Bret Keisling is joined by the NCEO's Danielle Clarke-Newell who discusses a June 2022 two-day feasibility seminar "Is an ESOP Right for You?" co-sponsored by the NCEOC, as well as other great educational programs.
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About Danielle Clarke-Newell
Danielle Clarke-Newell is the Interim Events Director at the NCEO. She manages the event communications and coordinates the logistics for NCEO events. Danielle’s event-planning career spans over eight years in the orchestral, hospitality, media, and pharmaceutical industries. She has planned conferences, virtual convenings, board meetings, and corporate gatherings. She holds a bachelor's degree in Marketing with a minor in event planning from LIM College in New York City.
When she’s not managing the programming for our webinars and meetings, she is an avid cook, enjoys practicing yin yoga, tending to her plants, and reading.
Mini-cast 183 Transcript
[00:00:00] Bret Keisling: Welcome to the ESOP Mini-cast. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Bret Keisling, and as it says on my business cards, I'm a passionate advocate for employee ownership. I am so delighted to introduce to you one of the great team members at The National Center of Employee Ownership, Danielle Clarke-Newell. Thank you so much coming on the Mini-cast.
[00:00:27] Danielle Clarke-Newell: Hi, Bret. Thank you so much for having me this morning.
[00:00:30] Bret Keisling: We're going to talk about an upcoming program. We're going to talk about a couple of things that the NCEO is doing, but first of all, let me just take this opportunity, Danielle, to thank and congratulate you and all of your colleagues for all of the amazing work you did at the Annual EO Conference that was just held last week in Seattle, Washington. It was a great experience!
[00:00:48] Danielle Clarke-Newell: Yes, yes it was. I'm so glad you were able to join us.
[00:00:51] Bret Keisling: And the cool thing was getting to meet so many of you and your colleagues in person that I've known quite well over Zoom and through the podcast in the last year or two.
[00:00:58] But everybody was there. Jaymie Oviedo, who has been referred to as the Maestro of the event, just did a wonderful job. And I had to laugh a little bit with affection and respect. She was just in running shoes for four days. Just running from place to place to place, as a lot of you were. But it was so cool to see Loren [Rodgers] and Corey [Rosen] greeting everybody, and if I name any more names, I'll miss some. But everybody was just great. And everybody, it was just a great experience. So, thank you again.
[00:01:24] Danielle Clarke-Newell: Yes, thank you.
[00:01:24] Bret Keisling: But we don't live in the past. The NCEO has plenty of ongoing really cool, important educational programs. And we're going to talk about a couple of them, but the big one that we're going to talk about today is you have a program "Is an ESOP Right for You?" that you're going to share some information about.
[00:01:40] Danielle Clarke-Newell: Yes. Thank you, Bret. So, we have our feasibility seminar coming up, "Is an ESOP Right for You?" This will be held at The Westin Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina, June 28th to the 29th.
[00:01:52] We have our company speaker, John King from Costco, and we're super excited to have Guenevere Abernathy from the North Carolina Employee Ownership Center join us as well.
[00:02:03] And this seminar will cover a wide array of topics from valuation to financing, to learning how to manage your stock holding shares It's a lot of information for folks that are interested in employee ownership or those that want to develop an exit plan for their own companies. And we're looking forward to having everyone join us in person after two long years of going remote for this program.
[00:02:30] Bret Keisling: We're going to include links to the program in our show notes and people can find it there but let me stress if you are considering an ESOP in any form at all and it's in North Carolina, which is a really cool place to visit. The cost of the two-day program is not that expensive. And if you put the cost in with just travel in a couple of nights in a hotel in North Carolina. Stay the weekend, because it's a really cool place to visit.
[00:02:56] But if you're looking at selling your business and creating an ESOP, the couple of hundred bucks, relatively speaking, is such a modest investment for the really thorough program that you guys have put together.
[00:03:08] I reviewed it, as you know Danielle, I was an ESOP trustee for seven years and you have put together an agenda that is just spot on for somebody who wants to look at considering an ESOP. So, very well done.
