The sustainable CO-OP Store weekly meeting #3

Yeah, cool.

It's okay, we're recording everyone. I'm gonna have to do a version by myself afterwards.

Thanks.

Awesome.

Okay, let's give it a minute more and then we can get underway.

Bring up, um, yeah, that.

Is somebody taking notes? Aha, we need to ask, right?

Yeah, that's— I was actually gonna— I was— my next item of someone could take notes.

I don't know, Jennifer, would you want to do it or Sure, I can take notes.

Great, thank you.

Thanks. Okay, let's get kicked off. If some other folks join a little later, we can always— they'll be able to jump in. Tyler, how are you doing?

Doing well, and yourself?

Not too bad, not too bad.

Cool, awesome. Okay, so This was the agenda I put on Trello, and I'll put this— let me actually share my screen so that you guys can see it. Cool. Uh, so Cool, there it is. All right, so yeah, this was the sort of agenda we put up on, um, Trello. There was, um, one, like, uh, or two minor changes. A, this review democratic meeting tips, we moved up to the start of the meeting. We thought it might be a little bit more easy to run the meeting if everyone sort of was on the same page on some of these type of tips. And then at the very end, there was some discussion about breaking into committees, but it might seem too early and we can talk about that later. But there was a suggestion to keep some time at the end of the call for open agenda items. So if anyone has an agenda item they want to bring up, maybe either just shoot it in the chat perhaps, or just make a note of it. We can make some time at the end to discuss open agenda items from anybody on the team. Is that cool?

Sound good? Sounds good.

Cool.

Awesome.

Thanks.

OK, so icebreaker.

So I was— we were supposed to start with the icebreaker, but there have been some concerns if we should actually start the meetings with icebreakers. And because we have so much to accomplish, so maybe to not dedicate this time to it, but rather move quickly towards, you know, working. But I mean, I personally think icebreaker is important and just wanted to point a few important roles of icebreaker, which is it brings really— that's the main thing— it brings positive atmosphere and brings this lighter feeling, lighter mood into the meeting. Brings this, like, a good well-being. So, you know, people come sometimes from different moments of the day. So it's kind of, I think it's kind of almost necessary. It also breaks social barriers. So we, by getting to know each other, being more familiar with each other, yeah, we start feeling more comfortable with each other. And actually that brings the positive boost of productivity significantly, and the studies show that. So because this way we build slowly relationships with each other. So I think, you know, as much as we want to accomplish more, by skipping it, actually having it and being in this relationship could boost this productivity. Another two very important roles of icebreaker is it motivates us. So because it's fun and like injects this needed energy into the group, motivates people to work, like to tackle the problem, to tackle, you know, the issues we have. So I think, yeah, that's also very important. And also this in general, it makes people like relaxed, you know, some people are tense or maybe the problem we will be working on maybe brings tension. So in general, icebreaker cuts through this tension. So that's why I think it may be helpful, especially there are some people who are more shy and some people who talk with no limits. So actually, it could be very helpful for those who are more tense or more shy. And one last very important role of icebreaker is It helps our creativity because, like, we start thinking more outside of the box. And how it works, like, icebreaker is kind of like a brainstorming. So once people, like, bond with each other and they start bouncing ideas off each other, they start thinking more creatively. So I think, you know, in our situation, we are just building this this business from start and yeah, their creativity is very important here. So after this short introduction of icebreaker, I want to just— that's going to be our icebreaker. I want to ask you guys a question. Do you think we should have icebreakers in the beginning of our meetings? And you also can add a few words why if you want, but if you just want to say yes or no, it's okay too, or also why is it we should have it. And we maybe— I was thinking we can just take notes, you know, what people kind of vote, and then we decide what we are doing later, should we keep them or not, depending on the vote result.

Yeah, and also just to add, I mean, just the counterpoint, it's like, yeah, we do have a lot to accomplish. So if, you know, folks feel like, you know, maybe icebreakers are not like required, you know, that totally makes sense. We just want to— I think, uh, I think we wanted to sort of, uh, share this perspective because sometimes they come off very like casual but they might, you know, be more valuable than we realize. So I think she just wanted to share that perspective. But if the group kind of feels like they're just not necessary and we have a lot to accomplish, that's also totally reasonable. So, um, yeah, I guess that's what you wanted to sort of take a vote on it.

Right. And also, you know, there is like many different kinds of icebreakers and now even icebreakers we could do within 2, 3 minutes when we split into the groups and just people, you know, work one-on-one or, you know, two and two and still get to know each other. And yeah, it changes the whole energy. So it doesn't have to take 10, 15 minutes.

You're right.

Okay.

So I don't know. On my left is Brad.

All right, what was the question? Just should we do icebreakers? That's the icebreaker, right?

So the question is, should we do it usually in the beginning of our meetings? And in a few words, why, if you want to explain, but you don't have to.

Okay, sure.

Yeah, yeah, so I'm Brad Review. I'm from Cleveland. I'm a software developer. I would vote yes on icebreakers. And I guess there's a bit of a story. Kind of when I was in college, I was in like a student environmental group and we had like a really great organizer who, I mean, like, I guess I could tell a lot of stories about how funny he was, but he always did icebreakers. And like, eventually I got him to admit that like the icebreaker may not apply here, but the icebreaker is designed to for him, it was designed to anyone new to the group. It's kind of very awkward coming to a new group. You don't know anybody. And the icebreaker is there to make it seem like everyone in the group is new to the group when you're first coming in new. So like everyone goes around and says their name, even if like most people know each other and answer the same question. So that, that one person or two people was like, oh wait, everyone is like, you know, I'm part of this group and everyone's new to it and, you know, I can jump in and say things. Now it's, you know, that doesn't— may not apply here, but, you know, I guess that's just like in my mind, that's like a— makes total sense to do icebreakers.

Yeah, totally. Totally. Because actually new people keep on coming and I think maybe this is similar. Yeah. People, the new people don't know who was there before. They think maybe everybody was there before, but that's not really true.

Right, yeah.

Okay, cool, thank you. Uh, next, Vivek.

