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After spending 30 years building Ocaquatics into a $10 million swim-school business with five locations and 150 employees, Miren Oca knew she needed a succession plan. She also knew what she didn't want: She had no interest in selling to private equity, and her son had made it clear he didn't want to take over the business. So Miren started exploring employee ownership. She considered worker cooperatives and even spent $50,000 pursuing an employee stock ownership plan before deciding that wasn't quite right, either.Ultimately, she chose a less familiar option: an employee ownership trust, or EOT. It allowed her to preserve the culture she'd built, share the company's future profits with her employees, and collect an eight-figure purchase price over 12 years. But there's an intriguing twist: Miren financed the entire transaction herself, which means she's being paid with cash flow from a business she previously owned outright. So she’s getting paid with money that would have been hers anyway. This week, Miren explains how she arrived at her decision, how the deal works, and why she believes it was the right choice for her, her employees, and the business. The episode is brought to you by
Grasshopper Bank.
Correction:In our conversation, I managed to confuse Miren with one of my questions, which led her to understate what she believed selling her business to an ESOP would have cost. Here are the right numbers: She says the estimated transaction cost for an ESOP was close to $500,000 — or roughly five times the $100,000 that her EOT transaction actually cost.
