Episode 5: Building Employee-Ownership

Welcome to this episode of the Owners at Work podcast. Uh, my name is Chris Cooper with the Ohio Employee Ownership Center at Kent State University. And with me in this episode is our co-host, Michael Palmieri. Michael, how are you doing? I'm good, Chris. Excited to uh finally make my way onto an intro. I feel honored. Well, it's been a, it's been a few episodes, that's for sure, but we're certainly good to have you back. Um, how are you doing as we uh are being socially distant and uh working remotely? How are things going with that? You know, trying to cope like everyone else out there. Uh, it's getting difficult, but I'm excited that we are now entering the month of May, and I'm hoping that this month will um be a lot. More hopeful than this past March and April, which I think were difficult for, for everyone. I'm, I'm glad we're having this type of conversation this time around because we are talking with Tim Reddick, who is the CEO of a company called InTrust IT. It's Uh, it's a company based out of the Cincinnati area. They're a new ESOP. They became an ESOP, uh, last year, and they're a real interesting company in terms of the kind of culture that they have, kind of the rationale behind Tim's decision to, to start selling the company to the employees through ESOP. He's got a little bit of of a family history there. And he's also got some interesting plans for what he wants to do in the future. And so it's a really interesting conversation, at least I, I felt it was interesting and uh hopefully our audience uh will find it interesting as well. And so uh before we head out to, to the conversation, I wanna mention a couple of things. One of the things we really wanna do with this podcast. is to talk to employee owners and business owners that have sold their company to their employees and, and get those kind of real life stories talking to people who live the employee ownership model on a day to day basis. And so I think uh Mike, we had talked about this in previous episodes that what we want to do. I try to get more of those kind of conversations. So what do we want to tell folks who might be interested in coming to talk to us on the pod? Yeah, I mean, if you're interested in trying to have your story told on the podcast, we're more than happy to to get in contact with you. So you can send an email to OOC@kent.edu. Um, or you can contact me or Chris directly. We'll put our emails in the show notes, and we'd be more than happy to, to kind of talk to you and see what's going on. I mean, you'll see as we get, um, when we jump into this interview with Tim, that he has some really interesting Kind of personal stories about what led him to to think about employee ownership, not just seeing his father, who also decided to sell his company to the employees, but also personal stories of his own, seeing how other businesses had operated. And not wanting to take that same route. And I think it's also interesting to Chris, a lot of the points that Tim brings up is he really even before selling his company, believed in engaging employees and a kind of open book style of. Management that he sees as key to that transition to employee ownership. So I think that that's a really important part of this interview as well is kind of those lessons, right? We all kind of sit here and talk about the ways that open book management or high engagement may help a company, but I think stories like Tim's make it really clear the practical ways that that plays out on the ground. Yeah, I think what I find interesting is usually, you know, the process that they went through where they started the open book management prior to becoming employee owned is in, in, in a lot of instances, the, the opposite the way, you know, it usually happens. So what we, what we often see is a company becomes employee owned and they, uh, sometime after that, they say, so how do we take full advantage of this employee ownership thing and then they start implementing an open book management kind of. Uh, a process, but, uh, but Tim actually went the opposite direction. He had the open book management actually had started to implement the great game of business within their company and kind of going through that process. And so, you know, I often get asked what type of company is a good fit for employee ownership and, and one of the things I always say it's, it, it's pretty apparent right away which kind of company is really gonna be a great fit for employee ownership. And if I would have been called in at the time that that Tim was thinking about selling his company to his employees. And kind of talked to him for probably, you know, 10 minutes and then found out that he was doing this and he was, he kind of had this kind of culture already. I would have said, you know, this company would be a perfect fit for employee ownership. And it seems since they've uh become employee owned that it's uh definitely the case. The other really interesting thing too in this episode is when Tim starts talking about what his strategy now is to grow the employee ownership sector, which it seems like I mean you had the conversation with him, but it seems like what he's looking to do is to begin to go purchase companies. Kind of inject this technology aspect where he has a background, get the companies operating to be profitable enough to then sell back to the employees of that company and he's actually in the process of doing exactly that during COVID-19 and I just found that story really