give them enough time to, you know, and that's probably part of the issue is they don't have enough time. But what I like about the program you have is, is they're starting with the blank slate. A lot of these champions, you know, that are, that are designated, it's like, hey, go and do some research and, you know, and then it's your job. And now, what you guys do is you really give them You know, a full slate of information and, and tools that they can use to go do the job that they need to do as, um, you know, as the champion of the ESOP to the company itself. That's right, yeah, and we'll do, we'll do, um, in addition to the tools, we also do all sorts of training, so we do regular webinars on the communications challenges that people are facing, um, everything from like how do you use this as a differentiator in recruitment, how do you onboard new people, how do you create engaging messages, how do you tailor the message to like young folks or brand new employees like frontline employees, groups of people have had trouble. Um, engaging. So we do these regular webinars as well because what we'll see with the new ESOP is, as you know, it's, it's really a founder initiated transaction and so often the champion or the person who's in charge of, of doing the communication, they might not have been super involved in the transaction. They might have a, a kind of a A lower level of understanding around the details of this as well. And so we'll find with a lot of new ESOPs we're spending as much time training the trainer and helping the champion get up to speed in that first year as we are actually doing external communication or I suppose internal communication, but to the employee owners that makes sense because a lot of times they're not involved in the transaction and they just get brought in. from a um electronic platform standpoint, does the company have with, with the tools that you're giving, do they have like their own website, you know, or is it part of their website that people, that part of the employees will go to their, their company's website and look at what they have as far as the employee ownership um information or is it, is it other than that? We have our members go through their existing channels, so it seems like everyone has some sort of like learning management system or like a SharePoint or an internet companies have all these different internal channels that they've developed for, for all the different communications needs and we find this is you get maximum exposure if you send out your employee. communications through those existing channels. Uh, we don't feel like people need a new, new platform to go log into. Um, we do have a platform for our members, but that's really for the, the, the trainers that we interface with our contacts through that. Yeah, that gives you the, the trainers a resource to go and quickly find information as opposed to, you know, Googling everything, um, as they can. So you've been doing this since 17. So if you have like an existing ESOP company, so that now we're moving on to a company that's more mature, they've been doing this for a little while. What sort of things do you do to support a company like that? Yeah, it depends on what they've been doing. Um, we'll meet ESOPs that have been doing this for a long time, but in many ways you're starting from square one. Like there there are those companies out there, and that's totally fine. Um, so it can look like a new ESOP, but one with a little bit more of a history, and obviously the statements are already a little bit more mature. But other companies have been doing this for a while and and what they like about working with us is we can just take that work off their plate. There's this big economy to scale here. We're working with 200+ companies, people are giving us ideas for handouts every single day. We're building new stuff, getting all this feedback, and since we can spread that work over 200 plus companies, we just invest a lot more time in the material creation than than any one company would. So a lot of our members that are mature ESOPs, they like to just basically leverage all the content. Um, maybe the training helps fill in some gaps, or of course, like there's always turnover on your committee. You always have new people coming on, so there's also that opportunity to train new people. Um, a lot, a lot of it's just helping people save time and, and keep the message fresh because No matter who you are, no matter how long you've been doing this, you do have to kind of think of new ways to get this information in front of people and the challenge that a lot of mature Es face as well. We feel like we've been doing this well, but we've kind of been doing the same thing for the past few years, and people only look at the same handout so many times. So even just repackaging that information in some sort of new updated design can help people take a second look and maybe get a little bit more of an understanding. Yeah, yeah, just kind of appeals to their eye and they're excited about it again. Um, in the sense, marketing, marketing the ESOP internally. And if you're relying on your own stuff, you know, it's gonna be difficult to always keep that fresh, fresh look. Um, so that's OK, that's cool. So as I, as I kind of like that gives us a better picture of it, you know, kind of what you guys do in services, um, how would you explain the way that you're, you charge for the service cause everybody was always gonna ask, hey, what does this cost? And so how would you explain that? Yeah, yeah, so we do scale the cost a little bit with, with size of, of company, um, because obviously with, with larger companies, we do a little bit more work, but we basically charge like a flat annual fee that is all inclusive of um all the work we do, so customizations, communications plan support, all that. And it's anywhere from like 2.5 to $5500 a year depending on company size. Which, yeah, it's pretty reasonable considering, you know, what you guys have available. So it's, you know, and it's and what people in the amount of time if people actually looked how much time they spent doing this, I mean, they'll easily spend that, um. You know, so, so I think that's