Yeah, I, I'm, I think I'm, I'm generally fine with them. Maybe, maybe my only feedback was maybe we, uh, maybe we keep them for a couple, for a couple weeks, uh, and then we can reassess if, like, as a group, do we still want to do it? Like, maybe in a couple weeks we don't, we realize that we don't need to keep doing, like, icebreakers and we kind of want to get right to work. So yeah, like maybe, maybe we can like, like check in, in like, uh, I would say maybe like 6 weeks depending on how many meetings we have, like within 6 meetings or something. You can say like, oh, you know, do we feel like we're good? And we kind of like get to know each other well enough for now and we can sort of kick into, into like more focused work mode. Okay.

Yeah, thank you. Maybe actually you point the next one.

Um, I would, uh, next person, maybe Tyler.

Yeah, for sure. Uh, hi, I'm Tyler. I'm a software developer from Canada. Um, I would say the icebreakers are a good idea purely for, I mean, like, people in my position. This is the first meeting that I've been able to attend just because my full-time job got in the way. And it's really nice to get off on the foot, like Brad was kind of suggesting, that it feels like everyone is kind of a little bit new and stuff. And so it's nice to not be the only one or not feel like you're the only one in that position.

Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, welcome to the group. Yeah, great.

It doesn't work, it doesn't work if we have to make everyone call out if they're new at the beginning. It's not a good icebreaker, whether you know or not. How awkward do you feel? How awkward is this for you?

It's not a good icebreaker.

Yeah, so it's not that bad. Yeah, Tyler, would you like to pick the next person?

Oh, sure. Uh, Erica.

Hi, I'm Erica. I've always worked in education until now, maybe still. Will do. And I am from Mexico, but I live in New York. I think you brought very good points, and I agree with all of them, both Ulla and Brad. Thank you. And well, next, Jennifer.

Hi, I'm— I, I could go either way. I guess I could go with the flow. I liked what Brad said about welcoming new people into the group and not having people feel strange or outsiders. And so, icebreaker, okay, if you want to, that's fine with me.

Thank you.

All right, would you like to—

I guess Adam's the last person.

Adam, do we see everybody?

Yeah, I think that's everybody. Yeah, right now that's everyone right now.

Hey Adam, you want to just tell them what we're proposing? So yeah, hey Adam, you only missed the part we are discussing if we should have the icebreakers in the beginning of the meeting. And the question is, the icebreaker for today, Do you think we should have them and why?

If you want to.

Oh, you know, I don't really have a passionate opinion on this one, so I'll defer to the group here.

That's also fine.

Cool.

Sure.

Honestly, maybe the people who— because I'm part of the core 4 people, if you guys don't know. And so we kind of have a working relationship. But so I think the newcomers to the group might answer this question a little better. And I think their opinion matters more right here. So I'd let them decide.

So we have 5 years. I think it's pretty unanimous. So maybe— We like, would we consider like just reviewing this maybe in like 6 meetings?

Yes, after 6 meetings we see if we want to continue, or how do you feel and how everyone feels.

And so you'll keep, you'll keep track of this?

Yeah, sure.

Okay, cool. Maybe that's just like an agenda item or an action item we can keep a note of, um, that Ulla will, um, keep track of, uh, when we should potentially sunset the idea of icebreakers. Is that cool, Jennifer?

Yeah, that's fine.

Cool, awesome. Okay, so next up on the, um, agenda was to review democratic meeting tips, um, and consensus voting. Uh, Erica, I think, is gonna handle that.

Yes, thank you. Yeah, so I thought it would be good to review some points regarding meetings and decision-making, and while some of this information you may already know or it might be new to you, so whatever the case, it's always good to, to study it, and especially together as a group, so I'm going to share my screen.

I think I have to— yeah, I gave you host ability so you can.

Yes. Oh, one second. Okay.

Okay.

Can everyone see it?

I can.

Yes? Okay. Great. So, meetings and consensus. So all the information I'm about to share with you, I gathered from one of the many resources from the Democracy at Work Institute website, which is an institute that is dedicated to expand the co-op model. They train co-op developers, support new partners, provide education, tools, and standards for co-ops. Amongst many others, and it is a great place to find information and resources about co-ops. That's their website. So we're going to start by asking ourselves this question: what makes a good meeting? We're going to take a moment just to think about it, and if you would like to share with the group, just, uh, please unmute yourselves and do it at any point during the presentation. Feel free to do that. Because I'm not really looking at you, just unmute yourself if you want to say something. So what makes a good meeting? Just take a moment to think about it for you. Oh, sorry. Would anyone like to say something, like to share with the group?

I think, yeah, active participation, people paying attention, I would say.

Okay, cool. Anyone else?

Uh, talking about important things, you know, and moving kind of briskly, not getting stuck on one little thing.

Okay, like staying focused. Um, okay, well, anyone else?

Uh, yeah, I think a good conversation. Sorry about that, Brian.

Go ahead.

A good conversation and, uh, transferring a lot of, uh, knowledge.

Okay, yeah. Great.

Like keeping also in the time frame that— it's a mute, yeah— keeping the time frame that we agreed upon and not going too much, you know, beyond.

Yes, yeah, very important. Okay, great, thank you. So yeah, and like these are all good points and I feel we could all Take a moment and read these additional points of what can make a good meeting also. So just take a moment to read them and adjust them, and then if you would like to add something, please feel free to do so.

Great.

So, to summarize, like, a good meeting— in a good meeting, everyone has a saying. We go through the agenda, right? That was very important. Seems very important to everyone. And we stay focused on task. Everyone is heard and acknowledged. And in our case, everyone has equal power in making decisions, us being a co-op. And decisions are agreeable to all, and everyone's clear about what had been decided or what has been decided. Okay. So during a meeting, generally we'll have different roles. We have the participant, we have the facilitator, the participants, the facilitator, and the minute taker. They're all equally important and they should be rotated. So we all— we're gonna go through the description of these roles, some of them, and again I will just ask you to take a moment to read to read them, and then we can discuss a little bit about each one of them. So, the meeting participant. So as you can see and probably know, the attitude and focus of the participant is extremely important. If we come prepared and with an open mind, we can really contribute to having a good meeting. So I would love to hear your input about it if anyone has some— would like to share their feedback.