interesting. Only because it demonstrates a pretty innovative way of growing the sector, but growing the sector within the COVID crisis, which is just another hopeful story from the employee ownership world as you kind of open up this intro in a socially distanced world, which was really nice to hear. Yeah, for sure, I think you'll hear him say it, but Uh, he's not 100% sure, you know, how, how it's gonna keep on, how, how that whole kind of process that he's got mapped out is gonna, is gonna, you know, how, what that's gonna look in 6 to 12 months, right? We don't, there's so much that we don't know as we go through this, right? But I think it's like you say, it's a real hopeful message. I, I think it's a real kind of powerful thing that he wants to do and it was a great conversation and um So I just hope that uh everyone enjoys it. I know I enjoyed talking to them. I enjoyed kind of learning more about the company, what they're doing, and uh it was just a great conversation. So, yeah, all right. So let's hop right into it then. Tim, uh, good morning. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Chris. Very excited to be here anytime. I can be part of the employee ownership group. I'm more than uh excited to uh talk and, and be part of that and participate. Great. Super. So, before we kind of get into the meat, I was just curious as to, you know, we're all going through the coronavirus situation here and the impacts it's having on, on business generally and uh society, of course, as well. So, how are you and your team doing? Are you holding up OK? Yeah, we seem to be doing OK right now. Really, we've got a lot of work on our plate to take our minds off of things. We've been able to work from home for quite some time. We've had people that on a regular basis would work from home. So us transitioning, we, we kind of before it got really bad, started working from home and isolating our guys because we are a pretty critical component to a lot of our clients and how they operate. Uh, and now we are very busy helping companies transition to being able to work more, you know, for a longer period of time from home. So we are extremely busy. We've hired 3 people, um, just, you know, within a week of this all starting just so we can handle the additional, the amount of service requests that were coming in to us for um all these companies needing this assistance. Yeah, I imagine, you know, in this kind of environment when everyone is working from home, we're all telecommuting and in a lot of ways. I imagine that's just generally good for, for you guys cause you can provide a lot of uh services for folks who, who need assistance and kind of get that stuff up and running and maybe doing something that they weren't previously prepared to do. Yeah, exactly, and there's been a lot of criminals that have taken advantage of the situation and have launched some cyberattacks against companies and are trying to infiltrate their networks because now they're more dispersed at home. So our cybersecurity services that we offer have been busier than ever as well. Yeah, so that's kind of a good lead in actually to the next question is, tell us a little bit about your company, what you do, and maybe how you got started in the business and kind of your, your backstory. Yeah, sure, Chris. So I'll have to start with my father actually because he started a company called Software Solutions in the 70s, which is very unusual for somebody to start a software company in the 70s, but he did. And I grew up working for his company in and around computers in grade school, high school, and college, and I started my own company focused on IT in '92, so 28 years ago when I was in college at the time. So what the company does today is we act as the IT department for small, medium sized companies, in fact, in some cases, very large companies. That don't have the, they're not big enough to have their own IT department, so we act as their IT department. We do cybersecurity and a lot of cloud and Office 365 integrations, configurations, supports, those types of things. But the interesting thing about all of this and the reason that you brought me here today is my father's company. He transitioned to an ESOP 15 years ago and retired. So his company is now like twice the size it was when he retired. It's continued on without him. Uh, and then I transitioned to an ESOP last year, 30% ESOP with my company. So as you said, you're relatively new ESOP, just a little bit over a year old. Tell us how you, you know, besides the, the backstory with your dad and kind of understanding the ESOP concept, what was it about, about transitioning the business to an ESOP model that, that was appealing to you? Well, I saw what happened with my father's company because when he was looking to retire, he had a software company in a small suburb of Cincinnati, so it was an unusual place to have a software company with, you know, higher paid people working there. So it was, it was a very good place to work considering what was mostly available in that area. And when he talked to a lot of these companies that wanted to buy him, they weren't too keen on keeping the company in Lebanon, Ohio. They were looking at You know, pretty much buying him for the software for his customer list, and then if the people that work there wanted to move to wherever their headquarters were located, they were more than happy to hire them, but other than that, they were probably going to shut down that um office that was operating in Lebanon. So