213 | Literally Including People: Employee Ownership & Positive Impact with Jennifer Briggs
Our guest on the pod this week is Jennifer Briggs. Jennifer was the lead cultural steward for New Belgium Brewing as the VP of Human Resources. She sheparded the company through multiple growth stages - growing from a regional brewery to an employee owned national brand with 800 employees.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Employee Ownership & Positive Impact: Literally Including People Interview with Jennifer Briggs Transcript
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Jennifer Briggs
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of The Awarepreneurs Podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience and is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce our guests and our topic today, I have one request. If you could go over to Apple podcasts or whatever show you're listening to this on, hit the subscribe button do rating, it helps tremendously. All the good algorithmic things happen in social entrepreneurship gets out there to more people. Thanks for considering. Today, I'm thrilled to introduce you to Jennifer Briggs. And our topic is: Literally Including People: Employee Ownership & Positive Impact. Jennifer was the lead cultural steward for the New Belgium brewery, as the VP of human resources in her 13 years with the company. She shepherded the company through multiple growth phases, growing from a regional brewery to an employee owned national brand with 800 employees. Jennifer, welcome to the show. Thank you, Paul. It's great to be here. We've got some things to talk about. This is an exciting topic. And we never talked about employee ownership ever in 200+ episodes. So you're gonna help us break some ground here. I am so excited to be here. Yes, let's break some ground. Before we get into this exciting topic, Jennifer, were called Awarepreneurs. And one of the ways we get to know somebody is to ask you about a wellness or a resiliency practice that you personally use to help resource yourself for this really important work. You know, mine is pretty simple. And it's meditation. I think a lot of us have that in common. For me, specifically, I started meditation with Transcendental Meditation. And I've evolved my practice since then. But it really is, you know, just simply meditating. Being in nature, spending time in water, there's a wonderful book called The blue mind that, you know, just when we spend time near water, it really does help us
Jennifer Briggs 02:15
with clarity and emotional, I guess, acceptance and awareness. So yeah, it's just time and and especially making space for those things to happen.
Paul Zelizer 02:27
You live in a terrible place to spend time in nature, don't you?
Jennifer Briggs 02:31
I do. I do. I live in Colorado, and I am fortunate there's a lake a small lake. If anyone knows Colorado lakes, we generally don't have big lakes, about three blocks from my house, I can go paddle or just simply goes to the lake. And you know, it's just fantastic. We have a ton of blue sky here. Yeah. So amazing place to be
Paul Zelizer 02:54
your neighbor to the south here in New Mexico, pretty similar. I mean, differences, but some very significant, you know, this morning, I was running in the foothills before work, and just you know, so we're blessed. We're really nice.
Jennifer Briggs 03:07
And what's wonderful, I think to from a, you know, community perspective is where I live, there's a lot of active people too. So, you know, when you go out running in the morning, you'll see other people running in the morning, and you get those just kind of energetic highs from different people that are doing the same thing as you. And that part's fun. And it's, you know, even though it might be not be directly a social experience, we're all enjoying it together.
Paul Zelizer 03:33
Totally. What I can't remember the name of the book, but Kelly McGonigal at Stanford wrote a book about movement, and neuroscience. And what happens when we move together, I'll put a link of that in the show notes. It's such a great book. And you know, I was running this morning, we call ourselves the New Mexico dirt baggers. I'm very trail running community. And yeah, there are four of us this morning. And there's just something that happens when we move like it just in proximity or in community with each other. So I'll, I'm making a note, put that in there. So before we hit the record button, Jennifer, you said something really, really interesting that I just wanted to ask you a little bit more about he said, a lot of us who get into this kind of work, oftentimes, you know, we're like trying to change systems and develop more functional and more humane and more supportive and more inclusive systems. And a lot of us have had experiences with systems that didn't work so well for us. Can you say a little bit more about that?