Yeah, I recently read something about, you know, there's two schools of thought. One is like, there's this movie called Being There where it's just enough to just to be there, present, and bring your whole self to the meeting. And then I was reading for this job I was going to apply for last week that they were like, being there, just showing up is not enough. You don't get an A for effort. You have to, you have to really have results. We're results-driven. So, so I was like, hmm, which am I? Am I being there type or the results-driven type? So I don't know, in my cover letter I put I'm results-driven, but I don't know if I'm the being there type or the results-driven type for sure.

Thank you. I would say like we, we all were on different positions at different times Like sometimes you're driven towards something than others.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

I want to talk about like arriving in time for the beginning of the meeting. So definitely this is important, but you know, sometimes people cannot make it on time, so I think it's still good when they maybe let us know before and they still join rather than miss the meeting.

Yes, I completely agree. And this is probably like, I will say, like I mentioned, like this specific information, it was probably from like when there was a time when you could actually be present at work and you had to be in time for the meeting. But of course, like we're in different like time zones and different jobs, so it's completely understandable if one of us is late, or even if we can't attend. That's why we're recording the meeting. Thank you. So next, let's talk about the facilitator, or let's read these statements and then talk about it. Okay, so as you can see, the role of the facilitator is very active but also very neutral, right? It helps in many ways and it is a very important role and, as I mentioned, it's our role that we should rotate and so we all get the opportunity to participate in this way. Would anybody like to add something or have any questions?

Well, it's— they're neutral, but they're also developing the agenda, right?

Yep.

Yes, that's a very important part, that they're keeping everybody in track and like focusing on the agenda and making sure that we are not going off topic. Thank you. All right, okay, so let's read about the agenda and the minutes. So the agenda is an outline of what items will be discussed by the group and in which order. Prior to the meeting, the facilitator develops this plan in consultation with meeting participants. This advanced preparation reduces the likelihood that a meeting will be Bogged down by too much work, unforeseen issues, or big topics. Agendas are distributed to all meeting participants prior to the meetings. Possible. Oh yeah, when the meeting begins, the agenda is reviewed and adjusted by the participants, which is what we just did. And minutes. Minutes are the written record of the meeting. They identify the name of the group meeting, when the meeting was held, who attended the meeting, and the minute taker, the name of the minute taker. I would say also the name of facilitator. Minutes are not a transcript of everything said during the meeting, but a concise summary of key points raised, decisions made, next steps, doers, and deadlines. Minutes should use polite and clear language. They should be distributed to the group within 24 hours of the meeting if possible, so they can be reviewed by the participants and corrections can be noted for the record. Okay, so here are some meeting reminders. So before the meeting, do your homework.

Sorry, just a question. So in regards to the minutes, is there like a format?

Like, do you know that we're supposed to be like using that, or we just like take like high-level notes of what happened in terms of Well, that's a good question, and I think we can also decide that as a group if we want to follow a format or if everybody can do it in their own style, whatever becomes comfortable to them. What do you guys think?

Does anyone have like a particular style that they've seen in minutes that's been really useful? Maybe.

Okay, so we can keep it like that for now, but if someone has like a format that is effective and wants to share with the group, I think that would be also good.

Thank you.

So before the meeting, do your homework, read your materials in advance if there are any, Don't come with the plan. Come with an idea and see where the group takes it. Don't own ideas. Be ready to give them away to the group. Good tips. When listening, be attentive and work to increase your understanding of what others are saying. Be patient and respectful. Accept that information comes in many useful forms: facts, opinions, hunches, ideas, feelings, mistakes, and silence. During the meeting, help the group stay focused on the agenda, help the group create space for everyone to participate. And I think this is very important because we are all responsible for this, not only the facilitator. The facilitator is just— it only— he will like remind us to do this, but it's everyone's responsibility. When speaking, be concise, Express one idea at a time. Use I statements to define your needs. Take ownership of your feelings. Keep the reasons behind your thinking. Be solution-centered and take a dose of humility. When deliberating, take a long-term view. Be open to outcome. Don't lobby your idea. Don't set limits. Look fairly and equally to all pros and cons and encourage others to do the same. And learn when to let go. Finally, after the meeting, follow up on your commitments. So would anybody like to add anything to the meetings topic before we go on to the next one? Any tips, questions?

I have a question. One of the points on the slide before this one was don't lobby your ideas. Where's the line, I guess, between explaining your reasoning behind an idea versus lobbying an idea?

Well, that's a great question. Would anybody like to answer it before I do?

I mean, I could take a crack at it. I mean, I guess, I guess, uh, from my understanding, it's, you know, yeah, you should certainly present your idea as best as possible, as clearly as possible, but perhaps not avoid, you know, trying to, uh, you know, connect with, uh, other, uh, members deliberately with the purpose of trying to get them to support your particular item or agenda item or concept that you're doing. I think that's been my experience on the matter.

Yeah. Yes, thank you, Vivek. I agree with you. Anyone has a different point of view?

Well, I just wanted to put out these words. Expository versus persuasive. So if we can try to be expository rather than persuasive.

Thank you.

Okay. Can I add one more thing?

Yes, of course.

Yeah, I think it's important also like the attitudes that we come with to the meeting and when we, you know, maybe we disagree we should try to stay neutral, or at least like, I mean, I always have positive attitude, but I imagine when I disagree with something, really, it's maybe hard, but it will be good to work on keeping it neutral and not impose this kind of negative attitude. You know, that would give this negativity feeling. To the others.

