John Abrams is a founder who didn’t set out to build an employee-owned company—he redesigned ownership after realizing the traditional model no longer matched how he wanted to lead or live.Watch on YouTubeJohn and I talk about what happens when owners realize they’ve built a business that depends too much on them—and how that dependence quietly shapes behavior, trust, and decision-making. We don’t treat employee ownership as a solution in search of a problem, but as one response to a deeper realization: ownership structure determines where responsibility actually lives. This episode is about design—how power, decision rights, and accountability are distributed once an owner no longer wants to be the center of everything. It’s not about being altruistic or giving control away. It’s about building a business that reflects how you want to lead and live, without pretending the tradeoffs are clean or easy.John Abrams is the co-founder of South Mountain Company, a building firm he starte...