Jennifer Briggs 04:32
Yeah, so for me, it started actually, when I was really young, I had a kind of unfortunate family situation happened and I ended up being a foster child for a while and I was emancipated when I was 16. And so I spent a lot of time in the in the social services system in the public health system myself. And for a while it was you know, I was seeing all these things that were going on and and one of For people who have, you know, so much potential, and I kind of almost don't even like using that word because it sounds like a cliche, but it was real, you could, you could see it happening. But the system itself is so bureaucratic, which is actually one of the reasons why I got into business is because I had the opportunity to apply a lot of the public health and public health system, lessons in theories into business. And I could see how powerful it was in a business. And it could actually make a business more profitable and run well. And so those fundamental experiences of just constantly feeling like I was, you know, jumping really high hurdles, and facing a lot of roadblocks trying to, you know, take care of my basic needs, and my family's basic needs and trying to get through college. And when you start out, you know, behind the starting line, as it were in poverty, and you know, a lot of other people have a lot of other hurdles. Beyond that, you know, especially when we talk about race. So, you know, you just feel like you're constantly behind, and I have seen firsthand and done things firsthand that show that business can make a significant difference in people's lives, and they help the business to my first career was in community mental health, and I worked with a lot of families in different relationships, kids and families with the foster care system. So I'm sorry that you had that experience that mine actually I had wonderful foster parents, and I was in a wonderful, you know, that a lot of my teachers were very supportive. And so again, you see this reinforcing community attitude, and when kids don't have access to that it sets them back, you know, years is decades in some cases. So I feel like I was lucky. And when we look at when are people why are people more successful? Or why are people able to come out of the poverty system, and others aren't? I think the the idea of being in a, in a business allows people to thrive. You know, in simple some of these things are simple examples, like I worked in a video store. Yeah, I worked in a video store in my little town, and my boss, let me bring my daughter to work. And so it was in house daycare before in house daycare became a thing for businesses. And so when we talk about education, daycare, living wages, having dignity at work, is so so important. And we can do it, businesses have proven it over and over again, that it can be done. And we just need to get more people to realize that.
Paul Zelizer 07:45
So from a bumpy start to New Belgium brewery, talk to us a little bit about how'd you wind up in New Belgium, we're gonna talk about why New Belgium is significant in a moment, but just Yeah, like, give us a through line there. Yeah, it was. It's, it's my life is not linear. I finished my degree in community health education, my bachelor's degree. And through this kind of other process, I got into human resources. And I was working for a major international corporation, the company I worked for was acquired by W pp. And so I learned business, the jack welchen way, I learned, you know, that was real popular for a while. And in some sectors, it still is, where, you know, you always cut the bottom 10%. And this very shrewd, rigorous way of running a business that was considered to be somehow smarter. And, and, you know, these people were serious business people. So that's where I came from in world where I really cut my business teeth, as it were, I got burnout really fast.
Jennifer Briggs 08:52
And then somebody called me and said, Hey, you know, we got this job open at this little brewery. And I said, No, I don't want to do Human Resources anymore, because those are like the bad people, because I had hurt a lot of people along the way, laying them off. And, you know, through some of our processes that we had as a business, you know, things like capping wages, and, and just a lot of practices that are typical for large corporations. They said, No, believe me, New Belgium is different. You want to come here, this is a good place to be. So I went there with some hesitancy. And it changed my life in a lot of ways. And it really changed how I saw business and what business can do, and really what business should be doing. And here we are, you know, more than a decade later. And businesses are doing these things. And it is we see ESG practices coming out for public companies. And they're basically mandating in some some respects the things that little companies like New Belgium was doing, you know, two decades ago. So hopefully we're seeing a tipping point on it. But what I hope doesn't happen is it just becomes another program that companies run and it doesn't really change our DNA. And that kind of goes into, can you really change a corporate system until you can change? Who owns that corporate system?
Paul Zelizer 10:16
Now, there's kind of two levels, when I think a New Belgium, there's kind of two levels, just multiple levels. But one level is the product itself. It was, you know, Fat Tire was like one of the first craft beers that many people heard of, including yours truly, right. And so there's the product itself. And then there's the culture of the company. We're going to talk about Aesop's and ESG, and the culture of ownership. But let's start with the product like what what would you say just from like, what the market thinks or when you were there, what was different about New Belgium has a brewery and what you were putting out there into the world, and so on a product level, any any sense of that?