Absolutely, like to be open and keep a respectful attitude. It's very important. I think it's like all these tips can be summarized by that. Thank you. All right, so next is: How can we make decisions effectively and democratically as a group? Okay, so here comes— this is very important for us forming a co-op. All decisions are made as a group, and what this proposed solution here is decision-making by consensus. So what do we mean by consensus? Consensus is a process of synthesizing the wisdom of all the participants into the best decision possible at a time It is not necessarily unanimous agreement, and in fact, participants may consent to a decision they disagree with. Consensus is a type of accommodation where all agree to do something they feel is best for the group. So let's take another moment to read the statements, and then we're going to We can discuss them. So why do we work to make decisions by consensus? Okay, so you can see making decisions by consensus is not only effective, but it's also better for the group, for its dynamics and relationships. Would you like to add something, anybody? We're going to explain a little more how this process goes. This is just like the reasons why This would be— this is a good decision-making process. So let's just take a quick look. So consensus comes from the word consent, to give permission or approval, and by consensus we mean a general agreement versus what a conventional, let's say, company would do, board of directors, which would be a majority rule, which often leaves a minority dissatisfied. And this is what we want to avoid by making decisions by consensus. So how do we reach consensus? The process is guided by the facilitator and involves the following steps. Presentation. A group of members presents a proposal, and usually with background information. Then we discuss it. The group analyzes and clarifies information presented. Ideas are offered, reconfigured, and synthesized. Testing. The facilitator tests for consensus. Is there anyone who does not approve of the group proceeding in this way? Does anyone have any serious concerns regarding this suggestion? Then we address the concerns. Concerns are clarified and discussed. The group works to shape a creative solution that addresses these concerns, or the group might ask for a new proposal to be brought to the next meeting. As a solution emerges, the facilitator again tests for for consensus. Finally, when everyone consents to the proposal, the group then clarifies how the decision will be implemented. Okay, and I would like to hear your input about it. What do you think about this process? Have you participated in this process before? What is your experience? What are your concerns about this process?

Yeah, I mean, it totally makes sense. Just, I see it— I never tried it in practice, but it seems a little idealistic, you know, because what if we have one or two or more people who actually disagree? Like, how do we do it?

Yeah.

How long do we do it? Like, until we reach the consensus, you know, how long, how much time do we give?

I agree. Idealistic is— is my microphone off?

No, it's on.

I'm on mute?

No.

Sorry.

Yeah, idealistic is a great word for it because things are going to get very complicated. And so at some point there's going to be, okay, is this a, a problem that we have to proffer to the entire group, or is this going to be within my umbrella where I make the decisions, um, any decision revolving around X, Y, or Z? So I guess it's going to be, okay, is, is this particular problem going to be something that the group decides on? I'm not sure, yes or no. So organizing how that's going to work is, is going to be complicated.

You know, I agree, and hopefully this is something that, uh, um, so hopefully the next part of presentation can help find like suggestions to this and solutions, more solutions to this problem, because you're right. It is, it is a little idealistic, but there it is. There's a process, and hopefully, like, we can find a solution to that. And breaking into small committees is something that is also going to help in this process. Would anyone like to add anything?

Yeah, I'm part of a, like, a volunteer group where we, we use similar rules of consensus. And yeah, it's worked generally speaking. I think where we get nervous about is when there's this big group, but I think broadly speaking, most of our process will probably be in smaller groups like this where if there's one or two dissenting people, we can talk through and try to understand what their concerns are, and then bring those views into actually like revising the, the like proposal on the table. Kind of like even just, even just like our first one with the, with the, the icebreakers. Yeah. Like I was like semi-dissenting and saying I want it. I would like, you know, I'm kind of fine with it, you know, as long as we kind of review this again in a, in a like you know, in a couple meetings, like 6 meetings or something like that. And that can be like sort of a creative alternative to just saying, okay, blankly, this is how it's working without— and trying to like, for us as a team, work together to find a creative solution that incorporates other people's opinions.

Thank you.

Is there a clear way to know what decisions should be made as a group and what decisions should just kind of be made on the spot and like, so we can, you know, you can move forward on whatever you're doing?

I would say, to my understanding, that all decisions should be made as a group, but someone might disagree.

I've been attending community board meetings and it seems like no action is taken. Like, there's discussion call a question, someone has to second that question. So no action is really taken, like not even a letter sent without approval of the whole group. But it's democratic. It's not 100% consensus. It's 50%, 51%.

Yeah, Erica, I think maybe you Democracy, as Vivek mentioned, can fall into bureaucracy, and this is something we should really, really try to avoid. And I think being active participants is very important. And I'm going to present— there are different ranges of consent or dissent. And so maybe we can take a look. To this range of options and also like possible alternatives in case we cannot reach consensus. What action should be taken? Okay, so here for instance, we are all sharing our concerns. How can someone support consensus if they have a serious concern? So we should see concerns as not as stumbling blocks but as building blocks. For crafting a decision which is wise and widely supported. If someone has a genuine concern, they should raise it for consideration and then work with the group to explore creative options. If the group does not adequately address the concern, one has the power to withhold consent, thereby requiring the group to continue looking for a more acceptable course. However, most group members are able to support the group by offering some form of consent. So this is important, like even though we might not agree with the decision, we can, we can still support it. So consider this range of options: endorsement, yeah, I like it, full approval, agreement with reservations, I can live with it, Stand aside. I don't like this, but I don't want to hold up the group. Will consent if future reconsideration is built in. I want to include a sunset clause, like Vivek did about the icebreaker, right? And formal disagreement, but with willing to consent. I want my disagreement noted in the minute, but I will support the decision. And finally, block. I do not consent this proposal. Okay, so here, this is like the question that, uh, most of us have in mind. So what happens if the group cannot reach consensus? So we have two alternatives. They propose here two alternatives. One is further exploration. The group decides to take more time to think, discuss, or research before reconsidering the matter at a later date. Or backup voting procedure. The group establishes a modified majority rule voting procedure for use in such situations. Example, if the board cannot reach a decision via consensus, then a decision can be made with a supermajority vote. Of 75%, and this is something that we should decide as a group. Some decisions are bigger than others and might need more time, but some should be made maybe before a deadline, or like they have— they shouldn't take that long. So when will this backup voting be necessary? That is something that we also have to decide. It's a group, and today actually we're going to put in practice some of these principles. It's going to be good practice, and I would say that the more we practice and the more we work together and make decisions, even a small one as the icebreaker decision, the better we'll get at it and we'll have an answer of when enough is enough, like deliberating. Okay, so thank you. I thought that today we can— I would like to ask someone to volunteer to be our facilitator. I'm just gonna go back to that slide. Uh, sorry. Okay, in the meantime, think if you would like to be our facilitator tonight and practice what we just, um, discussed. Um, anyone? We all— who would?

