--- title: The Change the Game Podcast | Employee Ownership description: Employee Ownership | The Change the Game Podcast for The Great Game of Business --- [![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2020/Home/GGOB%20logo%20(1).png) ](https://www.greatgame.com/) - What Do We Do? ![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2021/DownArrowBlueLarger.svg) - [What We Do](https://www.greatgame.com/what-is-great-game-business) - [Who We Are](https://www.greatgame.com/about-great-game-business) - [Our Process](https://www.greatgame.com/about/our-process) - [Meet The Team](https://www.greatgame.com/meet-the-team) - [Why Choose Great Game?](https://www.greatgame.com/why-choose-great-game) - Resources ![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2021/DownArrowBlueLarger.svg) - [Free Tools](https://www.greatgame.com/diy-resources) - [Great Game GO](https://www.greatgame.com/community) - [Blog](https://www.greatgame.com/blog) - [Podcast](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast) - [Bonus Plan Design](https://www.greatgame.com/bonus-plan-design) - [Books](https://www.greatgame.com/books/3books) - [Videos](https://www.greatgame.com/videos) - [Testimonials and Case Studies](https://www.greatgame.com/case-studies/industry-display) - Events ![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2021/DownArrowBlueLarger.svg) - [Great Game® Conference](https://www.greatgame.com/conference-2026) - [Discover the Game: Free Intro](https://www.greatgame.com/introductory-workshop) - [Great Game® Experience Workshop](https://www.greatgame.com/great-game-experience-workshop) - [Leading the Game Cohort](https://www.greatgame.com/leading-the-game) - [See All Events](https://www.greatgame.com/event-dates) - Coaching ![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2021/DownArrowBlueLarger.svg) - [Get A Coach](https://www.greatgame.com/coaching) - [Meet the Coaches](https://www.greatgame.com/meet-the-coaches) - [Training](https://www.greatgame.com/trainings) ![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2021/HamMenuBlack.png) ![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2021/CloseButton.png) - What Do We Do? ![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2021/DownArrowBlueLarger.svg) - [What We Do](https://www.greatgame.com/what-is-great-game-business) - [Who We Are](https://www.greatgame.com/about-great-game-business) - [Our Process](https://www.greatgame.com/about/our-process) - [Meet The Team](https://www.greatgame.com/meet-the-team) - [Why Choose Great Game?](https://www.greatgame.com/why-choose-great-game) - Resources ![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2021/DownArrowBlueLarger.svg) - [Free Tools](https://www.greatgame.com/diy-resources) - [Great Game GO](https://www.greatgame.com/community) - [Blog](https://www.greatgame.com/blog) - [Podcast](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast) - [Bonus Plan Design](https://www.greatgame.com/bonus-plan-design) - [Books](https://www.greatgame.com/books/3books) - [Videos](https://www.greatgame.com/videos) - [Testimonials and Case Studies](https://www.greatgame.com/case-studies/industry-display) - Events ![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2021/DownArrowBlueLarger.svg) - [Great Game® Conference](https://www.greatgame.com/conference-2026) - [Discover the Game: Free Intro](https://www.greatgame.com/introductory-workshop) - [Great Game® Experience Workshop](https://www.greatgame.com/great-game-experience-workshop) - [Leading the Game Cohort](https://www.greatgame.com/leading-the-game) - [See All Events](https://www.greatgame.com/event-dates) - Coaching ![](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Templates-2021/DownArrowBlueLarger.svg) - [Get A Coach](https://www.greatgame.com/coaching) - [Meet the Coaches](https://www.greatgame.com/meet-the-coaches) - [Training ](https://www.greatgame.com/trainings) - [Community Membership](https://www.greatgame.com/membership-purchase) - [Store](https://ggob.myshopify.com/) - [FAQ](https://www.greatgame.com/faqs) - [Become a Coach](https://www.greatgame.com/internal-coach) - [Have Us Speak at Your Event](https://www.greatgame.com/ggobspeakers) - [Trusted Partners](https://www.greatgame.com/trusted-partners) - [Search](https://www.greatgame.com/site-search) ## **![GGOB + 21 Hats-1](https://www.greatgame.com/hs-fs/hubfs/GGOB%20+%2021%20Hats-1.png?width=250&height=81&name=GGOB%20+%2021%20Hats-1.png) **   ## **About Our Podcasts** Podcasts for entrepreneurs, business owners, and leaders. These messages are brought to you directly from CEOs and business thinkers to help build healthier companies, better businesses, and better lives for both you and your employees.   ## [A Successful Owner Chooses an Innovative Exit](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/a-successful-owner-chooses-an-innovative-exit) ![Loren Feldman](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/LF.jpg)   ***Introduction:*** This week, special guests Laura Anderson, founder of Local Ocean, and Peter Koehler, her financial consultant, explain why Laura decided to sell her thriving seafood business in a transaction that created a business model that is neither widely known nor widely understood. It’s called an employee-ownership trust, and there are only about 50 of them in the United States. But their numbers are growing here and abroad, and for good reason. The trust model offers owners something of a choose-your-own-adventure option that can allow them to sell for a market rate in a relatively uncomplicated transaction that makes it far more likely the business will remain true to its established mission—especially when compared to selling to private equity or even to an employee stock ownership plan. Of course, there are challenges, including getting a bank to consider financing one of these deals. But in this episode, Laura explains why, with Peter’s help, she decided to trust the trust. **— Loren Feldman** *** *** ## [It’s Like Planning Your Own Funeral](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/its-like-planning-your-own-funeral) ![Loren Feldman](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/LF.jpg)   ***Introduction:*** This week, Jay Goltz tells Shawn Busse about the latest stop on his journey to figuring out whether an employee stock ownership plan is right for his business. Jay’s latest adventure includes waking up at 4:30 in the morning in Minneapolis too anxious to sleep—“Oh my God, what am I getting myself into here?”—and deciding to leave the seminar and drive back to Chicago. But on that six-hour return trip, Jay says his anxiety turned into clarity. In fact, he thinks he’s pretty sure he knows now what he wants to do. Of course, he has said that before. And we continue to learn more about ESOPs, this week hitting upon an interesting issue: ESOP enthusiasts love to tout the benefits of turning employees into owners. But are they really owners? And is that the right message to send them? “If you bought 10 shares of General Motors stock,” Jay asks, “would you tell your neighbors that you’re an owner of General Motors?” Plus: We also talk about when business owners should ignore their accountants and whether Shawn and Jay expect their employees to come forward and tell them if they see another employee doing something they shouldn’t be doing. **— Loren Feldman** *** *** ## [Not Sold on ESOPs? There's A New Alternative](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/episode123) ![Loren Feldman](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/LF.jpg) ***Introduction:*** This week, two special guests who have built highly successful companies talk about what they ultimately plan to do with those companies. Ari Weinzweig is co-founder of Zingerman’s Community of Businesses, a collection of mostly food-related companies that are an iconic part of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Brad Herrmann is co-founder of Text-Em-All, a software firm based near Dallas that helps organizations deliver personalized, informational, and emergency messages by text and by phone. Both Zingerman’s and Text-Em-All consider themselves purpose-driven. Both practice open-book management. And so, not surprisingly, the founders of both companies took a hard look at selling to an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, in the hope that the cultures they’ve created might live on. But both companies, independently, soured on the notion of creating an ESOP, one after spending more than $200,000 and coming within a week of closing the deal. And now, both have settled on a little known alternative, what’s called a perpetual purpose trust. So far, only a handful of companies have tried to create a purpose trust for this purpose, but Zingerman’s and Text-Em-All are taking the leap. As both Ari and Brad acknowledge, they’re kind of figuring it out as they go. **— Loren Feldman** ## [The Hard-Nosed Business Case For Employee Ownership](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/episode105) ![Loren Feldman](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/LF.jpg)   This week, Jay Goltz explains how he got interested in selling a percentage of his business to his employees and why he quickly lost interest once he started reading books, attending seminars, and talking to accountants and lawyers who specialize in employee stock ownership plans. To Jay’s ear, they all made ESOPs sound expensive, complicated, and risky. This was not something he needed to do. So why go to the trouble? Why take the risk? But he kept asking questions, and over time, he sensed that many of the problems he was being warned about didn’t have to be problems. As of now, he’s