When a business owner decides to make a major transition - whether that is selling, bringing in partners, or moving to a new ownership structure - there is a natural instinct to want it done as quickly as possible. Once the decision is made, momentum takes over. The owner wants to sign the papers, make the announcement, and start the next chapter. And that impulse, understandable as it is, can turn a sound decision into an overwhelming one.

The issue is rarely the destination. It is the order in which you try to get there.

Aaron Schroeder, the founder and CEO of Bright Spot Climate built his greenhouse gas consulting firm from a one-person operation into a 40-plus-person company with offices in three cities. And he became one of the first business owners in Canada to transition his company to an Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) - a structure that puts ownership in the hands of his entire team without requiring any of them to put money up front. It is a remarkable accomplishment, and one driven by a deeply held conviction that the people who built the company alongside him should share in its success.

But when I asked Aaron on The Cash Rich Exit Podcast what he would do differently, his answer was immediate and instructive. He would sequence the changes differently. Because in his case, three enormous transitions happened at once.

To use the EOT legislation, a company must be governed by a board of directors. Bright Spot did not have one. So Aaron had to build a board. At the same time, the company's accounting policies needed to change to support the new structure and to work with financing - the kind of housekeeping that comes with moving from a solely owned corporation to one owned by a trust. And on top of both of those, there was the ownership transfer itself: the actual transition of the company into the EOT.

Each of those is a significant undertaking on its own. Done together, while still running a consulting business through a turbulent year for the climate sector, they created far more complexity than necessary. As Aaron put it, there are only so many hours in a day. He was establishing governance, retooling financial systems, transferring ownership, and serving clients all simultaneously. It worked - but it was harder than it needed to be.

His advice, and it is advice that applies far beyond the EOT, is to space these things out. And the order he recommends is worth internalizing, because it reflects a logic that holds true for almost any major business transition.

Governance first. If your transition requires a board - and many do, whether you are moving to employee ownership, bringing in outside investment, or professionalizing the company ahead of a sale - establish that board early. Give the directors time to get their feet under them. Let them understand the operations of the business before you ask them to take on the weight of an ownership change. Aaron noted that if he had it to do again, he would have put the board in place earlier so they could find their footing before the bigger shift arrived. A board that is still learning the business cannot govern a major transition well, and throwing them into the deep end serves no one.

Financial systems second. The accounting and financial infrastructure that supports your current structure is often not the infrastructure you need for the next one. Updating accounting policies, getting your books in a state that can support financing, formalizing the reporting that a board or a trust will require - these take time, and they are far easier to do when they are not competing with everything else. Aaron worked with his accounting firm to get there, but he would have started that work sooner, as its own distinct phase if he had to do over.

Ownership transfer third. Only once the governance and the financial foundation are in place does the actual transfer of ownership become manageable. By then, the board understands the business. The financial systems can support the new structure. And the ownership change becomes the capstone of a process rather than one more fire to fight in an already chaotic stretch.

I see the absence of this discipline often in my wealth advisory practice, and not only with EOTs. A business owner decides to sell, and tries to clean up the financials, formalize the contracts, build out the management team, and negotiate the deal all at the same time. The result is predictable: due diligence exposes the gaps, the buyer loses confidence, and the owner ends up negotiating from exhaustion rather than strength. The transition that could have been smooth becomes a scramble, and the scramble costs money.

The deeper lesson here is about time, and specifically about giving yourself enough of it. Almost every transition challenge I encounter traces back to the same root cause - the owner started too late and tried to compress too much into too short a window. Sequencing requires runway. You cannot put governance first, then financial systems, then ownership transfer if you have given yourself three months to do all of it. You can if you have given yourself two or three years.

This is why I encourage founders to begin thinking about their eventual transition long before they intend to act on it. Not because the exit is imminent, but because the preparation is sequential, and each phase needs room to settle before the next one begins. The board needs time. The financial systems need time. And you, the founder, need time to adjust to each change in turn rather than absorbing all of them in a single overwhelming season.

Aaron's transition succeeded. Bright Spot is now employee-owned, his team has responded with a surge of entrepreneurial energy, and he has created a legacy that reflects his values. But he would tell you himself that the path could have been smoother. The destination was right. The sequence was rushed. And the difference between those two things is preparation and time.

If you are contemplating a major transition - an EOT, a sale, a generational handoff, or simply professionalizing your business for whatever comes next - the best thing you can do is start early enough to do it in the right order. Book a one-on-one Wealth Gap Analysis with me, and let us map not just where you want to go, but the sequence and the timeline that will get you there without burning yourself out along the way. Reach out on LinkedIn - Colleen O’Connell-Campbell - or email me.

TTFN (ta ta for now),

Colleen O'Connell-Campbell

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