#287: How Financial Literacy and ESOPs Exponentially Impact Growth, Culture, and Value with Shawn Burcham

Shawn Burcham is founder and CEO of PFSbrands, a branded food service company that he started in his garage and grew at over 100% ARR year-over-year for the first few years. Now the company does $100 million in revenue and has an excellent culture that incorporates financial literacy at all levels. Shawn even wrote a book about it all called Keeping Score with GRITT: Straight Talk Strategies for Success to help other entrepreneurs achieve their goals as well.

On today’s show, Shawn talks about when he hit a multi-million dollar threshold and realized he needed to start setting goals and teaching his employees financial literacy so they could better understand how the company ran, made money, and reinvested to keep scaling. He believes culture is at the core of a company’s success, and should always lead naturally into an ESOP before an owner considers exiting. He explains his journey of turning PFSBrands into an ESOP and how it has benefited his business, company culture, and the community around him—and makes it accessible to any business owner. Whether you are looking to build a sustainable company culture or exit your business through an ESOP, this audio master class is for you.

What You Will Learn

The benefits of actively teaching your employees financial literacy
The business model and growth strategies Shawn used to scale his company from his garage to $100M
Why you need to build a good company culture before you ESOP, not after
A basic breakdown on how ESOPs work, when, and why
Why setting and chasing goals is so important to Shawn, how it helped him scale, and why clarity on one’s vision is so important for every business owner
The tax advantages of an ESOP
Shawn’s argument for selling the equity in the business to an ESOP if you still want to be the leader of the company
What can happen if you combine company culture and financial literacy in your company regardless of whether you are and ESOP or not
Why Shawn’s journey as an entrepreneur dramatically changed in 2011 after he picked up and read his first book since grade school
The three reasons Shawn chose the ESOP route to exit his equity ownership of business

// USE YOUR FINANCIALS TO CLARIFY A PATH TOWARDS A MORE VALUABLE BUSINESS: Intentional Growth Financial Assessment

Bio:

Shawn Burcham, author of Keeping Score with GRITT: Straight Talk Strategies for Success, is the founder & CEO of PFSbrands, which he and his wife, Julie, started out of their home in 1998. The company has over 1,900 branded foodservice locations across 40 states, is now doing over $100 million in revenue and is best known for their Champs Chicken franchise which was started in 1999. Prior to starting PFSbrands, Burcham spent five years with a Fortune 100 company, Mid-America Dairymen (now Dairy Farmers of America). He also worked for three years as a Regional Sales Manager for a midwest Chester’s Fried chicken distributor.

Quotes:

07:45 - “ I just wasn’t cut out to work for other people. I just always felt I could do something on my own.” - Shawn Burcham

16:13 - “I had some competitors in the private equity world, and I just saw what it did to their cultures. I saw what it did to their people. In many cases I saw the companies go away from the local area, maybe even the state that they were founded in.” - Shawn Burcham

21:31 - “We were always looking back. I knew what I was doing but I didn’t know what I was doing. And I didn’t know what I didn’t know.” - Shawn Burcham

26:43 - “That was my ah-ha moment in 2011. I was like, ‘Man, I gotta share what I know so people can actually know how they’re contributing.’” - Shawn Burcham

28:23 - “It’s cool to see so many people involved in our business, through just the line-ownership, if you will.” - Shawn Burcham

30:08 - “I just became obsessed with reading because I recognized what it did for me.” - Shawn Burcham

30:33 - “We do that all the way through our company. We encourage reading. We have a book club. Our senior leadership team is required to read, especially certain books. It’s been a game-changer.” - Shawn Burcham

35:46 - “I always like to say, it has to be for me, it has to be 51% about the company and 49% about the people. Because if I can’t keep the company stable, then ultimately I’m not going to be able to accomplish the goals of helping everybody within the culture, and with the success standpoint, of improving their own personal life.” - Shawn Burcham