Recruit, retain and reward with Employee Ownership

all right so i'd like to give just a little intro about myself in terms of who i am what i do here at project equity and um and then i'll pass it to donna to talk about herself introduce and um take us from there my name is miaka cochran i'm a senior business engagement and partnership manager here at project equity and i've been with the company just a little over two years about two and a half now and i came from the world of tech in the bay area where i like to say i was in the belly of the beast and really developed a passion actually for small businesses and the needs of independent businesses which are really the lifeblood of communities and face a lot of struggles particularly in areas like the bay area where the cost of living is so high and there can be a big challenge to recruit and retain employees and employee ownership is something that i've grown up around with my uncle being a founding member of one of the first cooperatively owned grocery stores in california in the 70s and my mother who was very active in supporting and giving patronage um to employee-owned businesses growing up so it was always something that i felt very strongly that this is something that's great for the community and for employees and i just feel so privileged to be able to to do this work with um with project equity to help get the word out about these business models and help businesses explore it so with that i will um pass it off to donna hi everybody i'm donna skye um and i'm also a business engagement and partnership manager here project equity um i've been with the company for a few years now um and i just feel really passionate about the work that we do i myself come from a business owning background i've owned a food manufacturing company for about 10 years in san francisco so you know working with supporting you know the dynamic business ownership um culture in the bay area something that's genuinely near and dear to my heart so um you know something else is that i i did not really know a lot about employee ownership prior to working with this organization so it's you know sort of the information that we're sharing today kind of comes from that like what do i wish i had known um about basically the power of employee ownership so next slide here so i mentioned we work with an organization called project equity um so who is project equity we are a local nonprofit we're based in oakland our headquarters is in oakland but we have a national presence so we work directly with um cities and states all over the countries and business service providers and organizations like the sbdc and most importantly directly with business owners like you um to help you you know secure your legacy and to transition to employee ownership if it's the right fit so starting from exploring if employee ownership's the right fit to to actually all the way through to the transition and we really believe in the power of this um that we'll we'll get into today but you know to really help secure your legacy um provide a path to exit if that's something you're interested in or to strengthen your business today also to keep these businesses rooted locally and to retain jobs um so our agenda is uh pretty robust um we but we will make sure to uh reserve lots of time for q a if you do have questions throughout please feel free to answer them in the chat if we don't answer them in real time we will make sure to either get to them at the end or to follow up with you but we'll go over a little bit about why employee ownership is is relevant and important right now um we'll talk about some of the benefits and how they work you know um you know we'll dig in there and how we can help you as a thought partner to explore if employee ownership is the right fit for you so what is employee ownership anyway you know you may hear the term um kind of interchangeably employee ownership worker owns co-op esop eot and but in general broad employee ownership is sort of a broad term to really define um and to say that a company is owned by a broad base of employees who work in the company and own it so they own the company that they work in um and you know they get to benefit from the financial performance of the company and also have a voice in the governance of the business and why is employee ownership relevant right now um so this is an important one so you know studies articles and more importantly all of you probably um have experienced some of the challenges uh i guess that's a light way to say the challenges of having a small business um in general and then specifically over the last few years um unique challenges have come up and something that often comes up is that recruiting and retaining workers um so being employee owned some of the one of the big benefits of that is that there's a much higher uh retention of workers in fact there's about 67 of of owners reported trying to hire folks um during the pandemic that this has come up so you know understanding that employee ownership can really provide sort of a solution to help that is is important also 92 percent of owners have reported not only having a challenge finding workers in general but finding workers that are qualified for the the positions that are open so some real challenges that happen in general in the in the bay area in northern california but even more so this has been exacerbated during the pandemic and many um again you know in line with the the great recession i mean great resignation that great recession um great um resignation is that you know there have been nationally over 50 million workers have quit their jobs since may 2021 alone so you know the pandemic started in 2020 but just in the last year this has been the highest rate on record um for folks leaving their jobs so you know the cost to replace workers as i'm sure all of you know and i know i knew firsthand and and having a manufacturing company to find and then train and replace workers it's really um big um pain point for a lot of businesses right now so um you know that's also coupled with the fact that there's almost you know over 11 million jobs job openings right now that need to be filled so next um so surprise surprise you know over half of the cfos say that employee turnover has has definitely increased in the last three years and um you know reque requests replacing i'm sorry um replacing those workers um really cost a significant amount um and you know as as we're sort of going through this if any of you you know have any kind of statements about your