Bret Keisling shares an excerpt from Episode 40 of the Owner to Owner podcast. Host Jesse Tyler asked guest Sarah Limoges of Admix, “what does ownership mean to you?” Sarah's incredible answer covered security, stability, generational wealth and more.
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Mini-cast 224 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. This week, we dropped Episode 40 of the Owner to Owner podcast hosted by Jesse Tyler. It's a really fun episode. His guests were Sarah Limoges of AdMix and Tyson Hendrickson of Pacific Steel & Recycling. They were on to discuss Corey Rosen's new book coauthored with John Case called Ownership, Reinventing Companies, Capitalism, and Who Owns What.
[00:00:41] And then Jesse pulled a little bit of a surprise on his guests, Sarah and Tyson. He had Corey Rosen himself join the podcast to talk about his book. It's a great, interesting episode. I really hope you'll check it out. You can find it at www.OwnerToOwnerPodcast.com.
[00:00:58] Early in the conversation, Jesse asked a question of Sarah and Tyson, prior to talking about the book, and the question was, "What does ownership mean to you?" And Sarah Limoges gave an answer that just knocked my socks off. I think it is just a perfect, wonderful answer for someone who's in her early twenties, been a couple of years out of college, is already a rising star in the ESOP world. She was the ESOP Association's Employee Owner of the Year, a year or so back. She's just absolutely a dynamic speaker. But, I loved her answer so much, I wanted to share it with you on today's Mini-cast.
[00:01:35] Here's Jesse Tyler and then Sarah Limoges.
[00:01:38] Jesse Tyler: But what I wanted to do is start again with Sarah with the great question in the employee ownership community. What does ownership mean to you?
[00:01:46] Sarah Limoges: So, this is the, the loaded question, right? Yeah. Ownership means to me, more than anything, and I've said it from day one. It, it's that... what's the word I'm looking for?... that comfort and just knowing that I'm going to be taken care of. That my work every day, it's not just compensated in my salary, but I'm going to be able to retire with a decent chunk that I will feel comfortable with.
[00:02:11] Now I come from, you know, very lower middle-class roots. Both my parents have had to work, you know, my entire life. And when I was in my teens, my parents ended up getting divorced and my mother has had a very, very hard time, you know, housing three kids, feeding three kids, and then, you know, kind of starting her career all over and having to find a house. Watching her struggle through all that and seeing her now, like really starting to worry about her retirement. She's edging up on, you know, her mid-fifties and getting closer to that retirement time and she's not sure when she's going to be able to retire, how comfortably she'll be able to retire, especially with social security looking the way it is. She's very stressed about those things.
[00:02:55] And me going into the workforce, I was really scared because I'm like, you know, I want to be a mom, I want to have a family. And I, I just, I don't know how I'm going to be able to make it all happen between paying off my school loans, buying a house in this economy, trying to raise children and still make a savings so that I can retire at a reasonable age, not when I'm 80, and then actually be able to enjoy retirement.
[00:03:19] And, as I said before, one of the biggest reasons I accepted this job, despite it being out of my wheelhouse, was because of the ESOP. I saw it as, you know, okay, maybe this is a chance for me to start to build that generational wealth that my family's had such a hard time building until now.
[00:03:35] And the more and more I've learned about it, the more and more I've felt empowered by it.
[00:03:40] Because it really truly gives me that vehicle to have some stability later in life. And that, that's everything. That is absolutely everything, especially the way this economy is right now. It's a scary time with capitalism the way we have it right now. Because Corey, I love how in your book you talked about we're not trying to abolish capitalism, we're trying to make more capitalists.
[00:04:05] And that's exa- it is truly exactly what we need. Because I've always said up until I read this book, like I hate capitalism. I hate how it is because it's only the few who succeed and the rest of us who are doing the work, the day-to-day work, don't get to see any of the profits of it. We work till the day we die, and it feels like we're just workhorses for these CEOs who get all the money.
[00:04:26] Whereas, no, ESOPs create more capitalists. We actually get to put in and see the fruit of our labor. And there, there is no replacement. There's no other… that, that's the way capitalism should function.
[00:04:37] Jesse Tyler: That's great. That's great. And just, just to add a point. So, what I hear you saying is, is you know, your sense of security and that things are going to be okay and you're going to have, you know, that retirement that might be far out for you, early in your career, but it makes today different, it made yesterday different, it makes tomorrow different for Sarah coming to work knowing the longer term view. The money comes later, but the experience is today. And I think, I think of that.
[00:05:03] Sarah Limoges: Well absolutely, because I don't have to put just my salary into savings constantly. I can use my salary to buy that house, to raise a family, to have my kids in the different activities they want, which I don't have children yet, but that's in the future.
[00:05:18] And I can use my salary to live on, which is what a salary is for. And I can live on that salary comfortably knowing that I will have something for my retirement, not just my 401k that I also have to pay into the fruits of my labor that I worked for for 40 years will have built up over time into something that I can rely on.
[00:05:38] Jesse Tyler: That's great. That's great.
[00:05:40] Bret Keisling: Once again, that's an excerpt from Episode 40 of the Owner to Owner podcast. We'll include a link in our show notes for this episode, and also you can find all of Jesse's great episodes at www.OwnerToOwnerPodcast.com.
[00:05:54] I hope you'll check out the episode on Corey Rosen's book and all the great work Jesse's is doing.
[00:05:59] With that, we'll wrap up today's episode of the Mini-cast. Thank you so much for listening. This is Bret Keisling. Be well.
[00:06:06] 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, 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.