What I think a business should be:

So I was watching Chris Mycopunks’ Instagram a few weeks back and he’d raised a question in one of his stories something along the lines of “should a business get involved in activism?” and it got me thinking. I told Chris basically “it’s your business so fuck what anyone else thinks of what you’re doing, make sure it aligns with your personal ethics”. This then got me thinking about my business. Why do I do the things I do? What is it that’s important to me? What should a company that sells spore syringes actually try and do in terms of ethical impact?

I think (you may disagree and that’s cool, I don’t give a shit) that if you start a business up you should try to do a bit of good with it. Don’t get me wrong, I set up the business to be able to provide for my family, so that’s obviously important, but I think given that I’m lucky enough to be the one in charge of how this business is run it’s also important to be able to try and do some good at the same time (let’s put the radicality of sending spores everywhere to the side for one moment). Por que no los dos?

What is it I have OTC do then? A few things. When the business first started, it wasn’t profitable (as most businesses aren’t), because I needed to be able to scale from being brand new and unknown to being insanely busy. This required a lot of reinvestment, meaning I basically didn’t take any money at all from the business for a very long time. However, I’d always said that the very second the business became profitable I would start sending money to some good causes. After some thought, I settled on the local foodbank (Transformation CPR). I live in an area of the UK that was the third poorest in the entire EU, and due to the Tories being Tories and fucking everything up, there’s a huge demand for their service.

This, coupled with the cost-of-living crisis caused by, you guessed it, systemic mismanagement by the fuckin’ Tories, means that fewer people were able to donate to the foodbank. It’s a perfect storm of shit, Randy. Because of all of this, I donate every single month to Transformation CPR; all the money from sticker sales goes towards that, but then I top it up with the regular sales. I make sure I throw around a grand’s worth of toys to the foodbank for Christmas, because the thought of kids going without a Christmas present boils my piss, and me doing this means that hopefully their parents can have a small weight taken off their shoulders.

I also try and support any other charity sponsorship bits through the business as well because again, that’s what I feel the business should be doing. Doing a sponsored whatever? Let me know! I can’t do everything but I might be able to help.

In addition to this, I make sure the guys that do a bit of work for me are paid properly for their work (I’m not going to go into numbers because that’s their business but they’re very happy with what they get), as it’s their labour that helps keep the wheels in motion (and also they’ve probably stopped me from having a nervous breakdown haha). The business still isn’t at the point where it warrants any full-time staff, but hopefully it’ll keep growing and maybe one day that’s where we’ll be at. I have always thought that it’s just downright dogshit when a business expects to pay you the minimum (or often, slightly above it) and then wants you to give a shit about what you’re doing; it’s unfair and I don’t want to be a part of that sort of exploitation.

I guess that’s where I’m at, ethically. I try to order as little from Amazon (or any big business run by an amoral billionaire) as I can, I try and make sure I’m supporting all the other cool businesses that I’ve come across, and I’m always on the lookout for anything else that I can feasibly do that makes the world a slightly less shitter place to live in. It all feels like a drop in the ocean sometimes, but at least it’s a drop or two.

Anyway, cheers all, don’t vote Tory for fuck’s sake.