pretty much concluded that an ESOP could help him secure retirement for his employees while generating more profit for his business. In fact, he says, “I’m confident I can make more owning 70 percent of the company than I am now owning 100 percent.” But he still has a few lingering questions, which is why we invited Corey Rosen to join the conversation. Corey helped draft the legislation that created ESOPs, he’s the founder of the [National Center for Employee Ownership](https://www.nceo.org/), and he literally wrote the book on how the plans work. All of which led to an inevitable question for both Jay and Corey: If ESOPs are so great, why are there so few of them? **— Loren Feldman** ## [Corey Rosen on the Future of ESOP](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/episode103) ![The Great Game™ Team](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/GGOB-logo-author.jpg) **Corey Rosen, Founder and Senior Staff Member of NCEO, ** talks about his new book, *Ownership, Reinventing Companies, Capitalism, and Who Owns What, *and discusses what the future of employee ownership looks like.  [![Click to Listen](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/2628288/326093ef-cbce-49b7-b014-c1ddd1b0375c.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/2628288/326093ef-cbce-49b7-b014-c1ddd1b0375c) ## [The Future of The World's Supply Chain](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/episode90) **Suranga Herath, Founder and CEO of English Tea Shop** **,** discusses Sri Lanka's most unprecedented economic and social upheaval in its history, and the future of the world's supply chain with social and economic inequalities worldwide.  ## [Positioning Your Employee-Owned Company to Attract Talent](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/episode87) ![Prairie Capital Advisors](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Prairie_Logo_RGB.png) Hillary Hughes and Tom DeSimone from Prairie Capital Advisors discuss the cultural aspect of an employee-owned company, using an ESOP to build wealth for your people, and how to position an ESOP as a benefit that attracts employees. ## [Anne-Claire Broughton on ESOPs, Co-ops, and International Players](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/episode84) ![Anne-Claire Broughton](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Ann-Claire%20Broughton_HeadShot%20C.jpg)  In this episode, Steve Baker highlights Great Game Coach, Anne-Claire Broughton's work with her international client Chillibreeze. She shares about their initiatives to provide financial literacy training, their own signature "Inspire" course on their company values, culture and work ethic, and how they maintain up to 15 impactful MiniGames at once. ## [EOX State Centers](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/episode49) ![Steve Storkan](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/Streve%20Storkan%20author%20photo.jpg) **Steve Storkan, Executive Director at EOX, **outlines what it means to be an employee owned company, and what an EOX State Center can do for owners considering employee ownership. [![Click to Listen](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/2628288/12bc4641-ec05-47f3-b863-219193df4080.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/2628288/12bc4641-ec05-47f3-b863-219193df4080) ## [Pros and Cons of Employee Ownership](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/episode41) ![Victor Aspengren](https://www.greatgame.com/hubfs/_Gathering%202019/2019%20Speaker%20Headshots/Aspengren_Victor.jpg) *Victor Aspengren, Employee Ownership Consultant*, talks with Steve and Rich about the pros and cons of employee ownership, and how employee-owned companies can more than double the wealth share of the bottom 50%.  [![Click to Listen](https://no-cache.hubspot.com/cta/default/2628288/3008a021-87c2-4268-a51f-15863744c071.png)](https://cta-redirect.hubspot.com/cta/redirect/2628288/3008a021-87c2-4268-a51f-15863744c071) [All posts](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/all) [Next](https://www.greatgame.com/podcast/tag/employee-ownership/page/2) ## About The Podcast ![GGOB + 21 Hats-1](https://www.greatgame.com/hs-fs/hubfs/GGOB%20+%2021%20Hats-1.png?width=400&height=129&name=GGOB%20+%2021%20Hats-1.png) The Great Game of Business has partnered with [21 Hats](https://21hats.com/) to bring the 21 Hats Podcast to all entrepreneurs in The Great Game of Business community! Hosted by Loren Feldman, this podcast offers real-world business insight. Tune in to stay up to date on today's business issues, hear real stories about organizational challenges leaders are facing, and take away strategies CEOs are using in the business world today. When you subscribe, you'll receive a weekly email notification of this podcast. 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