What makes your business 'good'?

In a recent group conversation with fellow freelancers, who are all part of the Freelancing For Good community, someone asked me:

"Are there any types of clients or work you would turn down on ethical grounds?"

In the moment, I said "no" - partly because my circumstances as the sole unpaid sandwich carer to several immediate family members means I have no recourse to support for myself, and so less capacity to take on work than my counterparts, so I need to try and take anything  I may be offered. But also because as I answered, I realised that I've never been in a position where I've been offered work that I'd had to seriously consider taking on ethical grounds.

This then prompted me to briefly widen the conversation as to what constitutes our respective businesses being 'good' or 'ethical', in order to work out just where the line was where I might start to say 'no' to types of work I'm asked to support:

- is it the type of work you do?

- is it the clients and customers you work with?

- is it your business model?

Your business model and form doesn't automatically make you 'good'

And this last prompt in particular may be more contentions than you think; for example, we generally hold co-ops and mutuals to be intrinsically 'good', but what if the product they offer may be seen as dubious to some (i.e. alcohol production, or support to sex workers)?

Perhaps we should look to 'badges' and accreditations? - but this too can throw up more complications. For example, Belu Water has won various public accolades from Social Enterprise UK, and yet it's market offer (botted water) is recognised as being one of the most environmentally damaging products in the marketplace.

What counts as being 'good'?

But I think there's also a wider challenge to setting the criteria for what counts as 'good'. Namely, to be 'ethical' means being socially acceptable, but what's socially acceptable changes over time (I'm of the generation which initially never knew or thought about the importance of recycling, or had any awareness that tuna was being fished in a way that killed dolphins - and yet within less than my lifetime I've seen significant changes on these, and other ethical/social issues).

And there's also the lesson that the brilliant TV show The Good Place highlighted: it suggested that in order to get into 'the good place' after you die, you needed to amass enough 'good points' during your time here on planet earth. But as our heroes came to learn, it had been centuries since anyone had been able to amass enough such points (and so 'the bad place' was creaking at the seams) - not because people were becoming more 'evil' but because of the curse of unintended consequences and the ever more complex supply chains that permeate our daily lives. For example, 200 years ago you could walk to visit your mother (plus points for family visit), and pick flowers as a gift on the way (more plus points). But today you'd drive (which involves mining of metals and fuels to create and power the car, often by people in precarious and dangerous working conditions = minus points), and buying flowers from a shop (again, grown and picked by people in other countries, necessitating CO2 production to fly them to said shop = even more negative points).

Even if it seems impossible, it's still important to try 

So if trying to live a good life is now so complex, and we can't help but compromise our ideals in trying to do good in how we run our businesses, should we even bother?

I think so, yes. Because for me it's the effort that's important - not what we do, but how we try and do it that defines us*; and this hopefully inspires and encourages others that although something may be hard, we should still try.

And we should also try and be kind to ourselves, on the occasions where we realise and have to accept that there is no 'ethical' choice to be had - we live in an imperfect world; but through our intentions and efforts we can try and shift this, even if only an infinitesimal amount. Because ultimately, it's when lots and lots of very small things get together to work in harmony, that the big things start to change and happen.

Does AI think my business is 'good'?

Finally, as this is my 20th year in business, you may have seen that I've been trying to look at things through this porcelain lens. Part of this has been writing 'Flushed!' as a retrospective of these first 2 decades from my own perspective, but I've also been asking AI what it thinks the main footprints of my business' activities to date have also been.

In keeping with the idea and questions of this post, I read what it thought through the question of "how good" has everything I've done so far actually been (after all, good intentions and commitments are important, but if you don't actually follow through on them...). What it returned was surprising and encouraging in equal measure - as I outline above, my core focus to 'doing good' has been about how I manage my business, not what I do, but AI highlighted:

"His portfolio includes socially challenging and “mission-driven” assignments — in-prison rehabilitation enterprise, incubation for homeless entrepreneurs, community-facing incubation or workspace models, etc. That shows not just business savvy, but a commitment to social justice and inclusion."

All of which leads me to conclude that your business is actually already doing more good that you might realise...!

* see my annual impact reports for examples of my efforts in this regard: 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1o7M70ttK7My-ieTuBRi-gGeR9VOUfYxl?usp=sharing 

What Sherlock Holmes thought about my book

I've always been a fan of Sherlock Holmes for as long as I can remember - and while Jeremy Brett's portrayal in the 1980s Granada TV show will always be my personal favourite, I've also enjoyed all the other actors' portrays and re-imaginings of the role too.