that really bothered my father, so he looked at the ESOP as a way to be able to keep the company in the town. You know, that he lived in and where all these people that worked for him lived and wanted to stay, so I saw the benefit in that. So that was one of the reasons that ESOP was interesting to me or that I thought that I wanted to head that direction. And then the other reason was for my company we work with a lot of different size organizations and about the same time that my father was going through this decision. I had a client that was a billion dollars a year conglomerate that was located in Cincinnati and then they were going out buying companies all over the US and normally they would, they would buy a company in some city somewhere and they would let them operate for a year or two and then they would slowly fold in some of their operations and some of their computer systems into the main headquarters. They called me up and said we're getting ready to buy this company in Texas and they are in such a bad place right now with their computer systems that we can't, you know, come in and buy them like we typically do and let them operate for a period of time. We're going to need to go put new computers in immediately because they're pretty much doing everything on paper. So, my team and I flew down there to Texas. We staged all the equipment in a hotel nearby like on a Thursday, Friday. The deal closed on a Friday afternoon. They took possession of the company like 50 p.m. on a Friday. We worked all weekend putting all new computers in the office, setting them all up and like turning their break room into a training center, and the idea was Monday that we had some people coming in from a nearby company, nearby branch that would answer the phones and hold things down while we trained their existing staff on the order entry system and what they needed to use to operate the company. So Monday rolled around, employees came in the door and nobody had told them any of this was happening. And uh to make it even worse is the owner of the company just left town. Um, he cleaned up all, yeah, he took all of his personal possessions out of his office and was nowhere to be seen. So these employees came in the door. Some of them had worked there for many, you know, 20 years and had expected that when the owner was going to retire, that they were going to be able to possibly buy the company from him or be involved in some type of exit or at least know what's going on. This was all totally a slap in the face to. All of them, they were very upset and I had to sit alongside these people for a week training them on their computer systems and listening to their stories about what, you know, how surprised they were and how terrible this was and how terrible this guy was that they had worked for for all these years that they, you know, loved working for and now he, they felt like he totally abandoned them. To this day, I don't know if that owner. was embarrassed because he couldn't keep the company afloat and had to sell it in a hurry to be able to stop from going bankrupt, and he was just embarrassed or whether he made up, you know, made so much money and he was just bleeding the company dry and, and took the money and ran and was again embarrassed that he did that. I, I don't know which one it is. I don't, I don't know, but either way, it's not a very good situation to be in. And from that experience, I was like, I never want to put any employees that work for me in that situation. Where they would be totally surprised and, and felt like they were abandoned by, you know, the owner of the company, um, and to be totally oblivious to if the company was making money or whether it was about to go bankrupt. They had, they had no idea what that situation was. So Out of that and what my father had done, I decided that I wanted to do an ESOP as well. So in 2012, I gathered my team together and kind of put together a new strategy for the company that we by 2020 we were going to be the size, the profitability, and kind of the sophisticated, you know, in terms of the number of people and um how our accounting was set up, we would be able to do an ESOP by 2020. So we hit all those goals and metrics in 2018, so it took us 6 years, so we did 2 years ahead of time of schedule and um then we did our, you know, the ESOP last year is what we wound up doing. So, um, out of all that, I'm very, very happy with how it all turned out. Yeah, you know, I think that's a very common story that we hear from business owners that sell to an ESOP, but we often get asked, what kind of business owners, is a good candidate for selling to an ESOP. And I think That kind of perspective that you laid out there is in many ways the prototypical uh EAP, uh, business, you know, the business owner sells to an ESOP or some form of employee ownership. And it's kind of a concern for legacy as much as for, you know, the, the top dollar that you can earn out of selling this company. Uh, so, so you said you're 30% now in our previous Conversations you mentioned that eventually you're planning on going to uh 100%. Do you have kind of like a time frame for that, you know, especially now with the way the economy is moving, even though you're doing well right now, you think maybe that's gonna change that timeline a little bit. How have you thought about that yet? Uh, yes, I've thought about that a little bit, so um. A lot, yeah, I mean, I'm looking at 5 to 7 years somewhere around in there to do the the remaining 70% is kind