“I really had no intention of doing this,” Kim Gokce tells me shortly after we log on to a virtual meeting together. He is in his home office in the Atlanta area. I am in mine in Ohio.
I had noticed a recent post of his on LinkedIn celebrating his new line of employment and wanted to learn more. Kim agreed to share his journey with me. It turns out that his previous position had been eliminated at a large financial services organization in one of the worst job markets in recent history. He’d tried for 14 months to find another job on a W-2, but kept coming up empty. He wasn’t ready to retire, but wasn’t sure where to go next. I think a lot of us can relate.
He had worked for decades, had amassed modest success and modest savings, but all of the sudden he found himself with no work, no income, a retirement plan that was just a bit too shy to make the leap, and a whole heck of a lot of political and economic uncertainty. He felt stuck.
That’s when he started looking at starting his own small business. “If no one else is hiring me, I’m going to hire me.” He had just started exploring franchising options when he stumbled on a Facebook post from a neighbor who was looking to buy a small business. A commenter suggested the neighbor connect with a franchise broker and dropped a name. Intrigued, Kim reached out and learned that some franchise brokers specialize in small business franchises. By assessing a buyer’s financial as well as personal goals, the broker can help buyers identify franchising options that match their interests.
It took a while, but Kim eventually found a good match in his broker’s portfolio, one with a solid playbook, a mature onboarding process, but that required a bit more capital than he had hoped for in a startup.
You might be thinking at this point, boy, Kim must be independently wealthy, because most of us could never afford to buy a small business. I really have no idea what Kim’s financial status is, but it turns out there are several ways to fund the purchase of an existing small business. Kim says that, in his case, the magic word (or acronym) is ROBS.
Through a “Rollover for Business Startups”, you can effectively borrow against your 401k to invest in your new business tax free. Kim reasons that he is “betting on himself” with this investment, which seems at least as secure as an investment in a publicly traded business in the current, volatile market we find ourselves in.
A lot of us might stop here, just looking to make an honest and dignified living, serving a need in our community, but Kim took this investment a step further, registering his business in the state of Georgia as a B Corp, or “Public Benefit Corporation.” This means that his business, Floor Coverings International (FCI) of Brookhaven, operates as both a for-profit entity and also as one that addresses social, economic, and/or environmental needs. In Kim’s case, his company sells and installs flooring as you might expect, but it also gives back to the community. With the tagline, “Floors That Build Futures,” a portion of every project FCI of Brookhaven delivers goes to support high school seniors pursuing skilled trades. Most recently, FCI, awarded a $500 scholarship to a local high school graduate to cover the tools necessary for his carpentry apprenticeship.
Kim’s face lights up when he talks about this last part of his strategic plan. He explains that the public benefit element of his business is what keeps him going, even when the lifestyle of a new business owner has him running ragged. “Regardless of what you’re dealing with in the business,” he says, “the PBC makes the sacrifice worth it.” He wanted me to remind our readers that any company can register as a PBC. “You could be cleaning sewers,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what your product or service is.” The public benefit element can be completely separate from your day-to-day operations. Basically, the sky is the limit when it comes to dreaming up how you might like to give back to your community through your PBC.
If you, like a lot of us, find yourself at a crossroads in your career, dissatisfied with, or even shut out of, the corporate game, it might be time to consider something entirely different. I’m sure Kim never in a million years imagined he would choose to sell flooring for a living, but he has found this transition reinvigorating. It’s allowed him to reconnect with his community and to give back on a number of levels. He feels like he has the autonomy to apply the skills he’s acquired over his years in the corporate world and like he’s contributing to something bigger than himself, which is more than many of us can say these days. To top it off, his business plan is on track to meet his break-even and return-on- investment goals. So many of us got caught up in the race toward corner offices, company cars, and beefy travel budgets. But along the way, we lost touch with the primary reason we work – to pay the bills, sure, but more than that, to find value in solving customer problems and to contribute meaningfully to our communities. I think Kim might have found the secret to doing just that.
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