As I've also shared in the past about having 'fan boy' moments in the sector, I recently found myself wondering what a (fictional) hero of mine might make of my first book, about imposter syndrome...

Sadly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is no longer with us to be able to take up his pen to craft the tale of how a conversation between Holmes and Watson might play out, where they to be musing over my monograph while residing at 221b Baker Street - so I did the next best thing, and asked AI.

Reassuringly, it seems to suggest that Holmes would have approved...

Scene: Baker Street. Holmes stands by the fireplace, the book in hand. Watson enters with tea.

Watson: You’ve been absorbed in that book for hours, Holmes. Another monograph on poisons?

Holmes: Hardly. It is Adrian Ashton’s Loving Your Doubt. A curious title, yet one containing a commendable premise.

Watson: Doubt? Most people try their best to avoid it.

Holmes: Precisely why most people think poorly. Doubt, Watson, is the beginning of all sound reasoning. This author argues much the same.

Watson: Does he now? And is he correct?

Holmes: On the whole, yes. He insists that the insecurities which plague so many—what you medical men call “imposter syndrome”—are not signs of weakness but opportunities for inquiry.

Watson: A rather optimistic view of self-criticism.

Holmes: Rational, not optimistic. When a man doubts himself, he has a chance to examine the origin of that doubt. If he pursues it logically, he may discover either a flaw to correct or an illusion to discard. Both outcomes are useful.

Watson: So you approve of the book?

Holmes: I do. It teaches readers to do consciously what I often do instinctively. Were Scotland Yard to adopt its lessons, we should see far fewer bungled investigations.

Watson: Holmes, I suspect that were Scotland Yard to follow any book you approved of, the prisons would be overflowing.

Holmes: One can but hope, Watson. One can but hope.

how I decide what to charge you

In the spirit of my commitment to try and be more open and transparent in this, my 20th year of business, I've decided to do something very un-British: talk openly about money.

Specifically, how it is I decide what my rate should be when I'm quoting my fee as part of how I would like to work with you.

I've thought about 'pulling back the curtain' like this this for a while, because:

1. there can often seem to be a lot of mystique and mystery around how consultants/freelancers types like me set our charges (and keeping things hidden usually only makes them worse for everyone in the long run);
2. as a trainer/facilitator, there's lots of encouragements and exhortations for people like me to charge by our value (what the job is worth to you, the client), not the time it takes us to do it (so I wanted to offer another perspective on this).

Ultimately, I try and keep my pricing easy and transparent for all of us - I have a set day/hourly rate that's same for everyone. This means I'm less likely to confuse myself, or cause others to get confused if they talk with each other about what I charged them for their respective projects. There are, of course, exceptions to this:

1. a client who states that there's already a fixed budget or rate that they pay all consultants and associates, which means I'll bill them on that basis (assuming I'm happy with the rate that they offer, and that this may mean a reduction in the scope and depth of work that I might have otherwise delivered);
2. subject to circumstances, I'm not completely averse to offering a goodwill discount to a client (but I can't give all my pricing secrets away in a single post here, so you'll have to come back to learn what those circumstances might be another time);
3. or when I offer to work on a purely pro bono basis (for more clarification on what it takes you to get into that bucket of my pricing, see this previous blog I wrote)

To the point about the basis of my choosing to charge in this way: I've personally always preferred to set a rate on the time I'll spend on a job. This is because:

1. it means I can offer more transparency and openness in my relationship with a client in how I'm working with them (which hopefully helps engender more trust and 'human-ness');
2. many of the types of organisations I work with have to report back to a funder or commissioner on how/why they've spent money on me; and that usually involves showing a rate based on days/hours. If I take a pricing approach that helps match this, it makes life slightly easier for them, which hopefully helps us all get along better?
3. the same work or outcome will be worth different amounts to different groups, depending on their relative circumstances - which means that a fixed value price would represent a bargain to some, but 'paying-over-the-odds' for others; 
4. my primary motivation for why and how I'm running my business is to 'earn enough' to support my family. I'm afraid I don't have any aspirations to scale my enterprise to the point where I can start to buy castles, etc. So although I recognise this 'pay as you use me model' potentially limits my earning potential, I'm OK with that. (Or at least, I am for now - ask me again in a few years time: the world and our personal circumstances are always changing, and having a castle to ride out the end of the world in might not be the worst place to be..?).   