experience with this i'd just like to say you know feel free to add that in the group chat but you can also dm us directly if you want to on the on the chat um but another key fact is that you know 94 of employees would stay at their work if if you know employers were invested in their long-term learning um and you know we'll dig into a little bit about how there's a path to make that possible um so people perks and pay are not enough um what we're hearing is you know increasing wages alone particularly in the bay area again we have some of the highest wages in the country um but you know owners have reported um often that even having that that pay or having a great manager um has not really been able to solve this problem of attracting retaining and recruiting workers so with that um i will talk a little bit directly about the employee ownership benefits so what we found is that employee-owned companies these benefits can be really far-reaching so starting with the ability to be able to strengthen the company itself and you know these benefits are not just one time they're year over year and far-reaching so um employee-owned companies have reported having eight and a half percent higher profit margins year over year than their peers in the same industry and they also grow at a much higher rate and one example of this is a company that we worked with um for for a few years to help them with their transition it's a great company called a slice of new york they're located um in silicon valley area they're a um they have multiple pizza slice locations and they have had tremendous you know benefits from becoming employee owneds that have had great impact on their workers so in the years since they have become employee owned the 35 workers at a slice of new york have grown and generated enough profit to distribute and share in over 500 thousand dollars in patronage so this is huge to um you know food service workers you know particularly you know in this much needed economic and secured time having these extra funds for the workers and and their commitment to growing the company has really had a big impact on the company and its ability to generate those additional profits as well employee-owned firms were four times more likely to retain employees during the pandemic so four times you know we just sort of went over some of those kind of dismal statistics but four times more likely to retain their employees during the pandemic um so you know really uh important tool um for businesses and for the people who work there employee-owned companies also have significantly less layoffs year over year as you can see um you know this was even before the pandemic the number of layoffs in employee-owned companies was much lower and that has continued um into the present so you know sometimes two and three times less layoffs than their peers so i'd like to just talk a little bit about some specific um additional case examples of businesses that that we've worked directly with you know national data is great but what are those those real life stories or those real life examples around impact of being employee owned one particularly during the pandemic was california solar so um you know employee ownership is powerful tool during enormous normal business times but has really shined as a powerful business structure during the pandemic so for example california solar um like so many businesses they they did have to pause their business during the pandemic but as owners they all sort of came together to innovate while being furloughed because they were owners so instead of having one owner sort of you know at home during the pandemics or scratching their head what am i going to do how can i pivot all the employees who were workers worker owners came together and collectively um came up with a strategy to pivot and shifting their traditional work and solar to also offering generators during the pandemic and and you know they really have attributed this resilience to being employee owned and then another company that we've worked with and has recently transitioned to employee owned is the local butcher shop i don't know if any of you have heard of them if you have feel free um you know great company based in berkeley and they were able to actually transition to employee owned to a worker-owned cooperative during the pandemic so the local butcher shop was founded by a husband and wife team and they're really committed to staying rooted locally um and you know it was important for them to sort of in their to preserve the legacy of their company and to also find a path to exit so transitioning to employee owned gave them that path and it helped them to you know have the full weight of ownership off of their shoulders but to share it collectively with the the folks who who work in the business um and also keep their business um growing and and since the transition and throughout the pandemic their company has has grown and has been strengthened during some of the most challenging times um that many businesses have faced and then another key thing that employee ownership can be really um a powerful tool with is around selling a business or providing a path to an exit in succession planning um you know we live in the bay area and we often hear about these unicorns that sell for millions and even billions with a b of dollars um but those you know we often don't hear about those businesses that that don't sell um and that's partly because selling business isn't easy you know um over half of of business owners in the us are 55 years or older so they're going to be looking for sort of a path to exit and if when there's a lot of businesses for sale that could you know impact um there might be more businesses for sale than there are buyers so you know keeping in mind that um having a path or a strategy where you can sell your company to the people who actually work in it can be a really um powerful path to exit um also less than 30 of businesses now transition to families so in the past that was sort of a common way for current owners to exit they would you know transition or have what we call family transition where maybe a child or someone else in their family would take over that business but that's happening less and less now and only about 20 of businesses sell so you know a statistic that a lot of folks um myself included and many of my peers in the industry did not know you know that only about 20 of businesses sell so to dig in a little deeper about how this works i'm going to pass it back to miaka and he can can tell you more all