Jennifer Briggs 11:01
Well, yeah, and I think New Belgium is an example of what really is a lifestyle brand company. And a lot of the way the the brand of the way it presents itself in the marketplace, is also the way we were living inside the company. So it's a fully integrated system, it's very holistic way to look at it. But at that time, when it was launching is very countercultural for the United States. And at that time, there was just a lot of, you know, Anheuser Busch being one of them. cores, which happened to come from a, you know, a family roots, but it got turned into a very large corporation, these little tiny breweries, were able to disrupt the market, because they were connecting with consumers in a different way than what I'll call yellow bill beer was at the time, you know, we were just used to the American lager. And here came these people that were a little gritty and inventive, and we're bringing traditions of brewing back. And so that's what I think is interesting, even though it was a modern, I think countercultural event. These companies were drawing on history. And you know, our co founder, Jeff leibish, was an engineer, went to Belgium, and started bringing back the the really cool ingredients and these ideas of using multiple yeast strains and, and adding a lot of significant flavor into beer. And then bringing back the ideas of handcrafted beer of the human connection to creating these recipes. So I think about half the time that are when I was there, about half of the leadership team was women. And that's highly unusual in the in the beer industry. For the United States, it was more of a manufacturing more of a male trend for men to be brewing men to be leading these breweries. And if you look back historically, at beer, beer was actually more of a food product. It was something like, for example, in Belgium, brewed by monks to give people you know, when there wasn't potable water to get people to drink. Women were making beer and fermenting beverages as part of creating nutrition for their families. And so we really leaned into that side of beer, of creating something good that people could appreciate. And when you're enjoying meals together, you have this experience. And so we did that at the brewery. That's how we lived as co workers. And we weren't buying into this some kind of more, I'll call it kind of college ideals of the way people were drinking and consuming massive amounts of alcohol. It was really more of a social experience that lent back on the the, you know, the history of what brewing was, was really doing for communities centuries ago,
Paul Zelizer 13:58
And it really caught on! Again, we both live in the West. You see it throughout like the Rockies, small town brewery where people are mountain biking and hiking like those things just got paired together on a trail runner now right after you trail run, many people will have a some sort of a craft beer everywhere, but that's a common thing that you go back 20 years ago 30 you know, 30 years ago is unheard of 20 years ago, all of a sudden, I was mountain biking more than trail running, but it was like it just took off. And he can Fat Tire just listen to the name on the image was literally a bike ride to the mountain bike community was one of the ways that sort of fed that or natural pairing with it. And it just took off. Is that fair to say?
Jennifer Briggs 14:48
Yeah, it is really fair to say and you know, I think we worked really hard at the brewery I think we had fantastic you know, Kim Jordan, our co founder, fantastic, amazing person. And our whole leadership team during the time, like we had so many good times, but the reality is, is we were also writing a wave of a trend. And now you look at it to your point, there's, you know, over 8000 craft breweries and, and we've seen kind of return of, you know, the pub environment where people are going there, you see lawns, these event lawns, and a lot of the breweries where people families are coming together. So hopefully, we're kind of losing some of that, that more contemporary history of excessive drinking to it being a more responsible social experience. And that was what we wanted to do at the brewery. And it was one of our values to be to know that we were creating something good for people, but also to be responsible and, and live more in the tradition of beer culture that was responsible with with that beverage.
Paul Zelizer 15:58
So there was a product itself. And and there was also like, how cool I did not know that part of the story about how many women were in leadership. How cool is that? And then there was the culture and the ownership and and to help explain that there is this thing, that's, you know, we throw out all kinds of terms around ESG. We're gonna define that one in a second. But help us understand what Employee Ownership Stock Plan (ESOP) is because that's a central to understanding the story and our topic today.
Jennifer Briggs 16:29
Right. So employee ownership is this very broad umbrella, if you will, and it includes things like employee owned cooperatives and includes Employee Ownership Stock Plan and in for smaller companies, it can just include really broad base gain sharing where people, the thing that they all have in common is people sharing the value they help create. Bottom line. Aesop is one of the vehicles to do this, it was created regulatorily by Congress back in the mid 70s. And it is a corporate is a vehicle of corporate finance. So what it allows people to do, it allows business owners to sell to their employees, their employee that become it establishes a trust, and the employees own their beneficial owners of that trust. And, and as the company grows, their benefit grows. And because of the word Congress did, it's in a qualified retirement plan, which is even better for participants, because you know, when, when you participate in a 401k, you get the benefit of tax free compounding over years. So it operates very similar to a 401k. But it is invested in employer stock. It's regulated, it has, you know, a lot of safeguards around it. And it's just a wonderful thing. And more importantly, I think for Employee Ownership Stock Plan (ESOP) in particular, is the employees don't have to buy the stock. So if you're a person who might not for whatever reason, you don't have expendable income, and you may not have ever been able to buy stock, or participate in the capital markets, it is a way to participate in those capital markets in a very structured protected way. And that's just an opportunity, a lot of us wouldn't ever be able to have his is to buy the stock. So in some public companies, for example, to contrast that he might have employee stock purchase plans, where employees of those companies can purchase company stock, but you have to have some kind of expendable income to purchase that stock. And, you know, if people have families, if people are paid at the lower end of the wage spectrum, they just won't have that extra income to be able to do these things. So it's a pretty big deal. I think it's a wonderful way for owners to transition their business, when you know, maybe they don't want to sell to private equity, or venture capital, maybe, maybe they want to keep their business owned locally. And it's an opportunity for those business owners to sell in a way that helps those things happen.