But just because this is my preference, doesn't mean that I always adopt it. There are occasions where I'll agree a fixed fee for a project with a client in certain circumstances (see earlier references to this).

And to the 'money shot' piece in this blog about how I decide what my day/hourly rate is...

I'm afraid it's rather boring - I have a spreadsheet that tracks typical charges across different sectors, and for different types of services. Into this I add various national sector bodies' own regular benchmarking studies (such as ipse's); and charges I'm offered by agencies and other bodies where I'm working as their associate - and then average them all out.

This may seem convoluted, but for me, its the most equitable basis I can currently think of to come up with the number I put on your quotation which isn't accidentally feeding into a 'race to be the cheapest'. As to do so would ultimately only mean that the work is of a lesser standard, and also my fellow freelancers and consultants would also suffer from having more pressure on them to charge less than they might be able to afford to, at the cost of their (and their family's) own quality of life.

My hope in sharing this all openly here is:

1. it will be of some encouragement or help to others who are starting out on their own respective journeys as freelancer/facilitator;
2. it will help my (and others') clients better appreciate the thinking that some of us consultants/trainers do in how we come up with our bill to you;
3. it will also feed into a wider conversation that will help the wider pool of us in our collective sectors.

I should also namecheck Jodie Newman of the Content Shed as part of this post, because it was her prompts at a recent call I was part of with her that led me to decide to create this post. So if you think this was brilliant, go check out her Shed; if you think it wasn't, then blame me for the poor execution of the idea...

The Global Sustainable Development Goals aren't just for saving the planet - they also help with quality management and professional standards

10 years ago the United Nations launched the global Sustainable Development Goals - a basket of 17 thematic aspirations that, if pursed well, will help see our common world a generally better place to live, work, and play for all of us (as well as those animals and vegetations that we also share the planet with too).

And in the year that followed, I redesigned the impact reporting framework I'd started to create for my own enterprise around it.

The goals, and my engagement with them in this way, have subsequently drawn ongoing interest and recognition - most recently from a new global special interest group who asked me to be their inaugural guest speaker. Specifically, the group is made up of facilitators who are all part of the global International Association of Facilitators, and who were keen to explore and understand different perspectives in how facilitators (one of the capes I sometimes don) have thought about how the Goals relate to their practice and profession.

As always, when I have opportunity to share some of my own story in this way, I try to deliberately pause to reflect on it afterwards. This post is therefore what struck me as being of most interest and encouragement from my side of the screen (but if you manage to join this interest group - links below, you'll also get to read other's take-ways to add to these):

Good ideas take time 

Most people who have a passing awareness with the Goals might know that they were launched in 2015. 

But they weren't officially adopted until 2016, the first guidance about reporting against them wasn't published until the year after that - and it took 3 years to even get to their launch point after the concept for them was first agreed and started to be explored in 2012.

So whatever your aspirations might be to create change; design new systems; and see people adopt new ways of working - take some consolation that it took the UN 3 years to get to the point of being able to start to get some early adopters to commit to adopt these Goals after they first started to talk about the idea of them.

You don't (and shouldn't try to) do it all

One of the few regrets I have in this life, is that I didn't buy all of the mugs I once saw in a shop window, with the message "you can't save everyone" printed on them.

The Goals are no different - they were never designed or intended to be adopted in their entirety by any single organisation. That's why I've focussed on working to 5 of the 17 Goals: it means I can hopefully be more credible in how I'm presenting myself in how I'm contributing to them (i.e. I'm not making what many would see as incredulous claims about how my different business offers are helping to improve the biosphere for life under the sea).

Altruism isn't (and shouldn't be) the only motivation for all of us that adopt the Goals 

As part of my reflections with the group, I'd mapped the Goals against the IAF's professional standards for facilitators. In doing so, it highlighted how taking a Goals-based approach to how you design and deliver your work very easily demonstrates how you're meeting and working to occupational and quality assurance standards - so there's also a clear direct business case for the Goals to be picked up, as well as an ethical/moral one.

My using the Goals helps others to contribute to their delivery

As my business model and ways of working are wrapped around the Goals, then the more I work, the more I'm delivering against them. Which means that whenever a client commissions me, I'll do more work = more delivery against the Goals.

