The Sustainable CO-OP Store weekly meeting #6

Computers? I told you. Can you do it?

It's here.

The producer.

I don't want to until we are ready.

Ready. I'm ready. Hello. What's up guys? How's it going, Erica? How's Adam?

Hey. How we doing?

Oh, thank you.

Any part of the house, or—

um, no, I'm actually, uh, down in, uh, Ouray, Colorado. Oh, for a few days. So I'm in a little, uh, little hotel here.

Nice painting behind.

Thanks for making time.

Yeah, I might jump off the call a little early tonight though. I might not do the whole 2 hours. Because I feel bad.

Okay, why is it—

oh, so hey, hey Brad.

Oh, hair's always weird. Hi everyone, I made it. You're all upon entry.

Should they?

So we have some extra people tonight, Erica.

Hi, Calvin, who's probably, probably going to join the second hour. Um, he, he and I connected through a, one of these events, some of these Zoom call events that I joined to do, like, for co-op stuff that randomly comes through my radar. And he was, like, asking if people had to, like, get involved in a co-op. So I invited him and then, or I told him about it, he then he reached out to me, followed up like after he checked out the website and from our meeting videos and stuff like that. So yeah, he seems pretty interested and he has some background co-ops, stuff like that. So he, but he's in Chicago and I just, we just chatted for the first time yesterday. So he didn't have a lot of time to prepare. So he's gonna for the second hour. And yeah, we'll see how it goes. So yeah, and Russell, I know he's gonna— he said he always has a little tricky time getting on precisely at 7. We talked about it last week after the call. He just said with family, he has family commitments with the kids and his wife. So he said he tried to join the call without being too disruptive a few minutes in. So But, uh, so I guess that's everyone right now. Maybe I wonder where Jennifer is. I'll shoot her a message, see if she's jumping on. Brad, good to see you, man.

Yes, sorry I missed last week.

All good.

We missed you.

I like the, like, the jacket. Coming formal to the meetings.

Dress up sometimes.

Yeah, right. I feel like I should too. Next week I'll come in and talk. All right, um, should we give it a minute maybe? Sure.

Are we recording?

Yeah, it's already recording. Yeah, I didn't want to mess it up like I almost did last week.

I hear there was a nice spring day in Brooklyn today.

Yesterday was even better. Today was nice too. Yesterday was super warm. It was like—

57.

Oh, Jennifer's already—

okay.

Yeah, it was like 57 or 60 or something. Today was pretty nice too. So not too bad. Cool.

Hey, how's it going, Jennifer? Can you hear?

Can—

how's your audio, Jennifer? Is it okay?

You're muted.

Oh, can you hear me? Yeah, it's hard to—

not good.

It's okay, maybe try again.

A, B, C, D, E, F, G.

Okay, yeah, that's pretty good. Okay, let's try. Awesome. I think everyone's here. Russell will probably jump on in a minute or so. And so maybe we can get started. Is that cool with everybody?

Yeah, sure.

Adam, I think you're—

Yeah, should we? Yes, maybe we can go. I'll be the facilitator for the night. I mean, pretty easygoing, not, not much to facilitate. I think the group has a good flow already. We figure out a little bit this mirror and We have the agenda there. I think everyone can see it. Uh, hope everyone feels good after the last session. Um, can you guys hear me?

Yes, there's a little feedback though.

Yes, I think maybe we're gonna have to do the other.

Yeah, sorry, just give us a second. Uh, Annie, uh, this is in our apartment, but she decided like seperate just because it is easier for her to focus and be able to—

Yeah, I think that's gonna be better.

Yeah, sorry guys.

Yeah, so yeah, just to review— Yes, that's pretty privileged for me to be here with these two guys for the last, for the last two weeks. Oh yeah, last time I think it was, I guess we had a really good meeting. Vivek introduced us really to the steps of creation, the co-op, and I think everyone left the meeting pretty motivated because it's actionable and it's nice to see that we are on track. We are on a good track. It's a long, it's a long journey, but this, we are on a good track. And there's a lot of things and questions still hanging in the air, like for example stuff about membership options. Erika and Ulla, they started last week discussing, and I think we're gonna go deeper in this meeting. So the agenda for today, we're starting with the icebreaker with Adam, then also Adam also worked on the mission statement suggestion. Based on the shared objective that we collected in the Miro board with everyone. And then we have a topic on ways to compensate potential members for their labor that Jennifer, Ulla, and Erika will talk about. And then a couple of questions on where, where are we heading next, where what's next on our steps and on our timeline and our journey. And we'll finish with a little feedback on the meeting. Anyone wants to add anything to the agenda today? Yes, I do. Okay.

Yeah, there's like two little things. One is like the follow-up work required of like that we've been doing as facilitators. You can just put follow-up from the facilitator. And then I just wanted to see if anyone wanted to add someone they know to a list of email that we will talk about later.

So you want to have a follow-up for the previous meeting, you're saying?

So usually we've been doing, starting with Vivek, and then Brad did it, then Ulla did it, then I did it. But without actually saying it, we've been sending the follow-up email with the minutes, with the link to the Zoom recording. And now we've been putting the agenda together according to what we talked in the meeting. So we've just assumed so far that the facilitator is doing this, but I just wanted to make sure that we are all okay with this. Okay. I was like in the air, like, who's gonna do this?

It's easy way to, to, to keep track on who's gonna do it.

Okay, so, so we can discuss and see if everyone agrees with having the facilitator sending the follow-up email.

Okay, and the second thing was You can just say like a broader group email list and then—

Okay, adding how to add more people to the email list.

Okay, thank you.

So the email list, I added this to the mirror board. Okay, so yeah, let's start warming up with an icebreaker. With Adam.

Great, okay, um, let's see, uh, what did it— what did I want to do, uh, for icebreaker, um, everyone tell a lie about yourself. Okay, I'll go first, um, I have no social anxiety whatsoever. Okay, um, how about Erica go next?

I hate dogs. Uh, dogs.

Annie? I don't like to live in community. Russell.

Can't hear you.

No, not yet.

No.

How about now?

Yeah, okay.

Um, I said, um, a lie about myself would be I can do it alone.

That's good.

Do you want to pick someone?

Oh yeah, who else is left? Jennifer?

Um, I love to water ski.

Okay, and then who's left?

I hate camping.

Hate it.

Hate nature. Brad?

The first thing that came to mind was that I show up to every meeting that I sign myself up for. But I think a good one would probably be that I can be productive without coffee. Oh, sorry. Yes.

I love ice cream, especially the cookie dough.

Would you say I love ice cream?

I said that. Yes, that's right about me. I love ice cream, especially cookie dough.

Interesting.

That's like my favorite and she'll never eat it.

Got you.

Safe one.

Cool.

Nice. Nice, guys. So we had everyone, yeah? Yes. So Adam, how did it go with the mission statement? How was your process?

Can I share my screen real quick?

One second.

I think we need Vivek to enable it.

Instead of making him host, yeah, yeah, you can just click an arrow for advanced options so everybody can share without being—

Okay, thank you.

So next to the share screen there's an arrow.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

Can you do it, Adam, now?

Uh, one quick thing too. I think Vivek, you are, you are, um, the minute keeper for today.

Yep.

Are you good with that?

Perfect. Got all these lives.

Okay, let me know when you could see it.

Yep.

Got it?

Okay, great.

Okay, I figured I'd go through a couple mission statements, definition, examples, whatever. So a mission statement is defined as an action-based statement that declares the purpose of an organization and how they serve their customers. Of course, this is— I'm sure there's a lot of different definitions for this sort of thing. Does anyone— can you guys mute your computers? I'm getting feedback from something. There we go.

Oh, great.

OK. All right, so I figured let's go through a few because different companies have different feels for this sort of thing. Some people like to keep it really simple. So Sweetgreen, to inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real food. Patagonia, build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental process. And Warby Parker, to offer designer eyewear at a revolutionary price while leading the way for socially conscious businesses. IKEA, to create a better everyday life for the many people. I won't spend too much time on this, don't worry. JetBlue, to inspire humanity both in the air and on the ground. Tesla, to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. TED, spread ideas. Some companies have longer statements. The Wheatsville Co-op has this paragraph here. And I'll go— the mission of the Wheatsville Co-op is to serve a broad range of people by providing them goods and services using efficient methods that avoid manipulation of the consumers. Minimize exploitation of the producers or damage the environment. The primary focus for this mission is supplying high-quality food and non-doctrinary information about food to people in Austin, Texas. So they opted to go for a little longer one. Dairy Farmers of America is more to the point, dedicated to delivering value to members through secure markets, competitive pricing, and increasing value throughout the entire dairy chain. Ben Jerry's is another longer one. Unified Grocers out of California. Success at retail sustainability at wholesale. Unified Grocers is the largest retailer-owned wholesale grocery cooperative in the western United States. Yeah, yeah. So that's enough. REI: we inspire, educate, and outfit for a lifetime of outdoor adventure and stewardship. So I personally like the shorter and direct ones, but I totally would be open to something that's adds in more things. Within our literature, there's, there's gonna be different points in the process where we could share more ideas or more lengthy things, or we could use it here. So the next— now I wanted to get into R Co-op, and these are just some stuff that people have written either in the sharing our values thing exercise from this week or from previous stuff. So this is all your— all of our writing, I guess. So someone wrote, cooperation is timelessly part of human nature, an impulse that arises whenever a task looms too large for an individual or a powerless group. Worker-owned co-ops provide a better product or service by not compromising either simply to match investor demands. Pretty sure that's Vivek. Provide a positive shopping experience in which customers can feel absolutely confident that the products they are acquiring have been sustainably sourced and completely free of plastic packaging. We know food and packaging should not contain single-use plastics to be part of a path for consumers to reach 2 tons annual carbon footprint, to create a safe, fair, friendly, and motivating workspace in which every member is appreciated and has meaningful— a meaningful job that they love and enjoy, help consumers get to zero black bag trash. Then citizens should not have to pay more for sustainable products or services. So that's just a little sampling of of ourselves. And so let's go ahead and just get into our mission. So there's one thing that Ulla and Vivek wrote a while ago that I really liked. It was really simple. It was on one of the Instagram posts. It says, even if you want to, avoiding plastic is hard. We hope to make it easy.