Paul Zelizer 19:11
So listeners, you've heard me before, if you've been around for a while, if you're brand new, welcome. We're so glad to have you. If you've listened to any more than one episode, you've heard me joke about my spiritual highlighter. So I'll pull out my spiritual highlighter here. And Jennifer, you said, people get to share in the value they create. Think about that listener, so many of us want to make positive impact, right. And economic inequality is a topic we've talked about. I don't even know how many times in the 207 episodes we've published a lot of times, right? But think about this, right? That's where our topic today. We're literally it's called literally including people and what you just said, Jennifer, I think I heard you say but I want to highlight if I'm wrong or not, or if I'm right, let's circle this. They don't have to buy the stock.
Jennifer Briggs 20:02
No. And that's, you know, we talk about equity, right. And equity is such an important thing. We want people to have be treated equally, we want to have dignity in the workplace. And those are all important. And this is a way to literally get equity, that capital equity is a way that people are not just included from a dignity purpose, they're included in the growing value of the company. And so you know, all these financial terms that we use in the social terms that we use, this is where they come together is an employee stock ownership plan. And it can be a really powerful thing. Now that you still need really high quality leadership to make all these things happen. I don't want to say that because you do an Aesop, it'll magically happen, but it is a very important ingredient into really changing in and reinventing how work can be done and what it looks like for the employees.
Paul Zelizer 20:57
So let's contrast that just for a minute. Pick your favorite, massive, I pick on Walmart a lot they deserve it. I'm sorry, I'm not sorry, sorry, not sorry, Walmart, right? We literally have people who like are on food stamps, many his time while working full time, right? We're in ownership of that company just gets richer and richer, Amazon, right? Like it's richer and richer and richer. And the folks who are like actually putting the things you buy from Amazon in a box and taping it or delivering it, etc, like can barely feed their families, or in many cases literally can't, they have to get food stamps, while working full time all the ownership gets richer and richer and richer. You're talking about here, Jennifer is the person who drives the beer truck, get stock in the company that compounds through time, and they don't have to buy the stock, they don't buy it with their dollars, they buy it by participating in the company, and they get a share of those returns, not just like here's some money, but they get a share in the company. And as the company grows, and because of these tax benefits, you're talking about it compounds through time, as if they were somebody who is of the financial class that they could invest in the stock market. And they get that return with wealth building through time is that is it something like that?
Jennifer Briggs 22:18
Yeah, you you have it 100% correct. So that's awesome. And I would I would add to say, so I am an executive fellow with Rutgers University. And there's an Institute for the Study of employee ownership and profit sharing. And one of the things that the researchers have found in these companies is they actually do tend to even pay higher. So when we have our labor income, you know, the the stuff that the money that we earn from doing our jobs or completing our tasks, that's labor income, then you also have this capital income and the capital income, the chasm between capital income and labor income is at the at the crest of the crux of everything that we're talking about, right, right now in terms of income inequality, and wealth inequality. And so these companies, researchers have found that they do also tend to pay more on the just the labor income side. So it's not like people are having their labor income reduced. So they could have capital income. They're getting both.
Paul Zelizer 23:18
And if you were to, I think more of our listeners might be familiar with something called a co op, which is another structure I think of food cops, or there's many kinds of cops, but many of us probably have at least some reference points or something like a food Co Op. How is an Aesop similar and how is it different than a co op?
