EP18 - Indiana Jones - Will the ESOP Make A Difference For Your Employees

This episode uses the classic film, Indiana Jones, as our feature film. The podcast utilizes this retro film as an example of something that never goes out of style-just like business owners helping their employees! The question the podcast discusses is if an ESOP is the best option for your company and people? This is a common question on anyone’s journey to an ESOP. The podcast attempts to help listeners asses where they are in company development of employee engagement. 

Transcript

[0:09] Hey everyone this is journey to an ESOP and Beyond podcast where we talk about Employee Stock ownership plans, and how they work and all sorts of things to help you figure out is this even a right option for you is this even something that, you might want to consider for those that are new to the podcast thank you for for listening in today, uh we have a website called journey to an esop.com that you can go to and get more information um on other topics and other interviews we've had so you can expand your knowledge, of esops and just make sure that you've got some a great resource here for your, education as well as potentially new questions or things that you might want to ask what you can use our contact us um form in the website, that will be helpful to interact with us as we go for those that are continuing on this journey to an ESOP with us thanks again we're going to start.

[1:03] Music.

[1:12] Thethe. Is something that man was not meant to disturbfor itso you might recognize this. Um I'm shooting back to 1981 and 1 of the things I I've been experiencing just in the summer of 20125 is. The movies in the summertimeare terrible. For the most part right I could tell you what 1 Movie I liked this year but so far but it's terrible like it used to be that they would they would create a lot of cool movies a lot of new ideas and whatnot but now it's just a remake of everything. Um so that's just me being a little critical um sorry but at the same time I wanted to come back to a classic Raiders of Lost Ark Indiana Jones and the scene here is just. They're negotiating for the release of the girl um they've got the the ark at this point this is the the kind of the wrap up of the meeting of the of the movie and.

[2:25] Um as we go back into the movie a little bit um 1 of the cool cool scenes about Raiders of Lost Ark, is that there's this this metal Medallion that that takes forever to get, and whoever has it then they can kind of put it on the staff and then this they can go down into the tomb um and basically as the light shines on as the sunlight shines into the tomb. At this specific angle.

[2:53] It lights up this this map of a 3D map on the ground and it shows exactly where the the treasure is so he. Uh Indiana Jones Harrison Ford uses this in order to kind of find it now um so that made me think of the move the ESOP topic today for, what will move, the dial you know so as you think about the ESOP um as a movie itself as the as the sun is moving the dial to show us and it what what's so cool about this scene again I'm just kind of describing it today.

[3:28] Is that it it illuminates the um and almost magically way like in the movie it illuminates the the direction that that they need to go to find the actual treasure so, all that being said I mean most people probably have seen this movie a million times and this was the very beginning so there's a million Indiana Jones I I can't tell you I watched the most recent 1, but I like the idea of of of this because it connects back to the idea will the question here is for those that are thinking about an ESOP will this move the dial. For your company you know specifically will this move the dial for your employees, and I wanted to spend a little time talking about the employees today we haven't done a lot that this year in thinking about that and I part of this is just because I've gotten a lot of questions about, will this even make any I had you know 1 company this year but it won't make any difference to my people my people are too young they don't really care about you know, um their future retirements they just want, more money to spend on whatever and so they're not this is not going to move them I mean having a bigger retirement plan you know the the idea is is it's not going to move them in that sense of moving.

[4:41] Um engagement or we'll call actively engaged Workforce or moving them towards stronger retention or stronger you know ultimately the incentive to help, um promote and build the business and the value of the business as we as time goes on and so, so part of this is is difficult question to answer for every company right because in the reason this is such a difficult question. Um that being will this move the dial will this help me people to to have reasons to just dig in and stick stick around and and, work harder or work smarter and make this business stronger as time goes on is because every business has just like every person has its own culture and its own personality.