right thank you so much donna and thank you all again for i see some great questions coming into chat and q a and just a reminder we will do some live q a at the end so i'm going to address one of the questions that came through the q a function and also if there's anything in the chat that makes sense we'll bring that up too so let's jump into how it actually works we've talked a lot about why employee ownership is important now what the advantage it can have and how it can be a way to how it can be a way to solve for challenges that businesses are having so let's talk about how it actually works first of all similarly to you know a buyout of other sorts if you're going through a business broker or other sort of private sale sale price is and deal terms are finalized this is an acquisition you as the owner can still stay on in the business and become an employee owner but the business itself is being sold to the employees once the transitioned employee-owned company is created so let's say you're creating a co-op that new entity actually takes out a loan to buy out the old entity so it's called a leveraged buyout if you're not familiar with that term meaning that the business itself is taking on the loan which it's paying off out of future revenue there's a lot of different reasons for that um but it creates a very safe way for the business to continue on in the future and allows for the owner to also be able to get paid for their work in the business and how the deal is structured if we want to kind of open the hood on that generally a portion of the sale is owner financed and that is in the form of a seller's note and what that means is that you are taking a percentage of business and saying okay for this percentage of the total amount i am willing to not get paid up front for that piece but i will get paid over time generally on a five to seven year timeline uh plus interest and so it's a way both to ensure that on for the financing side that they have some level of protection there um but also allows the owner to be able to play a portion of um you know over get a portion over time plus interest and so some owners are actually choosing to get creative and take a larger amount that they're seller financing to maximize some of their financial options including an earn out option where they could you know accept a lower today value but get a piece of additive revenue over time as well the remaining 50 to 77 on average is bank or lender financed and so this comes from what's called often a cdfi or it's a community development fund or other mission aligned funds we actually have a couple ourselves that we've developed that we can tap into to actually finance the transaction and then generally depending on the model if it's a cooperative for example the employees will have a buy-in amount but it's fairly nominal it can be a couple hundred dollars a few hundred dollars a thousand dollars often it represents a you know roughly five percent of the total sales price but that's just kind of a best practice it doesn't have to something to allow them to have a skin in the game but something that's still accessible now going from here broad base and play ownership models so when we talk about employee ownership of course we're talking about broad-based employee ownership because stock options are a form of employee ownership a management buyout is a form of employee ownership as well but those aren't the those are not the models that we work with we work with models that allow all employees to have a path to ownership and the three primary models that we work with in this space are the esops or employee stock ownership plan which are structured as as retirement plans very similarly to 401ks and they're even governed by the same body erisa on a federal level and so the profits of the business go to to a benefit that retirement plan employees have stock in and that's how the ownership takes place now a worker cooperative is a as an entity that is wholly owned by the employee owners who share in profits and they elect a board of directors which is the governing body in a cooperative and then the gov that governing body board of directors oversees management so one in cooperatives the board oversees management the management oversees operations and the employees and the employees then elect the board and employees can also serve on the board as well become elected uh and then finally last but not least is employee ownership trust or eot this is a very new model um in the united states there's actually less than 30 nationally but that number is rapidly rising because this is a model that was an adaptation of what's called a perpetual purpose trust utilized in the uk as now a form of employee ownership so it's highly customizable um that you can incorporate different elements whereas a worker-owned cooperative and an esop have things baked in that you can't change um and eot does have some customization and so really here the idea is to figure out what your goals are for yourself and for the future of your business and employees and work backwards from there so instead of kind of going through these options be like which is the best for me think about the future of your business and what you want and we can help you narrow down the options to figure out which model is going to best support the needs for you as the owner and the business now let's see if you were paying attention we're going to have a little bit of a employee ownership quiz so i invite you all to uh populate your answers in the chat and follow along to see how much you've picked up or already know about employee ownership so question one true or false accepting selling to employees requires accepting a lower selling price is that true or is that false any thoughts any ideas the answer is false yes you are correct dana that's false excellent oh tom and jessica all correct a fair sales price is established by debt capacity just like in a bank finance sale to an individual so it's going to be you know comparable to what a fair sales price could be on the open market generally that roughly you know falls within a certain range what it won't be is a strategic buyout similar to what donna says if somebody's out there to buy you up to close you down to get you off the market because your competitor they're probably going to offer more than than you know what the value of business is right but that's not aligned with sort of the mission and goals of what we're trying to do here so is it comparable to what you'd get from a private buyer in many cases if not