Jennifer Briggs 23:37
Yeah, so there's a lot of employee on co Ops, and they're wonderful things. co ops can actually be used to start up a company, which is a little bit different than an ISA but Aesop is really a transition vehicle from one ownership to another. And then cooperatives are formed under state trust law. Colorado happens to be one of my my friends on the Colorado commission for employee ownership. His name's Jason whiner, he talks about how Colorado's the Delaware for co Ops, we have very friendly cooperative laws. And so they're formed under state law, Aesop's are under federal law, Aesop's have a pretty profound tax advantage tax advantage systems that helps owners and helps employee so this whole system works from a tax perspective. cooperatives can be structured very differently. But there are times that in CO Ops, you have to either there's a process of becoming an owner and sometimes people might have to buy the co op. And then also co ops. They don't have stock in the same sense or that a Aesop does. And so the Aesop's are very long term looking long term horizon things and so co ops can pay, you know, dividends or some kind of member payment at the end of the year based on their profits. So they're both good. And they're and companies are maybe more of a candidate for one or the other. But again, we still get that that sentiment of well, not dishonest sentiment, it's a real thing of people sharing the value they helped create. If a profit, the CO operative is more profitable, the cooperative members are going to get more of those profits returned to them. In Aesop, we look less at profit more at share value. And so as a share value, that value appreciates people are taking, they're participating in that appreciation of stuff.
Paul Zelizer 25:35
And in both of these structures, co op and Aesop's, you get your either monthly salary or hourly wage, whatever your arrangement is, with your employer, but over on top, and those are, as he said, likely to be higher than if you drove up your truck for a company that wasn't any sign up, right. Plus, you get these additional benefits that comes from the profits of the company that's trying to say we care about the people who work here. And we're trying to structurally set it up to be inclusive that you get some of the financial benefits of being an employee being a member of this family. And that's pretty freakin cool, in my opinion.
Jennifer Briggs 26:17
You know, and I think you said something really important is structurally set up. So I am also a fan of broad based profit sharing, and I really like it when Aesop's they have the Aesop but they also run an annual profit sharing plan. So you get the short and long term horizons covered on both of those. But the difference for profit sharing plans is they're usually discretionary. You know that the executives of a company or the owners of a company can choose on any given year to implement it or take it away. And with CO Ops, and Aesop's, they're structurally, it's codified into state or federal law, depending on where it is. So it's a very specific plan. So that's a really different, it's, it doesn't have the precarity of a profit sharing plan or doesn't have the situation where you might just have to be kind of reliant on a very altruistic owner, that it's, it's a structured system.
Paul Zelizer 27:17
So the upper echelons of the company can't say, you know, New Belgium group, 800 employees, sorry, 800 employees, it wasn't as good a year this year as we've had, and I really want my bonus, and my really big salary. So you folks are out of luck, but I still get my bonus. And that's not a thing. That's not gonna happen, because it's structurally, it's shared in a very detailed way. And you can't change that on the ups and downs of a particular market year. Is that fair to say?
Jennifer Briggs 27:47
That is fair to say. And even kind of in that vein, a lot of people know that New Belgium brewing was sold a couple a few years ago at this point now, but one of the things, you know, businesses are bought and sold all the time it happens. And one of the things to take this a little bit further, is when an Aesop is sold, the buyer actually buys out all those is up plan participants. And so the wealth is circulating back to people when input when Aesop's are sold. And so some people get very dogmatic about this idea of employee ownership. And that, you know, we have to keep it and I do think New Belgium still is an example of businesses being sold is good because it created that churn of wealth. And here in Colorado, we have governor polis, he established the Commission on employee ownership. And he himself, he actually did it through more synthetic equity, not Aesop. But he's sold some of his businesses and generated a lot of wealth not only for himself, but for all the people that prefer the people that work for him. So there's a lot of examples of, you know, the kind of the course of a business cycle, when it runs that course, instead of just making one or two business owners very wealthy in the sale of the business, you could have 100 200 400 people, and you're passing on a significant amount of wealth.