[5:25] And so I want to kind of tackle this as we go um on a couple different levels and talk about. Some things that are justmaybe maybe within within the idea of employee retention and incentive and like the idea of Engagement itself. As areas that you may may or think about or may not think about and the value here would be to be maybe re um assess where you are with all those elements and it may be, not necessarily to prove out there's an ESOP work for you, does this even happen in your company are these things happening and so um so that's what we're going to do today it's going to be um more employee Centric more employee focused, um but it definitely an area when you think about as an ESOP right for you a question um is do I even keep going through all of these, conversations with these ESOP people to work through this if it's not going to be something that's going to help my people get to where they want to go I thought.

[6:23] Music.

[6:33] As I said at the beginning go to our website journey to an ESOP calm if you know somebody that's thinking about an ESOP and you think this is a good podcast, you know certainly flip it over send them an invite um you know share the file with them that's cool um that's always helpful if you, um like the podcast please rate and review the podcast it's always helpful to get some current um reviews as people are looking for different resources um as that stands out for for some people. And so with that um thank you again for listening today and we're looking forward to continuing on this this journey.

[7:09] So 1 of the things I'll I'll start with is as we think about this topic. Is the idea behind what an ESOP is and what a ESOP is not. And 1 of the 1 of the problems I have in the ESOP World itself in general is sometimes there's just this. This assumption that hey transition your business to an employee owned company become an ESOP company and all of your problems will be solved.

[7:40] I mean we know that that's not true right I mean as we think about this and this is this is a criticism I have over the industry, that maybe maybe assumes too many things and 1 of the things I would tell somebody that's evaluating an ESOP whatever stage they're in I mean it might be at the very beginning conceptually it might be that they've worked through some analysis, um like we would go through some valuation analysis some feasibility analysis we would go through some the warrant and SAR analysis but meanwhile as we talk about those things a lot of them are very a lot of those analyses and business models that we're creating.

[8:15] Are very focused and they should be to be honest with you on on does this work for the shareholders. And how does that actually work in terms of the shareholders value how they get their money back and is the company able to make sure that it's got the the cash flow necessary to pay off all ESOP, um you know leverage debt when you think about those kind of things that's super important and we need to do at the front end meanwhile in the background even conceptually there needs to be conversations around, will this move the dial for your people and some of that as we Ina engage with a client on those things we're we're we're assessing our own our own level of like, where what is your culture you know we're asking that question either Maybe, specifically or even behind some of the questions we're asking related to understanding the business better the business model better, so certain things like hey how many how many people do you have how many offices do you have how many um how much remote Workforce do you have versus non remote Workforce.

[9:16] Um what are some of the things that you currently do in your business to motivate people what is your what's your current culture like um do you celebrate victories how do you do that you know um is there a process that you go through, to communicate um on a structured process with your employees. How does it what does that look like is there some of the new things that we've seen in the last couple years is there, a 360 program where people are evaluating everybody um above and below um what's what's happening with that evaluation process how is communication done in your company is it, through, ongoing you know uh updates or what's the variety of communication that the company is engaged with um relative to as a is it an all all Hands-On meeting does everybody get together in person. Um how many times.

[10:08] A year did they do that or do they do what kind of 1 major thing a year um are there things that they do that are very unique to them like in terms of rewarding people, um how do you connect, and some of the some of the things that employees think about today is what is the work life balance how do you manage that question like if your employees were asked individually what would they say about all of the experiences they have in the company so so a lot of that as I as I say all those things kind of creates the, the assessment and a sense like assessing where what your culture is where you are in your, goals of your culture so 1 thing that's true about employee culture isthat it's never going to be like your your. Completed done right it's going to be this this continual process of. Of wanting to make sure that you're always working on it so it's this continuous improvement process of building and maintaining a culture.

[11:10] So when we know that I mean these this kind of basic stuff but so as we think about what culture is and we think about what esops are 1 1 of theprobably the most. Standardized comments in the ESOP world is like hey an ESOP isn't going to create a culture, and a play stock ownership plan itself is going to enhance an a culture now if you have a really good culture already. Then that will enhance that good culture right if you have a really bad culture. It's not going to fix the bad culture it may bring a tool in place to use but there's going to need to be work done on this area.