of my rough timeline. Um, yeah, I was, you know, over the past couple of weeks when this is all, you know, you're all processing what's going on and how this affects you. I'm sitting there going, oh, I should have done a 100% ESOP last year. And uh I wouldn't be in this predicament and uh then I'm like, well, wait a minute, if I would have done that, I'd have all my, I would have had all my cash in the markets and I'd be down 30% and sitting here, you know, not being able to do anything other than to take it out and sit to the side or whatever you're gonna do, whereas with my company, you know, I've got, I still have 70% ownership and I'm like, OK, well, it may be worth less today than it was last year because of, you know, where the economy is, but I can work harder on my company. And get it back uh to where it should be, um, worth more than what I can do with stocks where I just have to passively sit there and hope that they, they get better or um work with my financial plan or whatever, but Yeah, it might, uh, it might change a little bit what uh what I wind up doing or the timeline because of this whole situation, but we're actually, like I said at the beginning, we're, we're busier now than we've ever been because of so many people are now moving and working from home and needing those systems set up. Now the big question is whether they're going to be able to pay us or not, um, I don't know, so we're doing a lot of work up front and with the hope of, of getting paid by them after the fact. Yeah, so I've talked to a company the other day that one of the models that they're thinking about moving to is do the work now and agree to invoice at a later date kind of thing and kind of do stuff it's almost doing it on credit kind of thing. So I think with everything that's going on, you know, that's, um, there's plenty of work to be done, but like you said, the question is, you know, what, what's the timeline, yeah, you know, what's that gonna look like. So, so one of the things we talked about the other day when we were prepping for this is you, you implemented an open book management style uh prior to becoming an ESOP, and, and to be quite honest, that's kind of the opposite of what we usually see, right? We, the company uh transitions to an ESOP for 11 reason or another and then decides that they need to do a little bit more in the open book management or, or sharing of, of information. It sounds like a number of years ago, you had a long-term vision in place and everything was of a piece, but can you kind of describe what was the thinking process behind implementing that open book perspective before even setting up the ESOP? Yeah, I had uh two things that influenced me. Um, when I talked to my father about what he would have done differently when he did the ESOP, and he said, well, He felt like his employees didn't understand how the company made money when he sold it to them because he did 100% he stopped right out the gate, which is a little different than me, and he said after he sold it to them, you know, he's still working, I think he worked, he transitioned out I think over a year where he slowly worked less and less and then he was on the board for about 5 years, but he said that the company struggled with the employees understanding how the company made money and If you don't have some historical experience with how the company operates and the fact that when you invest money in some new software, it's going to be expensive for a year. You've got some expense there, but then you can sell that the following year and recoup that expense, uh, that investment, there's a difference between an expense and an investment, uh, and a lot of employees need to see that over time when they understand it. So when they When those employees become owners, all of a sudden they're looking at all their costs and not wanting to spend any money because they, they feel like that's the only, only thing that they can do to make the company profitable when in fact you have to know where to invest the money. Uh, that comes through some through some experience. So his, his thought was if I would have done this again, he said I would have done, you know, some type of open book management or financial um education with my employees before I did the ESOP. Uh, so that was one, you know, reason that I did it. The other reason was, um, I had an experience where we had an employee leave the company and it seemed like we, he left on great terms. It just, he, he, um, wasn't as technical as he thought he was and had some difficulty doing some of the technical work that we needed him to do. We tried him in a sales function. He didn't like that, um, that role either, so he wound up getting another position elsewhere and uh You know, he left the organization maybe a month later we had a situation where we needed to go into his email to find something that a customer had sent him. And when we went in there, somebody stumbled across an email from a recruiter that he had sent an email to the recruiter and was listing out the reasons he wanted to leave the company, and it was all these things that weren't true, but he had made up in his head that the company was not paying people enough and that the owner was You know, pocketing all this money and that the leadership team and their families were flown to, you know, Disney World and, and the company paid for all the leadership team and all their family to go to Disney World for a week and all these crazy things that he had made up. None of