I am delighted to announce that ROI Communication is now owned by our employees. This is a project we’ve been working on for months, and it is such a win, win, win!
We celebrated our 20th anniversary in August, and leading up to that milestone, I began to think about the future structure of the company. Over the years, we have been approached by many organizations interested in acquiring ROI. At one point, several years ago, I entertained that idea, but it quickly became apparent that if we sold ROI to another company, our special culture would be lost.
I had heard of the ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) structure and was intrigued. Essentially, the company buys the business from the owners and then a trust is created to hold the shares for the employees. Shares are granted to employees each year, based on a formula, and held in a pension plan. Employees do not have to pay for the shares.
There is additional administrative work to manage the ESOP, but the company stays intact, with the same leadership. I am still deeply engaged with ROI as CEO and now also trustee of the ESOP. In addition, I’ve become an employee owner along with the rest of the team.
Concurrent with the ESOP transition, I am thrilled to announce that our own Sheryl Lewis has been promoted to President of ROI. Sheryl has been with ROI from the beginning, and there is no one better positioned to help lead us into our next 20 years as an employee-owned company.
My heart swells thinking of what we have done with ROI. It is a perfect reflection of our culture and philosophy (internally and with our clients) of engaging and empowering employees to achieve extraordinary results. Our business results are already reflecting the value of this change. AKA, business is booming!
We will be announcing our transition to ESOP and the promotion of Sheryl Lewis publicly tomorrow. I wanted to give you all a heads up in advance. This is the “exciting things are happening at ROI,” that I referred to in my last newsletter.
It has been an emotional time. It’s an adjustment moving from founder and owner to founder and fellow employee owner. The overwhelming sentiment is positive. I am grateful for the value we have created in this organization, and now I can rest easy that it is in a structure that is not dependent on any one person. Most exciting is we get to retain our culture and our way of doing business while also supporting the financial future of our team. It truly is a win for everyone.
As many of you know, I’m now halfway through my first semester in graduate school at CIIS and I have a lot of homework! It’s absolutely delightful to be with a diverse global cohort engaged in philosophical and intellectual content and perspectives. My brain and spirit are stretching, which is exactly what I hoped for. I’ve read more in the last two months than I have in the last two years.
Life is a journey, and it has become richer in so many ways. I do find that with the school load along with the workload I don’t have the time to maintain a regular newsletter or conduct open weekly planning sessions as we did earlier this year. I am hoping to host an annual planning series in January. In the meantime, I look forward to staying connected intermittently.