[11:49] The longer that I live on planet Earth the longer I have worked The more I've seen this becoming. Uh in business itself as becoming 1 of the major. Top issues for most companies how do I keep my people how do I engage them how do I incent them how do I retain them. Um for a lot of different reasons and not to go into a lot of those things but I do think it's important to understand that as time goes on.

[12:18] Your employees have just so many more options than they did before in a sense they they their mindset their Paradigm of work has changed right and so you could do a whole conversation and podcast around the Paradigm of the new employee the new, um you know whether it's the millennial or the Gen Z or who are as people come into the workforce there's definitely a a difference in what they have and I can say that.

[12:47] For some businesses this has become, awhole level of complexity that they weren't planning on how do I how do I how do I leverage this and some people probably are thinking I'm not going to worry about it because AI is going to take over those jobs and, I just read something Microsoft is going to lay off like 6,000 people because of um their their Ai and what they're doing with it so. I'm just going to tell you whatever EI AI does in the future, it doesn't it's never going to you're never going to like just say well I don't need anybody just forget it who cares so. Culture itself and esops are re are relevant now and they're going to be relevant in the future AI is a tool that will make everything more efficient within a company and hopefully um make it more profitable. But the need for people whether they're not doing the same thing they were doing before the need for people is going to be there and as long as we have people in organization we're going to have to be thinking about this this concept so. Um so having said that in ESOP is not this like quick get you know fix every problem that you have in your company in fact it can create some problems um in that now you have an an additional layer of work that has to be done to communicate this effectively you got this list of compliance items so keep all those parts and pieces in mind right so it's not it can be like hey this is going to actually add some some work to the schedule for people to do that, now.

[14:14] Keeping all keeping all those things into into check so I'm not just speaking oh I'll just pull these up and or we're good to go right so keep all those things in a check, the main thing I wanted to start with is the idea that as we as we think about our enhancing our culture using an employee owned program Employee Stock ownership program. Um the value of that though and let me let me get on that side is that there's nothing like offering someone.

[14:43] The opportunity as an employeeto participate and reap the benefits of the value they create as an employee.

[14:53] Becauseat the end of the day the longer the esops go the more and more value they're going to see they have individually. Been created and appreciated I'm making a big assumption here and the assumption is that the the actual per share value of the ESOP is going up in the future. Now I'm bullish on the value of a of a per share value of of ESOP shares in a retirement plan going up in the future. Based on the experience I have had with companies that have gone converted to ESOP. I'm bullish on that that is going to appreciate the the main reason is is because the way that that esops are structured, have 2 built-in components that certainly helped the increase in per share value the first component as we talked about and 1 of the episodes recently was the idea that the IRS is providing a tax benefit to the company.

[15:48] That's per that's Arielle that's permanent like as long as the company's an ESOP they're going to keep that up so there's a guaranteed additional cash flow. That the company is going to be able to use to increase the value now the the the usage of that money obviously the usage of that cash flow is a direct um.

[16:06] Decision of the company's ownership. In management and ultimately the board of directors and now that money is used but as long as it's also used to pay off debt we're also going to ensure, that the as the debt comes off the company based on the transaction the ESOP transaction the value of the company is going to go up. Now why is this so important because because as we think about the the ESOP being a cultural enhancement to the company. As we start these conversations and so. Um let me digress for a second 1 of the things that people ask a lot of is what should I have the conversation with my employees if we're going to do an ESOP. And the answer to that question is always going to vary, um most of the time we're all going to in the ESOP World quote unquote professionals are all going to say relatively the same thing wait until your sub closest so that you know exactly what you're talking about and you don't make any promises you can't keep and you haven't put yourself in a corner to do something that you may not want to do in the end based on, whatever changes in the business right you've lost a big customer who knows what happens in the process of doing your ESOP.

[17:13] So having said that um coming back to the idea of when you do communicate it the value of being able to show people that you're going to have, as an employee you're going to have a stake in the value of what's increasing in the future based on the, that not only your compensation you're getting you're getting paid for the value you create there but you're getting this this value that's created in your retirement plan um and that's something you're able to lock in on.

[17:41] Invest into build up until you leave the company and retire and pull that out and the reason this is a very successful proposition for them, is the appreciation of smaller types of Company stock. Has a higher likelihood of appreciating much greater than a general Diversified flow on k retirement plan.

