- What Southern Vermont Heard at the Employee Ownership Forum
On Friday, November 6, the turnout was great. Local business owners, co-op members, and our partners in business and government filled the Winston Prouty Center in Brattleboro to work on a question most owners put off: what happens to the business when I step away. BDCC and the Vermont Employee Ownership Center (VEOC) hosted the Southern Vermont Employee Ownership Forum, and we want to share what we covered and what I’d ask owners to do next.
- The morning: owners at the table
The morning was an Ownership Succession Workshop for owners who want to understand selling to their employees. Dan Rosenberg of Real Pickles, Annie Winkler of the Democracy at Work Institute, Matt Cropp of VEOC, and Allison Curtis of the ICA Group ran it as a working session. Nobody lectured. The participants brought the content, which meant their own businesses, their own timelines, and their own worries.
Owners left with a clearer picture of the key succession concepts, the employee ownership options, and a short list of next steps. Lunch followed, and the conversations kept going over it.
- The afternoon: people who already own their companies
The afternoon was built for employee owners at ESOPs, worker cooperatives, and other employee-owned businesses. Two sessions ran at once in each of two rounds. Allison Curtis and Annie Winkler led cooperative leaders through a readiness check for a leadership change, scoring documentation, staffing, revenue, governance, and board strength. Matt Cropp ran a roundtable on how to start, grow, and renew an ESOP committee. Bonnie Hudspeth of Firebrand Cooperative taught practical de-escalation and how to turn conflict among staff or board members into something useful.
Tim O’Neil of BDCC led the fourth session with Annie, Financial Management through Critical Numbers. The idea is simple. A business has a few numbers that show how it’s performing, and when one of them looks weak, you can trace it back to the cause. We worked a case P&L, picked the changes we thought would help, and priced each one. People left with a one-page checklist they can take back to their own books. The conversations it led to among current owners, current coop members and partners were inspiring.
- What We’d ask of owners
Succession is not a weekend project. It takes years, and the owners who do it well started before they had to. The room on November 6 proved that the people who can help are close by, and that the employee-owned companies around us are glad to compare notes.
If you own a business in Southern Vermont and you’re starting to think about what comes next, talk with us at BDCC first. We’ll sit down with you, help you get your financials and records organized, and walk through how buyers and lenders typically look at the value of a business, so you can set your own price. Employee ownership is one path among several, and we can talk through all of them.
To set up a conversation, shoot an email to Tim O’Neil, Small Business Solutions and Transitions Manager, toneil@brattleborodevelopment.com
Thank you to the owners, the co-op members, and our partners in business and government who came, to the presenters, and to VEOC for being a true partner in this work and for bringing more direct opportunities to engage to Southern Vermont.