Oh, I can try.

Thank you, Brad. Okay, so I'm gonna pass it on to Brad. And as I mentioned, there's gonna be opportunity today to practice our consensus, our decision making process. Thank you. I'm gonna stop sharing my screen.

Okay, just facilitate the rest. What did I sign up for?

Yes, to facilitate the rest of the meeting.

Oh yeah, okay.

Yeah, maybe I'll stop sharing, you can share your, the agenda. Yeah, that will help and Yeah, thank you. And I'm gonna share this, uh, deck with you. I'm gonna share the link in the group chat and also the Trello board.

Thank you.

I got the Trello board up, um, but I— but the agenda is a little different.

So, Erica, can you, can you make me host again? Thanks, Erica. That was helpful. Just a good reminder how these things work and all that stuff. So, and thanks, Brad, for volunteering. Quick hi to Russell. What's up, man? Yeah, awesome. Thanks for making it.

Thanks. I was muted. Hey, everybody.

Hi.

Hello.

I had computer trouble, but I was also slacking, so I like, I was like, oh wait, the meeting, and I was like 10 minutes late.

So can I have a question? I'm taking notes, and, uh, so I have Brad volunteered to be facilitator, and so are we all in consensus that Brad's the facilitator?

I think we all are.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, thanks, Jennifer, for keeping us in check.

We're all on the same page.

Okay, cool.

Otherwise, um, if you're wondering, as long as we come back to this decision at a later time— yes, yes, yes, my only caveat— I would like to be addressed Yeah, totally.

Hold on, this is my computer acting up. All right, cool. So, uh, here, here. So we're a little, we're a little bit behind, but, um, let's try to— we can get through this.

So we're number 3, open discussion, questions about proposed vision.

Yeah.

Piece of cake. What, uh, okay, so Pose Vision, um, we talked about last week. Um, I was gonna bring it up, but I guess I don't have it.

Um, no, I think, I think we could just, you know, we can just talk through it, but it's basically the, the concept that I proposed last week with the online in-store experience. And, you know, I wanted to just make some time, hopefully the last week or so folks have had some time to think about the proposed agenda, sorry, proposed vision. And I wanted, you know, to see if people had tough questions, concerns, anything, uh, maybe words of support, whatever that is, uh, we could talk through it. And then ideally, uh, we can vote if we can move forward with further research. This is not saying like, you know, this is the final say, but it's just saying, hey, we have enough information, and as a group we feel good enough to move forward with like further researching this proposal. Or is there some additional like concerns that we need to discuss and, uh, walkthrough. So that's the point for this period. Makes sense?

So if anyone has questions, uh, um, I guess it was just, just clarifying. Um, yeah, I guess it makes sense that we would, we would continue researching. Like, I don't see, like, especially because it doesn't cost us anything to continue, right? So I don't see why we wouldn't spend time doing that. And then specific specifics I would like to know, like what types of actions we could take towards that research, like so it's not just one person trying to take it all on. Like, is there anything in particular, Vivek, that you would see as like the next steps?

Yeah, actually that's, that's the next agenda item, is sort of walking— that was a piece of feedback I think a fair amount of people asked last meeting, which was, hey, like, understanding timings, I'm just trying to understand steps. So I took a lot of time this, this week to prepare for that component of the meeting and just trying to lay out the steps of like how you start a worker cooperative and then you know, where do we get to the place of, you know, really doing the in-depth research. And I got that information from this, the same source that Erica, um, got the information for, uh, like meetings and consensus, uh, Democracy at Work. Um, I can also share a link. There's a link to this document already in Trello, but I can share it with the meeting notes and so forth. But, um, it pretty much lays out this, like, the process. So I think Going forward, yeah, hopefully we can divide up the work and we'll have some action items for everybody to volunteer for as they please. One that, like, while I had the mic, and Russell, like, I know you got a chance to review the video and you weren't able to attend last call. Was there, you know, any concerns or questions that you particularly had in mind besides this one? Like, Everyone else had an opportunity last time to sort of raise some of their questions, so love to— while you and Mira are chatting.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. So like, can you hear me?

Yep.

Okay. Yeah, so my only concern is that we're moving too slowly. And I like, I know we want to get it done correctly because If we don't, if we don't all understand what a co-op is, then there could be a lot of— there could be hurt feelings and there could be and stuff like that. But I think at the end of the day, we're up where we literally are going up against Goliath, um, and they're running super fast and they have a lot of tech behind them and a lot of money behind them. So the faster we figure out how to start running, even if it maybe is the wrong direction, I think it's okay. So like, I guess that's what it's— that's, that's my only concern is like, we might be spending too much time, um, talking about how to structure and not enough about the actual problems that we want to— that we all desperately want to solve. Because I know everyone's really serious about these problems, the plastic problems, the, uh, self-sustaining problems and stuff. So Those are— that's my only concern, is that while it's important to focus on getting these pieces right, I think we should also have things that people can be doing when they join our group right away so that they feel like they've helped and contributed, even if it's not a major decision thing or whatever. Something that is— if we could come up with something like that, some sort of plan, then I think that sense of urgency can be can be captured and we can run with it. So it's kind of a tangent.

Yeah, sure.

In the sense of like having— being able to like present some like a solution to some questions that people have had. Like, I know there's questions about like where we're going to locate and products and stuff like that.

Yeah.

Other people come up with like, here's a proposal for that.