[18:05] So that you know 2 things their number 1 statistics are going to show over and over and over again that that there's a a stronger um retirement plan. The non- ESOP companies and I think the the statistics something around 2 and a half times the value of a just a normal 401K plan. Secondly connecting back to like you you have no control over the stock market you have no control in your 401k all you can do is diversify hope do long-term average cost buying hope for the best at the end when you actually do retire hopefully everything's up.

[18:41] So the the value here for the for the employee is thatthey get tosorry about that.

[18:51] They get to participate in this as time goes on and compound the value going forward and connect that back to what they do for the company and culturally speaking there's a great opportunity to connect back to things in your business that actually helps them so. So those are going to be some some foundational things I think that are important to consider when you're thinking about your um communication strategy around your ESOP.

[19:19] Now 1 of the things about these are just things to think about topically as we go into culture but the the first thing is this idea that um. Your how you communicate with your people is it is such a direct part and it's a very general thing to say like how do you communicate with your people um it's a very generalized thing to say around um. Theum how do you communicate the value of the ESOP plan itself and so some things here that are just going to be um. Ideas that you might have already done but just things that might be helpful under that umbrella of communication would be you know sharing as you guys build as you build your business sharing feedback how how often should you share that feedback, how often should you do 1 in 1 on 1 check-in meetings with your people.

[20:10] Um feedback sometimes can be you know literally every every week or a few times a week depending on your managerial structure I have some, clients that have a a high level of manager ratio with their people so that no manager has more than 6 to 8 people. Um so that they can give ongoing feedback and have a very strong level of communication other organizations have a much flatter structure so there's less and less of that, um so it's a matter of being creative as well in those in those types of communication strategy so you know creative communication can be, things about you know using technology more to um, Spirit some things that can just be kind of systemic in the business so that how often you know do you do a slack message um how often do you use some of some of the other programs that are available, um that would be super helpful to build out these things these types of things what I what I have found in my experience is that.

[21:10] The right HR person in a company can make a world of difference and that person based on their training, of course their job is to be helping the company not get into a compliance issue but I also think that their job is to lead the organization. In this platform of communication and really Spirit um the companies um and Foster the company's culture in using all these tools, um some of the things that they may they may recommend again this might be um is your company grows this might be an expanded um.

[21:46] Responsibility amongst other people but helping to kind of make sure that the company has a way to truly listen to the employees take that information in and use that now that can be in the form of like. You know things like surveys and things like that where you can just continue to ask questions incorporate those questions into ongoing responses so that there's always this flow of of communication kind of throughout the organization. Um but I think that the the the hard part about talking about this part of it is that there's so many different ways to go um it does take a lot of work. And the but there is a direct correlationfor the companies that have a very solid communication processes.

[22:36] Policies approaches to this that um. With the correlation of 6 of companies being very successful at leveraging the value of employees and their contribution. In that environment when we put an employee stock ownership plan on top of that what we're giving the the individuals that are that are in charge of this type of communication is we're giving them some tools. To provide a direct um. Enhancement to what's happening and 1 of the things about this that has to be said that has you know been said many different ways is that the don't oversell the ESOP don't oversell this as I mean the first thing is it's not a short-term plan it's a long-term Benefit Plan, that affects your employees the longer they're there the more value potentially they're going to have based on, the number of shares are going to invest in or or be allocated each year and then ultimately as a vest in those shares um the compound nature of adding shares every year. And the the nature of the value of the business going up is going to be a great way for them to track their success in the organization and then be, um ultimately ambassadors to the rest of the people that says yeah this has been phenomenal for me and my family because this is really helped us expand our. Strength is and wealth for future for the future retirement.

[23:58] Now shifting from communication um itself 1 of the things I was going to touch on is kind of a, current Trend with a lot of companies that is how they allow for flexible work schedules and some of this has just kind of. Evolved in a sense in company culture and so.