them were. At the time we were, you know, barely making any money, uh, but in his head we were making all kinds of money. So at that point I'm like, well, there's always this concern as a business owner that you, if you share your books with your employees, they're gonna realize, you know, or think that you're making a ton of money, um, and be less inclined to work for you, when in fact it's usually the opposite, they think that you are just making money hand over fist. They don't understand the finances behind it. So with that, I'm like, I, they need to know the truth of what's going on because we're never going to get to our goal, you know, of being an ESOP in 2020 if I've got people working here that think, you know, they don't understand the finances and don't understand why we may not be paying for this or that or why we're not investing in one item or We are investing in something else and the Disneyland thing is a perfect example of that is we took 3 people from the leadership team and sent them to a conference there that was very important to us learning some new software that we could operate the company better and they chose to take their families with them, and they paid for their families to travel there and they paid for the hotel in Disney World and everything on their own, out of their own pockets, separate from going to the conference, um. And uh so that, you know, that, that's a good example of people look at that and think that the company pay for that whole trip when in fact the portion that was paid for was only the conference and not everything else that surrounded it that they decided to, to tag on to the trip. So anyway, that was Some of the reasons behind that and you know, reading the Great Game of Business with Jack Stack and the stake in the outcome and Small giants and that whole ecosystem really I've gone to some small giants events as well, and I really enjoyed and wanted to be part of that and I thought the only way to do that is with great game of Business. Yeah, so you know, that's really interesting. One of the things I always tell companies is that if you don't provide information, Some type of information is going to fill that gap or fill that vacuum, right? And so the question is, who's gonna be providing that information? Is it gonna be accurate information, um, or like you say, is it gonna be thoughts that aren't necessarily based on facts. So I think that's, that's a real key thing that um that you brought up that's, uh, that we see all the time. The other thing is we're, we're dealing with a lot of companies they're gonna have to make some real difficult decisions. Uh, here in the next, uh, you know, 3 or 1369, you know, 12 months, whatever it might be, uh, we don't really know how long this is gonna go on yet, but, um, and the idea is if you, you know, if you want to communicate honestly and openly with your employees, but you haven't done any of that previously. You're gonna find yourself in a little bit more of a difficult situation here as you're trying to explain to your people what's going on, you know, why is the company, maybe the company's got to do some layoffs or whatever it might be furloughs or, or lots of other things. You're not making an ESOP contribution this year, you know what I mean? And so without that kind of base of understanding how the business operates, I mean, they're gonna have some very difficult communication. Issues going forward and how they communicate that to their people. You know, I think that's kind of leads back to your rationale for a while you made this decision. Yeah, we're already seeing that today. I mean, because we, so we have a weekly forecast. So every single Tuesday everybody in our company, you know, used to get into a meeting in person, but now it's online and everybody in the company has at least one line item of the P&L that they forecast what they think the end of the month's going to be. Obviously the first week of March was all, you know, sunshine and roses and then as each week went through with um March, the numbers got worse and worse, but we could make adjustments within the month. So we were pulling back on our marketing spend, we were pulling back on some Of the rewards and foods and things that we offer our employees, some of it on purpose and some of it just by default, like we usually have a all company lunch a couple of times a month for different meetings and that. So all of a sudden now everybody's working from home, so we don't have that expense. Um, we have a lot of sales where we are going out and having lunch with prospective clients or existing clients and those types of things, and now we're not doing that. Um, so we had some cost savings right out of the gate so they can see that kind of happening week by week, and they can, they feel safe knowing that. OK, we are still making money and we still have money coming in and we're still profitable at this point and they can see um why we're starting to make some of the adjustments that we uh that we're making. So it makes us more feel like a team because everybody knows what the score is and they know what we're doing to win the game. Yeah, it's funny, there was a survey that came out, I forget how long ago, but uh there was a survey done of employees like uh relatively a broad-based survey and, and, and folks were asked, what do you think is the average profit margin? Of a typical company, and I think some of the, there was a significant group of people that thought it was like 30-40%, right? And I