Author: GAWDA MEDIA

By Mike Lorence, PH.D. You’re about to digest a very meaty article with a ton of actionable strategies regarding the hiring of superstar sales reps, but this information is not for the faint of heart. Let’s start by asking these questions:  Are  you motivated to hire superstar salespeople in your gas business?  Are you the main ‘rainmaker’ for your business?  Have you hired salespeople in the past that turned out to be duds? Do you want to extract yourself from the day-to-day selling activities in your business? If your answer is yes, read on … but first, let me introduce…

By Jennifer Briggs When a company sells to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) or a group starts a co-op, a common question is, how will this new organization be different for the employees as owners? There is the obvious and critical starting point that the employees need to understand their benefit and recognize how an ESOP or co-op works from their own financial/beneficial perspective. But, then what? A big win with employee ownership is the shared profit motive. No longer is it a single owner, small group or set of anonymous shareholders who benefit. Now, it is the trust/employees…

Newest of the GAWDA ESOPs, McDantim Inc. changed its organizational structure at the end of 2017. The successful company of 23 employees is located in Helena, Mont. Company Origins Started by Mert Fallon in 1988, McDantim specializes in on-site gas blending technologies.  The Decision  Mert’s children, Michelle, Dan and Tim, each owned a third of the company, but hadn’t been involved in its operation. When the founder-father died in 1991 Dan decided to take over the company rather than shut it down. There were just three other employees then. The logic of the decision to convert to an ESOP “was…

Toll Company was an early adopter. Started in St. Paul, Minn., in 1945, the company established its ESOP in 1975 as a retirement program for its employees only a year after federal legislation that permitted the formation of Employee Stock Ownership Plans. Company Origins Founder H.R. Toll wanted to establish a retirement plan for the employees, which led to the formation of the ESOP in 1975. Shortly after the ESOP was established, he died in a car accident in 1979. As the years transpired, the company became 100 percent employee owned. That designation is one of the company’s primary branding…

Company Origins In 1965, Philip Keeler founded Aluminum Precision Products (APP). In 1992, APP acquired Catalina Cylinders. Keeler and two of his sons, Gregory and Roark, managed APP and Catalina as family-owned businesses for the next 17 years. The Decision Philip Keeler passed away in 2009. It had been the Keeler family’s philosophy that the company should transition to the employees versus selling to a competitor or private equity firm, so the company immediately began transitioning to an ESOP. In 2015, to better align the business with the interests of the employees (90 in California and 160 in Virginia), Catalina…

The company marks its silver anniversary as an employee-owned company this year. With three Minnesota locations, the firm can service the majority of that state plus customers in western Wisconsin and the eastern Dakotas. OSC has an active ESOP Committee and advocates for ESOP ownership regularly. Company leaders attend and speak at regional and national ESOP events and conferences and make advocacy visits to Capitol Hill. Company Origins Bill Huber and Bill Lund (always known as “Bill and Bill”) started the company in 1959. They owned and operated it together for 34 years. The Decision Reaching retirement age and without…

Company Origins Norco Inc. began in Boise, Id., in 1948 as the welding supply division of the Nordling Auto Parts Company. Larry Kissler, formerly Union Carbide Linde division general manager in charge of 11 eastern states, bought the company in 1968 and moved his wife, Fran, and four children to Idaho. With 15 employees and two locations, Larry and Dan Steele, general manager and eventually company president,  started acquiring distributorships throughout the intermountain region.  In 1985 Kissler’s son, Jim, bought the firm and led expansion efforts of nearly15 percent annually. A specialty gas division was started in 1990, and in…

Company Origins In 1968, Richard “Dick” Couch Jr.  and Bob Dean formed the company after they invented a water-injected plasma-arc cutting technology. Headquartered in Hanover, N.H., Hypertherm now has 1,400 associates, business partners in 93 countries and is known for its active social responsibility program. The Decision In 2001, anticipating their retirement was still a decade or more out, Dick and his wife, Barbara, undertook what was “partly an experiment” to see how ESOPs worked and to learn about them, says Evan Smith, current president and CEO. “They didn’t need to sell the controlling interest of the company at that…

Since a modest start in 1969, this third-generation welding supply and gas distributorship has grown to become the largest independently owned welding supply company in the state of Colorado. The company became a partial ESOP in 2007, a benefit that is “part of our secret sauce for recruiting and retaining the best in our industry,” says its president. Company Origins Gene Armstrong began the company in a retrofitted gas station in 1969. In 1970, his son Gary joined him. Today the 200-person, 10-location firm is still managed by a third-generation Armstrong, in the form of a partial ESOP. The Decision…

The foresight, innovation and generosity of second-generation owner O.E. Meyer Jr. in the 1980s has carried the company through a family-owned to employee-owned transition. Today, it celebrates 100 successful years in business as a 100 percent employee-owned firm. Company Origins O.E. Meyer Company began in 1918 when Omar E. Meyer Sr., who had been a lake captain, joined his brother in the operation of a welding shop. The company now operates eight locations in Ohio and has headquarters in Sandusky. The Decision In mid-1982, as Omar Jr. got up in age, he pondered what to do with the company. Meyer…