[24:19] Um 1 of the things that that has been analyzed is this idea that there's there's a much more productive, um and a better focus with with more flexible work schedules now the combination of this and say remote work environment, is really um I'm not basically arguing for any of these things by the way I'm just kind of giving you what we're seeing a lot of and and um across the C country with different companies doing different things. Um

[24:49] I know that certain levels of talent are difficult to find sometimes and allowing somebody that is maybe a higher value type of employee that's coming in with, direct experience and has and somebody even really just targeting as uh Talent acquisition. May be easier if you have a flexible schedule around what what's happening in their life it could be that they could plug in remotely and work from anywhere in the country, um I will say that the other side of the coin with the remote work environments has been um again this is opinionated and this is just my opinion or my. Um what I can take from other companies is that. It is also difficult to have remote people in general and build a strong business so we are seeing a lot more people come back to the office more full-time schedules or maybe even a remote schedule or some type of hybrid remote schedule around that um and it has to work for everybody but I think in general there was like this this pendulum going from, everybody was remote after coid now it's swinging back the other way where we're seeing a lot more people in the office.

[26:00] But 1 of the positives of this is I think that people are seeing that a different Paradigm of you know what the old traditionalists were doing um say the big the Baby Boomers that ran all the businesses moving those into the xers and how they thought about things I think there's a paradigm shift too about like there's a lot of ways to do this and I've seen some companies do this extremely successful, but I think part of part of 1 of the key ingredients of this um is going to be the front-end interview process.

[26:33] When you do hire somebody and really asking a lot of questions to qualify them for this for this type of organization or culture where you have a lot more flexible type of schedules and working um around their issues right, the other side of it is is that you don't really know until you know and there's other I've seen other policies and processes around, hey we're going to give you 90 days if this is I'm going to be we're going to be super honest with you if it's not working, we're not going to stay with this with this structure um because you're you don't really know until the person really gets into it but the idea behind this is that you can take the flexible work schedule. For those that are working in an ESOP the the general rule is that they have to be working more than a thousand hours a year. To be eligible for the ESOP so as long as they hit that they can be part of the ESOP and you can now reconnect them back to employee ownership as part of the benefit not only being flexible but also um. Being a a participant in the building and the Val the value creation of the business.

[27:39] The next car category here that I wanted to kind of dig into and I had kind of something to do with this whole AI business that we've been kicking around a little bit is this like just in general how do we use technology more in our companies and I think that's something that. Um is can is continually improving so you know there are certain things that that are being um put forth from a software in terms of how do you how do you do this with software in terms of getting more and more information from people so so relative to that to measure Employee Engagement they're going to have things like, employee net promoter scores the 3 6 0, managing with technology rewards and recognition programs how does that actually work um with relative to incentive comp plans so some of this is is so was so manual in terms of man of managing all of those types of things. Um kind of like when you think about where I'm at with this is this idea that our. Contact management systems for our contact our relationship Management Systems the CRM systems for customer and data right is there in the same thing like with Salesforce and different programs like that, what we're seeing is to the trend of using a lot more software and Technology to manage employees especially as the company grows larger now.

[29:05] What this does is it also helps to um. Use these systems to get the data and manage the company better from an employee perspective it allows companies to, um expand geographically again back to the remote Workforce maybe they don't have an office there but they need a person in that Marketplace um and it allows them to kind of have a a. Um a smaller communication style where they can continue automating those types of processes and procedures.

[29:36] The reality is a lot of the younger people are just super comfortable with technology anyways so if you're not incorporating this in in your initiatives I think you really need to think about how you're using technology um in building out the um. The company's platform of communication and leveraging your culture throughout technology that way.

[29:58] Another area to think about is and this is kind of something that happens with some types of sometimes when we think about rolling the. ESOPout to the keep key people first and then the employees later right, um 1 of the things that's on everybody's mind I think in general and just take take people that I were or I would just kind of refer to them as high performers in your organization is. 1 thing they're they're always going to be thinking about whether they're very vocal about this or not is what's what's my next step. What's in it for me next like what does that mean for me and my family how do I advance.

