Why Nina Hale chose employee ownership

[Music] i started my business in 2005 and i started as a single consultant for internet marketing for digital marketing and my focus at the time had was and the company still remains completely focused on driving revenue from online so we did branding but everything was always a measurable amount to what money are our clients making so we worked with a variety of clients all over different industries creating and executing digital sales and marketing plans and i founded the company in 2005 i resisted hiring for a couple of years because i was so afraid of taking care of people and having people who a lot of their livelihood was going to be dependent upon the work that i also did and but i had such amazing clients that i just kept wanting to add more people so that we could take care of these great clients so every year we grew by about 12 people by the time that 2013 2012 came about we had about 45 employees and we at that point i was starting to think about what was my future going to be they always sort of say in my different business groups if you don't have an exit strategy you don't have a strategy so i really started thinking about what my exit might be in the future and and how i would be able to maintain various things that had become very important to me so anyways what happened was that by i initiated an esop which we will talk about shortly and by the end of 2019 i retired completely from the agency which is now called collective measures [Music] i put a lot of time into the business huge amount of hours long long time a lot of pressure about taking care of all of my employees taking care of all of my clients and i had there was a lot of stored value in the company that was there and i wanted to make sure that i had a plan in the future so that i could take out some of that stored value in the company and really reap some of the money that that had been created from my efforts [Music] i really did look at selling the company and what that would look like i met with a couple of brokers to get a sense of what it might look like so that would have been a strategic sale to another agency or similar holding company investment firm and i i did really look at that and i thought about what those options might be um for selling the company [Music] so here this agency is named after me right i am this brand and but it was so much more than me as i said by the time we sold the company there were 45 employees we had clients who i had never met i had never worked on their accounts so the idea of selling the company and taking all of that value for myself just really didn't seem right it didn't seem like the right thing to do when there were so many other people who had had such an incredible impact on the growth and the success of uh for their clients and thus for the agency [Music] so what the esop means to our employees today is clear understanding of their importance in the company and that it is way more than just saying you're a big part of the company you're so important it's actually putting as we say sort of cash on the barrel head it is saying you are such an important part of what this agency and what this company is that we're going to make you an owner of this company and so we want you to stay here we value you so much that we want you to stay at this company we want you to contribute to this company and we want you to feel the values so strongly that that you are part of the growth of the company and that we are providing a long-term financial uh reward and bonus for you and i think that that really makes people very excited about what they are performing and how they interact with our clients and it becomes more than just you know this job on the way to another job it becomes something that they really deeply care about improving and being a part of the strategic initiatives the quality of what they're doing and so it's been this incredible team effort and it really does become about the team much more than about specific individuals who may run the company but then also reap all of the awards or rewards [Music] what i wish i had known when i had decided to do an esop or what i would tell nina 2013 nina trying to decide whether or not to do this is to really be aware of what my goals are are my goals financial and are my goals making an easy transaction are my goals to dictate my own exit because if you sell to another company you you know you're tied into what the company wants from you usually and so you have to determine if you create an esop you can dictate your own exit and exactly what the terms of that exit are i would also tell myself to really make sure that that i'm not doing it a hundred percent to be a hero for my employees because when it comes down to it there are a lot of different ways which our organization and then ceo really will help people make these decisions on there's a lot of different ways to reward your employees so you have to make sure that the esop is one of those different ways that seems to really make sense for you i'm incredibly glad that i did an esop and i know that my employees are incredibly glad about it as well [Music] employee ownership is absolutely fantastic for businesses in minnesota now i say this as a died in the wool minnesotan loyal to the core to our amazing northern state we really care about each other in minnesota in a way that i think goes so far beyond and esops really really are about creating wealth and opportunities for everyone who is working there so an esop is an especially wonderful vehicle for employee for a business structure for a company in minnesota because you are keeping the business within minnesota and you are directly impacting the long-term welfare of your fellow minnesotans [Music] you