Love it.

It's simple, concise, to the point. Um, is it appropriate here as our mission? Maybe. Um, is— could we use it elsewhere? I think we should. Um, either here or elsewhere, whatever. Um, but I, I love just, um, it kind of nails the point. Um, and just to backtrack a little, uh, there's— so there's a few essentials that I see in our, um, uh, our project here. It's, it's, um, creating a cooperative that has, uh, democratic, uh, values. Then there's the— we're focusing on the problem of, um, plastic. Um, and then, you know, how are we going to solve that problem, right? So in our mission, it's— I tend to think that we should focus on, um, the, the problem, the plastic problem, or the environmental problem. And then I guess after I'm done here, and I'll be done in 2 or 3 minutes, I'd like to hear from you guys about what you might think, you, what, what category of value you'd like to see in our mission statement. If you prefer something more concise or something that has more information. And so I'll open up to discussion in just one second. So option B, something I wrote, is our mission is to enable and embolden all people to consume with less impact. Then just as a further option, option B+ would be, to use that but then add the cooperative sides of things. So to enable and embolden all people to consume with less impact and to create an equitable working environment that facilitates transparency and fairness for our members and customers. So alternatively, we can add to the statement in an area like some companies will have a purpose as opposed— like a purpose and a mission as well, and then we could use the cooperative stuff there. For example, the Wheatsville Co-op, they have their mission that I read earlier, and then their purpose is to create a self-reliant, self-empowering community of people that will grow and promote a transformation of society towards cooperation justice and non-exploitation. I, I happen to really enjoy that sentiment from them. The wording is pretty perfect there. Um, so at this point, um, in the process, I'd like to hear from you guys. Um, and just to make it, um, to streamline things a little bit, uh, the idea is, um, what do you prefer, a concise mission or something that adds a little, like a longer paragraph? Then B, do you want to hear mostly about the environmental impact and save the speaking about the cooperative for a different part of our literature? And then C, do you like, or are any of these, what do you think of this specific phrasing, these options here? So how about this? To keep it simple, let's answer the should be concise or should it be, or yeah, should it be concise or should it be a longer paragraph? Which do you prefer? And if 2 or 3 of you could answer your, quick opinion on that, please let's do that right now.

Why don't we use the chat to write in the chat? Maybe everyone can write in the chat concise or long paragraph and then we can discuss.

I can't see the chat right now when I'm hosting.

I wonder where it is.

Oh, it's—

oh, there we go.

Should be on the bottom next to participants. Okay, so we're getting concise, concise, concise.

Either Okay, it depends, haha, but usually I say concise. Great, okay, so that's fine. And obviously, uh, wherever it goes, it could evolve. So, um, if it's not working as a concise statement, um, then we could definitely add to it. So let's go back to, um, this area. So, um, the next question is, um Do we want to mention the, the plastic side of, or the, the environmental side of it and the co-op in the mission statement, or do we want to separate those two? So you could go ahead in the chat and answer that now. Okay, so separate them, plastic only, focus on environment.

Let's wait one more minute.

OK. OK. So it seems like people are more into separate.

When did— OK. Keep together with mission.

OK.

Got you.

All right.

So it seems like we're kind of drifting towards the keep it simple, Just be about the environment. Great. This time I'm not going to go to the chat. I'll just— well, if a few people could just comment on the style of these things, what they're into, or maybe advice on where we would want to go with it. So let's just talk about these two just so we have a jumping off point. The even if you want to, avoiding plastic is hard. We hope to make it easy. And then to enable— the mission is to enable and embolden all people to consume with less impact. So yeah, if anyone would like to chat about that right now, let me know your opinions.

I feel like the first one sounds more like, like a slogan, if that's the word, like something we— it can be like on our website, like just like that. But then the second one, option B, sounds more like a mission. I don't know if it makes sense, and I love both, but the first one sounds more like that.

For me, option A is a little vague. I think there's— it's like very open-ended what we hope to make it easy could be. But B is at least a little more clear.

Okay, got you. Anyone else?

We could potentially change option A to be like, we make it easy to avoid plastic instead of we hope. Okay, just we make it easy. I'm not sure if that changes the sentiment, but—

Okay. My opinion is no matter what, I'd like to for sure use option A on some marketing somewhere. I just love the simplicity of it.

Yep.

But the B kind of like Erica was saying, it does fold into more of a missiony type statement. It's, you know, obviously when Option A was written, it wasn't for this objective exactly. So it might be less applicable. I just liked it a lot. So I kind of wanted to talk about it here. Okay, anyone else want to comment?

Yeah, I like them both, leaning towards the first one. One, but I really like the second one. So I was wondering maybe we could just add, uh, we make it easy, uh, to all people to consume with less impact. So kind of maybe, uh, combine them in a shorter form.

Okay.

I don't know if that would make it, you know, the very punchy one, but okay.

Great.

You did a great job.

This is really awesome. Nice. Sorry, Ani.

Yeah, no, I was just going to say that I definitely, I think the same, that the first one, it's more of a tagline or like something that you put like under the, like the name of the store. When it comes to like consume with less impact, I mean, like what, because impact, it can be a positive impact, you know? So impact, if you just use the word impact, I don't know if it's really like, it's like we don't want to have a negative impact, but actually we want to have a positive impact. So like for me, that's something that it's missing there. Less in, yeah, because you can say you can help embolden people to consume while having a positive impact, for example. So I'm just saying that for me, it's not complete, the impact on its own, because impact, you have impact all the time. It can be like—

That's great.

Yeah.

Another question is, to enable and embolden all people, I thought it could also be all communities, our community, to embolden the planet to consume with less impact. What do you guys think of all people in that?

Situation. Can I say something about the less impact? We could also just cut impact and keep consume less. Consume less because that's also what's important.

Consume less, but then it's also— you are kind of like—

our goal is not to just have people only shop. Yeah, well, while that's important, You know, like you're not going to sort of just— you're obviously buying something from us.

Yeah, yeah. So I also think the same there. It's like we are a store, so you cannot—

we can— there's always— that's— I think that'll be a part of our education, our marketing efforts, like about educating people on consuming less.

But that—

I don't—

yeah, I don't foresee like mission. Yeah, I was just trying to say before, I think this is a really nice approach to analyzing this and going through it, you know, between these two. Yeah, I would agree with the sentiment about the first one being like more of like a slogan, punchy marketing. I do like it too, kind of the same way you do, but I think it'd probably serve better there. Option B is really nice and powerful. I share the same concerns with Ani about the impact, more clarity on the impact. And I know this is like a draft, so, and even the emboldened, like, I wonder if that word alone is like a little complex, like, for like a general public to precisely know what we mean. Maybe not, maybe I'm wrong. This is just a suggestion that maybe that wording is a little, tricky, but otherwise I think it's pretty good. It's on the right track at least.

All right, great. Anyone else have any comments? Otherwise we'll keep moving on.

Yeah, so I would like to hear maybe some ideas on like how do we continue this search for the mission, for the right mission statement. Is in a collaborative way. Adam started the process, and how do we continue? Maybe till the next meeting?

Um, we could put it on that board or something, and we could put this option at the top, and then people could respond with their revisions.

Yeah, let's see, is everyone on the Miro board as well?

I think so.

I was thinking we can use something like a graphic or we can like put Post-it and we can say like maybe high impact, easy to achieve, this kind of thing. I don't know if you can see my cursor for our revisions, for like missions, or like, or like different—

we don't see your screen.

Okay, let me share. Okay, stop Google Chrome. Okay, so I'm thinking maybe we can add here— what were it— like, uh, the mission statements, and we can add different ones till next meeting. Can be one of our things, like sort them out.

I don't— maybe Adam needs to unshare or something, but we can't see.

If you go to view options, you Can see, I had to go down and select.

Oh, what do we have?

So there's a, yeah, there's a dropdown for view options and one that showed. Now it's not there anymore.

Thanks for the—

there you go.

So can you see it now?

Yep.

Okay, so, um, if you can click on, uh, on my icon on the You can follow me on top.

You can just go to the Miro page.

Miro page. So avoiding plastic is hard. We hope to make it easy. I'm missing something, but to make it easy. So we can like place this kind of cards, like what do we think is like a high impact for the people or like easy or hard to achieve. And then we can come up with new, new mission statements maybe for the next meeting and place them around the graphic.

Well, I guess, is everyone coming up with their own mission statement and placing it on this scale?

Or how do you feel about that? Or how, how, what kind of ideas you have for a collaborative, um, yeah. Work on this?

Well, um, Brad? Yeah, I guess if we were going to go— I mean, I like this idea, but I think maybe we— I, I would worry that we'd get stuck talking about, um, like the semantics of the words is like a separate topic from this, you know what I mean? So maybe this is where we put— just put topics down of we want to worry about plastics, do we want to worry about environment, you know, it's just like pick those words first and put them up here, and then from there go to a mission statement. Otherwise, I think, you know, we're going to be, you know, talking more about, I guess, which words fit, fit better in the mission statement or not. It might not be, it might not really fit in the scale or the graph, I keep calling it scale.

I mean, one thing I would personally— I, this type of thing is like a, um, it's a bit like an artistic effort in some ways. And, uh, I would probably say in my perspective on this, like, Adam maybe should take a shot, like a crack at this. I mean, he's already done it, but like now he's got some input from us, got some like direction from us, maybe he should, or if anyone else wants to volunteer, I don't know if Adam is volunteering to take it all away, but, you know, take a crack at just, you know, giving us a couple versions, and then like maybe us like talking about and voting on it. I don't know if this is like one of those things we should be like, you know, going through committee to like all collaborate on, and, you know, I think you can lose a lot of its like punchiness and its directness if maybe Adam like brings out his like top 3 or 4, maybe even like, you know, and also like in that process if you're doing it, Adam, like, you know, you did it like the one, the version with both was also pretty nice, and maybe you can even just, if it, if you want to take a crack at it that way, you even show it that like, okay, here's one that's like super punchy, you know, here's one that's like a little bit of a like a combination of co-op and an environment. Here's one like super focused on plastic. I don't know, like whatever your creative process is, but— and then that way we can evaluate and then sort of make it like a final vote and try to get close to consensus on one of them. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but that's sort of my perspective on it.