[00:03:19] Danielle Clarke-Newell: Yes, thank you so much, Bret.
[00:03:20] Bret Keisling: So, in addition to that program, the NCEO has stuff going on all the time. I understand that there's a webinar just next week that you can tell us about.
[00:03:30] Danielle Clarke-Newell: Yeah. So, we actually just wrapped up our webinar with Corey Rosen on "Best Practices for ESOP Boards." We have another webinar coming up next Tuesday. We'll be joined by Ted Becker and Allison Egan from McDermott Will & Emery. And they're going to be discussing recent lawsuits and court decisions and fiduciaries and other information that will be valuable for our field.
[00:03:53] Bret Keisling: Danielle, that is such an important seminar. And for those who aren't aware, Ted Becker and his colleague Allison Egan. Ted Becker was one of the primary folks on the ESOP side behind the GreatBanc settlement with the Department of Labor in 2014 that just changed the way transactions were done and changed them for the better.
[00:04:14] So, I can't think of any better folks to be giving a legal update than Ted and Alison and moderated by Corey. How cool is that?
[00:04:21] So, that's going to be next week and a very important program. And you also have the Fall Forum coming up.
[00:04:27] Danielle Clarke-Newell: Yes. So, our Fall ESOP Forum registration launches next Monday, which is also the same day that our speaker submission proposal deadline closes.
[00:04:36] So, we're just encouraging folks to register and also, if you are interested in speaking for the Forum, please be sure to submit your proposal by next Monday.
[00:04:45] Bret Keisling: Excellent. And I presented in Seattle with Jesse Tyler who hosts the Owner to Owner podcast. And the presentations really are what make the conferences so important and special.
[00:04:55] I encourage not just the professional service advisors who are used to presenting and submitting proposals. But if you're an employee owner and you have experiences, don't hesitate about whether or not you're a polished speaker or that sort of thing. The most effective presentations that I ever am at, at any of the conferences, are where actual employee owners are participating because their stories are so important.
[00:05:21] So, I'd encourage everybody to start with the registration process, which opens Monday. But the speaker proposals, which are due Monday, give it some thought and I hope you get a lot of responses. Your presentations are always so amazing at the NCEO conferences.
[00:05:35] Danielle Clarke-Newell: Yes. Yes. Thank you.
[00:05:37] Bret Keisling: All right, Danielle, thank you so much for taking a little bit of time today. Thank you again. I was so happy to meet you last week in Seattle and thank you for all of your efforts. And we're going to have you come on in the podcast in a little bit of time and give a fuller rundown of the Fall Forum. Is it okay? Can we have you back for that?
[00:05:54] Danielle Clarke-Newell: Yes. Looking forward to it, Bret.
[00:05:56] Excellent. With that, we're going to wrap up today's episode of the Mini-cast. My appreciation and gratitude to Danielle Clarke-Newell of the National Center for Employee Ownership. Check out the programs that she's discussed and join us Tuesday for part two of my conversation with Alex Moss of Praxis Consulting.
[00:06:12] Thank you so much for listening. This is Bret Keisling. Be well.
[00:06:16] Bitsy McCann: We'd love to hear from you. You can find us on Facebook at EO Podcast Network and on Twitter @ESOPPodcast. This podcast has been produced by Bret Keisling for the EO Podcast Network, production assistance by Victoria Huerta, original music composed by Max Keisling, branding and marketing by BitsyPlus Design, and I'm Bitsy McCann.
Standard Disclaimer: The views expressed herein are my own and don't represent those of my own firms or the organizations to which I belong. Nothing in the podcast should be construed as guidance or advice of any kind in any field and the fact that I mentioned an organizational website or an advocate or a company on a podcast does not reflect an endorsement, but if you've heard your name or your group's name mentioned on this podcast, I'd love to have you come on and talk about it yourself.
A note on the transcript: This transcript was produced by Descript, an automated transcription service. While it has been reviewed by The EsOp Podcast, we can not guarantee the accuracy of the transcription. Please refer to the original audio when citing sources.