Owners at Work

SUMMARY: One of the exciting happenings in the world of employee ownership today is the proliferation of different models and methods for bringing employees into the ownership of a company. In this episode we discuss the Direct Stock Ownership model that Chip Cargas, Founder of Cargas Systems, implemented at his company. We also discussed where the model took him, and this next stage of his entrepreneurial journey, with the development of the Tandem Center for Shared Business Success, a nonprofit initiative offering pathways for business success through profit sharing and direct employee ownership. We also talk with Nate Scott, current President and CEO of Cargas Systems and discuss his journey from employee, to employee owner, and finally to his role as a leader of the company. Finally we talk with Drew Mousetis, the Executive Director of the Tandem Center and get the scoop from him on his plans to grow employee ownership using the Direct Stock Ownership model.  Further Material  * https://www.tandemcenter.org/ [https://www.tandemcenter.org/]  * https://cargas.com/    Guest INFO:   Chip Cargas is the Founder & Chair Emeritus at Cargas Systems, an employee-owned software company with nearly 200 employees. They provide software for accounting, operations, sales and marketing. Chip founded the company in 1988 with the purpose of creating a caring environment where people would love to work. He served as CEO from the founding until December 2017, Board Chair until October 2020, and Board Member until March 2022. He was named Chair Emeritus in 2022. Chip continues to nurture the company’s purpose of “Shared Success for employees, customers, owners, partners, and community.” Cargas Systems has earned the following national & regional awards for its values and growth  Nate Scott is President and CEO of Cargas Systems, joining in 2005 as a sales consultant. He eventually became manager of the Sales and Marketing team. When Cargas launched a new business unit centered around its proprietary Cargas Energy software, he became VP. During his tenure, the business unit doubled in staff and doubled in revenue. Scott also took advantage of annual career advancement meetings and asked to lead cross-company initiatives. In 2014 he became President, and added CEO four years later.  Drew Mousetis is Executive Director of the Tandem Center for Shared Business Success with a background in business management. Before joining Tandem, Drew was a lead consultant at Cargas, where he embraced the ethos of employee ownership within a dynamic culture of engagement and profit sharing at the employee owned company. Prior to Cargas, Drew was the Director of Finance & Development at The GateHouse.     SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a https://secure2.convio.net/ksu/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app262a?2440.donation=form1&df_id=2440&NONCE_TOKEN=28DAFAA902A9B3BB79EC490684E0EE16DONATION [https://secure2.convio.net/ksu/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app262a?2440.donation=form1&df_id=2440&NONCE_TOKEN=28DAFAA902A9B3BB79EC490684E0EE16] today to help keep our work going.   WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu [oeoc@kent.edu]   ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Guests:   Olga Prushinskaya and Jamie Pockrandt, Democracy at Work Institute  Summary: The second most common form of employee ownership in the United States is the worker cooperative where workers participate in both the financial success and governance of the firms. Today there are over 750 worker cooperatives in the United States, which is triple the amount that existed in 2012. How do we know these numbers? Unlike the number of ESOPs which can be tracked using publicly available data generated by the government, there is no public entity that tracks worker cooperatives. Instead, it has been nonprofit groups that have filled in this gap in knowledge. On this episode I speak with Olga Prushinskaya and Jamie Pockrandt of the Democracy at Work Institute, a national organization committed to worker cooperative development – which includes gather data on worker cooperatives. We talk about their soon to be released State of the Sector report and what it found regarding worker cooperatives as well as other projects they have been working on which aim to better understand the impact that employee ownership is having on workers, companies, and communities.   Further Material  * Learn about DAWI’s work here: https://institute.coop/ [https://institute.coop/]   * Existing datasets mentioned in the show: https://institute.coop/core-research [https://institute.coop/core-research]     Guest Info:   * Jamie Pockrandt, Data Architect, Democracy at Work Institute:   Email: jpockrandt@institute.coop [jpockrandt@institute.coop] | Phone: (415) 379-9201 Ext. 19  * Olga Prushinskaya, Metrics and Impact Analyst  Email: olga@institute.coop [olga@institute.coop] | Phone: (415) 379-9201 Ext. 17    SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a https://secure2.convio.net/ksu/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app262a?2440.donation=form1&df_id=2440&NONCE_TOKEN=28DAFAA902A9B3BB79EC490684E0EE16DONATION [https://secure2.convio.net/ksu/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app262a?2440.donation=form1&df_id=2440&NONCE_TOKEN=28DAFAA902A9B3BB79EC490684E0EE16] today to help keep our work going.   WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu [oeoc@kent.edu]   ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Guest: Campbell McDonald, Ownership Works   SUMMARY: Much of the work for raising awareness and advocating for supportive policies for further expansion relies on data collection. When making the case for employee ownership, it is one thing to say that, in theory, employee ownership can benefit workers, companies, and communities. It is quite another to prove such claims through the collection of empirical data.  