That's fine with me, happy to do it.

Perfect, so we'll let you take the lead on that then.

Right, is that cool? Yeah.

I would suggest something like this. I mean, he wrote it great, and maybe someone between us has another brilliant, you know, statement for it and would like to send it to Adam. But if anyone else would like to send a suggestion, can send one or two or something like that. If someone is like, I'm okay with whatever he will come up with, then we will vote it. Doesn't have to do it.

That'd be great. I'd love that.

Cool.

And then also we have, um, the, our, uh, shared input that, that me and Vivek have been bringing together. That'll probably help as well with this research that, you know, because we pulled together all those people's, uh, every, everyone that's here is things that they kind of expect for the co-op. And so I think that'll help the process as well. So Adam has more ammo to— and poetry to go from.

Speaking of which, do you guys want to talk a little bit about the objectives and what you've worked together on this week, as it's our next topic on the agenda?

Yeah, sure.

Vivek, do you want me to take, take over, um, or do you want to talk? You're muted right now.

Uh, yeah, if you don't mind taking over the, uh, are you— the minutes, you mean, or what were you—

oh, the— we're going to the next segment.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, I'm just taking the minutes down too, so, um, yeah, that's fine. Like, once you— once you Do you have my link I sent you though?

No, I was just going to open the Miro.

Okay. Actually, just share.

Yeah, why don't you, why don't you share? Yeah, go over it.

Yeah, I'm going to share my screen, guys. Hopefully this is a helpful approach. Okay, cool. So I basically, I took whatever was on Miro and I just I dumped into a spreadsheet trying to like— I didn't know how— if you can see, there's 33 shared objectives. There's some overlap for sure between them, but I just like completely raw data coming from Miro. There was 33, so I just wanted to sort of see that, and I was trying to figure out, get my head around how do we pare that down because I knew it was like Obviously we can't have 33 shared objectives. It wouldn't make sense for any company, obviously. So that was like my first step. So then after that, I tagged on all of them. I just like, I create, these are arbitrary, like my own. I just like read them and I was like, okay, what is this? Like for the first one is like, too long to serve the masses, not serving the woke minority. I like, for me, that was like a size business growth sort of tag, I guess you could call it. You know, there's, if you scroll down, like Erica talked about giving back to the community by providing affordable, high-quality, and sustainable products and a space and means for education and meaningful, well-paid jobs. For me, that was a, you know, external corporate responsibility sort of sounded like a bit like our mission, so I tagged it like that. Um, you know, Brad talked about need benefit corp requirements, that's sort of a governance thing, so I try to tag them. And I thought the tagging would help, uh, because then we could see like what are— where is there overlap, and maybe those things can be combined to like one thing, and then we can decide like, um, you know, combine them, like try to make some like wording into one like shared objective from all of them. A good example would be like on the education front. So there's like a bunch of like ones on education, like Oola has a bunch of education-related stuff. Educating and learning, the RRR, refuse, reuse, recycle, helping society find the right solutions to live more aligned with nature. So like that, those things seem like environmental education, education in general. So, oh, I think we have Christian who's just joined on. Hey Christian. And so like, even I also have an education one, or I did, it was spread awareness and support worker-owned cooperatives. So there's a bunch of different like overlaps, and I guess I'm not quite Yeah, Russell, I don't know if you have some ideas or you want to talk about like how we go from this 33, like 33 item list to, I think probably for shared objectives for a corporation, probably makes more sense to be like, I don't know, in the ballpark of 4 to 8 or something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We would want to get it down below 10 probably. So then the question is, how do we do that? And I didn't really have a good, good idea, and I know that we're all, we're all like really passionate about making sure we do this right. So I wanted to make sure we— everybody was feeling heard. So, you know, me and Vivek said, why don't we do it together at this meeting? And so like one way we could do it is to try to just consolidate things together into a single sentence that kind of works for us. And we have who said them, so we could try to do it that way. And that would give us probably— that would probably get us down to, you know, hopefully around 10 to 15. And then from there we could— oh, I see somebody wanting to come in. Go ahead.

Well, I just want to first, before that, say hi to Christian. He's joined the call. Thanks for coming in. Christian, we're just going through a document that we have. We last week, one of the homework assignments was for all of us to share our individual objectives that we like to see this organization sort of fulfill beyond just our mission statement. So mission statement's like really the high, like direct focus, but of the, of the organization, but these shared objectives are sort of like secondary objectives that we'd like to see this organization's corporation accomplish. To a degree, you know, you know, so this document basically compiles everyone's shared objectives and, you know, we're trying to figure out a process to whittle this list of 33 down to, you know, somewhere between probably 4 to 8 and while also being thoughtful to everybody's own voice and concerns.

I have a suggestion.

Yeah.

If, if we can go back to the Miro board.

Sticky notes, you can—

we can put the ones that we feel strongly about higher than the ones that we feel less strongly about or something like that and pick from the ones that we feel strongly about. Or if there's redundant ones, we can move them, take ones off that are redundant.

Okay, just a thought.

That's what the sticky notes are good for, I think, but just a thought.

One other, one other way we could do it is on that spreadsheet I actually create columns and I thought maybe people could vote on their like top 8 or something.

I don't know, is that a better approach or maybe moving around the sticky notes, whatever you guys, um, also since you created this, it would maybe make sense to have one for each type, one for education, one for environment, one for co-ops, and we choose which one we like the best for each one.

Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Also what I think probably that has also worked for me, the Venn diagrams. So like you create Venn diagrams in which you put like community, co-op, And then we start putting, oh, this belongs to this area. And then we started throwing ideas, like all these sections there. And then it's easier for us to just see what is overlapping. And what is overlapping, we can just actually have that straight up, that idea, and then see how, I don't know, like overlaps with somebody else or the same. Sometimes you're trying to do the same thing. Same goal with this, but different with the different idea. So I think Venn diagrams would be— you just have to create the sections as Erica was saying.

Ani, can we do that on Miro?

Yeah, we can do something like that. You can do like a Kanban with, or just like a chart or something.

Okay, I'm not brave enough to try yet.

You want to say something?

We also, like what Erika said, I think like it's great idea to make those, I think, 4 categories. And in those 4 categories, we would, we could give points. For example, you know, let's say we have 4 in each, so we would, you know, give them points from 1 to 4, whatever we agree for, and then we see which one is the best in each category. And then we already done go down to 5 or 4.

Well, I think it's one per category, she's saying.

Yeah, I don't know how many categories it is. Yeah, we will choose one from each category after voting and giving points.

This is like kind of a Scrum points, maybe, when we could do— I forget the numbers that you don't give. Like, you give from 1, 3, 7, like in order of— I don't know the numbers.

That's like a lot of work, but yeah. Yeah.

But then we just have to count the points in each category, which one won the most points, and that's the winner for each category.

Okay, so what, what are the categories? I agree with it.

You made the categories.

Well, these are— well, there are more categories than I think right here. So, um, like, I mean, there's a, there's a bunch of different tags. Like, they're not just, um, they're not just like co-op, they're not just environment, they're, they're a bunch of different things. So there's like stuff around packaging There's stuff around business growth, product goals, data. So there's a lot of categories. Unfortunately, there's not like 4. If there was, then it would be a little bit easier. But that's still—

I think we can resolve this this way. So we choose, we give points first to categories. So to downgrade to 5 categories, let's say, theoretically. So we give points first to categories. When we have the categories, we give points to the statements in each category to choose just one in each.

Yeah, I sort of understand, but once again, there's a lot of categories. Adam, you think it's kind of complicated? What do you— do you have a suggestion? Any other suggestions? Kind of go through it?

I kind of like the logic you used. It's like maybe you and Russell need to go back just by ourselves before going to the group with it. And because I feel like it's just easier to go back and forth with just one person as opposed to 6.

Yeah, maybe, maybe. All right, so is that, is that kind of okay with everybody? We're gonna, we're gonna give us like the green light to— maybe the way we'll do it is we'll, we'll, um, we'll keep this like full list. We'll sort of show like our transition from like a big long list to like a more whittled-down list. And then it'll probably still be even— there'll probably even be a few ones that don't fall into a particular category of sorts that we, we're not like— we don't want to like make the decision on alone. And we'll probably present it to the rest of the group like, hey, okay, well, the mixed ones, these are, these are a couple ones that didn't fall into like a broader category. Um, and you know, where is the rest of the group to think about? Should we add them? Should we not keep it in for XYZ reason? Is that kind of okay?

Yes, and I agree with Christian. Like, some things do overlap and/or are interconnected, so that from like two tags, they can become one if it makes sense, just to simplify stuff.

What's that song? Two hearts become one, right? No, I'm joking. But yeah, I mean, there's like— yeah, to Christian's point, yeah, this This is like what I was trying to do with this concept of tags. Like, I've actually— now that Christian mentioned this, like, Venn diagram thing, that probably would have been a smarter way to do it. But I guess I'm like so old-fashioned with spreadsheets. But, um, so yeah, um, yeah, uh, I'll— um, sorry, Russell and I can get together, um, tomorrow or something like that and work through it. So if that's cool with everybody, assuming that's okay. Yes.

Yes.

Cool. Okay.

And that will be an action item for us to go there and— Aha, then we are still—

No, no, no, we're going to take the list.

And do the final thing.

Yeah, we're going to try to combine them into like, ideally, probably like down to 10. And then maybe even whittle it down a little bit less if possible. Christian, is that cool? Jennifer? Awesome.

Yeah, so we can also have Christian adding his personal objectives in, yeah, in a Miro board. And I think I also added a little bit late, so you can, yeah, get all that information.

We got you on it.