don't, you don't need to share your profit margin with me, but I, I, I'm assuming that you don't have a 40, 40% profit margin. Yeah, correct, yeah, so that's that's more like a gross margin, yeah. So, um, You, you are a relatively new ESOP, and have you seen an impact in the company so far being that employee owned company, uh, that, uh, that's maybe something you want to point out, uh, have the employees started acting any differently or is it kind of, it, it just was a natural progression and, and things are just moving along kind of on a nice, nice straight line. It was more of a natural progression, um, because we've been doing a great game of business for so long and we've been talking about the ESOP for so long. Uh, and educating them about how an ESOP works for so long. It was a kind of a non-event when we finally signed all the paperwork. Uh, I have some other companies that, uh, I work with that the owner did the ESOP and then kept it a secret and then announced it. Um, one of them even brought everybody together because everybody thought he was going to sell the company. And he brought everybody together and he's like, I know you all think I'm gonna sell the company and you are right. I am selling the company and the new owners are in this room and those new owners are you, you know, and it's just a big celebration and surprise and everything for people. Um, I, I didn't get to have that moment. Um, it was more like it was a non-event, like, yep, we signed the paper now we're an ESOP and then everybody. It it really until we, um, you know, this year we're gonna come out with our first statement and we've done the, we did the evaluation last year for the transaction, but this year we're gonna actually have the valuation and actually the stock distribution and everything, so people will get statements and I think that's when it will become more real for people to understand what it is they own and how this works. Yeah, so they actually see some, something going on in their account. Uh, you know, unfortunately, that first statement's going to come in this year, right, when we're going through all of this. So I don't know how that's gonna impact, you know, we're, we're still trying to figure all that out for all of, you know, all our companies are trying to figure that out. But, but still, I think, you know, getting that statement kind of. Makes things real. So, when we were talking in preparation for this interview, you also shared a vision for a sort of a very interesting model of entrepreneurship, a kind of a venture capital thing that you're creating, and I thought it was really interesting, so I was wondering if you'd be willing to tell us about it. Yeah, so, you know, I'm just, I'm in my 40s now, late 40s at this point, and uh retiring and just not being involved in business to me since I've been, you know, I started companies when I was in grade school, so I, I can't imagine being retired. My wife cannot imagine me being retiring like that. So there was a lot of soul searching like what am I gonna do next? Do I just want to keep my 70% or some portion of my company and work there. Um, but because of my experience with my father doing an ESOP, I do, I'm doing an ESOP, uh, and then I have other companies that I also interact with that have also done ESOPs. I wanted to do more of that and, uh, so what I've decided to do, chosen to do is buy companies from people that are retiring. where the company is maybe not of the size or maybe not the sophistication or the profitability that it needs to be to be an ESOP, um, so buying those companies, scaling them or putting in the systems or whatever needs to be implemented in the system so that they can become an ESOP and then exiting that purchase. Um, via an ESOP, so turning them into an ESOP at that point. And I've already, I'm in the midst of that right now. It's kind of terrible timing. Um, I closed on a company totally unrelated to IT, um, at the end of February. Um, and, uh, so I took possession March 1st of the company and we know what's happened in March. So it has been a huge challenge and the reason I bought this company, it was a husband and wife that founded it 31 years ago. They've operated it the whole time and they still run it all on paper. It's still a 100% paper-based company. So I had a vision of coming in and then 3 to 6 months, transitioning them to online, you know, putting all the computer systems in place that I have familiarity with, kind of injecting that technology into them so that they can scale because they had, they had peaked about 4 years ago um and really couldn't grow any further because their systems were all very, very manual. So, what has happened over the past month is I had to take what was a 3 to 6 month plan and then like the span of 2 weeks, like computerize all their operations because they were all in the office, close quarters with lots of paper, um. Working with the public and that, and we had to give everybody laptops, send almost all the staff home so they work from home and then um they're in staffing, so they were doing uh interviews in person, they were doing paperwork, you know, applications in person, everything was in person. Now we had all their interviewers are at home, talking to people on the phone, doing video interviews, um, we had all of their applicant tracking was all Paper-based with files, so we've had to put in an applicant tracking system all online and their website was just pretty much a, you know, a staid website that said we, you know, we're