[30:38] And so part of this is is as the as we think about the ESOP um and conversation around the ESOP is like this is only, um a benefit to help improve your your overall retirement plan. But the company still is going to have to be very present when it comes to what is their training and development platforms. So and part of and part of this is even a a a risk element in the valuation side so as we think about.

[31:09] 1 of the limitations of of growing a business and and this can be. Kind of true for a lot of companies as I say this right you might have heard this before it's almost cliche now I can only grow as much as I can get the people to you know to do the work right so the idea is that there's a limitation or a cap, and the amount of growth so if you're in a in an industry that's just growing crazy but you can'tyou can't um. Um use that growth in your business Revenue model because you can only hit certain levels of of of growth because you're limited by the amount of people that you have. Um what this does is you build out your training and development Platforms in conjunction with Recruitment and onboarding you're able then to um, you know prove out that the the company is truly scalable. And prove out that the company because of that then we're what we're really doing is directly mitigating the risk of not having enough people to manage the growth of the business.

[32:15] That means that now if we're if we're able to do this. And there's some ideas here as we talk about um development training programs but as we're able to do this, we're actually able to increase the multiple of the business so if we are an existing ESOP and we're looking for ways to grow the value of the business this is definitely 1 of those areas I think is important to be checking the Box on if you're going to become an ESOP same thing you're planning to try to create the the, um the value that's appropriate fair market value and make sure that that value um, is is as much as it possibly can be considering all the other elements of your planning for ESOP.

[32:53] So there are things like you know incorporating within the training and development um you know either programs or again using technology how do I how do I actually coach people better how do I actually Mentor them better how do I actually get them skills training. That will help um build their job to where they can actually accomplish the job better and become more and more efficient at what they're doing.

[33:19] Um some of the things that that you might see companies will actually invest in their um their training and give them um incentives to hit those so those benchmarks which kind of sounds, um Maybe a little more Innovative um be like yeah well of course we're going to reimburse you for for tuition for a degree that we think you need right that that's kind of the old stuff I'm talking about. We need to really get to this next level umlet's go ahead and give some kind of small stipend or some type of incentive for people to hit some of these skills development training, that would actually translate much more directly in in in in the value and there's a million of those what's cool about technology today is that, this in this type of training is usually their online anyways so it's not like you got to fight people to places or you can you can do conferences and things like that to um help you know build them up and and strengthen their growth in different areas but the online training stuff is there and it's just a matter of like leveraging that giving them an incentive to hit those um but I think it's it's a big area for for Innovation that the the that I I would encourage you, as you think about this in your business um not to just stop right but that every year there would be some level of like yeah this is what we're doing this year to build our development and training programs much much greater.

[34:45] So I mentioned um the remote Workforce so that I think that that has its own category as well of of like how do we do this really really well um. But keep in mind there's a lot of um there's a lot of things that can go wrong with this as well so being being super practical about it um.

[35:03] Leveraging that idea of like how do they come in how they check in what's the responsibility is what's it what's the remote worker versus the non remote worker. You know or and is there a second-class citizen here that kind of stuff I think is important to, to be conscious of um I do think it's it's like 1 of those things in the tool belt how do you use it if you use it really well it can really enhance the business, but if it's done wrong it can also take away and make it make the business kind of um start to be lesser and lesser valuable because people are not really accomplishing this I I think the main thing is as what I've seen done well is is what I mentioned earlier is that you you have to really prove out the concept, with your organization and where you hire people and the way you keep people accountable um I think that that's um goes without saying that that's not going to happen and I think you got to be careful.

[35:57] So as we go through um some of the other items um I just want to kind of mention a few things as we finish this episode umyou know some some. Things that companies have to be thinking about again normal to just human beings is is what we're asking people to do is work right are are we assessing their. Their value in terms of of what that means to them if they're really pushing hard through a season do you you know do you have this this system of of. You know time off or do you just ask them to do more later um so assessing burnout is is I think it's a an area where. Um it needs to be thought through and and the worst thing you can do is just say well don't worry about it they'll they'll be fine I worked really hard when I was their age and whatnot um. That doesn't really I think.

[36:50] Build a culture where people feel like they're really heard and understood so the other side of the coin is is of course you you could have people that.