most cases yes but it's not comparable to a strategic buyout now a next question is true or false employees will have to pay out of pocket to buy the business employees are going to have to take out loans or other financial you know other financial means to be able to pay for the business and if you were paying attention that's correct jessica again that's a no employees are not obligated to finance the transaction usually it is completed through a leveraged buyout so again the business itself is actually taking out a loan to pay out of for future revenue and often the employees will have a small contribution if it's a cooperative but it's not required for them so this is a way that that provides you know a path to make this happen without having a large group of employees having to kind of pull together and figure out how to actually come up with the funds to make it happen there are funds available to make it happen and we can tap into them for you now true or false selling owners can remain strategically involved after the transition once the owner is selling the business to the employees can they remain involved true or false that is very true excellent everyone i see everyone's getting this one right yeah selling owners have many options to stay involved in the business including in their original role if they are a gm or president or ceo or maybe shifting a role and focusing on you know something and sharing the load of management a little bit taking the opportunity as well as last but not least an opportunity to potentially serve on the board so really kind of going into retirement operationally but maintaining a board position for a few years to continue to provide guidance for that business and for that new management and leadership team now the last question i have for you is true or false all employees will be managing the business equally so you're transitioning to a cooperative where everyone is an owner the question is will all employees be managing the business equally true or false a very good question i see false question mark that is absolutely correct this is one of the key things that happens when people think about cooperatives is they think okay everyone is an owner they're going to have a vote so we're going to have to vote on everything anytime we need to buy a new stapler everyone's going to have to vote on it no that's not the case strong management layer is important to any business and there are ways to include open book management participatory management practices other things that you can customize and add in into employment model but operationally largely your business should not change you do have a governance layer which will you know in most cases be elected by the employee owners and that's the filter point that's the way to ensure that their voice is collectively represented in the business but you still need strong management to be able to execute and be nimble enough to not have everyone vote on whether they want you know like blue or purple coffee cups in the break room now let's get into a little bit about how we can actually make this happen so we've covered the benefits we've covered a little bit of how the deals work and you guys did great on the quiz so thank you all for your participation there now let's jump into actually how can we help you make this happen what i want to do is give you a picture and overview of the transition process so we work in a few different phases and so how we start is step one and that's exploration and so you're right on the cusp of that right now you're coming to a webinar learning about it and how we do that further is actually do free consultation with you we are thankfully a non-profit working on a national level and we have amazing funding partners to allow us to do this work with you to actually explore the fit of employee ownership and how it can be beneficial to you and give you an idea and give you feedback whether it's we estimate that it's viable once we get to that point where we can estimate yes this is viable it's highly likely to meet your needs and and also the needs of your business so to be able to ensure that you have a way to um you know the business itself is going to have what it needs to make it happen as well as is it going to meet your needs for the owner we do this then in a feasibility process where we would do three work streams we go through uh the financial feasibility so we're actually doing debt capacity analysis financial projections um to come up with what would be a range of recommended sales prices for you and employees to see based on different financing scenarios so use the owner have your sort of menu of options for what you can choose for different participation in seller financing you know various pieces if you want to maybe do a partial transition and only sell part of your business a portion a percentage of your business now and sell the rest later all those different things that you might want and then we do management uh transition needs so we'd outline the needs for you as the owner if you're leaving or wanting to adjust your roll can that be replaced internally does it need external replacement or a hybrid so maybe the roll is split up some of it is replaced internally and then a maybe a sort of downsized role is outsourced externally to replace to make sure your full skill set is replaced and then last and most important too is employee engagement so we're actually going to also give education to your employees about what this means gauge interest surface any questions and concerns address those so that at the end you all have a strong model of the businesses and playing entity what it will mean for you the business and employees for the future and what a potential sales price could be to get you to a decision point so this is really the bulk of the learning process so we're going to really get you to the point where you understand the model which model is going to fit how that works and what the future will look like for all involved after that point if you and the employees decide that this is something that you want to do we can offer you a transition plan so this is actually the design and implementation of the model and we continue on those three work streams so we work through the financial point developing the financing and collaboration with you how is the deal going to be structured and then play on business function all that point all those points management transition needs and then deeper employee engagement and training to prep and become employee owners at the end of