👋 Meet Zolid AI
Here to support your company's exit journey — Zolid AI can answer questions and provide insights. Free for now, with fair usage limits.
Your conversations are not shared with others. We may review them to improve Zolid AI.
Zolid AI may provide inaccurate info, so verify responses.
No quick summary yet. Be the first to add a quick summary.
Add quick summaryNo information listed yet. Be the first to add who benefits from this content.
Suggest who benefitsThe Healthcare Dilemma: Protect Employees? Or the Business?
No detailed summary yet. Suggest a summary to help the community.
Suggest summaryNo questions listed yet. Be the first to add a question for this topic.
Suggest questionThis week, in Episode 273, David C. Barnett, Paul Downs, and Sarah Segal tackle health insurance, one of the least enjoyable issues business owners confront. It’s renewal season, and the three owners are seeing different systems, different pressures, but similar frustrations. Paul tells us he’s facing the largest premium increases he’s seen since the Affordable Care Act—double-digit hikes that will cost him an extra $15,000 to $25,000 next year. Sarah hasn’t received her numbers yet, but she’s preparing for the worst. And David gives us a cross-border view from Canada, where universal coverage eliminates the pricing drama but introduces its own set of complications. It’s a candid conversation about what’s responsible, what’s sustainable, and what business owners are supposed to do when the numbers don’t leave good options. Plus: We also talk about what it takes to get a business ready to be sold. While BizBuySell recently reported that more owners are looking to get out—even if it means dropping their asking price—that’s not exactly what David is seeing in the marketplace. “The truth is that small businesses sell for relatively low multiples of cash flow,” he says. “And so, the real benefit is not actually in the exit. It's in the owning.”
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.