an applicant or we're a hiring company and if you want to fill something out, call us on the phone or stop by and we had to redo the whole website. So all that happened in a month. Right, so that was just the only thing it was doing is saying, yeah, we're here. We're here. Here's our address. Stop by or give us a call. Yeah, and I, you know, I think that's a really important point because we work with a lot of small businesses, uh, with business owners who are thinking, you know, it's getting time to, you know, to retire to exit the company, to figure out what they're going to do and what we see with, especially with the smaller businesses, and we're talking probably. Businesses with fewer than 20 or 30 employees. And the big thing that's uh often holding them back from realizing the, the, the value that they built up over a number of years is often in their system, right, their systems and their processes are so far behind the times that, you know, the, the, the value of the company is really hurt by that. And so oftentimes we have to talk with business owners and say, well, you know, your company is not worth quite as much as you think it is because you just don't have the systems and processes in place to make it. To maximize the value to someone else, whether it be an outside buyer or even selling to the employees, selling to the ESOP, and I, I know you're a technology guy, but it, but it's almost more than just technology though too, right? Would you, would you agree with that? Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. Yeah, you, you have to have the systems and process in place and that, that was the plan was to come in, document their processes first in paper and make understand what they were doing so that we would then understand how we could do it um digitally. And mimic it digitally, but we had to skip that middle that middle plot point and just, you know, I had planned on just watching and learning and documenting what they were doing for a month or two so that we could then plan out what we're gonna do online and that all went out the window and we just started throwing computers at people and, and uh giving them technology like as fast as they could adopt it. So it was a whirlwind. They Uh, and it was really spoke to the power of the employee ownership that they are not employee owners yet, but you know, I came in and when we announced that they were selling the company to me, I told them exactly what my plan is, so they know that they are going to be owners of the company in the future. And, and also, you know, educate them on what an ESOP is that they don't, it's skin in the game, but it's not that they are on the hook if the company goes bankrupt, it's just like owning stock in a, you know, a public company. You own stock in the company, but they can't come after you, um, like a traditional business owner, as an employee owner. So it's a little different model that they have to understand so that they don't think that I'm just trying to sell this and move the liability to them that it's, there's a lot of upside to it. So everybody there has just worked tirelessly to learn these new systems, makes things happen, you know, work as hard as they can, support me, and this is all with me just coming in the door. This brand new person they've never met before. But the good thing that I had coming in the door is the history of my father having done an ESOP. I also have done an ESOP, and then, um, I, for the first two weeks of March before we had the, you know, social distancing and everything in place, I was able to take some of the employees from the staffing company. Over to my IT company and have them sit in on some of our great game of business meetings and forecasts and huddles so they could see how that operates so they understand this is the vision of where your company is going to be in the future and they were that brought, you know, brought that excitement back to the staffing companies so they could see it really can happen and this is what it's going to look like in the future. Yeah, I, I think that's a great point. I think it really goes to show the, the actual power that the employee ownership idea has and especially as, as we face uncertain times, this, you know, that we're going through currently. I think the employee ownership idea, the, the kind of ethic behind it. Provides a lot of benefit for companies that even though, you know, we're gonna be all going through a difficult period, I think that the employee ownership model provides uh distinct advantages for companies making it to the other side. And you, you, you saw that just even though they're not employee owners yet, the folks in that other company are still, you know, they're, they're seeing the, the road ahead. They're seeing the goal in front of them and they can work towards that and And kind of be a part of that process. So I think that's really cool. Yeah, if if I would have come in just as a typical business venture capitalist, private equity company that would have bought that staffing company, and then two weeks later, this whole pandemic, you know, starts affecting the operations. I don't know if I would have been able to get the commitment from the employees to stick in there and make this happen, you know, with what's going on. If they didn't know in the future there, you know, all the hard work, they're gonna be able to be part of this in the future. So, so, Tim, I think this is really cool. You know, I said it before, I'll say it again, but it's a