I'm not aware that any client has ever engaged me solely on the basis of this, but it's an additional assurance I can offer them as to the wider benefits they get from using me as their consultant?

We don't usually think about how the Goals help us have better conversations about our role in local communities and the wider economy 

I was struck by how most people hadn't fully appreciated the wider importance of small and micro businesses, and how we can encourage and support these by trying to prioritise them in our own respective supply chains - despite us all bemoaning when a large employer closes their site, and the wave of unemployment this causes with the knock on effects to other businesses, families being able to remain in the area to find new work, etc.

The Goals prompt us to think about who we're doing business with, and how this in turn helps build more resilient local communities in the context of seemingly increasingly unpredictable economies and extreme weather events.

We're all already doing more than we realise

Through breakout room reflections, people shared a range of practices that they already used that were aligned with the Goals, but who hadn't realised the importance or impact of, before correlating them in this way. This meant people were more encouraged to continue and build on these models of working. And, within the framework of the Goals, they'll now be able to more easily share with others, as encouragement and challenge for them to consider doing similar.

If you'd like to know more about the conversations which are exploring how the Global Goals are being supported through the work of facilitators, please check out the IAF's Special Interest Group at: https://www.iaf-members.org/site/chapters/sustainable-development-goals

And a recording of the story sharing of my history with, thinking about, and approach to the Goals can be watched again via my YouTube channel:

Why social entrepreneurs (can) never retire

In my decades of walking around different parts of the social economy, there's something that's always personally bugged me - far too few people encourage us to openly talk, and think about, how we get paid (and how much we should be paid).

The focus always seems to be on supporting a person or groups' shiny social enterprise idea, and how to help it create as much impact in the world as possible. There's an implicit assumption that the social entrepreneur leading it will not only be able to give the emerging and growing venture whatever it needs from themselves personally (time, energy, own money, etc), but that they'll be able to do so indefinitely without needing to take anything from it to balance/in recognition of this.

Also, there doesn't seem to be any talk of 'succession' or 'exit' (such as we see in 'mainstream' business support programmes). There's little or no option for social entrepreneurs to take any form of future 'sweat equity' in lieu of foregone wages, the lost time they've incurred in otherwise having been able to build up savings for their own retirement, etc; (does this mean we may see future generations of social entrepreneurs retire into poverty?).

This also creates problems beyond those for the individual person as outlined above - most people who pick up, or are offered the badge of 'social entrepreneur' aren't in privileged or independently wealthy positions. They (we) need to continue to earn money to pay our rent and bills with. And as social enterprises are usually relatively slow to start to be able to generate enough cash to offer and sustain wages, this usually means many start life as 'side hustles' alongside other paid work that the person needs to maintain so they can still afford to live. This in turn, creates more tensions and potential issues for these new social enterprises, as they're being managed with a part-time/split-focus founder.

But despite the potential gloom in the above, I'm starting to see/take some encouragement from a small but growing trend of people who seem to be similarly feeling able to start to talk more openly about the social enterprises they're developing, and who need to recognise and reconcile these tensions and possible contradictions - this has led to my being asked to explore more 'group structure models' (using combinations of linked legal forms to help best manage the tension between a founders' personal, and their respective communities' needs, both now and into the future). It's also involved my starting to be approached by the leaders of more established social enterprises and charities, asking for support with salary benchmarking (although to date, this has highlighted how in general and as a whole sector, we usually pay our people and selves less than in other sectors for broadly similar roles, and this includes with making less provision for future pension and retirement).

I also recognise the tension that underpins all of this - if what we're doing is to ultimately create social good, then to pay better wages etc, we need to charge more. But how can we feel comfortable doing this when we see that the communities we support are in poverty, etc? 

But if we don't find ways to start to address these elephants, then we risk losing talent and skills as people may begin to feel that they can't continue to trade off their personal futures for the sake of helping others today - and actually, research from Social Enterprise UK shows that social enterprises are generally more likely to be profitable if they're trading in areas of deprivation; so it seems that there are ways to reconcile this apparent contradiction.

 

I have an idea that the only way we can start to break this taboo of social entrepreneurs being able (encouraged, and allowed) to pay themselves both today, and with regard for their future retirement chapters without feeling guilty for doing so, and the limitations it's placing on the sector as a whole, is by trying to talk about this more openly and in grown-up ways.