very affordable when you think about what's out there and trying to make sure it's, it's, you know, they're effectively, you know, using this, cause, and I can, I made this point in the front end of this episode because that whole employee motivation, if they get that right, then the company is, is really utilizing and leveraging. The power of an ESOP, then the company is gonna make a lot of money because they're gonna go through that, you know, if either it's more revenue or less cost because people are more cost efficient, less rework, because people are motivated to do the thing. So, so really that's what's on the table. And I think, you know, what, what you guys are doing to help that is going to make, you know, this whole thing make more sense. Yeah, and if nothing else, you can just think about the amount of money that people put into the ESOP every year, which we've seen it somewhere between like $30,000 to $5000 per person per year. Um, so when you start thinking about a 100 person company putting $500,000 a year into this. Where with a brand new ESOP, if you don't tell people about it, then it's, it's reasonable that that sort of visibility of that investment could be near zero, right? And no company has ever told us, hey, 100% of the money we put in there is recognized by our by our employees as value. There's always someone who doesn't get it. And so there's definitely like you're saying it's, it's time, time well spent, um, if you can reach out to people, not only the upside and all that, but just like, hey, that money that you're putting into these accounts every single year, just making sure you're getting the most out of that. Yup. So, so thinking about the, the more the long term now and again, I think the idea of building this business is just really phenomenal. Where do you see certified EEO going over the next several years when we look at what's happening with employee owned companies and And just the market right now, I mean, I, I'd imagine there's a lot of potential clients that you guys have just in the current market. Yeah, so what's nice about the internal, kind of the uh the internal education is that if you think about our big Picture mission of creating national recognition for employee owned business and really helping every single person in America be aware of this model, understand what it is, why, why it could benefit them, and really kind of lighting that fire of support very broadly. The employee owners are a great place to start, right, because there's We think there are about 60 to 7000 employee-owned companies. Um, for us, employee owned is at least 30% of the business held in a broad-based way. So I think about 1.5 to 2.5 million people work at those companies. And so that's like a very good audience to start with and engaging those people, figuring out how to make this clear and simple to someone who has a lot at stake but maybe doesn't have a deep financial education or doesn't have a ton of time to spend diving into the details like giving them the high-level messages and helping them see what they need to know and understand how they can make a difference. That's like a really good step one. And so we'll obviously continue to build on that, continue to work with our members and, and grow that. But where we want to go with this is really kind of expanding that audience. And so I mentioned in January we're gonna launch this full-on directory of every employee owned business. So one place you can go to see every employee owned company in America, see who's located in your state, see who's in with what industry, um maybe see which products are at the grocery store, so if you want to support employ companies, do that sort of thing. Um. And I think that's going to open up some opportunities for us to start talking to external groups and people maybe outside the employership community about this model. I think that will help us kind of grow. The interest from job seekers, the interest from consumers, the interest from businesses, maybe even like state and local governments, maybe getting interested in procurement and purchasing from employee owned businesses, so kind of starting that more general drumbeat, which also will help us connect with business owners. So we do get some business owners asking us about converting to employee ownership and wanting to do that education as well, so. Um, we're gonna kind of shift and, and really as we grow our membership, combining the the reach of, of members and we do, we do like some external marketing work with many of our members as well. So growing that and, and growing our audience in a way that obviously will, will of course benefit our members through increased visibility as well. Now, sounds, it sounds exciting. I, I guess the, the whole logo or the brand itself certified EO, it kind of makes it feel like, you know, you're a certified employee owned company. Is that kind of where you're going with it? Yeah, that's the idea. That's the idea. And, and one of the early things we tried to do because there are all these great communities, um, like the ESOP community and their work cooperatives and there's this new perpetual trust as well as all these people doing it through like the equity comp stock stock options type plan. There are all these great ways to implement this broad-based ownership. I think the ESOP is probably the most, the most common, but there are others. And um and so what we did early on was, was create a set of standards that kind of cuts across or, or really is abstracted away from the particular legal implementation and really is more about the essence of like, OK, what does it really mean to the employee owned how would you How would you draw a line? And obviously drawing a line is imperfect, and that's not really the point, right? But the point of drawing a line and creating this brand is is uniting the reach of these companies to try to achieve something that we cannot achieve just acting individually. And so building a brand is a big part of that, right? You think about like great place to work, you think about fair trade or B Corporation. It's a very similar playbook and kind of By creating this mark, by creating this, this sort of set of, of