You got me. Okay. Yes. So that's pretty good. It's nice to see, to have a process. I think we're working on both mission and personal objectives. And yeah, it's not something that we have to get, do in over the course of one meeting in between the meetings. We can definitely spread that over to the next meeting. So for, for the next maybe 20 minutes, we can go to our next topic on the agenda.

Let's just—

before we do that, I just want to say something on that point. And so I think I've mentioned this a couple of times, like that I have a weekly call with a woman named Shelley at the ICA Group. The ICA Group is like a New York-based organization that helps support worker-owned cooperatives get established. And so she, you know, it's paid by taxpayers, though, like, she's happy to chat with me on a weekly basis, and I, you know, give her updates on the progress of how things are going. Anyway, today I had— this is the second time I had a meeting with her and her boss Dave, who's the executive director of ICA Group, and he has a ton of experience, like, 20-plus years of experience with cooperatives. So I just gave him an update that we, you know, we kind of created this initial steering committee, and then, you know, we're like working through stuff like the mission statement and shared objectives and, you know, working through consensus and stuff like that. And anyway, he was very delighted by the speed by which we're working and was very encouraged that, you know, we're making such progress. So if things feel like, you know, sometimes slow, I would, I would And I'm just telling this as an encouragement, actually, that we're, I think, working at a very solid pace. And sometimes stuff like this, while there's often or there's required discussion, once we get through it, it'll be— we'll be on a solid platform. So I think we should be encouraged by the pace we're working at and how cooperatively we are working together.

Nice, thank you Vivek.

And actually, and the last thing, Dave's like, doesn't often meet with cooperatives because he's just like, you know, pretty senior at the organization, but he really loves this idea so much and he has a ton of experience with, with helping cooperatives with like food cooperatives and grocery store cooperatives. So he's like, he actually said he wants to meet with with us on a monthly basis. So that's awesome. I was very excited to hear that he was so intrigued by the project.

Cool.

Thank you. Yes. Nice. Good job. Maybe later you can also tell us like if you actually have a plan for a monthly meeting and how, like, when to organize that with everyone.

Yeah, good point. Yeah.

Yeah. And so we have the ladies, the other ladies on the screen, Jennifer, Ulla, and Erica. I think you've done a little bit of research on compensating potential member for their labor. Do you want to share with the group what, what you've discovered on the World Wide Web or calling the communities?

One response was, of course, we would want to do cooperative, really, and whatever we decided, of course, would be, uh, okay. Um, so, Jennifer, I, I didn't talk to any, uh, I didn't call up any cooperatives, but yeah, I, I think we're hearing you pretty badly.

Maybe you can turn off your video for the moment. Just while you're speaking. All right, let's see.

Um, I, I looked through the directory of cooperatives. If you just look up co-op directory, worker co-op directory, and started looking for co-ops that might have good advice for something for us and came up with the, the Central Cooperative co-op in Tacoma and Seattle was doing a grocery store kind of similar to ours. So I posted that on the Slack. I think you guys saw that.

Yes, I did get a chance to look at it. It looks, as you said, very transparent, and they seem to have some, some good resources. Um, thank you for that, and also for, like, um, for the suggestion for last meeting's call. So actually, during that call, Vivek asked— I asked first, and then we went back to my question because we openly asked what were some ways in which the steering committee gets compensated for their work. And there doesn't seem to be any system or some— Their answers to me seem pretty vague, like they mentioned hourly compensation and there was another one. Okay, well, so actually Vivek and I got together to talk a little about this. Let me tell you which one was the other one. And yeah, pre-development loans, which Personally, I wouldn't like to do, to start getting extra loans to pay us right now before we become profitable. So to me, I think we all agree, and you can say otherwise on the chat, that we want to get compensated for this work and we should. But the question is, how do you— gauge the work that we're doing right now. Like, for instance, Jennifer commented that she can probably work 8 hours a week, and maybe someone else can do more and less, and that's not wrong because this is a startup. We're a steering committee, and our commitments are, according to what we talked last meeting, are not measured by the amount of hours we work, but by other things like attending the meetings and participating, following up on our action items. But when you're talking about getting paid, you are talking about hours. Anyway, so if we go to Miro, I can share my screen so everybody can see. Miro too, but if you want to just follow it on your own, that's okay too. I created this.

Let me just make it smaller.

Can you see my screen?

Yes.

Okay, so here is the question, right? And I'm like working on this like narrowing our focus thing, like how would we look How will we get compensated for our work? So the first question would be, what are some ways in which we can gauge our labor for future compensation? That's question number 1. And I made like one column to answer each question. Question number 2, should we determine a fixed hourly rate for future compensation? Question number 3, would it make more sense to determine our salaries based on how long we have worked for the co-op, including this time, the organizational stage? So these are questions that I want us to answer together if possible. So we actually— Vivek actually came up with that one solution For the first question, what is one way we can not only gauge our work but also get feedback from each other so we all feel like we are doing a fair amount of work and we're compensated since— yeah, fair. So I don't know, Vivek, if you want to talk a little about how you came up with the idea, and then we can share the form that we created and propose this idea to the group?

Sorry, yeah, I was muted. Yeah, so maybe you want to pull up the form, but I think so. Last week, I think Glenn and Erica had shared the, like, some, like, metrics that maybe we could track, and we could track, like, like 3 out of 5 or something and see like if people were working to accomplish those metrics, then, you know, we, they would be like, their hours would count. But then even Russell mentioned something like even some of those things can be gamed. And it brought me, it made me like think a lot about like, you know, how do we track, you know, people's commitment? And how do we track if people are, you know, also like in hopes of providing feedback, you know, not just to be like tracking, but like really like how do we get the most out of each other, like their full commitment. So I thought about like a really simple form. Eric, if you don't mind like scrolling down. So basically, or actually you can start here, but like basically as you can read this, this form is, is designed to help us learn, grow, and hopefully bring out the best in our abilities. This isn't a tool for punishment. Instead, we should see this form as a source of personal development and recognition of our efforts each week. So yeah, pretty simple goal for this form. You scroll down, this one is for Erica, and you would, you know, the first thing you would do is enter your name, like who's filling in this form. And to, so we know who's like giving the feedback. Uh, and then there would be a simple question, two simple questions. The first one, do you feel, um, Erica met her responsibilities as a teammate this week? Um, and just three options, pretty simple. Um, you know, no, satisfactory, and 110%, you know, and 110% is like showing initiative beyond, um, her basic commitment. So You know, as worker owners, like, we are owners in this business. So, you know, being able to, you know, some weeks we might not be able to give it our best. Maybe some weeks we actually can't even attend because we are away or something like that. But when we— but ideally, all of us should be trying to generally work towards 110 if we can. That'd be like real ownership, right? If you owned it, if none of us else were involved in a business and one of us was trying to start our own company individually, each of us were starting to try to start our own company, we would be doing a bunch of different things. You know, we'd be— not only would we be doing financial modeling or trying to design stuff or taking out the garbage or trying to get customers to come to our business, we'd be doing all these things together, uh, all these things combined. I mean, So, um, so this is like the first question is just to try to get a gauge from our peers. Like, are we, or did, did each of us individually do our responsibilities, um, or not? Right. So that's the first question. And then the second one is, um, just provide thoughtful feedback, um, uh, feedback you have for Erica this week. So, you know, this can be good and bad, like, It shouldn't just only be like, we shouldn't think about feedback from a traditional standpoint, like, you know, only give like trying to be constructive, but also like notice the positives and negatives of what the person did this week, you know, try to like let them know, you know, how you feel. But like I said in the beginning, this form is not meant to be a form of punishment. We shouldn't look at it that way. I fear if we do that we won't be honest with each other, and that this will discourage us from trying to provide honest input and help us grow individually and miss, like, and see blind spots that maybe we're missing in our own behavior, in our own work. And so I think this form will allow us, A, to learn and grow, and then long-term, you know, if, you know, someone's getting a lot of nos, right? Like if one no's, like, you know, That's fine. You know, we all have off weeks or maybe we take a week off. It's fine. Not a big deal. But if you're like months after months, like, you know, everybody on the team's like giving you a no, then maybe like that might pose an opportunity for a conversation with groups, individuals on the team, or, you know, perhaps like when we're thinking about compensation down the road, like that individual may not be up for it, because they just haven't been committed to the project. That's sort of the genesis of this forum. Hopefully that's clear. I'm happy to take some questions or feedback on it.

So who is going to field this?

Oh yeah, great question. So yeah, so every week, the way I would imagine it, the way, or sorry, the way Erica and I were imagining it, was like to rotate. So probably like 2 people each week would write a— or would fill out one of these for every individual. So we just rotate, like, you know, maybe this week it's like my turn to, you know, provide input on Adam and Annie's work, you know, and then this week it'll be like your turn and Brad's turn to provide input on me, you know, and we just keep— we'll just keep rotating it. So this is also good because then it creates an opportunity or every week to get like different perspectives from other people in a systematic way. Is that helpful?

Yes, and I made also these just like brainstorm diagrams so we can like, if you have a question or a comment regarding how you feel about this form, We can just write it down now, just like you just say it, and like here, like the question they will ask, we will need to figure out a rotation system. So yep, input is here.

I wonder if that would be possible, for example, to start this the form with the question for that person, like for each person. Let's say that one was for you. The question will be, how do I feel I performed this week? And I give, like Erika would give herself, let's say that, 10 points. And then let's say you have like one day to do it. And then we have those two people that you guys talk about, they fill out the rest of the form. And at the end, we can see that do they kind of match.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, but why, why do you want to complicate this?

Um, because maybe someone may feel not— I mean, and eventually we could move to just self, uh, like self-grading. I don't know, self-assessing.

Why?

Why not?

We all kind of are honest, so We can, but then would you, wouldn't you want to get regular input from other people for growth?

It gets tricky when, um, people just don't see what you're working on, you know, like someone could have done a ton of analysis this week, but they're not presenting anything. So how do you grade that person?

Well, I think it's not, it's not just about, um, I think the form says it's not just about like, you know, what they're presenting. It's about just, you know, are they involved in coming to meetings? Are they active on the different platforms that we're communicating through? Are they following up on action items? Things like that.

