Success Story

about excel legacy group

Our personal experience of selling through an ESOP has provided us with the insight you can count on.

Strategic planning

We strive to provide the highest quality, most comprehensive ESOP services to help our clients in achieving their goals for their ESOPs. Our consultants, lawyers and investment bankers help companies determine whether and how to establish and finance new ESOPs. Lastly, upon completion, ELG will organize and execute a company event to celebrate and communicate these new changes for your employees and communities.

experience

Having successfully sold their previous company through an ESOP they can guide you through the process to ensure a smooth transition. 

network

 ELG brings together a wealth of experience and resources from groups of ESOP lawyers, consultants and investment bankers.

solutions

Our tailored solutions and diverse team of professionals have been utilized by a diverse range of industries and company sizes.

patti plough

Patti Plough is a longtime entrepreneur, business leader, health care practitioner, and the president of Excel Legacy Group.

As a longtime entrepreneur, business leader and health care practitioner, Patti Plough personifies a rare combination of passion, strategic thinking and genuine concern for others’ well-being.

These qualities help her connect with audiences in an engaging, sincere fashion, setting the stage for learning and honest self-reflection.

Patti’s career has traversed many miles, and nearly as many directions. She began on the front lines of health care, working as a bedside nurse for 15 years. This backdrop shaped much of her career path, especially the experience of seeing patients suffer from chronic conditions that might have been prevented with proactive, preventive treatments.

She first ventured into entrepreneurship by founding a company that provided health screenings and exams for insurance companies. A few years later, she added an event services firm that produced around 200 events a year.

Patti’s journey of innovation peaked when she assumed ownership and leadership of a full-service wellness provider serving hundreds of customers, domestically and internationally. Her focus on strategic planning fueled significant company growth. Her emphasis on developing process and protocols on the health care side, combined with strict operational standards on the business end, led to customer retention in the mid-90th percentile.

Knowing that her company was a likely takeover target, Patti secured the future of the company, and its employees, by leading its transition to a 100% employee-owned ESOP. The positive, fulfilling experience led her back into entrepreneurship … and a new career as a consultant for organizations considering ESOPs.

Patti holds a diploma degree in nursing from Gateway Technical College. She and her husband, Dan, have two adult daughters, both have been involved in the company. Patti serves on several company and organization boards of directors in the Milwaukee area. She and Dan split time between southeastern Wisconsin and Key West, Fla. … because those Wisconsin winters can tend to grow just a bit too long.

You have plans, big plans and dreams too for the future of your company but maybe there are just so many options.

It can be overwhelming to try and think 20 years, sometimes even 1 year into the uncertain future.

So how do you plan to grow, to maintain and to exit all whilst juggling everything piled high on your plate?

I am extremely passionate about the success and succession plan for your business.

That might seem insincere, how can I say that – if you are reading this we probably aren’t even contacts yet.

The reality is though, I have seen your struggles and your successes through the lens of my own professional experience. 

What I thought would be an exciting but extremely trying time of securing the future of my business in the wellness industry and all the hard work myself and my team had put in turned out to be life changing, for all the right reasons.

When you grow a business it is not just the bottom line that grows, it is your staff compliment, relationships, real people with real families and real lives. 

I didn’t want to just walk away and leave everyone that had worked so hard to get us there in the lurch.

So often in takeovers the culture, the very lifeblood of the business changes and that is just not what any business owner wants to see when you have worked so hard to create that culture to start with. 

Enter the concept of ESOP.

Now my business is helping you with a future plan for yours. 

Our services

Our ESOP consultants, attorneys and financial professionals have more than 75 years of experience working with ESOPs. Our depth and breadth of experience set us apart from other ESOP consulting companies. The professionals with ELG have implemented ESOPs for more than 500 companies and have completed more than 1,000 ESOP-related transactions. We work with companies nationwide across all industries.

design

If an ESOP is ultimately the best strategic choice for you to accomplish your objectives, ELG will assist you in exploring the appropriate size, structure and financing terms, among other areas, of your ESOP plan, to ensure the feasibility of a successful transaction. This analysis will model how the ESOP will impact the company, the selling owners and the employees.

Financing

ELG affiliates have decades of experience in structuring and financing ESOP transactions and working with lenders of all types across the country. Most of our clients rely upon us to help them structure transactions through the ESOP feasibility study process. Many then engage our affiliated investment banks, to raise ESOP financing through a competitive bid process or to assist in negotiating financing terms within an existing banking relationship.

legal services

Our professionals have the skills and expertise to assist owners in balancing their needs with those of the company and its employees to create successful and sustainable employee ownership outcomes. Through our affiliated ESOP attorneys we assist companies in the legal process of establishing and funding an ESOP, including preparing the transaction, financial and legal documents with an eye toward minimizing fiduciary risk.