To this end, I'd encourage anyone reading this to share, reply, and engage in these conversations where and how you're able to (although I recognise that talking about money isn't something we Brits do very well). But if no-one talks about it, then nothing can ever change...

why unpaid carers struggle so much to be heard...

I think I've figured out why it's so difficult for the views and experiences of unpaid carers to be accepted by policy makers and government.

Along with a few million other people in the UK, I'm an unpaid carer - and I'm also self-employed; juggling earning a living alongside meeting the support needs of several immediate family members.

Over the last few years, I've been trying to wave a flag for those of us like me - because we're the only type of unpaid carer not currently recognised in law or policy (which means there's no support for us). This lack of support is also a problem for everyone else, because it means that our respective businesses are all under-performing: in the wider economy there's over £10Billion of lost/deferred job creation, investment, exporting, etc that isn't happening every year, because we're trying to figure how to support ourselves in reconciling these competing roles on our own.

A key way in which I've been able to have some small initial successes in attracting interest to the approaching 1million people / unpaid carers / small business owners who are in this circumstance is through research and data - without which, policy makers and membership bodies can't justify investing the time to investigate these issues more.

But recently, a comment by one of Directors at the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES) gave me reason to go back to basics with this - I'd referenced in conversation that most unpaid carers are just as likely to be men as they are women (in contrast to the typical general perception that it's usually women who take on caring roles). They challenged this by referencing the latest national census return, which CLES use as a baseline for all their policy work, as showing that it's actually predominately women who are unpaid carers. 

So I went back to the original source materials and realised that all the national government, health, policy, and support bodies are all working to a different understanding of who we are as unpaid carers.

It's shocking and depressing in equal measure - they all have different data about who unpaid carers are, and are using to base their support to us on. Is it any wonder then, that there's so much confusion about us, and why it's so hard for our voices to be heard? Because without a common agreement on how many of us are men, women, or other, each public body or agency can easily dismiss the research of others', on the basis that the starting point of identifying and understanding who carers are at such a fundamental level is so different to their own.

Can you see the confusion in the above chart?

• The government census shows a roughly 60/40 split in gender - but this survey was done in a global pandemic, and there's been questions subsequently raised by others about the validity of this finding, because of how the question on the census from was worded which likely led to many people not identifying themselves as carers when actually they are;
• Another government source (the DWP's family resources survey) has a different split at 66/33;
• x2 national public health sources (the national GP patients survey, and a national NHS survey) both have a big difference between them in how they've identified the gender split of unpaid carers;
• and the research by national bodies are who specifically created to understand and support carers have a notably different split again, at 50/50.

And this initial basic question of gender is also excluding people who don't identify along such binary f/m lines. 

So - if all the government bodies and statutory health services can't agree on such a simple basic starting point of 'what's the gender of unpaid carers?', then is it any wonder why carers are so mis-understood when it comes to us trying to share our experiences, or lobby for changes that would see us getting closer to being afforded the same recognitions as everyone who doesn't have caring responsibilities?

As for me - I've always generally aligned with the maxim "nothing about us without us". In this instance, that means I'm currently more trusting of data from carer support bodies, rather than distant civil servants whose own internal governmental departments and bodies can't agree on how far we may be made up of more than one gender than the other.

Why the 'endings' chapter doesn't come at the end my book

'the end' is never 'The end'...

We often think of "the end" as being the final point in something, after which there is nothing more - the end of the movie, the end of a book, the end of a relationship, the end of a business...

But endings don't actually signify a finality of things stopping and not continuing. They're just a transitional stage (albeit sometimes a bumpy on) that leads us into the next thing. After all, if nothing ended, nothing new could begin (because there wouldn't be enough space).

Endings are also not an automatic sign of failure - I've referenced elsewhere how my business has outlasted 90% of all others who started out at the same time as me 20 years ago. But just because they're not still trading like I am, doesn't mean that we should see them as having failed: some may have been designed with an intentionally limited life as part of a stop-gap for people; while for others the world may have changed too much for them, and they decided that they didn't want to twist and subvert themselves for the sake of carrying on being a part of it.

And that's why when I was putting 'Flushed!' together, as part of marking the 20th anniversary of my business, I deliberately didn't make the chapter titled 'endings' the last part of it - to highlight that things can, do, and should, still happen after 'the end' has been announced by someone.

If you want to dig more into this idea about endings not being what most people think they are, and how to approach them better, you should check out the decelerator -https://decelerator.org.uk/