Those are, those are probably great. Um, but even like Because we're, because we're planning to be bigger, like, because our, our end vision, our North Star is like, in every city we want to have a center, a distribution center, right? What could we do that's small, working towards that goal that doesn't require any decision-making, and people can consent to it without even joining our group, and they can just start helping us? Like, it could be something subtle that gets brand awareness. I don't know, but we, we, I know as like marketing is like this thing where if you can capture that person and get them as like a lead, um, and you can continue to drip information towards them, towards working towards our goals, I think we can, we can harness that power. Um, and it can, we can start to move faster is all.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I tend to— I agree with the desire to want to start moving and getting stuff done and being productive. And I think that can happen in marketing. For example, that Australian company Who Gives a Crap, they spent a year and they saw exactly how much plastic each of them used. And then they put all the plastic down and they took pictures and they're trying to analyze it for metrics and all that stuff. So doing maybe something in that vein of identifying the plastic problem more or something, or just any generator of positive marketing stuff we could post on our social media accounts, like maybe that is something we could do. As opposed to running down the direction, like the corridor of, okay, we're getting into the distribution business, let's figure that out. Like, I think we need more time for that side of things. So I think there are creative ways to be productive without making decisions, as you mentioned.

Would you say that's kind of market research? Is that kind of somewhat what you're thinking, or is it like a different— are you thinking of something different?

Market research or just publicity, kind of publicity. Yeah, creating our own publicity, doing— yeah, figuring out our brand strategy, like how are we going to connect at an individual level, like how are we going to connect with our followers and create more followers.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah, I think, I think the steps I'm gonna like share with the group hopefully will address that concern, Russell, and, uh, and allow us to sort of start working on different things. I think, I think they're— and we're gonna— I'm gonna walk the team through it, and then we can have a discussion if this like feels right and if we want to make some changes and or want some time to like sleep on it. Um, but I also— I think while I too want to, um, you know, quickly solve or like start like taking action. I think also there, we do have an opportunity where right now we're like getting into a place where we are working well together. We like figure out the systems to work well together. And so that it's not like, it's like a one-time like fluke, like we, we hit a 3 versus like, oh, we're just consistently, we have like this mechanic system. Like we as a team know how to work well together and gel and we know how to to solve problems. And that's like more, I'm like more excited about. And while that can come off as like, oh, like too much like process and not enough action. Like sometimes I think we, in this day and age, like there's this like movement to like always try to like move forward where, when I think sometimes like a little bit more like planning, and that's where like the power of our cooperative I see is really, really powerful. But like I said, I'm going to definitely present it with an opportunity for all of us to pay close attention, and if I miss something or there's something that we disagree with from the process that I grabbed this from, we can always talk about it and we can try to figure out a better solution to it.

Vivek, are you going to cover Priority of, uh, when you— I guess it was part of the way you're going to present, like what, like what order we're going to be going through these things, like brand strategy, location, products, promotions.

Yes. So a lot, some of those details are not encapsulated in the steps of creating cooperative because, you know, every cooperative is a little bit different. But there's like a big step in there where there's like a market research step, you know, and I think that's where we're going to get into the nitty-gritty of those components. And we're going to break into— I'm imagining we're going to break into committees that are going to like solve certain problems. So we'll have like little like ninja crew that like know, like it's a little bit like more familiar with certain things and they're going to solve that problem. Another group's going to solve something else.

Makes sense.

And we'll have opportunities to get back together and talk about this and, and, you know, make sure that people, you know, feel it makes sense.

So what I'm hearing is Russell saying sure, he's, he's— because it seems like Vivek wanted to have a vote, up or down vote on on whether to go forward with this proposal. And Russell's saying, sure, why not? And Adam's saying, sure, why not, but let's go a little faster. And Adam's saying—

Oh, sorry.

That was— so I said we should probably be looking for ways to have projects that we can move faster. And Adam said that he may have a way of wiggling that into marketing. Potentially, and we could start spending that energy in the marketing.

Okay, so like social media, for example?

Yeah, social media or web pages or something, just so we can use that energy when people come to us asking us about our, our group. We know, we know that we can have them do something, they'll feel good and we'll feel good, and it'll be moving us towards our goals. And if we're always thinking that way, then every time we have marketing, we'll be moving the right way.

So yeah, and that sounds like that's something that will probably, uh, or could happen in a committee. Is that, is that kind of how it's, uh, how it would be?

Yeah, totally. It's actually, to be honest, I'm kind of like doing this a little manually, um, like that splash that page brought in a bunch of people after the event and a couple people trickling in here and there. And thus far, when I've like, Ulla created a Google Form where she like, we basically funnel people to submit information there. And then I like, I send them this manual email like, hey, check out our first video and like, get back to us. And like, my theory has been thus far is like, oh, let them at least, have an entry level of like spending some time to watch the first video, and if they were that interested, then, you know, we'll sort of try to see if we can get them to be a member, um, and perhaps participate in some meetings. Um, but I wanted to like— that's been my process. But I think that process, A, could use a lot of improvement, B, can be reviewed by the group, um, at some point in time when we, you know, we think that's like a focus item. Um, but, uh, but that's— it is sort of like going on but not like in a great way, but it definitely can be improved.

Are there any other comments from the— or questions from the presentation last week?

No?

Okay. I guess I should probably speak to it a little bit. Am I muted?

Nope.

I'm good. OK. You're good. So I've been working with the group for a little while now. I've had a lot of talks with Vivek about my opinions on these things. And it's a little different than his. And I wanted to— last week, I didn't want to comment at all. But at this point in the process, when we're going to a vote, I thought it was— it's appropriate time to voice a dissenting opinion. I'm very reluctant to get into the grocery business in general, and as is stated, creating a distribution center with With a grocery store distribution and online presence, it just feels too complicated, and I'm worried that as a group of people, we have no mastery of the grocery business. So, the idea of us coming together and figuring out how grocery stores work, how inventory work, tracking, pricing, models, all that stuff. I feel that there might be a better use of our talents. So that said, I would just suggest that we table the vote to go ahead and instead brainstorm as a group other, other directions we might take to achieve the same goals that we were— yeah, I'm very happy with the co-op oriented structure. The goal of specifically going after plastic is great. Um, I personally would support the group no matter which way we go. Um, I just think we might want to stop and take time to, uh, uh, understand how we might want to deploy or, or just solve this problem.