that process we bring in the lawyer and the cpa to ensure that all the eyes are dotted all the t's are crossed and we finalized the deal and the owner gets paid for the portion that's financed by the financial institution and um and and a new employee-owned entity is born and you know we as as a non-profit have a lot of great collaborators in the space and so we work with other organizations that do the similar kind of work but i will highlight one of the things that's very unique about our work is our thrive program so post transition will actually stick with the company for up to two years for additional consulting advisory and guidance this can take the form often of sitting in board meetings if a board of directors is new and the company hasn't had that before we want to be there to help ensure that that's kicking off well that the board and management has a healthy working relationship and that's all going smoothly as well being involved with new employee owner onboarding um maybe the first time you're doing uh the the sort of patronage or profit sharing to the end of the year we can be available to be involved as the new entities is really going through this stuff in practice um not just in learning and that's how we work and i did see somebody pop in the question i want to address that somebody said they had an issue setting up a free consultation yes it's possible to email us and we will share our emails at the end to ensure that you have that as well and maybe donna if you want to share your email address in the in the chat just so people have that um so you know in terms of the feasibility kind of the double click on that this is this is really the the sort of bread and butter of what you need to get to the point of a decision um for the future of your business and you're going to learn what you what it's going to be to be employed on business what it's going to mean for you financially and really how it is all going to work and so as i said before we're going to conduct a debt capacity analysis to establish sale viability and a price ceiling sort of what's the maximum debt that this business can bear to pay off over time support initial employee engagement um you know often this will be definitely in a survey and employee survey but depending on the size and needs of the company maybe it's going to be a you know a process of doing a little open meeting altogether an open q a or or maybe we do um you know a separate meeting just with key sort of management people you know whatever's kind of needed and best for your business and then we want to understand any possible future management scenarios what are you wanting to do as the as the owner i worked with an owner who you know and talking to me she said you know i really do everything i have to have all these different hats but my bread and butter is i love sales and account management like that's what i did before i was a business owner and i just that gives me the most joy at work if i could just do sales and account management for the last you know five to ten years of my working life that would feel like semi-retirement to me even if it's full-time because at least i'm only putting 40 hours a week and not my usual 60 or 70. and so for her this was an opportunity to you know end her career strong doing the the core and the thing that she loves the most while still remaining connected to the business and benefiting as employee owner through profit sharing and other things so that's a possibility but that meant that her other roles and functions you need to do she needed to offset and get replaced elsewhere and so we worked with her to outline those and then as you get into design and implementation you have a blueprint for what you need there and then last is is sort of just an encompassing of all this packages packaging this all up into a straw model of employee ownership so you know exactly what it will look like as the planned entity in terms of readiness factors so the reality is that you know we have a colleague who would say if you see one business you've seen one business right like yes that there are things that are have commonalities across industries business size location but ultimately it's never going to be the same exercise we have to look at each business uniquely that being said here are some general broad readiness factors to consider for your business first of all is it a profitability if is it a profitable company there there needs to be some level of profitability in this company for this really to be effective in recruiting retaining and rewarding employees to ensure that the future of your business is strong and use that as a strategy so there has to be some level of profitability it doesn't need to be life-changing at the beginning but it needs to be something is is the is there a stable size and strong team so generally we recommend you know often about 10 plus employees as a starting point we've worked on smaller we've seen smaller that can definitely work but having about 10 and ultimately 15 or 20 employees it starts to become more viable the the larger you get because if people leave and other people come in there's still a core amount of people that that really keep the keep the business going and also in terms of strength of team how many team members how many employees have been there you know medium to long term more than one or two years maybe you know five years ten years or longer that really helps the viability of this as well and then you have the proven track record which is just a business that's been around you know you know a long time the longer the business is around the more financial history there is the easier it is to be able to secure financing to make these deals work for example and to that extent for financing you know there is flexible capital for businesses transitioning to employee ownership this is a shout out specifically for one um which is our employee ownership catalyst fund so in addition to our funds just to transition businesses we also have creative financing options so this is a way for businesses who maybe need more of a capital injection now and they are very interested in planning on transitioning to employee ownership but they're still stabilizing you know amidst or post pandemic and they need money to stabilize or to grow or bounce back this can be a way to basically get a a favorable loan now to then be able to actually transition in a couple years or at least a partial transition a couple years with some of the funds being potentially even forgivable so really great