James Kennedy sits down with Karl Baker, CPA and founder of Baker CFO Advisory, to unpack a third path to ownership and exit: employee ownership paired with open-book management. Drawing on Jack Stack’s The Great Game of Business and Karl’s decades in public accounting and fractional CFO work, they dig into ESOPs, teaching every employee the P&L, and the cadence of weekly financial huddles that move companies faster—without chaos. We also get into when to bring in a fractional CFO, how to get bank-ready for growth, and why decisions made with 60–70% of the data often beat waiting for “perfect.”