Okay.

Well, thanks, Adam, for, for, um, thanks for saying that because I, you know, I also had similar, similar feelings, um, but I didn't voice them just because I didn't want to try to derail anything. Um, specifically food is, is more difficult than any other product at them as far as sales because there's, you know, more regulation because people are eating it versus wearing it or whatever. So it might be the harder things to— one of the harder stores to build is probably food versus anything else we could think of as far as physical stores. So right away, it's like, not only is it a physical store, which is hard, but it's also a physical store and it's one of the more difficult ones. That was kind of one of my objections for it being like the first focus. However, I do believe that if we want to win, we're going to have to eventually go there. Um, but again, that's why people keep asking about priorities and stuff, because we don't want to derail the grand vision, but we don't like, not necessarily if it's not, it's not necessarily like I'm not completely sold that doing a grocery store, yet another grocery store is the answer at the moment.

Would you say you want to see the idea more focused on— I guess just more focused on a smaller problem?

Yeah, yeah, I would say we would like— ideally we would pick the smallest version of this problem. But, but we already know like there's plastic waste in food. But there's also plastic waste and other types of shipping and sales and stuff. So maybe it's easier to try to tackle a different, a different problem in the subset.

Okay.

I think what we are in consensus on is our values about wanting to see a better planets, healthy planets, and the— to the sustainability and the cooperation, and maybe even the store. But maybe we're deciding what— we wouldn't be here if we didn't like sustainable cooperative store. So I think there's something powerful about sustainability and cooperation?

Well, I kind of share opinion with Adam and Russell since Vivek changed the whole idea, and my biggest concern is also that food is the most difficult and most dangerous, especially the physical location. So I've been fighting with him about this many, many times. Although, the truth is that that's where the most plastic is coming from. Why? Because people always shop for food. That's why I'm kind of— I am on this like, yes, I stay open and see what's going to happen. But my concern is, yeah, also how difficult it may be just because of the food.

Yes, I personally like the idea. I support the vision because for me it's like, it's been really hard to try to shop sustainable and specifically without plastic packaging. And it's meant like giving up on certain things that I like to buy or certain brands and it hasn't been easy. Easy. And as I mentioned, admitting that you end up buying from different places and then spending more money. So it is more challenging. It is an ambitious vision, but there's a lot of opportunity. And one of the things that drove me towards this is also like a as Vivek mentioned, to make sustainable attainable for most people. And it is going to be maybe— it might take us longer than if we just like wanted to launch one product. But there's no— but it's a good time to do it because there is not much competition really. Like yeah, People mention Whole Foods, but Whole Foods, it's just organic, it's not sustainable at all. And you have to go to different stores to get your plastic-free or reduce your waste in your daily life. So I do support the mission.

Yeah, I think for me, For me, I think it's hard to— there's not enough detail for me to really have a really strong yes or no. I think I'd like to— I think I would vote to keep going just to get more details. And the thing where I see the opportunity is just providing more information about or having some definition about what is sustainable. Deciding, you know, having information about this, like this product is sustainable because of this, this product is not sustainable because of this, and kind of having a platform in some ways to put that out there for people just to say like, here's your, you know, here are your options and, you know, this is the research we've done on sustainability and these are good products, these are bad products based on these things.

I think that that's a great point because we're making a lot of assumptions. We assume most plastic waste is coming from shopping for these certain things. It'd be great if we could get real information to back that up and then make a more pointed strategy of what we could conquer. There's all these little small companies coming out. Drops came out to go right after laundry detergent. Then there's a— in the UK, there was a company that went after household cleaning items. So I'm curious, like, if we do create a grocery store, I see it as a high barrier to entry, very expensive project to build out a space like that, to buy out, to build shelving, refrigerations, all that stuff. And then when we first start, we have, you know, no initial buying power. So I just see, I see some trouble. So I would love to, if I would love to focus it down on certain things in grocery if we could. Obviously Whole Foods already, all dry goods, you could already go in there and not use any plastic. So how are we going to take that next step? And can we talk to our distributors that we're going to work with the yogurt people or whoever and say, okay, can you give me this product without plastic? And I'm sure they'd say no. So maybe there's some way that we could come up with something proprietary that we could help these producers to come to market in a more sustainable way. I guess the macro 20,000-foot idea though is, As soon as I said that, I blanked out. I don't know what I was saying. But is those advances in how we're going to create this thing, I'd love to brainstorm and take a little more time to develop our ideas and our understanding of this plastic issue.

So do you think your concerns are mostly about the location and the specifics around distribution, or— well, I guess, is it a financial concern mostly that you have?

I do have a financial concern. I've built distribution centers in New York City before, Over the last 15, 20 years with the emergence of Amazon around the, the five boroughs, all tons of warehouse space has been already taken. So that market is much, much, much more expensive than it used to be, even though residential has come down. All that warehouse and large inventory has gone up. If we're creating a distribution center, there's a lot of physical logistics that we're going to have to deal with, with regards to trucking and all that stuff. And so it's going to limit the places that we're going to be able to build. And then the, the cost of these projects also is incredibly high. So, so that's why I wonder, like, I would feel more comfortable if we were to pare it down to something Smaller.

Okay. Or if the plan included, um, you know, ways to, uh, use already, you know, infrastructure that's already there.

Definitely.

Yeah. Like buying an old mall, right? A mall that's being— it's gone because of COVID or whatever is being ideal somehow.

I think it's just using, you know, like a Amazon lets you, like, you can use their distribution centers to a certain extent, I guess, maybe not for food, but you can certainly, like, if you're selling shirts, you can have the shirts, just, you can ship them the shirts and then tell them where to ship it out one by one.

And Amazon's being, yeah, and in a lot of ways, Amazon's probably gonna get, like, the crazy thing about Amazon is they could take our idea and turn it into a feature tomorrow.

Yep.

