David, Jack, and I talked last week about selling more ownership in our LLC to key employees. We have several other employees besides George and Cooper that have been very solid contributors for the last five years, and they deserve a shot. Whether or not they can afford it is something else, but they at least deserve the opportunity.
Based on everything we've learned, it's clear that the price we've offered in the past was a really great deal for those shares. The company hasn't changed significantly since the last time I sold any shares, and I sold them then for $6,000 for every 1% "share." The partners who bought at that price got their money back very fast, so I'm looking at a higher price, as much as $12,000 per share, in part based on my last offer to Jack. I checked this with Jack and David, and they said it was probably a little high for employees buying into becoming partners, and something more like $9,000 per share might be good for partners buying in, but in either case, they doubted anyone I wanted to offer it to could afford it.
Besides these other employees, I'm also going to offer a little more ownership to Cooper, who has asked for this several times, and I've been very slow in getting back with him. Oh, and I didn't tell David about my recent offer to buy Jack's shares back from him. I left that to Jack to bring up.