Episode
Beyond the Business Plan. What Rochester's Most Experienced Owners Know That Nobody Talks About.
- Podcast
- Rochester Speaks
- Published
- Apr 3, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2289
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://rss.com/podcasts/rochester-speaks/2687217
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Summary
Nearly 6,500 businesses in Monroe County alone are owned by someone over the age of 55. If even a third of those close without a succession plan, Rochester loses 2,000 businesses, 25,000 jobs and over a billion dollars in payroll. Chloe Handelman and Bruce Peters, co-founders of Beyond Ownership, are doing something about it. Discover what Beyond Ownership actually does for second and third stage businesses, the ones that have survived the startup phase but have not yet figured out what comes next, including leadership development, operations consulting, succession planning and CEO peer groups designed to help business owners make decisions they would not make alone. Learn why Bruce believes Rochester has been filling a leaky bucket for years by celebrating startups while quietly watching mature businesses close, and why fixing that back end is just as important as funding the front. Bruce shares his personal story of selling his business within 11 months after joining a peer group, and how that experience led him to spend years training peer group leaders across the country before coming back to build something lasting in Rochester. Chloe shares her own journey from Accenture in Minneapolis to a six-year stint traveling in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and building an operations consultancy, and why coming home to Rochester felt like the right place to make a real difference. The conversation also discussed several local organizations that do business differently, focusing on legacy and impact. Including a company that sold to a perpetual purpose trust so it can never leave the community, a company that made 100 employees millionaires overnight, and a 300-person business unit that ended up teaching its parent company how to do succession planning rather than the other way…