Paul Zelizer 29:05
So let's do this. I take a break and hear a word from our sponsor, we come back. I want to hear about like how to sell works. Also what you're up to now and how somebody who's interested in this can like how the heck do I get started with this? That sounds pretty cool. All that when we come back? Are you somebody that's a business that's about making the world a better place, and you want to grow both in terms of your positive impact, and in terms of your income? If so, I'd like to talk to you about podcasting for a minute. Here's why. When I was doing the researching about podcast, I found three particular data points that were like, ooh, the first one is that podcast listeners are early adopters. In other words, we hear about new ideas and we say Wow, that's pretty cool. And then we try it without a lot of drama or a lot of lead time, right? If it seems like a fit. We are really hungry for new ideas. They're quick to him. momentum. Number two podcast listeners are natural leaders. We're the kind of folks that other people in our networks, whether it's at work, or family, or in our community turn to and say, Hey, you know a lot about this topic. What do you think I might deal with this particular kind of situation that I'm struggling with? Number three, podcast listeners make more money, not just a little bit, but quite a bit. So when you put that all together, right, if you where I'm going with this, if you'd like to learn how to leverage podcasting, to grow your impact business, we're printers has a podcast success team will walk you through every step of every decision, every choice of which microphone to use, or how do I find great podcasts to be a guest on if you want to use a guest strategy, every step of the way, you can find out more at aware printers.com forward slash podcast dash success. And thank you to everybody who's in the podcast success team who sponsors this podcast. So Jennifer, let's talk a little bit just that sale. Right? You know, you were just mentioning it right there at the end. So in essence, what happened is these 800 employee owners or partial owners, all 800 of them got paid when New Belgium sold, is that what we're talking about?
Jennifer Briggs 31:16
Well, it might. So Aesop's have an eligibility. So companies will set up an eligibility, maybe you have to work there for a year, which is typical. So you want to work there before a year before you come eligible. And then you obviously the longer that you're there, you get more shares. And so really free in new Belgium's it was, there were probably two to 300 people that had significant amounts of money, who tended to be the more attendee or people that have been there for a long time. You know, in in the case of Karen, the purchasing, I know, one of the reasons they were selected is because they really did care about the transition. They wanted to make sure that it wasn't just, you know, a typical acquisition, that there was Karen thought put into it, and that New Belgium would stay in environmental company and be socially conscious. And so again, that having that privilege of that decision of finding the next good partner, I think, is a really important part of their story. And, you know, all the good work that leadership over the years did. But yeah, so there was some people that got quite significant levels of money in that sale,
Paul Zelizer 32:30
which is wonderful. That's freaking awesome. On such a rock. So if somebody listened and you're like me listener, you're like, that's freaking awesome. How do you do that? Like, if I like, how would somebody who's saying this makes a lot of sense? How would somebody like start to move the needle if they have a business, and they wanted to incorporate employee ownership into what they're doing? What would you suggest for them?
Jennifer Briggs 32:56
Well, if you want to go the Aesop route, it does need to be a little bit larger of a business. So you know, think you can I actually one of my clients is a small Aesop in Orange County, and they have about 50 or 60 participants in their plan 1650 employees, as well. So you can do them smaller, but a 10 20% company's probably not going to be eligible and an employee uncooperative might be a better route. There's also ways of setting up your business in growing it so that you can think long term as I want Aesop to be my exit route, isn't it as an owner, so maybe it's not even something you want to do two years from now, but you're trying to do it? Five or 10 years from now, and at the bottom line to be eligible for an Aesop sale. It really just needs to be a successful business, is you want to make sure you have enough cash flow to cover the deal. There's some technicalities between an Aesop or S corporation, but when founders sell the business to the employees, there are some significant tax advantages for them that they're eligible for. And the other thing too, is S corp, Aesop's. They pay like typical S corporations, do they pay the tax at the shareholder level. And so what that means is taxes are paid as regular income when employees take that retirement income. And so for these companies, essentially, during most of their operating years, aren't paying federal taxes. From that perspective, it's like deferred taxation for them. So that really helps them on a year over year basis. have the money to invest in Aesop have potentially extra money to invest in their business. So for Aesop's, there's some significant tax advantages. And so if you're interested in well, employee ownership in general, let me step back there. A lot of states have state employee ownership centers, and if anyone's interested, they can contact me and I'll help them get routed there at the Bicester Institute, so we're an institute that was formed on behalf or by the pastor family. He was the founder of SAIC, a billion dollar company that was a partial Aesop. And so we work in that field and we do feasibility studies for companies to help them figure out are they eligible? Are they a good candidate for them? And then we help help manage them through the process of becoming an employee owned company. And I think why I am affiliated with Bicester is because we're also growing the next professionals in the Aesop field. Because this isn't you don't go to business school and learn to be a financial analyst. In an Aesop, you learn to talk, you talk about private equity in business schools, you talk about public companies, and that's the kind of analytics students learn. So with us, our grad students are really learning about how does this very specific model two and they get practical application and mentoring to go on and be professional financial analysts? There's a lot of consulting companies that do this as well. So there's a lot of resources, but I think what's most important, is sometimes you'll just talk to an attorney or an accountant. And they may dissuade people, they'll say, Oh, you know, the Department of Labor is going to make that really complicated. Or they'll cite some examples of where Aesop's went bad. And there have been a few examples of that, of why you shouldn't do it. And so I think it's really important to get aligned with somebody in this community, who really knows and understands how they've work, and who understand the structure that you work in so they can help them. And I find it I always find it ironic, because a lot of times we don't talk about how many time how many times private equity acquisitions go bad. But we'll talk about the two or three times in Aesop land pad. So you know, it's really important just to get connected to someone in the community,
Paul Zelizer 36:58
some winding it back just a little bit and helping to find the through line listener. So Jennifer, after you are at New Belgium, and the company went from a small breed 800 and then there was a sale, you wound up at this place called the Bicester Institute, and it's like a small, almost like a consulting arm or think tank within the University of California at San Diego that is really passionate about these exact topics, employee ownership and structures that are really inclusive financially. Is that is that fair to say?
