A project funded by the EOX State Center Grant Program

Building content that actually leads business owners to employee ownership

Wisconsin has no shortage of businesses that will eventually face a succession decision. WICEO’s challenge was more basic: finding the right owners early enough, keeping track of those relationships, and giving them useful reasons to stay connected to the State Center's ecosystem of support.

EOX grant support helped WICEO tackle both sides of that challenge.

The pipelines include:

• A new CRM paired with Hunter.io to identify, enrich, and track Wisconsin businesses that fit an employee ownership profile.
  
  
• A growing prospect database that has already identified 250 companies and opened active conversations with 20.
  
  
• A new three-episode podcast produced with Brolik, featuring business owners, EO professionals, and national experts.
  
  
• A format designed to stretch well beyond the original recording, with conversations repurposed for social media, newsletters, video, and future owner outreach.
  
  
• Clear benchmarks for audience reach, lead generation, partner sharing, and future sponsorship rather than relying on vanity metrics.

The podcast was originally envisioned as a video series. WICEO changed course after recognizing that audio could bring in more voices from across a geographically large state while allowing for deeper, less staged conversations, while maintaining a video component for the series.

WHY THIS MATTERS

Most owners do not discover employee ownership and make a succession decision in the same week. WICEO now has a better way to identify owners before they are ready, remember where those relationships stand, and keep offering credible information while they decide.

The combination matters. Better data makes outreach more precise. Better stories give that outreach somewhere to go. For other State Centers, Wisconsin is testing what a more deliberate, multi-year approach to business-owner development can look like with a small team and a realistic budget.