really interesting way to think about the venture capital, uh, in a different model, and a different, uh, paradigm if you wish. Um, and so I'm really interested in kind of keeping tabs on how this project goes for you, uh, over the long term. So maybe over the next few months and years, we'll be checking in periodically, see how things are going, and see how you're progressing on this. Yeah, I look forward to that. I look forward to our next check-in where I can, it'll be a lot more boring uh because right now I have to, right, yes, after the last 30 days of is crazy I can't, I just, I can't imagine it being any more crazy than the last, the last month. Um, I hope things settle way down. And uh we can just continue, you know, improving the company and growing the organization on a regular clip and not have the pandemonium that or the pandemic and the pandemonium that we've had over the past month with all the changes that we've had to go through. Yeah, I'm right there with you. I thought you mixed the words pandemonium and pandemic there for a second but I think that's very both of them at the same time. Yeah, yeah, it's very, very descriptive of, of what's going on. So uh thanks again for joining us, Tim, and really appreciate it. Uh, stay well, be well, hope you and your folks are, are, are getting through this OK, and uh we'll be in touch, as I said, and uh thanks again. All right, thanks Chris. it. So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed the conversation with Tim Reddick of InTrust IT down in Cincinnati area. Hope you found it as interesting as I did, and we're certainly gonna keep, keep an eye on stuff and then see if we need to come back and revisit and see what Tim's doing and not just in his bigger plans, but see how In Trust is, uh, is doing and making it through. Uh, this whole process just like we all are. So one of the things before we close out, uh, for this episode is that say once again, you know, that we really are interested in in talking with employee owners, uh, and, uh, telling those stories. So again, please, uh, get in touch with us if you are interested in telling your story as Mike said at the Beginning that we'll have all our email addresses in the show notes so you can contact us. One of the other things I wanted to talk about, Mike, is that uh the day that we are recording this is the day after our thirty-fourth annual conference would have been held in Akron. And so it's because of the current crisis, of course, we couldn't do that live. We usually have upwards of 400 people coming to. Akron, Ohio for our conference in, uh, you know, 2020 some uh breakout sessions, great keynote, we had a great keynote scheduled with, with Jen Briggs, uh, so we couldn't run it, uh, uh, yesterday as we would have liked. We weren't able to see all, all those, uh, great faces of employee owners and the folks that support them, uh, coming in Akron as well. So, but we did want to mention that we do have it rescheduled. Uh, we, we did reschedule the the conference for August 20. Of this year and we're we're hoping uh that we're gonna be able to run it live. Things are very fluid. We're not sure how things are gonna go, uh, but just to let everyone know that we are, uh, in addition to kind of thinking about that live conference in August, we are also planning at the same time to go virtual should we need to do so with that conference. And so we, we just had a, a mic, right? We just had a. Staff meeting this morning about that, right? Yeah, we're pursuing the dual track option and we'll be playing it as safely as we can, right? I mean that was the big thing that came up was that we want everyone to be safe and so we are leaving the virtual option on the table. Yeah, for sure, I think that's foremost in our minds, right? We do not want to do anything that would put uh great employee owners, great service providers, and of course our own staff in harm's way in any way, shape, or form. So, so we are, as, as we just said, we are uh looking at the virtual conference as well. So we've got some great ideas, we, we mapped out some things, so. Either way, uh, no matter if we're in person or for virtual, I think it's gonna be a good show. And so just uh keep an eye out on our website and uh in your email inbox, uh, you'll be hearing from us as we progress through this process and, and keep an eye on developments and And uh we'll also be doing virtual programming from now until then as well. uh keep an eye out on our website for new virtual programming as well so anything else you wanna add for the folks out there, Mike, before we check out for this episode? Um, I think you covered it all, Chris. I'll just remind everyone out there that if you have a story you want to tell, please reach out to us. We'll have a contact information in the show notes and hopefully we can, we can get more stories like this out there for, for everyone to, to listen to, to learn from, and um hopefully, you know, use this uh podcast to build a little bit of community in this socially distanced world, which is Which is tough to do, but it's certainly a goal worth pursuing. Yeah, for sure. That's, that's, that was a big theme of of what we're gonna try to do with the conference, right? Uh, when, when we, when we run it in August. And so, uh, I want everyone to stay safe, stay healthy, keep everyone that you care about and your thoughts, and, uh, keep looking out for one another, and we'll see you, uh, next time for the Odors at Work podcast. Take care, Mike. See you, Chris.