Jennifer Briggs 37:29
That is fair to say? Yeah, so after I left New Belgium, I really wanted to deepen into this idea of employee ownership. And so I've stayed focused on corporate governance and corporate performance. And the beiser Institute is a center of excellence inside UCSD, the University of California, San Diego. But where I really met my students to was years ago, Marianne Bicester did a documentary called we the owners, and New Belgium was one of the featured companies in that. And so you know, it's just once you the employee ownership, community is such a welcoming community, and we all want to see each other's businesses thrive. And so I think a lot of ways it's the same as the socially conscious companies is where we're welcoming to each other and we want to help each other. And so my connection divisor goes way back, and new Belgium's connection goes way back. And it's just something that I found myself continually committed to is how do we grow this idea of capital ownership, so more companies at a minimum or companies are aware of it, but more companies are actually doing these transactions and these conversions?
Paul Zelizer 38:42
solicitors if you are like somebody says, Yes, this sounds awesome. Get a hold of Jennifer through the Bicester Institute and her and her team can help you make sense of what your options are and what you might be working towards, and what might be a fit for your goals and your situation. So, you're so passionate about this, you're writing a book, tell us about your book?
Jennifer Briggs 39:04
Yes, it's, it's um, I'm I hope so may i help a lot of people can empathize with me and that I was, I've been working on it for a while I started when I left, New Belgium. But the the crux of it is is, you know, this, this life that we all lead is? How do we transition into these better business lives? And how do we really reinvent work? And why is it so important to us as a society? You know, there's a lot of a lot of consultants and a lot of work going on in this field. And I'm constantly mystified, like, why aren't more people catching on to this? And one of my theories is people just don't understand the story of why it's so important and how powerful it is. And so that's really where I want to go with the book is, you know, using the story and the characters to talk about why this is so it won't be an instructive business book, but Oh, Hopefully an influence book where we can captivate people and help them. And one of the things that I got to do was, it was it was one of those transformational parts of my life, I got to go participate in a voice, a little worker campaign, it was at the White House under the Obama administration. And what you realize is worker voice is something that we just need more of, and a lot of Aesop's have participant of cultures that help bring out worker voice more. And so I think, hopefully, we're getting to a place where people can start demanding different types of businesses, you know, like you brought up Amazon and Walmart, you know, how can we shift to the power differential a little bit to have wealth creation happen for more people. And so I wanted to be just more of our social conversation in general.
Paul Zelizer 40:57
And before we hit the record button, I was like, appreciating you, Jennifer. So often, I get an email from somebody, they're my private coaching, or turtle enterpreneurs, hey, I've got this book, it's been out for two years. And, you know, it's not selling that well. And I wonder what I could do to help market it right. And research tells us that the first six months of sales kind of set the trajectory, there are some exceptions, but what you're doing Jennifer, like getting out there and seeing the conversation and doing a podcast and being in the space and building the space. And then we were talking about it using the image of I live in New Mexico, if you just take seeds and throw them out in the soil of my like, really hard, sunbaked Albuquerque backyard, they're not gonna grow, you got to, I'd have a garden, another garden, not my backyard, where the soils very prepared and things are growing right now got all kinds of things, zucchinis and tomatoes, and basil, herbs and some flowers that Oh, my gosh, it's growing, so much stuff is growing. But we prepared that soil, right, so you're preparing the soil for your book, and then you'll launch the book into prepared soils, boy, listeners, if anything ever made, like stuck in your brain, as somebody who's either who's got a book on your radar is writing a book, go build your platform, it's called Building your marketing platform, build it, and then sell your book, don't write your book, and then figure out years later, maybe I should think about how I should sell this thing. So good job.