standards that are associated with some principles, then you can, if you get enough people on board and kind of get enough people buying in, you can create this asset that everyone benefits from, um, which people can't create individually. And so that's kind of our bigger vision there is that um there's maybe $200 to $300 billion in revenue across all the employee-owned companies. And so we can get everyone kind of leveraging that to build this brand and use this common mark. That'll be a very good thing for all of us. Oh yeah, now it's interesting because, you know, it is difficult to even know who the employee owned companies are unless they're saying, I'm an employee owned company, um, for instance, like Publix here in Florida, there are like 200,000 people employee owned company. Everybody knows that they are because they've talked about so much, but it's not like they advertise it. And you know, would it make a difference with the further customers say, you know what, that's a certified. You know, employee owned company, you know, and what that may, may mean in, in some sense of quality or whatever, you know, culture or who my customer experience or whatever I think about. So I think it's, it's an interesting idea when you start thinking about pulling all of that together because it's a, it's a bit, you know, fragmented, right? It's all over the place and there's all these different industries doing all these different things. So, um, so I, I think it's really cool, Thomas. Thanks. Yeah, well, right now it's just about helping companies find the company down the street that's doing this that they didn't even know about. And then over time you're right, it's about kind of being that gateway and helping and you know, as this becomes more common, and, and I think this idea of employee ownership is, is very timely, um, it's, it's only gotten more important since we started this 3 years ago when you just think about like the broader what's going on in like the broader economy and, and, and trends and all that. So. I think this idea is going to pick up a lot of steam, and as you do have a pick up steam, if we get more and more popular, there will eventually be people who are kind of pretending to be employee owned, but it's like, we actually ran into one business that was um they were trying to use, they were using our mark, but they weren't a member and so obviously you're, you're not allowed to do that. Um, but when we reached out to talk to them, we were like, oh, OK, well, maybe this is like another perspective member. Clearly they like using the mark, um, but it was just a, uh, it was a small business, 8 or 9 people, one owner who's the CEO who owned 100% of the business, and his argument was, well, I'm the I'm an employee and I own 100% of the shares, like 100% of our business is owned by employees. We're employee owned and it's like, well, no, that's not exactly what we're doing here. Um I've heard of that one. I know it's kind of ridiculous, but you know what. Yeah, it's a 100% employee owned, you know, if you really are, you know, torturing what that means. So it is, I think it is important to have these standards as the community becomes more popular and, and we get more visibility, you will have people trying to ride the wave a little bit. So yeah, that's very a defense there will be nice, yeah, for sure. Well, cool. Well, just some final comments that I have. I, I just, first off, as we talk about going through this um idea of what you guys have put on the table, I, I just seeing, you know, the deals that I'm seeing for my business of putting ESOPs together and we have existing ESOP clients. I know there's a great need for this and um I just know that people don't have a lot of time. Um, when I look into these companies and I know people are super busy, um, so I think what you guys have put on the table here from You know, just the simple, you know, tools to really helping them, you know, having a champion and a company and having them be able to go to you guys. I think it's a great, it's a great opportunity. So, um, that, those are my final thoughts. What, what would you kind of wanna do to wrap up your piece there, Thomas? Yeah, I mean, I would say that it definitely is. I mean, one of the great things we're obviously newer to this space than a lot of other folks, and one of the great things about this space is just how collaborative everyone is, how open everyone is. I've never, I don't think I've ever been to a conference like the NCO and the. Association conferences, which are fantastic, and I highly recommend you go to those conferences and companies are so open and willing to share and there are all these great people out there like yourself setting up these employee owned companies and doing these great things that ultimately go on and over the course of 5, 10, or 15 years help people working on the front line of factories or stocking shelves in grocery stores. I mean really build on the amount of wealth that changes their life and their families' lives. I mean it's incredibly inspiring and really, really cool and just seems like the perfect idea for this moment in time, so. I just really appreciate the work that you do and, and obviously the, it's all because the business owners who decide to do this. Often, sometimes, you know, it, it, it's not the easiest path for them, but uh very, very much driven by, by this idea and, and the potential and what it can do for their business and um And really just having that concern for, for the company and their people and up in the town where the business is located. And so I really just appreciate what everyone's doing there and um if people are interested in connecting, they can go to our website certified.com and you can actually set up time with us directly through there or you can just email me at thomas@certifiedo.com. Awesome. Well, great. thanks for your your time today, Thomas, the insight for what you bring to the table with this really useful tool. Um, and as we close out, I just want to remind everyone, if you like the podcast, please subscribe. Um, share it with a friend if you think it might be helpful. Have a great day. We look forward to our next step on this journey to.