Can you quickly share the form on the screen or the link in the chat?

Yeah. Oh, you want to see the form?

Okay, just for everyone to see if it's relevant, and so we can have it, um, here. Uh, can you see it now?

Yeah.

Okay, here it is.

And we also mentioned that we were thinking this, like, what is a no, right? What is— because it's our opinions, So what is satisfactory and what is 110? So that's why we try to put some description. And for instance, when I fill out Vivek's form, and this week I told him he did 110 because he showed initiative and suggested this form and also another thing that he helped me with. So like this extra, and we were thinking that this extra is for you really. It's not so like we are going to pay people who did 110% more because we don't want to be that. We don't— that's not our, our goal, right? Our goal is to, to solve the plastic problem. Our goal will be like, like this is for, for you as a person to to know. But if you're like— it's satisfactory means that you're here, like we are now, and that you're participating, in my opinion. That's why we are sharing this. And Annie, you ask a very good question on Miro, like who is going to analyze this data, right? We are all— what we're doing right now basically is thinking out loud. This is a way to do— to not measure our work, but if we're talking about compensation in the future, if we have this data, we have something that we can see in 3 months if your work is satisfactory. You met all the commitments, so this 3 months, they are considered work and you're going to get compensated for that.

Yeah.

So I think my concern is that like half of these things could be very subjective, like the— is somebody active or not active, easy to work with, could be very subjective, helpful, could be very subjective. Looking at this list here and that like the subheader, Right. You know, attend meetings is pretty clear. They either attended or they didn't. Responsibly handle their work, you know, you could definitely objectively say yes or no.

I mean, I think—

I'm suggesting maybe— yeah.

If I just respond to Brad real fast, like, I think it's not like— I agree that maybe first off we can always test this, and then secondly, and see if like, if we feel like it's being accurate, um, and if it's not, we can always change it. But secondly, um, I think there's like a sort of law of averages. Like, long term, I think this should be relatively accurate. Like I said, it's not meant to be a tool of punishment. So, and so it's like, if you have an off week, it's not like we shouldn't, you know, you shouldn't be penalized for it. But if you're like having lots of weeks like it, then this tool like is very useful to keep track of that. And then B, also helps us grow as an individual. And there can always be like opportunities for the two people to have a conversation. So Brad, if you see that I wrote this and I wrote you, I wrote no or satisfactory and you felt like you really went above and beyond that week, it could be a great opportunity for the two of us to connect and say, hey, I don't know if you know, but behind the scenes, I actually did a bunch of things. And that'll probably also come out in the comments section. It's like, oh, Brad, I saw you attend the meeting, but I didn't feel like you did anything in between via Slack, or you weren't really very— I think you had some action items, but you didn't you know, like I felt like you could probably do more or something like that, then you could, you could always, like, there can be opportunity for conversation there. Okay.

Do you see there being a separate process for like actually removing a member who like is, you know, like, you know, maybe that just like for whatever reason is toxic or is not, you know, not participating or doing whatever? Is there a separate process for actually removing somebody?

Yeah, there usually is. I mean, yeah, totally. And we probably need to define that process at some point. I don't know if you need to do it today.

I don't think so.

Unless—

I think that brings up a good point, because maybe we don't need this yet based on the members that we have so far. We're all pretty committed, the ones that come to these meetings. So But I think that this might be a valuable tool if we had— if we felt like we started to lose on the equation. But maybe we don't need this yet. But I do think that the feedback is valuable. And I think that we do need to figure out a way to share feedback with each other.

And also figure out a way of, like, measuring— somehow gauging the work we do. Compensation? Because that was like the initial question, right?

Right.

So maybe it's just— maybe it's— oops, sorry.

Sorry. No, go ahead.

I was just going to say maybe it's just us proclaiming like once a month we're still committed. Maybe that's enough. And then we could say like, well, are you? Because you haven't been around for a month or something. Right? Like if we decided like, hey, this person, or maybe it's a couple months, but you know what I'm saying? Like maybe that's an easier way. Then we don't have to track anything. It's just like basically saying like, yeah, I'm still here. I'm still committed to this project, at least until we're past the steering committee stages and we start actually hiring people and stuff, right? Or whatever else we plan to do.

Adam, what do you think?

Um, my thought, I guess I say if I was asked to grade a specific person and I just had no idea what they were doing, I would have a hard time like just being like, oh yes, satisfactory, or no, not. And I assume I would just err to like, yeah, just check the box satisfactory if But just a thought. Yeah, but I do like the macro idea of accountability.

Calvin.

Hello, Calvin. Welcome.

Calvin, were you waiting for long? Sorry, I hope I didn't miss your—

Yeah, I was trying to reach out to you. I was a couple minutes late. I do apologize, but I was here around 7:02.

2:03.

Oh man, get in there.

7:02 your time though, you mean?

Yeah, I'm sorry, my time.

Yeah, yeah, it's okay.

I feel like I'm gonna say like, uh, but yeah, it's all right. Still, still bad, 10 minutes, my bad, uh, Calvin. Sorry.

No worries, no worries.

Uh, I gotta change that feature. I'm so like novice for Zoom, so, uh, apologize for that.

No worries, no worries. Um, hi, it's a, it's a pleasure to be here. My name is Calvin, uh, Johns. My I go by the pronouns he/him/his, and I'm a big fan of democracy. I'm super excited to learn about the worker cooperative, and I also love sustainability, as we had talked about before, and I'm excited to learn more about what y'all are doing.

Awesome.

Great, welcome, nice to meet you.

Welcome, thank you for the introduction.

You're just working—

Oh yeah.

Sorry, sorry, honey.

Yeah, we are in the middle. We are in the middle of our meeting. And yes, we are discussing at the moment ways to compensate potential members, but more like how do we measure our efforts in a worker zone cooperative before it's actually running or incorporated or And even way before being profitable. So we're discussing this at the moment. Vivek came up with an idea, a form that we could give each other, share feedback with each other. But there's still, I don't know, I guess you're not familiar with all our tools, but we're still trying to see, answer this question. Collectively, like how can we measure our efforts.

Thank you for the update on the, on the topic. I want to kind of make you guys know the role I see myself in this meeting is pretty much just like, like a job shadow for me right now. I just want to kind of be in the background, listen to you guys, see how you, how y'all work, and I don't intend to interrupt any further.

Thank you, Calvin.

You can talk if you'd like though, for sure.

Ulla, did you want to say something? I saw you raising your hand.

Yes, about the topic, coming back to the topic. I think this form, I feel like it is what we want to avoid, democracy but not bureaucracy. This is kind of too bureaucratic to me. Maybe we could do it like once a month. But so I was also trying to find what, what other clubs do in the steering committee phase, and there was no like single, single answer, or there's no like regulation. But what I found is that we can just agree, for example, for 6 hours, that is a minimum that we each of us dedicate, and we will trust that we will do it. And everybody will be treated kind of equally. Let's agree for 5 hours a week until company becomes profitable. We'll all commit at least 5 hours or whatever we agree for. Plus all those things that we kind of mentioned, being active on our platforms, you know, following, following up all the time. But that's what I found, that we could just between us agree for a fixed hours a week. It was, yeah. Yeah.

That was one of the things that we discussed is actually on the Miro board to this determining, like you said, like 5 hours a week, 1 hour per weekday, and then just determining one hourly rate for that, and then once it becomes profitable, pay ourselves that. Another way that is mentioned in some documents is that our salary will have a percentage relatively to the time we've been working. Started from the beginning and you are doing like the same amount of work or the same, you have the same job title as someone that just started, then you will get paid more than that person even though you're doing the same because you've been here from the beginning. So that's another option. So I think like I really like Vivek keeps pushing me to reach out to someone and to reach to more people and cooperatives, and I think he's right. And the reason really that I haven't been reaching out is I want to have some specific questions because that's what they ask you because their time is valuable. So when I reach out to Shelley, she say, okay, what's your question specifically? So I would like us— as a group to come up with some specific questions so that I can ask. For instance, I can ask about this idea of determining a fixed number of hours and a fixed hourly rate until we start actually working or form the co-op. That can be a question that they can easily answer as yes or no, or I don't advise it.

I have a suggestion of starting just, just a ledger, or like just a list of all the members. I guess we— I don't know if there is yet, but just a list, and maybe there's going to be like a column saying like, when did you get in? Like, when did you get in? So like, whatever, we have it from the beginning, or I joined in March. 2021 or July 2021. So at least that amount of information that we can keep track of. And maybe as Ulla suggested, like, what are— what is the time commitment? Like, what are your— and yeah, I think I like the idea of like going a little bit on trust. And as long as the group is small, we can also try to keep each other accountable. And I think Vivek has tried to like ask people to take ownership of things and action items, and we can continue doing that. But I do believe that everyone has a different level of commitment. Not all of us should be committed in the same way. So maybe somebody can just announce at the beginning, I can dedicate 2 hours a week and this is my commitment. I came in in February, this is what I'm doing. Like, you know, we can start tracking like basics for now.

Is the idea that if we're going to fill out this form weekly, should we have, say, one person do it on a rotational basis each week, kind of like the facilitator or whatever? Uh, just so we could get it done and just get some data, because I don't see a huge downside to this.

Yeah, I think that's a good idea. If maybe one person— like, we can rotate— maybe one person, uh, fills out the form, and the form, it's actually just one form with all of the names, maybe, so we don't How do you—

so at this time I don't want to track my hours. Like, I'm, I'm giving all my time in and I, yeah, whatever, whatever I do is like, I don't, I don't plan to track it. So I don't know about everybody else. So like, I think there we can, we can solve this without, without doing that.

Well, I mean, there's like, there's a couple of like, there's a couple different things going on right now just to be I think be clear. There's like a question about hours, right? And I think, um, Erica's thinking about how to, how to address that. And maybe, or maybe we can just decide as a group, um, what is like the minimum hour, like, like we're looking for from everybody right now. Or there's different approaches. We could do that. We could ask everyone what is their individual level of commitment, um, and like that they can put into it every hour or every week. Uh, so that's one question is ours. And then there's, I think, a separate one about the sort of generally tracking, like, how are, are we meeting our expectations based on our teammates, um, uh, like assessment. And, you know, each of us, um, you know, there's different ways to do it, whether it's one person goes through everybody, which I think would be laborious for a lot of people, or just like have one person go each, each Each of us does like assesses 2 people, which like, there's only 3 questions. It shouldn't take, it shouldn't take more than 10 minutes.

