What If Your Employees Became the Buyer?

Regret came up early in my conversation with Zoe Schlag.

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I’ve seen that regret live long after a business sale, especially when an owner watches the team, culture, or quality of the business change after they leave.

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Zoe told me about an owner who put it simply: “I just want to be able to look people in the eye when I’m walking down the street.”

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There is a human side to an exit that a valuation does not capture. Employees helped build the company. Customers have relationships with it. In some places, the business has become part of the community itself.

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Employee ownership gave Zoe and me a practical way into that conversation. She works with Employee Ownership Trusts, or EOTs, which give employees an ownership interest while giving founders a structure for succession. Zoe also described how an EOT gives an owner room to protect values that matter to the company as they step away.

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Then our conversation went somewhere I hadn’t planned.

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I asked Zoe what ownership meant to her.

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She connected ownership to agency and separated two ideas we often put together: control and economics. That led us to talk about the company itself as an ecosystem. A founder holds a particular role and takes particular risks, but value is created through many people whose work depends on one another.

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I find that question worth sitting with.

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If you are five years from an exit, there is time to think about the value of the business, who should own it next, and what you want to remain true after you leave.