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Suggest who benefitsWhen Your Business and Your Values Collide
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Suggest questionFor the past six years, we’ve done our best to avoid talking politics on this podcast. By focusing on the business realities owners confront every day, we’ve tried to create a space where people with very different perspectives—from different industries and different parts of the country—can still learn from one another. That’s something we take seriously. But we also live in the real world. And lately, the real world has been making that separation harder.
On this episode, Paul Downs, Kate Morgan, and Liz Picarazzi talk about those moments when business and personal beliefs collide—and when staying silent may not feel like an option. They’ve each faced uncomfortable questions: What do you do when an employee says something you find objectionable? Are there customers you simply won’t work with? How do you stay true to your values without putting your company at risk? There are no easy answers here. And not everyone will agree on where the line should be drawn. But as always, there’s real value in seeing how other owners handle tricky situations.
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.