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"If EO is so good, why don't we see more of it?"
It's the most common question asked about employee ownership.
And yet, the responses are predictably the same:
But what if these responses - while containing some truth - are actually diverting our focus from the real bottleneck?
What if we're treating important accelerators (P1 issues) as if they are critical blockers (P0 issues)?
Let's start with a thought exercise on the "awareness problem."
There must be at least 1,000 people in the US making a living preaching the EO gospel - through coaching, academia, nonprofits, advisory practices. Assuming each introduces EO to just one new business owner monthly (12 per year), we're introducing EO to 12,000 business owners annually.
Yet we see only ~300 new EO formations per year. Let's be generous and call it 500 including EOTs and worker co-ops where data is harder to track.
That means we fail to convert 11,500 businesses that become aware of EO.
Even if you disagree with my assumptions - cut them in half. That's still 500 conversions out of 6,000 businesses which is a terrible outcome.
While only 12,000 of the 6 million businesses becoming aware of EO each year is certainly problematic, we're not closing the loop on the ones that are already becoming aware of EO. This is a classic top-of-funnel drop-off.
The Real P0 Issue: What Happens After Awareness
Why might this conversion rate be so low? I reckon that awareness without a clear, confidence-building path forward for business owners is the real blocker. Even most place-based EO efforts focus primarily on awareness campaigns without paying due attention to conversion. Their websites become yet another iteration of non-actionable information - more content about the benefits of EO, but little help for taking next steps.
When a business owner becomes interested in EO, what's their path forward? Read research reports? Attend a conference? Connect with different advisors who each handle one piece of the puzzle? No wonder so many interested owners abandon the journey before it begins.
Instead of this unrealistic approach, the solution requires creating a seamless, confidence-building journey from initial interest to action. This is exactly what we've focused on by building tools that let owners understand EO in context of all exit paths - personalized to their specific situation, both qualitatively and quantitatively through our Day Zero Guide, Aha Planner, and Zolid AI.
The second most cited barrier - "Lack of financing is blocking EO adoption" - is misleading when stated as a universal truth. Financing is only a blocker for a minuscule subset of the 2.9 million businesses at risk of shutting down.
Just imagine: which of these options would you choose if you're one of the 2.9 million business owners:
I think most of us would choose option 2.
The only scenario where option 2 doesn't work? When there's a third option: sell to an outside buyer willing to pay fair market value at closing. It's for these businesses that external financing is needed to win them over to EO instead of selling to an outside buyer.
This option of selling to another party is typically available only to larger businesses. Since 5.9 million of our 6 million businesses have fewer than 100 employees, this financing narrative is one reason why the EO domain is unknowingly moving up-market.
For the vast majority of businesses that don't have outside buyers, seller financing is an under-appreciated path for businesses truly at risk of shutting down.
The existence proof: In the UK, sellers finance 90%+ of EO transitions because external financing is hard to obtain.
No doubt, easier financing would accelerate the field, but it's a P1 feature, not a P0 blocker. If we create the deal-flow of business owners who are truly ready for EO with financing as the last remaining hurdle, then markets have a way of filling such gaps organically.
The third common response - "There aren't enough resources allocated to EO" - requires playing devil's advocate along with some napkin math.
Let's use the same assumption of 1,000 people in the US making a living working on accelerating EO. Assume the fully-loaded cost of each person to their organization is $150,000.
That translates to a collective spend of $150 million on EO advocacy each year.
With ~500 businesses adopting EO annually, that's an indirect cost of $300,000 per EO business transition - separate from the fees businesses actually pay for their transitions.
I don't think it makes sense to have fewer people working in EO. I don't think it makes sense for the cost per person to be reduced. That only leaves us with one option: dramatically increase the number of EO business transitions.
The resource allocation problem isn't about total investment - it's about conversion efficiency.
Despite all the effort on awareness, financing, and resources, business owners still struggle with a basic question: "How do I actually do this?" When someone asks at EO gatherings "Is there a toolkit for EO?" the disconnect becomes obvious.
The typical answer: research reports, documentation, fragmented directories.
But these responses reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of what toolkits are actually needed to scale EO.
To illustrate this disconnect, imagine asking "Is there a toolkit for buying a plane ticket?" and being sent to:
How many of us would want to take that trip?
This reveals why current "toolkit" approaches often frustrate rather than help business owners. What they need isn't fragmented information - it's a clear, confidence-building journey from awareness to action.
The real questions we should ask for removing the biggest blockers:
Getting these fundamentals right will create a strong foundation that amplifies the impact of more awareness, more financing, and more dollars invested in EO advocacy.
At Zolidar, we're working toward building what we call "the easy button for employee ownership." We know building this easy button won't be easy, but we don't think it's impossible.
Our integrated tools form the foundation of this vision, focused on increasing deal-flow by converting aware businesses into EO transitions:
If this view struck a chord, I'd love to hear from folks in the EO field about:
You can reach out directly: ashish@zolidar.com
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