Each person, 2 people.

Each person, 2 people. Yeah. Just to be very clear. So like I would, I would like review 2 people, people review me. We would just do this like on a weekly basis.

From a workload perspective, I honestly think it's easier if I knew I have to do this once every 8 weeks and then get it all done. At once so I could focus and then not, as opposed to doing it 2 every week.

And yeah, I think once a month it's sufficient.

Plenty.

We would be giving feedback once a month.

Christian, are you there? Can't hear you.

Yeah, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. I'm super delayed here. Can you hear me?

Yep.

Yep.

Yep.

Okay, okay.

So I just wanted to hear your input on that suggestion about—

Well, I was agreeing with Russell that I think that it's a little earlier for feedback. It's a little earlier to just— no feedback. I think that it's a little earlier to, um, I don't know, I think that we're in this stage of, um, commitment, you know, like where people are just seeing like how many hours there are actually want to put. I actually like your idea of like seeing how many people put in a board, hey, I can give 8 to 10 hours of my week towards the co-op and I can assign that in that way. And I think that also would be more for goals, uh, because more than hours for someone can take like 20 hours to finish a task and for somebody else could take just 2 hours. So like, hey, if you ask me like, hey, do you want me to do the business plan and get done with that. Like, hey, I finished my goal, it's complete. You guys review it, hey, that was good, that was great. If someone is taking 20 hours, hey, if it's done, it's done, you know? So I think that it should be more than average for goals and tasks. But yeah, I think that, yeah, I mean, I see Russell's point of like, it's a little too early, but it also has to be, It kind of like has to be established since the beginning, kind of, otherwise it gets a little confusing.

Yeah, but actually that's to my point, like that's why I didn't want— this form is not like meant to be this form to like, I mean, there's an opportunity for honest feedback, but it's more just like, you know, did Christian do his goal, right? Like every week we might have different It's hard to say, like, we might all have like an action item after every week's meeting. And so this formula allows for sort of gauging if the person did it, did like their level of commitment to the project. Like, to your point, because like I can probably do something marketing-wise in a few minutes or an hour and someone else might take, it might take them a whole day or or a week even, you know, I don't know. So I think hours is like a hard way to track it.

Yeah, totally. I can see also like, I don't know, collecting that data and like at the end of the month, if we do that like every week and at the end of the month just seeing how, um, I don't know, kind of like a board where like people are like, oh, perform, I'll perform perform and just seeing like, hey, you need more help, you know, I'm actually— and that can give you like an extra point, you know. I don't know if you could hear me, my internet, it just says that it's unstable.

Yeah, I got most of it.

I didn't really hear you.

Yeah, sorry.

So should we go on with the form in any ways, with like a weekly form or a monthly form, or how should we start? Sure.

My question, if there is no form, and then in the future when it's time to get compensated What— who's gonna decide how many hours? And like, if it's a co-op, we all have to decide, right? So like, what is going to be our system for compensating? If it's not the form, it doesn't have to be the form, obviously, and it's not the only way. It's just like an idea, but I guess like, um, I don't want to see an action item, but like a work that we Decision we have to make is how, how are we going to— what is going to be our system?

Well, I have a question before that. So like, before getting compensated, like the money that we're gonna get to compensate people, right, it's like, okay, how are we making this money? How are we assigning this money to like the things that need priority? Research, development is going this place or this goes to that area. I think that in this state is very difficult to compensate people by hours because again, you know, like for someone who takes 2 or 3 hours, you can take somebody else 20 hours or 10 hours depending of the, I don't know, depending. So of course I know that everyone has the best interest here of everyone. No one's gonna screw up everyone's Oh, well, I spent 12 hours doing that plan. Sorry. You know, we don't want that, and I know that won't happen. But I think that in the first stage, we'd be more like, where is that money coming from to compensate people?

Well, just to be clear, sorry, maybe this is something you might have missed from the previous call.

No, sorry.

No, no worries. I'm just trying to fill you in. Yeah. So the mindset right now, I think, is this is just for us to track now so that when we are profitable in the future, whoever has been active now will get compensated in a, like, over a course of, like, months or years, like, for their efforts. So because it's a worker-owned cooperative and there's no, like, real equity, you know, you know, you can't, you know, you won't get like a payout if we ever go public or, you know, sell or something like that. So this is a mechanism to pay us out over a period of time or like, or through surplus or something like that.

Wait, like I have, I think, yep, go ahead.

Go ahead. Just to Erica's point that like, just acquiring some sort of weekly data is just gonna be useful in the future. I don't see any downside to it. Second point is, um, I think we have a mixed perspective here. Um, some of us have been working on this a lot longer than others already, so, um, it doesn't feel that early to say, you know, Vivek and Ulla and Erica and I, because this has been like 5, 6 months of weekly meetings, maybe more. I don't know. Vivek's been working on it 6 months before that. So it doesn't feel as raw as it might to people who have been here since January. So I just want to point that out.

This one, maybe like the monthly basis, you know, that would be good because otherwise, yes, so much data. I feel, I mean, definitely this is needed. Yes, we need to start tracking it because it's been already a year for some people.

Well, I mean, that kind of makes— it kind of proves my point that it wouldn't work for people who've been here for so long already. Like, I think we need to figure out how to retroactively— I think we would. Like, that needs to be accounted for, right? Because like, when I go into something and I'm like, I give it my all, and I'm sure a lot of people can relate to that. It's not even about the hours, right?

I don't think we need to solve that problem right now, the retroactive component. I think we just need to figure out how to do this right now going forward. We can have a separate meeting and a separate action item where we talk about the folks who've been helping out from the beginning and whatever, whatever. But I think, you know, tracking it. So just to be clear, for the individuals that are sort of hesitant about the weekly component, is there a reason? Is it like, is there a reason why you're so hesitant about it? Like, so I know and Erica knows and other people know why you're hesitant.

I don't like being judged. Like, like, I'd rather not be judged, but constructive criticism is great for me.

I don't know if you're joking, but like, that's what it's hoping to be. Like, I'm hoping it's gonna be constructive. Like, it's supposed to be positive, negative. Like, is it not meant to be a form to punish anyone? It's not like an Airbnb rating or an Uber rating. Like, it's meant to be really our own personal development. We should— I actually want to like reverse the mindset about it. I want it to be a source of like us growing positively.

Yeah, just to be clear, I don't like track my hours anywhere, like ever.

So, hey, Derek, to that point, I'm gonna just make a really quick point that could be also useful, um, and I've done it in different places like that, and my last job was doing that, is by points. So if we identify, hey, this task give you 5 points, these, if you complete this, is 3 points and this is 2 points. And then we create that board, then we can go interactively and say like, hey, listen, I've done this, I've done this, I have 15 points on my bank. And then when we have money, we convert those points into, into money. And then if I work on the business plan, whatever, you know, I'm thinking of something and that gives me 3 points, I'm like, I'm keeping track of those points.

Points.

That's, that's a thought.

Um, Christian, would you be up for creating this kind of ledger?

Um, yeah, absolutely. I think like it needs definitely like I would need to work with someone, as Adam said, you know, like for me I'm very new to this and then I'm just listening and then I want definitely the, the, the intake from people who have been working here longer. Like, I usually don't feel comfortable doing that. I will be helping someone that is committed to do that. Uh, I'll be down for it to do that, to help someone to work with me.

Anyone interested in getting some tasks, some points for these tasks, for this task?

I can do it.

Okay.

I was thinking, I mean, this is a great idea for sure. At the same time, when you said it, Christian, I thought about giving like a star. If someone for that day, let's say, what's today? I don't know, 10th, gets a star or not. So that means in general, we think completed, no matter the best or kind of just completed, still gets a star. If you didn't, just doesn't get a star. Maybe too simplified, but I'm fine with points as well. But I can help or we can work together.

What do you think would go into deciding how many points?

Exactly, I think that also has to be an entire group situation. Like someone has to create it and it has to pass by every single person's approval in the sense like, yeah, I think that's fair that like some type of like, I don't know, just like research gives you 3 points or like some engineering thing like software, like working on an app gives you 2 points. Some people have to say yes or no. I mean, it's not easy.

Like, sure.

Would, um, what other things other than time would expertise needed go into how many points would something would need? Would, um, Christian, what were your— did you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, no, I think so. I feel that, but in order to do that, we need to contact someone or like a startup that already has that system or contact someone who knows about it. and just ask. It cannot come out of just us going on the Excel and just calculating that. I think that it needs to be talked to someone who already knows about this.

I mean, I know this— I've done point systems. I'm sure Brad and Russell, for sure, I'm sure you guys have done some point stuff with development and stuff like that. I think it's tricky, yeah, because, you know, when it's like diverse skill sets required, like if it's a marketing thing or if it's development thing or like some design work, you know, my assessment of the design work, you know, points-wise would be really different. I don't know, like right now we don't— we're not in we're not breaking up into roles, right? Like we're all sort of owners trying to take up different tasks. And, you know, I'm doing stuff oftentimes that I have no familiarity with. I'm just like learning, trying to like, like this compensation stuff, this review stuff, I'm not like a ton of experience in it. I think Adam like took up this mission statement stuff. I'm not sure how many times he's done this before. I'm assuming not very often. And he's, you know, so we're all like kind of taking up stuff and I, I wonder if I worry that points is a really tough way to, to like figure that out. And yeah, that's, that's why I kind of like the form that felt like really like a simple way of just tracking. It's not, it's not tracking hours. It's not even saying hours. Yeah.

It's just saying they're two separate things.

Yeah.

It's not at this point.