example of just some of them the money out there that's um that is available to help support businesses you know pre and post transition and during the transition as well so now we've finished our presentation thank you all for your engagement for your patience and for your great questions that you've you've provided we're going to get to the q a in just a minute but i want to make sure that you all see the link to join up so this is our general link we will share this for everyone but donna actually has offered to be able to connect directly with you all specifically who have attended this webinar and so regardless if you have just curiosity and you want to learn more um if you are very serious about this and are wanting to get you know deep feedback on how to measure viability how to make sure you know that this is a good option you know wherever you are in the spectrum we'd love to talk with you because we're here to be your employee ownership navigator and get you to know um you know what you need to know to understand the models understand the strategies and estimate viability for how likely this is going to be able to meet up with your goals and be a strong option for the future of the business and employees of course um so you know we have uh one question in the chat um we'll get to um but we also will invite people to you know raise your hand if you want to get unmuted and answer ask your question live we'd be happy to do that but just make sure you capture this contact information right here it's donna project dot uh whoops let me go back donna project equity.org and then donna has also provided her direct booking link so you can book you can book a consultation directly with her through that link but if that doesn't work feel free to email her and we'll get started so i just want to say thank you again to norcal sbdc network for partnering with us and allowing us to be able to host this wonderful presentation and without further ado let's get into some q and a so if you have burning questions go ahead and answer ask them in the q a function ideally or chat or raise your hand if you want to ask it live so we'll start with the couple questions that we have and then as new questions come up we'll kind of just take them popcorn style uh for the last um the last bit of our time here today so um i think this is this is a really good question that um oh there's a great one in the in in the in the in the chat right now i'll get to in a second but the first one is from dana is uh looking interested for uh taking a class or course about how to set up a co-op business um do we have any recommendations so there that's a very good question there are tons of resources we actually do have some partners that we can get you connected to if you're looking to get a class especially if you don't have a business already if you're looking to establish a new cooperative that's not what we do but we can get you connected so definitely email us and we want to learn more about what your needs are before we can you know refer you out but the other thing i will say is that our feasibility study is also designed to educate we are educators and so we don't take the form of classes but through our exploration process and free consultation we want we want to help you learn about this so please you know we'd love to speak with you and help you learn about cooperative business how to set it up um what you should consider before you do so and really get you to understand the model so that you can make a good decision in terms of moving forward with a co-op or maybe a different model you know we we often come have people come to us with a certain model in mind and through discussions and sort of understanding strategies and goals they actually shift and then decide to go with a different model so we've had people come to us saying i want an esop and then through discussion and work do i actually a co-op is going to be better for us and likewise people come they're like oh i want to co-op oh actually an eot may be better so um great so uh going on from there uh we have another question that that came up to was case studies on uh management uh management models and how they compare donna do you have thoughts you want to share on that one and you're on mute um yeah i mean there's there's different types of uh levels of engagement from the workers when companies become employee um you know some companies uh you know i know miyaka said we wouldn't want you to you know change your business model where now there's a lot of time being spent on whether you have pink or purple cups in in in the lunch room so so that's not uh what we're talking about you know that's would just not be um wise business practice but they're uh you know some companies choose uh when they're designing their new entity to have a higher level of engagement from more of the employee owners than others so you know we don't want to broke we don't want to break what isn't broken right so if your management style has has worked really well for the company great but if you'd like to sort of shift to having higher engagement in the decision-making process that could be designed into um the operating agreement or bylaws of the new organization there are you know there's one example in particular namaste solar that's a company that is a very very successful solar company and they have they're a little bit on the higher engagement side for their their workforce in making sort of larger decisions than some and then there are organizations that have really kind of kept more of a sort of a more typical of what you would think of in terms of managing day-to-day decisions so we do have those examples and i can i know i sent um i shared the link for the case studies uh in the chat i can do it again that has some examples of these different businesses yeah great um great answer there donna and just also kind of goes to the fact that we're happy to share materials there's a lot out there so if we understand more specifically what you're wanting to understand or sort of you know get to the point of conclusion on we can help direct you there so so you know drop drop us an email and donna or i can can certainly help you um help get direct you there and it's true we don't want to um we don't want to change what's not broken right but there's lots of fun ways you can do employee advisory boards um other ways open book management participatory management a lot of tools there and you know some businesses kind of will choose to do stuff like that as more of a phase two you know so you