Jennifer Briggs 42:33
In you know, I mean, I wanted to get more experienced to to feed the depth of bid. I've now I've worked in Birmingham, Alabama, I've worked with a team at the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, you know, and worked with more and more businesses. And I was aware, you know, that my viewpoint could possibly have been too narrow. And, you know, what I know is I'm not writing a book for me, I'm writing a book for readers. And I wanted to make sure that the experiences that I could share had depth and had significance. And so you know, part of it as you chart, you know, your, your storyline when you're writing a book is just to make sure that it's it has significance in it connect with a lot of people.
Paul Zelizer 43:18
So you've been in this conversation a long time. And you've been thinking about these themes, participatory cultures and inclusive structures that the people who work in the company get financial benefit, and also a voice I love that use worker voice as a frame, what a beautiful thing. So like, literally inputting into the direction and the structures of the company and getting benefit back financially, from those choices and decisions and all the collective hard work. What if you look ahead like five years from now, what do you think is going to be happening in this space of employee ownership type structures? And these conversations?
Jennifer Briggs 43:58
You know, well, I guess the simple answer is I hope there's more. But I hope the ones that are becoming that really stay in tune with what society needs. So it's not just a benefit. It's not just an incentive plan, that we're teaching people throughout the company, financial literacy, so they understand the business of running the business, they understand how business is made, they get to experience some of those tensions, because I believe growth happens in the tension. And so, you know, business decisions aren't simple. And when you choose to, to have like a socially aware count company, like we have experienced with, there's just so many choices that you have to make that sometimes are directly at odds with one another. There's still profit making businesses, they still want a lot of revenue growth, and they want to be wonderful companies. And so where do you choose these investments. And so I think when you teach business literacy to the people that are there when you teach social emotional intelligence inside the workplace, to build this This really strong durable company, socially strong, durable company. When those people leave, they're more well prepared to go on to better jobs, they're more well prepared to choose different careers. And so I think this is really part of a bigger system that we can all play as a business community, of building and kind of lifting up everyone around us, so that we create more opportunities. And I think sometimes small businesses, they want to stay small. And I think that's wonderful. So how can we help people when they outgrow the company grow into something amazing. And so ultimately, I hope that where it goes is I hope we teach decisions. I hope we teach finance, I hope we teach about the challenge of choices so that people are more well prepared to make the right choice. When they're presented with tension.
Paul Zelizer 45:54
I could talk to you all day to ever This is so cool. And I won't do that to you. And I won't do that to our listeners, if there was something you were hoping we were going to get to in today's interview and we haven't gotten it. Or you're like wanting to leave our listeners with something like a takeaway as we start to wind down. What would that be? You know,
Jennifer Briggs 46:15
I think the takeaway or or the desire, some of both is, for all of us, as social businesses, as social entrepreneurs, is really how can we reposition ourselves collectively, ahead of the public companies so that our politicians and policymakers can see us as a force that needs the demands their attention, that demands new kinds of policies, that demands more thoughtfulness on their part, we're always the public companies always get the news, because, you know, they're public companies, and it's transparent to some degree. I want them to be talking about us. And when it comes down to the point of our political leaders talking about tax policy, or social policy, I want all of us to have a seat at that table somehow. So I would like for us to be top of mind. And I think the more that we can do, the more like what you're doing, Paul, and what other people are doing, the more we can have that united front. I hope that happens. And I think we could recreate the economy really, just by having that united front and showing that we can be successful.
Paul Zelizer 47:31
Jennifer, it's been fabulous having you on the show today. Thanks so much. Thank you, Paul. So that's all the time we have for today's episode. Thank you so much for listening before you go. We love listener suggested topics and guests. So if you have an idea for an episode, go to the aware printers website. And on our contact page, we have our three criteria frames that we use to like who comes on the show and who doesn't. It's right there. We try to be as transparent as possible. If you read those, say this is a fabulous idea fits perfectly. Please share it. We really appreciate it. For now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our work.