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Suggest questionSooner or later, most business owners run into the same unsettling question: How do I actually get out of this thing? Pass it to family? Sell to a competitor? To key employees? To private equity? To an ESOP or an Employee Ownership Trust? Or maybe just shut it down?There’s no shortage of advice—but almost all of it comes with strings attached. Most advisors know one path best, and not coincidentally, it’s the path they’re paid to promote. Sorting through the options on your own can feel overwhelming, expensive, and risky. What if there were a place to get an honest, apples-to-apples comparison—one that looks at your specific business and lays out what really fits?That’s the problem Sonali Kothari is trying to solve with Zolidar, a startup she co-founded. In this episode, she explains how the company is building a tool to help owners think clearly about their exit—and why that process shouldn’t start five years too late. You can even test-drive it yourself with Zolidar’s free 10-minute Day Zero Guide (https://zolidar.com/exit-plan-guide?referral_code=bl92K8) for a preliminary assessment.
About 21 Hats
The proponents of employee stock ownership plans can make them sound like the greatest thing ever. A business owner can take a big chunk of money off the table—or even all of it—while still getting to run the business. And there are some pretty great tax breaks. Oh, and it will also solve income inequality in America. On the other hand, if ESOPs are so smart, why are there so few of them?
Jim Kalb of Triad Components Group in San Diego and Jeff Taylor of Crafts Technology in Chicago have both implemented ESOPs. Jay Goltz of the Goltz Group in Chicago has reached his 60s without a succession plan, and he’s considering his options. In this 21 Hats Conversation, you get to listen in on a street-smart discussion of the pluses and minuses of ESOPs from the business owner’s point of view.