It's just like, hey, this person did his responsibilities here. She did their responsibilities this week. Like, that's it. Or, okay, so if it's an issue with like every, every week, maybe we make it every other week, like every 2 weeks saying, hey, like this person was, you know, I think, but I think a regular cadence keeps like, keeps us all, it creates a data point. And then B, it also creates an opportunity for all of us to continuously and, you know, get feedback, good and bad, good and bad, not, not punishment.

Yeah, I, I agree with what was just said there because, um, I think the points or hours, that's, that's in the future, but like having some sort of data on what's going on right now is useful. And, and that form is pretty damn simple, so like doing it every week I don't think would be that hard, especially when it seems like each week we're, you know, we're coming up with we're finishing and ending projects, right, every week. So it kind of just seems like it would make sense to me.

I would agree, but I actually think we should be tracking hours at this point, even if farther on down the road we decide— even if they're not that accurate now, like, you know, people are just kind of saying, I did about 2 hours, about 5, whatever. Or even if later we decide, nah, it's not that important, like the hours were kind of, everyone was basically the same. To Adam, your point, I think it's more information. I think that's good. And I think, I think my hypothesis is we will see people fall into different camps of, you know, these people do 2 hours, These people do 5, these people do 10, and compensation will make more sense at that point, even if some people were different levels of productivity. I think that's, I guess, to summarize, that's like the only currency we have that we can put into it at this point.

Right?

The idea, we can kind of like merge ideas. So like the idea that Olaf proposed initially that we've had like a fixed number of hours, like let's say the basic commitments or our commitments are 5 hours a week, just 2 hours of meeting and 3 hours of work. If we are like all on the same page and that we are all like meeting our commitments and the form can be a way to all being on the same page, then let's say we agree that the first 3 months we work 5 hours a week. And then in 3 months, we see where we go.

So just to be mindful also of our time, maybe we can still populate your diagram on Miro because there's still the open questions and ideas. So we can still populate and decide for the strategy on the next meeting. Meanwhile, we can still go to the columns and answer the questions there. I see already the point system is already in.

Did somebody move the background? I'm looking at the Miro page now.

Yeah, it seems like it's moved.

I hope I didn't do it.

Well, I can just move it back.

Yeah, also make some adjustments according to what we talked today.

Okay.

Yeah, using things that don't make sense anymore and just make some adjustments so we can all like—

here be one of our action items for everyone. Um, let's see.

So these are— we want to fill in the questions, like solution for question 1, fill in that idea 3, idea 2, idea 3. Is that where you were?

Yeah, or, or like 4 or 5 or make adjustments.

But like, yeah, like the, the main question, how to, to measure our efforts for future compensation.

And, uh, yeah, I feel like there's still room for conversation, but if you have a specific idea, maybe also we can come up with a plan so that we can present. So for the last the last minutes of, of this call. I think we have in the agenda where, where are we heading next, where to proceed next. What should we do?

Should we do 7 and 8 first?

Yeah, agree.

Is that—

is it—

I know they'll be out of order, but Yes, yes, make more sense to, you know, yeah, makes sense. They were the last, they were added.

Oh, okay, they're very quick. So one is like, um, I mentioned in the beginning, but usually we've been rotating, uh, the jobs of facilitator and minute taker and icebreaker. And usually the facilitator is being After the meeting, we've been sending a follow-up email with the link to the recording, with the agenda for next meeting. We put up an agenda according to what we talk. Like, for instance, next week we have to talk about the ideas for compensation again. And then also that person will share— will send a calendar invite with the Zoom link. So I just want to make sure that we are all okay with this, so we are not just assuming that the facilitator is going to do it, but that it is an actual part of the job as facilitator. So if you agree with this, just write it on the chat.

So just quick question, so follow-up follow-up email would come from, uh, would also include the Zoom link for the next meeting.

When we usually been sending that in the calendar invite and then the day of the meeting, just a quick reminder.

Yeah, that's—

yep.

Okay, so it seems like we all agree there. And then the next topic, it was about adding more people to our email list.

Yeah, do you want to talk about like the email and like just because you have like a clear idea and of that email, just so if you— we are making a list of, uh, we have a list of people who originally RSVP to the splash event, and we want to keep that, that group involved. So if you have any people that you would like to add to that bigger list, just let us know so we can send one email, one follow-up email.

Yeah, and I'll just add to that, yeah, we're just going to send out a follow-up email kind of briefly touched on this last week. Erica and I drafted something up. It's gonna go out this week. Nothing crazy about that email, just to keep people up to date and a little Google, like a Google Sheet to like ask them a couple questions to get some feedback and try to engage people. But ideally the goal is, the main primary goal of the email is just to keep them up to date so they feel like there's real progress and we didn't disappear on them. And then more importantly, trying to see if a few folks want to add to this steering committee so that we have a few extra hands and a few extra perspectives. But yeah, so if you know somebody who wants to join that email list, shoot me or Erica a message and we'll add them to that list. But just obviously please let them know that an email will be coming from someone on the team.

Perfect. So we message you with the emails that we want to add. Uh, sounds good.

Okay, before we, before we like switch gears too, too fast, one, like, one last thing. Um, I, I, I— could we, could we just check in with Calvin? Uh, I think Calvin had something he wanted to maybe be able to add on the subject we just sort of switched on, and just maybe a little last thoughts on it before we come back to, I guess, next text meeting.

Yeah, hopefully that's okay with everyone. I really am interested in this. I've read a few books on a company called Menlo that is ran much like a worker cooperative, and they have a few ways of going about assigning hours. They actually have— they work in pairs, which is its own unique thing. Um, but they also, uh, later, um, they also meet with the client once a week and, and they have on pieces of paper, um, that are cut to size. So every inch equals an hour. And on those pieces of paper, it's a feature that a client might want in the software that they run. Menlo's a software company. So the client, um, tells them Okay, I want this feature. And then they assess like, okay, that feature will take this many hours. And the paper size, you know, is however big for that feature. And then the client tells them all the features they want. So they have all these pieces of paper and then the client has to take those physical pieces of paper, go to a grid and then plot them down. And that grid is for the week, right? So each paper has a finite time, a finite cost, and then the client has to go, okay, wait, which features do I want? And lays them down. So it's not directly analogous to what we were doing, but if you kind of view us as both the client and the people assigning the hours, it's us assessing, you know, how long do we think this is going to take and how much, uh, you know, in compensation that would turn into eventually. And then it's us going to the grid and going like, okay, realistically, how much time do you have this week? Out of that time you have this week, how much of this project can you get done? Um, I thought that was an interesting approach. And then I also had the thought of There might be a way to reward both aspects of one is like a monthly involvement in the company. So let's say the bare minimum is 2 hours a week. Let's say for the month you average 2 hours a week each time for every month you do that. I believe it was Erica mentioned that maybe that means you're, you, you're that many steps for every month that you achieve that minimum of like involvement. You are, you are a a founder for a month, you're part of the founding group for a month. That's every month that you do that is a step above standard salary once the company starts, perhaps. But then also you can be tracking your monthly hourly. And then based on your, or weekly hourly, however it works. And based on, you know, as long as your teammates verify and agree that, you know, you've worked around this this much, um, then you also can look forward to the reward once the company becomes profitable that you get hourly payback programs. So there, there might be a way to, uh, get rewarded in both ways because somebody's 2 hours might be extremely expertise-laden and like hard-earned and they may have had to have just fit it in that week. Um, so I think they deserve some sort of like, um, reward for that as well as somebody who maybe had 10 hours and was working, you know, maybe more relaxed on it over the weekend. They also deserve a reward. So I thought maybe there's a way that you could reward both. Sorry for being so long-winded, but thank you for giving me a chance to talk.

Thank you for sharing, Calvin.

I hope and imagine that we get something more along the lines of what you've just described. So But I feel like I wouldn't know how to set that up, so I'm really happy that Erica's thinking about, thinking about this problem right now.

Our competition is all in the hands of Erica. You better kiss ass.

So looking for the next meeting or next, yeah, next steps? What, what should we consider? Where are we going next?

So I think the action items I have right now— Adam's gonna, Adam's gonna work on paring down that mission statement pretty closely. Russell and I are gonna gather together to work on the shared objectives and getting that down, and a little bit clearer. Erica, I guess it's a little open on your side. Are we— how did we— are we gonna provide input on Miro? Is that clear what we're supposed to do on your questions? Okay, cool. And then I think also we saw this open, open item of like thinking about compensation more clearly, or this form, or maybe, maybe we come back next week ideally to like think about voting on it. If we have some more thoughts, we can share that. I know, how do we, how do we go forward with that one, Erica?

Well, we haven't reached consensus regarding we should do the form or not. So maybe we could, due to time circumstances, we, that can be an item for next week.

Whether to do the work or not.

You're breaking up a little bit, Erica. Maybe, maybe you want to turn your camera off just for a second. Okay.

Okay, so I was saying that we can do— can you hear me better? Sorry.

Okay.

Yeah, the action item for— or agenda item for next week can be to decide how often, if we do use the form at all, to reach consensus on that form. Because it just— it was just open. We haven't decided if we're going to use it or not.

Or maybe an action item is that we, yeah, we can leave some feedback on the MIRA forum about the form, and each of us, like, maybe take some time to think about it so that we can decide whether we go forward with the form or something else. Each of us can take some time. I don't know if Calvin wants to potentially also collaborate with you or Jennifer or something like that. Jennifer, you've been pretty quiet. I don't want to also— I forgot to check in with you.

What did you want to check in about?

If you had any feedback.

About the form?

Yeah, the form or how you guys want to approach it, you and Erica.

I think I like— what I was hearing was from Brad was that he would like to track the hours, and the form doesn't really have a space for hours. So I would maybe want to tweak that. And I was agreeing with Ulla a little bit about it feeling kind of bureaucratic, but I don't know, my feeling I'm hoping that maybe there can be a category for membership for just volunteers, because that's how I'm feeling. Like, just like, I don't want to really work that hard. I just want to volunteer and have, you know, I don't, I don't want to think that hard.

This would, um, I mean, I think this would still apply for anyone volunteering too, at least in my mind. Anyone else can jump into it.