say let's set up employee ownership as a cooperative let's go ahead and um you know set up this function and profit sharing and governance layer and then we'll kind of set a goal of maybe in one to two years after that we'll we'll try out some new you know management styles or sort of you know way deeper ways of engagement you know so i know the slice of new york pizza set up you know kind of small micro teams which were people who were um you know focus on different elements so they had a team that was like okay we're all what we're gonna do is just dive into you know cleaning and maintenance and like how do we clean and maintain our equipment and restaurant here and are ways that we can improve that and so they were a cross departmental team that really kind of came together to problem solve on that or kind of like a tiger team as i think that was uh started with nasa with the apollo 11 situation back back in the day so next question is why is winco so great or how is winco so great so for those of you don't know winco is a is one of the largest esops in the country at the um if i if i am correct um and they are a um a bit of like similar to a bit of a costco um they're kind of a bulk um almost wholesale type of business but they don't require membership um to be a part of it um and their employee owned in the form of an esop and they really are amazing i know when i went to college winco was everything for me they're really fantastic store and it's one of an exam and it's an example i think of a really successful esop because i know that when i go into a winco all the employees just have this sort of brightness and engagement about them that you don't always get right um people seem to take pride in their work and have a level of sort of engagement and helpfulness people asking me how i'm doing you know employees just in passing and things like that and it just kind of has a different vibe and i find that common in my experiences as a customer there um so the next question is in regards to the feasibility can you give us a little bit more information about what it looks like to evaluate the employee engagement portion yes so this um uh portion specifically really is bespoke to your individual company and the employee base and your culture so we need to work with you to understand what's best so some businesses like to bring in and it makes sense to bring in employees into the conversation early because the owner is very open and transparent about this type of stuff others they're like no i as the owner want to wait two weeks see a sales price and management transition kind of pieces before we even talk to the employees because i don't want to get their hopes up if this isn't going to sort of meet my needs that's fine too and what we almost always do is a survey as a part of it so it's a questionnaire to get questions concerns etc but in addition to that there is also um there's also ways that we can engage them in terms of education right so we'll give materials for them to understand if we're looking at a cooperative or an eot or an esop to make sure that they understand and it's you know it's it's common for uh employees to come up with concerns initially and it's often because they don't necessarily have all the information that they need so for example you know you have an employee who says uh i don't want to be an employee owner like i see all the stress and all this extra work the owner has to do i don't want to deal with that i just want to like show up and do my work and work well but then once they realize that their role isn't going to change at the company necessarily but they're going to be able to have a little bit more of a voice in the business and they're going to get profit sharing it's a lot of benefit and a lot of value for not a lot of lift and also not a lot of risk too um in terms of their own personal investment in the business and so once they kind of understand those pieces um often there's a lot of support for employee ownership um you know and you don't need full participation you don't need a hundred percent of people to join in you just need a healthy percentage of the business of of the workforce to be able to um participate so again in regards to your question it's bespoke it's going to be unique to your business and it's something that we need to kind of work out with you in terms of what's going to be what engagement is going to work best in the feasibility um so another question here is uh do you all ever need grant support um yeah great information um we're always looking for for for new collaborators and connections and so if that's something you have a connection for definitely you know email us if you if you have connections to other people you know the artwork would be interesting to always love introductions so so happy to do that um well go ahead donna we have one more miaka with from shannon with regards to feasibility can you give a little more information about what it looks like to evaluate the employee engagement portion did you answer that one yes yeah i i i think you're answering another question but i just i just answered that one okay um yeah but um you know again if you guys have follow-ups if you have any additional questions we have a couple more minutes um but happy to also you know we'd love to speak with you um so regardless of where you are in your journey whether you're just curious and interested or you're very serious and wanting to get connected to to resources and information to learn and kind of get you to that decision point where you say yes or no this is going to be the direction for me and my company we'd love to hear from you so i want to give a huge thank you to the norcal sbdc it's been a great partner with us and supporting our work in california and for those of you not in california we work nationally so don't worry uh please please sign up for a consultation a conversation a chat um and we we'd love to connect with you and also thank you so much donna uh a wonderful co-presenter and and amazing colleague and i really do hope you all take advantage of donna's offer to be able to connect directly um she has a wealth of experience and it's just really fantastic so i think you you really have a great opportunity to be able to connect with her and i and i really hope you do all right and with that i think we will stop sharing to say a final goodbye so thank you all any final thoughts donna that you'd like to to share no just i'm excited to to speak with you all and learn more about your business and interest in employee ownership