In this episode, I sit down with Campell McDonald, the chief executive of Ownership at Work, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about employee ownership in the United Kingdom. We talk in detail about the recent research project he oversaw, which collected first-of-its-kind data that measured the impacts of employee ownership on worker well-being, company performance, and various other indicators. Further Material ·        Find the report at this website: https://ownershipatwork.org/ [https://ownershipatwork.org/] Guest INFO : ·        Campbell McDonald:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/campbell-mcdonald-628378/?originalSubdomain=uk [https://www.linkedin.com/in/campbell-mcdonald-628378/?originalSubdomain=uk]   SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a https://secure2.convio.net/ksu/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app262a?2440.donation=form1&df_id=2440&NONCE_TOKEN=28DAFAA902A9B3BB79EC490684E0EE16DONATION [https://secure2.convio.net/ksu/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app262a?2440.donation=form1&df_id=2440&NONCE_TOKEN=28DAFAA902A9B3BB79EC490684E0EE16] today to help keep our work going. WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu [oeoc@kent.edu] ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Guest: Gina Schaefer SUMMARY: For 38 years, the OEOC has gathered hundreds of people from across the employee ownership community at our Annual Conference and every year, we invite a keynote speaker to address those in attendance. This year, we invited Gina Schaefer, the founder, CEO, and selling owner of A Few Cool Hardware Stores, which became 100% employee-owned in 2021. Her story of how her company came to be, her approach to building culture within the business, and her tendency to build relationships outside of it speak to the power of building community and how employee-owned companies are uniquely poised to do this. Beyond that, Gina’s address and the story of A Few Cool Hardware Stores highlight other important themes whose power we often underestimate: faking it until you make it, doing the hard thing, being curious, and telling our own stories of employee ownership, to name a few.  Further Material * Gina’s Book Recover Hardware: https://ginaschaefer.com/book [https://ginaschaefer.com/book] * A Few Cool Hardware Stores: https://acehardwaredc.com/ [https://acehardwaredc.com/] * Past OAW Episode featuring Gina: https://www.oeockent.org/owners-at-work-podcast/seaon-2-episode-7-a-few-cool-hardware-stores [https://www.oeockent.org/owners-at-work-podcast/seaon-2-episode-7-a-few-cool-hardware-stores] Guest INFO :  *   Gina Schaefer: https://ginaschaefer.com/about [https://ginaschaefer.com/about] SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a https://secure2.convio.net/ksu/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app262a?2440.donation=form1&df_id=2440&NONCE_TOKEN=28DAFAA902A9B3BB79EC490684E0EE16DONATION [https://secure2.convio.net/ksu/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app262a?2440.donation=form1&df_id=2440&NONCE_TOKEN=28DAFAA902A9B3BB79EC490684E0EE16] today to help keep our work going. WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu [oeoc@kent.edu]

SUMMARY: When we think about expanding awareness about employee ownership, we often think of the United States and how much more work we have to do. However, the movement to expand the prevalence and awareness of employee ownership goes well beyond US borders. In this episode, we highlight an international example of this effort. We speak with Rodrigo Fernandez del Valle and Gonzalo Hernandez Gutierrez about an edited book they published, which includes chapters on employee ownership contributed by practitioners, researchers, and thinkers worldwide. Their goal? Introduce students, government officials, and business leaders to employee ownership and how it can positively impact society. We talked about how the book project came to be, what the book's reception has been, and what projects they are working on now to expand employee ownership in Mexico, Latin America, and beyond.  Free Book Copy  Employee Ownership in the Americas: A Path to Shared Prosperity: https://cleo.rutgers.edu/articles/employee-ownership-in-the-americas-a-path-to-shared-prosperity/ [https://cleo.rutgers.edu/articles/employee-ownership-in-the-americas-a-path-to-shared-prosperity/]  Capital IncluyenteCo-founded by Rodrigo with the purpose of providing technical assistance to those who want to create businesses owned by employees:https://capital-incluyente.org/ [https://capital-incluyente.org/]  Guest Info: ·        Gonzalo Hernandez Gutierrez: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gonzalo-hern%C3%A1ndez-guti%C3%A9rrez-phd-93a648a1/?originalSubdomain=mx [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gonzalo-hern%C3%A1ndez-guti%C3%A9rrez-phd-93a648a1/?originalSubdomain=mx] ·        Rodrigo Fernandez del Valle: https://capital-incluyente.org/ [https://capital-incluyente.org/]    --------------------------------------------------------------------- SUPPORT THE SHOW: We make all episodes of Owners at Work free and never place them behind a paywall. But they take time and money to produce. Consider making a https://secure2.convio.net/ksu/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app262a?2440.donation=form1&df_id=2440&NONCE_TOKEN=28DAFAA902A9B3BB79EC490684E0EE16DONATION [https://secure2.convio.net/ksu/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app262a?2440.donation=form1&df_id=2440&NONCE_TOKEN=28DAFAA902A9B3BB79EC490684E0EE16] today to help keep our work going. WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU: We are always looking for new employee ownership stories to tell. Please contact us with your story at oeoc@kent.edu [oeoc@kent.edu]