Yeah, I think that's also a good reason for us to express our commitments, like maybe in a clear way. I can volunteer like creating a spreadsheet with some, or maybe a Miro, even a part in the Miro board board where we express a little bit our commitments.

I think that's crucial. I think that it would be interesting to just start with that, like, how many hours are people willing to put, you know? And then, hey, to be like, I mean, my personal, like, I mean, I, I'm very busy right now and like my mind is a lot harder. So like, I want to be here and just be part and just give ideas, but at the same time I also want to volunteer and just put the most that I can from my skills to help you guys out, but to put my background and to put my skills and then help you out. But at the same time, I don't feel like— I don't know how to express this. I don't feel that I'm the person to be like, "Hey guys, we should compensate people." like that. Oh guys, and I know that you guys— I actually appreciate that you guys are open to, to hear everyone here, but I think that that should be the task of like certain people. And like, I can put like between like 5 to 10 hours a week, and then you guys can be like, hey Christian, your skills are this, this, this, and this, can you guys, can you help me with this? And I don't know if that's okay with you guys, if it's not okay. And I think that it's important to just have these people kind of these guys volunteering and these are the guys bringing the ideas. I don't know. I don't know.

Thank you, Christian. Yeah, I agree. And also, I think we're a little bit on the limit of time. Um, let's get on our— this action items for next week and let's have a final checkout. Maybe we can all say say, like how we feel about this meeting, how did the meeting go.

Let's—

Erica, how do you feel about the meeting? I hear some—

Can you hear me?

Yeah.

That's better. I feel— I don't know how to say. I feel enthusiastic, actually, and positive because I feel like this very abstract idea of compensation and commitment is becoming more concrete. So, and I see, like, I have some quick questions to ask if I'm gonna reach out to someone. And we, we have like, uh, yeah, some, some good ideas. And I was also like, I really— it's too bad Adam's not here. I really like the way he presented the, the mission statement suggestion. And just one thing, we have to assign roles for next week's meeting.

Eric, you want to hand it to the next person?

Sure. See Russell.

Hey everybody, so I thought today's meeting was good. I feel like we made a lot of progress. Actually, it seems like we've—

we're—

we just did like 3 projects at once. So that's pretty impressive, even though it's just the business development, figuring out what we're doing. But soon enough, we're going to be you know, building stores and stuff. So that's great. Yeah, so it's good. And I'll try to be the facilitator next week.

What—

pass me over notes because I don't remember what I'm supposed to do. Thanks. And I'll pass this to Brad.

I gotta unmute myself. Okay, um, I think this was good. I think that, um, you know, I, I think the two weeks ago we were kind of in this too where there was a lot of presentations but we didn't quite, uh, like wrapping it up. There wasn't like a vote, like a yes/no vote at the end. It was kind of like continuing, like we're gonna follow up on this later, and I think we need to kind of try to get to like we're in a meeting, we present this thing, and we do yes/no and we kind of move forward. And I think that'll be a little more productive. Or maybe, you know, if there— if we find out that like these are all kind of going to be like 3 or 4 week things where we get feedback, we come back, we get feedback, stagger them so there's like one that we're kind of wrapping up every week. Not that it's I like, I mean, you know, I think the long-running ones are fine too. I'm not saying that. But I think that's my only feedback. I mean, I think it was good to hear everyone's, I think everyone talked during the meeting.

So I feel like that was really good and we got feedback from everybody.

So I think that went really well.

You gotta pick somebody.

I gotta pass it?

Okay.

Calvin, you, you're at least, that was at least half the meeting, right? So you, what were your thoughts?

Oh, I thought first off this was super fun to be here, very mentally stimulating. So just an honor to, to be here to listen in and then even more to be able to speak here. So I just had a ball of fun and I think you guys are on such the right track and are going to be so successful, and I can't wait. Pass it on to Kristin. I'm sorry, how do you say that? I want to make sure I'm saying it right.

That's right, that's right, that's right. It's difficult to pronounce. It's not difficult to pronounce, my dad just fucked up my name. They told him like there's an H in my name, and he just put it after the T, after the Nice. I'm gonna make a story out of that, right? Um, no, I think that it went great. I think that, um, 1 to 10, I will give it like a 8.5, you know, just get some feedback, you know. I feel that you guys went through the entire list, you know, it's been good time on every single topic. I agree with Brad, you know, they have at some point you have to just move on and then just, I don't know, take some of those topics out of the meeting and then, all right, we need to work more on this, we agree with that, and then let's move on to the next topic. I feel that, no, nothing, I feel that you guys have a good structure right now and then you guys are identifying the roles for sure. And then, um, yeah, I think that is at this point, it's just more the work that you guys are doing out of the, uh, out of the meetings, how to keep track of that, that work, and then just come back to, to the meeting to just present work, uh, more than ideas. Ideas, they should be presented during the— out, out of the meeting. Um, but yeah, no, you guys are doing great. And I'm here to help, so feel free to reach out. That's amazing. I'm gonna pass it to— well, to Annie.

Thank you, Christian. Really good to have you on the meeting today, uh, for all your feedback and input. I feel a little bit Yeah, a little bit similar to Brad. I think we're doing progress. It's really nice. And I feel like everyone is committed. If I would have to go just by the meeting, the way it went, I feel like, yeah, everyone is involved, 110% for everyone for the participation to the meeting. But yeah, I also have that feeling that, oh, we didn't really like out of the agenda, we didn't really nail everything. Anything like down, like this is done, we can like move on to the next topic. But maybe that's how it is. So we have to also accept that, that sometimes it will take longer than one meeting or the time in between the meetings. And yeah, um, thank you guys. As of next week, I will be on a different time zone, so it will be middle of the night for me. I'm not sure if I'm going to participate to the meetings but I'll keep up with, with you, and I have my source of information, Ullamby Beck, my, my besties. So yes, happy to collaborate, and that's why I also have to think about my personal commitments as well, since I would not be on the same time zone. And yeah, it's a good opportunity to define that. Ulla.

Great, finally someone picked me. See you in the living room, Ania, after the call. I think the meeting went very good. I think the icebreakers work so good and people are more relaxed and ready to share many different ideas. So it's good to hear. It's almost like not enough time to share everything. That's why also I think agreeing with Brad and Christian, Annie, that yeah, we should kind of— if we don't finish something on the meeting, I think the Miro board is great to just finish it. So when we meet on the next time, we have kind of everything together on Miro. So to not extend the same topic for too long, maybe we can dedicate just this time to finish up on Miro. Yeah, but thanks, Annie, so much for being with us for the last 3 meetings. Was it? Yeah, you brought great energy. Yeah, I see someone there. Who's next? Vivek.

I feel like I'm the kid on the soccer team you don't want to pick. It was like the last guy always picked. Yeah, so I thought this meeting was awesome. Like, start to finish, I was so happy to, you know, Christian, Calvin to join the team and for your contributions. It was really, really helpful. And just general like contributions from the entire group was like very active conversation as always. So amazing. On top of it, I was impressed by also just like the team's willingness to sort of, you know, let go and like let like Adam or an individual or Russell and I to sort of like take on something and and like take it a little bit further without like getting bogged down in like everyone's opinion. Um, I think that's huge. That's really huge. It's like saying we have— you have trust in each of us to do certain tasks, and, and that should not— because we're generally strangers for the most part. So that's a lot really amazing that we are sort of like— we're sort of like letting go a little bit and putting trust in each other. Uh, and then lastly, like, um, Russell kind of testified this, like the shared objective things. I was like literally like breaking my head for like days, like mentally stressed out that, that we would get into this meeting and would take us like a long time to go through the shared objectives. And then when you guys were like, no, you two just go and figure it out, like combine it and then come back to us. I was like, amazing. Like, this is awesome that the team has that trust because tasks like this are going to take a couple of weeks to get, get them down to like being thoughtful to all of our objectives and same with the mission statement and things like that. And, you know, Brad has a point, maybe we should, topics like that, maybe we should, we should like stagger so that they don't all come at the same time. But either way, I just, I think we're making— this is the stuff that's going to be tricky. Like I was talking, when I was talking to Dave today, I'll just wrap up this thought, but I was talking to Dave today, he was telling me what his organization ICA Group could help us out with, and it was like literally like we could actually hire if we wanted to raise money, which right now we don't, I don't think I would recommend, but if we wanted to, We could literally, you know, raise a ton of money and give it to ICA Group and they could do the rest of the work for us. They could, they could do the feasibility study and, and, and business plan and whatever. And Dave was saying, you shouldn't do that. Like, that's not wise, but you could do that. And so the point is that I think this, the work that we're doing right now is the work that only us can do. Like us owners of the business can do, like, and figuring out how to work together, figuring out the values, figuring out our shared objectives, like how do we compensate? These are the things that really only us, the owners, can do. And so I think once we get through this stuff, we're gonna be like smooth sailing because like that's stuff that anybody can do. We just maybe like need a little like training to figure out, you know, certain skills or certain problems. So yeah, Jennifer, close us up.

I thought it went really well, really great meeting.

That's all.

We need, we need a minute taker also for next week, and we have a facilitator, minute taker, and someone to do icebreaker. Any volunteers?

Icebreaker? I haven't done icebreaker yet.

Okay, cool. Awesome. And someone to do the minutes? Oh, Ola, you raised your hand.

I did once. Oh, okay, we didn't do it.

Okay, we didn't do the minutes. Who can do the minutes next week?

I don't mind doing them again.

Yeah, you are so good.

Maybe someone new. I don't know if actually, uh, maybe I'll, maybe I'll try to see if Adam will do them, uh, because he's, he's sort of new. So I think he didn't, or not new, but he's, he hasn't done them. I mean If he doesn't do it, then Jennifer, maybe I'll ping you.

Okay.

Is that cool?

I think maybe Adam did the minutes last time.

I think he did one time.

No, he hasn't done it. No, no, honey, honey, honey did the minutes last time.

Okay, and then before was Erica.

Adam did the icebreaker.

Adam doesn't do it, I'll do it.

Okay, awesome. Okay, cool. Sounds good. Thanks everyone.

Good night.

Good night. See you later. Bye.