As a child in St. Louis, John Block had a fairly concrete theory of success. The people with lake houses and cabins seemed to be entrepreneurs. They had built something, and the something had bought them a place to spend the weekend. It was an appealing chain of events. Years later, the ambition survived, although the question attached to it became more interesting: when a business creates value, who gets to own a piece of the result?
In July 2026, Unity Partners, the Dallas private equity firm Block co-founded and leads, announced a transaction that gave that question a dollar figure. Its sale of most of its interest in Prosperity Partners would trigger approximately $18 million in proceeds for the tax and accounting business’s employees through an Employee Purpose Plan. Unity would keep a minority stake. A philosophy about sharing the upside had reached a moment when the upside could be counted.
The link between the childhood observation and the employee plan is worth lingering over. Block wanted to become an entrepreneur. He spent much of his career learning how businesses work alongside people who ran them. Eventually, he built an investment firm that puts employee participation into its approach to growth. Ownership, in this story, becomes both an ambition and a design decision.
The lake-house theory of entrepreneurship
Block’s first job involved a rather less glamorous kind of property improvement. During high-school summers, he worked at a landscaping supply company, handling bags of mulch, rocks and sod and helping keep the lot clean. There were pallets to stack and pavement to sweep. His early working life included the materials from which other people made their gardens presentable.
He stayed in St. Louis through college, earning a BSBA at Washington University. His later moves took him through Dallas, Chicago, West Palm Beach and San Francisco, with Chicago and Dallas appearing more than once. He also earned an MBA at the University of Chicago. The itinerary gives his return to Texas the character of a second visit with a different purpose.
At Bain & Company, where he began his professional career, he valued learning to break complicated problems into smaller questions. He then joined HGGC in 2010, initially as an associate. Finance gave him another set of tools, but the desire to build his own business remained. During his first year of business school, he explored a search for a business to acquire.
That search brought a decision about the kind of work he wanted. He returned to HGGC, where he could work with leaders across several businesses. Eventually a partner, he held board seats at more than ten services and software companies. The entrepreneurial project was delayed while he accumulated experience beside other people’s enterprises.
A firm with room for other people
By 2020, Block was considering what he wanted the next 30 years to look like. Remaining at an established firm offered a clear route. Conversations with his wife, Shannon, helped him consider founding a business. In 2022, he co-founded Unity Partners with Bryan W. Adams. The childhood wish had finally acquired an organization.
Starting a firm also changed the texture of an ordinary working day. An established institution supplies a flow of activity. A founder can discover open spaces in the calendar just as responsibility for payroll becomes personal. Block described turning to a lesson from an entrepreneurial selling class: go sell. Conversations with prospective investors, partners and teammates could move the business forward.
The distinction is familiar to anyone who has faced a blank diary and a large responsibility. A presentation can always be made tidier. A conversation requires another person to respond. Block’s early experience put a premium on work that could create the next opportunity, even when polishing the plan would have felt more comfortable.
One of the people who joined was Jim Sharpe, now Unity’s partner and head of Propel. They had worked together when Block was on the board of a business Sharpe led. Sharpe recalled being struck by how prominently principles appeared in Block’s initial presentation. He joined in August 2022. The relationship carried a shared working history into the new firm.
Sharpe also influenced the vocabulary. He preferred “value acceleration” for the operational work: the people running a business already create its value, and an investment partner can help them move faster. It is a useful allocation of credit. A founder can assemble the resources without claiming to have invented every productive act performed by everyone else.
Five years, then a shorter list
Block’s planning approach begins with a long view and then becomes selective. A five-year ambition gives a business a direction. The first year needs only two or three priorities. That narrowing happens before an investment closes, while Unity and the leadership team are still deciding whether they want to work together.
He has compared the approach to building custom homes: a common framework can accommodate different outcomes. The analogy helps explain why repeatability has to live in the questions and the planning process. A company struggling with its systems may need a different first move from one whose immediate constraint is hiring or sales.
The practical tension is between ambition and capacity. A leadership team can agree on five worthwhile changes and still lack the time to deliver all five. Selecting a few makes the costs of attention visible. It also gives the next discussion something concrete to revisit. Progress is easier to assess when the list has edges.
- 5 yearsDefine what excellence should look like.
- 1 yearChoose two or three priorities.
- Owner + timingAssign the work and make progress visible.
- 90 daysTurn the priorities into near-term action.
Unity’s operational team works across six areas, from talent and technology to sales, finance, capital and governance. The tasks are recognizable: executive hiring, better reporting, systems implementation, acquisition integration. They are the sort of jobs that can look ordinary in a list and become consuming when someone has to make them function across a growing organization.
Block’s investment strategy connects that work to recurring or essential services. Its focus includes office and field businesses, such as accounting, insurance and pool services. The aim is to pair people with technology, support organic growth and bring businesses together through acquisitions. The resulting platform needs systems and shared services that can support its enlarged responsibilities.
An ownership promise gets a dollar figure
Employee participation sits within that operating approach. Unity’s principles explicitly connect employee ownership with shared goals. Another principle treats organizational values as an asset that can scale. The premise is that growth carries a cultural task alongside the financial and technical ones: people need a reason to understand where the business is going.
An ownership plan creates that possibility, but a future stake still has to be explained. Employees need to understand how value develops and how the business is progressing. Communication and accountability matter because a benefit described at the beginning of a partnership can otherwise become remote from someone’s daily work.
The question also extends to acquired teams. When Prosperity added New York-based Farkouh, Furman & Faccio in December 2025, the announcement said all of the incoming firm’s employees would participate in Prosperity’s Employee Purpose Plan. Growing through acquisition meant expanding the circle of participants along with the business.
By July 2026, Prosperity had more than 250 employees across offices in several American cities. Unity’s partnership had included nine strategic add-ons, expanded services and investments in technology. The announced employee proceeds belonged to that broader company-building story. They were an aggregate amount across the employee base, rather than a stated payment for each individual.
The transaction provides a specific example of the arrangement reaching a realization event. It also keeps the human question close to the balance sheet. An employee can help a company become more valuable through years of work. A participation plan determines whether some of that value can arrive in the employee’s own financial life.
“We are boring, make-money investors.”
John Block, on the businesses Unity seeks to back
The pan is ready
Block’s public manner allows room for ordinary pleasures. He enjoys cooking for family and friends, including the improvisation required when dinner has to emerge from whatever happens to be available. His team also has an annual paella party. A founder who talks about partnership evidently appreciates an occasion when people can sit down together without an agenda.
After his Investors & Operators appearance, he invited host Jordan Selleck to come through Dallas again and promised to have the paella pan ready. The invitation was specific enough to be useful. Hospitality becomes much easier to picture once someone mentions the cookware.
Dallas is also a deliberate professional choice. Block moved back from San Francisco to launch Unity, attracted by the city’s finance talent. In 2026, the firm moved into The Capital in the Design District. He described a team excited to come to the office and host people there. The place to build a firm became part of how he wanted the work to feel.
By August 2026, Unity reported eight platforms. Block’s job now carries both the entrepreneurial responsibility he once wanted and the obligation to help other leaders build. The most revealing measure in his story may be how many people can participate when that building produces value. The lake house was an understandable childhood ambition. The ownership plan asks what success can mean for the people who helped pay for it.