My Head is Spinning

So as many of you are aware, my company was acquired (merged, bought, sold, you pick the word), by a much larger company (C&F) last week.  If you missed the announcement you can check it out here:  http://www.redwoodsgroup.com/

Now that the news is out and I have the freedom to talk more about it and can now share the experience with you.

Many of you have probably been through a similar experience.  Companies are bought, sold and merged every day.  Sometimes they make the local and even national news.  But most of those announcements are newsworthy because they mean someone is making a lot of money and others are out of jobs.

In my situation this week, yes there was a transaction that included money, but no one lost their job, no one was given a pay cut and no one's benefits change.  Yep.  I am for real.

It is business as usual at TRG.  I still get to go to work everyday.  Sit at the same desk.  Report to the same manager.  All while continuing to protect children from drowning, being sexually abused or getting injured because they were riding in a 12-15 passenger van.  All of these are core to TRG's business model.   Our mission is to protect.  Our mission is to provide an insurance product that provides coverage that is appropriate and unique to nonprofits that serve their communities.

TRG wants to make the country (we would love to be world wide and we may now have that opportunity) a much safer place for children (and adults too).  And our new owner wants to help us do that.  They want us to help us grow our business.  They want us to provide even better coverage.  They want us to find other nonprofits to partner with.  And they want to help us do that in a more efficient and effective way.  They want us to Scale our Movement.

As an actual insurance carrier now, we get to take out what we call the frictional costs.  We will have more authority, less oversight  We will have the ability to rate and price that makes sense for our customers.   We will have access to more capital.  We will have access to better resources.  We will have new systems.  Yep, I get to learn a whole new claims system and have been in trainings this week and next.  Good thing Lent is over, I am going to need coffee.  We get to keep doing what we do best.

As many of you know, TRG is a certified B Corp.  There are some B Corps out there that you may recognize -- Burt's Bees, Ben & Jerry's, Seventh Generation, Patagonia, Method..... just to name a few.   If you don't know what that means, in simple terms, it means that we are a company that focuses on more then the bottom line.  We are for good or for benefit.  Not necessarily for profit.  We give back more then we take in.  We volunteer.  We open up our offices for others to use.  We give grants.  We love.  We Serve.  We Transform.  We call it The Redwoods Way.

And as part of this transaction, we get to keep our B Corp status.  And as if it couldn't get any better, our new owner wants the rest of their brands and companies to look at doing the same thing.

Who knew that a small company based in Morrisville, NC that started with 6 employees in a warehouse (for those of who that remember, I was one of those first 6) could be so instrumental in changing the communities in which we all live.  

This transaction has restored in me my faith in the business world.  Good things can still be done.   We can make money.  But we can also focus on more.  We can make a difference.

We can love, serve and transform.