S2E7 Sustainable Small Businesses and Employee Ownership

In this episode, we will be offering data and strategies from Rob Brown, the director of Business Ownership Solutions at the Cooperative Development Institute based in Northampton, Massachusetts. Business Ownership Solutions works throughout the Northeast states with business owners to think through whether conversion to a cooperative could meet their needs. They also work with employees or community members to execute the co-op conversion. 

You can find Rob Brown's article here: https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1905&context=mpr

Transcript

Today, we will be offering data and strategies from Rob Brown, the director of Business Ownership Solutions at the Cooperative Development Institute based in Northampton, Massachusetts. Business Ownership Solutions works throughout the Northeast states with business owners to think through whether conversion to a cooperative could meet their needs. They also work with employees or community members to execute the co-op conversion.

This is the Maine Policy Matters podcast from the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. I am Eric Miller, research associate at the Center.

On each episode of Maine Policy Matters, we discuss public policy issues relevant to the state of Maine. Today, we will be covering an article by Rob Brown, the director of Business Ownership Solutions at the Cooperative Development Institute. Brown gives us an inside perspective on how we can build back our economy in his article entitled  “How to Save Jobs and Build Back Better: Employee Ownership Transitions as a Key to an Equitable Economic Recovery.” This article was published in volume 30, number 2, of Maine Policy Review, a peer-reviewed academic journal published by the Margaret Chase Smith Policy Center. For all citations for data provided in this episode, please refer to Rob Brown’s article in Maine Policy Review.

What are small business owners to do in the midst of a pandemic as they approach retirement age? How can small businesses and their employees successfully stay afloat once the owner decides to retire? Rob Brown has some answers.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Maine was already on the leading edge of what is called the “silver tsunami.” This term refers to the large oncoming wave of baby boomer business owners looking to exit and retire, many of whom do not have a plan and don't understand the process and options.

Nationally, the average age of business owners is over 50 years old. In rural Maine, almost half of business owners are over 60.

Maine has 12,790 small businesses where the owner wants to retire in the next several years. These retirements would affect 108,000 workers across the state.

And yet, less than one in five business owners have a documented exit plan for what will happen to their businesses–and their employees–once they retire.

What options do business owners facing retirement have?

Having their children take over the business is risky, as business transitions to second generations are only successful 19% of the time.

Well, what about retirement age owners selling their businesses?

This is also often not a good option either, as only 20% of commercial listings for businesses actually sell.

If retirement-age owners are closing their businesses, what happens to their employees? What are they to do when their jobs close down with the business?

Brown paints a picture of how such retirements impact employees and the community: “Too often, the default option ends up being liquidation and closure, and the smaller and more rural the business, the g