[37:00] Are not able to do the work you know so this the idea of like. They don't have the capacity or the the aptitude or the skills to do the work so that's not what I'm talking about I'm talking about people that do have that. We're pushing him hard to hit certain initiatives, and then being super mindful of having coming back to that flexibility at the very front end of our of our uh some of our topics that we were talking about. Um that can kind of ebb and flow with their life as the business es and flows as well. And that that's kind of difficult to you know know for every company I think the part of the truth of this is that as the company gets larger and larger it's much much harder. Because companies that get larger in employees you kind of have to come back to. Policies companies that are smaller you can kind of make some decisions based on a smaller group of people much much easier. So managing that is really hard but it can it's definitely something that has to be thought through.

[38:00] Um that kind of goes in in line with what is your PTO policy what's your paid time off policy how does that affect your your family leave policies things like that, related to um you want people I think in this day and age of course and I I just believe it you want people to feel like they can have a life. Take care of their families and still do a great job and be rewarded and be elevated in the business as long as they're doing a good jobum. You know because it's unbalanced to just be mono monocle at the work and that's all you do is work work work right so it's just definitely a balance and it's got to be in alignment with your culture. Your strategic plan the goals of the business and then throughout that it's got a permeate through the organization to make sure that that's, um you know that's kind of similar to every everything that has been said so that there is a strong transparency in the organization companies that have a strong transparency and what I mean by that is that, people aren't, surprised and the word transparency absolutely is being overused at this point and in the world of business right it's like oh I'm transparent I'm transparent um.

[39:08] We I I'm using it because it's a very descriptive word that is Meaningful and it is is important. Um how do you build trust with people they have to know that you're going to do what you said you were going to do and with transparency they're not going to be surprised by something that just came out of left field. So helping people to understand that.

[39:29] Um the hard part about transparency is that you can't explain everything all decision to every single employee of your business right, so there is a there is a limit to this right and I think sometimes, um you have to be able to say yes I'm being transparent there and I would be transparent to say like this there are things I can't talk to you about because they're just I don't know I don't know exactly how the company's going to organize around that but when we do know we will absolutely let you know and if you keep that type of of of cadence to the conversation around your with your employees then I think there is a, um an actual transparency that's much more real than trying to be transparent about like yeah we're not sure what we're doing here because people still need to be. Um underneath and I don't mean this like subordinates but they do need to be underneath good leadership. They need to trust that leadership as it has a a real solid um understanding of their core values that translate through the organization and then they're going to follow those, those people that work under those types of leadership generally will trust and feel like they're in a in a good environment where there is transparency.

[40:40] So part part of the processes of doing all this is to follow through on if you don't have an ongoing process to do, career paths or meeting them performance reviews those kind of things there needs to be a a solid process there but part of as we mentioned earlier is being, not too focused on just any 1 style of communication but actually having a lot more frequency of communication throughout the organization.

[41:06] That brings us back to like as we think about an employee stock ownership plan type company and employee owned company. That's what I see as a very solid company that um has. Frequency of conversations with very solid processes that helpthe individual employee know where they're going, where they've been where they're going how does this actually benefit them and then this continual um elevation of your culture using this concept of employee ownership um carries and it Cascades through all of the things that we just talked about, that I think are going to be umnot just going to be but they are essential to stay on top of. And be integrated into the normal business processes carried out by by your HR people other people in your your managers anybody responsible for an employee. And then that those are things that are going to are going to be varied and customized and innovated and I think that's the opportunity that we have with an ESOP that I'll leave you with like the opportunity to innovate with the tool of an employee stock ownership plan, is unlike anything else. In the United States and I think as I finish I just want to say this is why this moves the dial so as we talk about any Anna Jones and the idea that.

[42:27] Umthere are so many things that can happen in a company that's in a play stock ownership plan um but you need to think about the details that we just covered, and how to like really leverage those in your company whether you're already in an ESOP and you're working on this already or you're thinking about becoming an ESOP all of these and if you're never going to become an ESOP these are going to be relevant things for you. Thank you so much for listening today and we will see you on our next step on this journey.