And, and do it wrong. So, and this is why I keep saying we need to be urgent, because I mean, it's a good idea and they've like— I, I don't know. But yeah, I do think it needs to be smaller and something that we can start to get easy, um, start to get wins from so that we can start to be like, you know, like something to brag about really and to talk about and to get to drive more people into our mission. And like I was saying before with the, the marketing, it's not just marketing our, our members, it's also marketing. It's also marketing just our customers eventually. Like ideally they'll be our, our tribe. We're really looking for our tribe, whether they want to help us build this or if they want to just be our patrons. That's what we're really trying to do. I think it's— we should be trying to build that first somehow because that's free. Like Vivek said, he's been doing some marketing with the videos and the meeting minutes and other things. And I think if we continue that and we have something that they can take away with or do, that's cheap enough, I think. There, there wouldn't— we wouldn't need any capital to start, I guess, is what I'm trying to say, versus trying to buy a mall or trying to do something else. I feel like we would need a lot more capital and a lot more research and fundraising, versus we could try a smaller project and see if we can get some smaller wins and then try to work on building those wins up. Um, Brad, does that kind of answer?

Yeah. Would everyone agree they'd like to see some, like, something added to the plan with that would be low capital, like, like you said, Russell?

Well, my, for example, my initial idea was to start with just online store. So once we grow the online store, we grow followers, then we would open the physical location. I mean, that was a while ago.

What type of products were you thinking about, Oula?

I mean, I was not thinking about food. I mean, food maybe would be the last the last part that we would add because it's the most risky. It's really so much responsibility. But anyway, just start, just start online store. And this way we can also grow our finances and then invest that. Also, it's, yeah, it would be, we would be more sure. And it's, yeah, because it would be less risky. We would already have followers. We would already see maybe the change happening.

Tyler, did you have a perspective? I wanted to share, but I wanted to, I was hoping to hear from everybody.

Sure, yeah. I'm kind of, I think Russell and Adam both bring up some good points in terms of opening a physical grocery store along with a distribution center is a huge chunk of work. I, I think from my experience, I have trouble— I'm not very Put bluntly, I'm not very into this environmental movement yet, but I've had trouble finding, finding a place to buy a lot of sustainable products and finding a place to buy plastic-free products. And so hearing something like, let's do an online store that does kind of a collection of those kind of products to make it easy for me to get into this stuff, and I, I think a lot of people are like me in that. I like that a lot. I guess that would be my vision for this, but I'm totally amenable to anything, really.

You know, something that was brought up last week was a focus on education, and I wonder if that's just— I wonder if it's just starting with that, just educating, you know, any way possible, you know, either creating material, some sort of materials we put online, or You know, you've been doing, um, been doing some stuff already, I realize, but yeah, if I can, I'm gonna—

I'd like to address this, um, pretty directly. So, you know, when I, when I hear like Adam's concerns and Russell's concerns and, you know, your other people, I, I hear where you're coming from, like, um You know, when I reached out to Adam months ago, when I reached out to Erica, who has been hearing this story for almost a year now, the original vision was online. And I, like, that was always my mindset. I was like, online, online. And then, like, a month ago, like, something really clicked. And it was involving groceries and physical. And the reason that clicked was what I presented last week, and I'm going to bring this up on the screen real quick. And it's this, like, graph here. Convenience versus easy, you know, convenience, difficult, challenging, easy. And, um, and I, I think this is like, I, I didn't emphasize this sufficiently last time. Um, like, this is pretty huge, okay? Because when you create an opportunity for someone to literally walk out their door or conveniently drive to a place to pick up groceries and you tap into a habit that they already do, and they do this on a weekly basis, you are— you're allowing for us to get into a behavior pattern and change our behavior patterns. It, like, there is a totally different experience when someone literally has to go to www.packagefree.com or grovecollective.com or Leland or whatever, and just like walking out their door or like driving 5 minutes to a physical location that's convenient for them. And this might have been like sort of subtle last time, but I'm trying to like emphasize this is the key. What we're trying to do by getting people to buy like plastic-free products is not like, it's not saying like, you know, they're doing some new paradigm. What we're trying to really do, like, if you break it down to the most basic thing, we're asking people to change their behaviors. Like, behavior change does not happen super easily. So what do you have to do is you have to think about how can we tap into something they already do? And what does every American do? Basically, they go grocery shopping, they shop. And so yeah, I don't love worrying about groceries. I don't love worrying about like things going out of you know, like, um, you know, rotting or whatever. I get it. I get the concern. But if we really want to tackle this problem and we, we need to change people's behaviors because there actually are people doing this. There, there are stores out there and every one of them is, they're doing really well too. That like, they're doing fine, but they're never going to get to the masses. And so if we are a group that's like fine with just being a niche, like, but that's a, that's a, that's a different business. You know, when I presented this and what I want, I want us to do is I want to do something that reaches the masses, that goes beyond just being for like a bunch of tree huggers and a bunch of like hippies like me who like wants to get like on a Zoom call on a Tuesday night till 9 o'clock at night talking about this, right? We want to reach the normal guy or person. Who doesn't have the mindset to, like, or the energy to think about sustainability. What are they— they have like kids, they have families, they have like jobs that are really freaking hard and it'll take a lot of their time, mental energy. They're stressed if they're gonna even work next week because, you know, their boss is down their neck. They're working 50, 60 hours. They don't have time to think about sustainability. That's what we do. That's what we're trying to do. We're thinking about all this for them. And you know what? It just happens to be that this grocery store happens to be 5 minutes away or 10 minutes away from them, and they're just gonna— it's convenient, it's really a great experience, and they just happen to be shopping sustainably. Sure, we're also going to get the tree huggers, the hippies that like to make it a destination for them, just like, just like, you know, some people do that for Whole Foods, like some people do that for Trader Joe's. Like it's a destination for them, right? And that's going to happen. But if you really want to get into the masses, we want to get to the general population of America, that requires making it convenient for them, making the experience a no-brainer. So that's why grocery is important. And it's not about just making another website because there's a bunch of other people doing that and they're doing okay. But they're going to continue for the longest time. And none of them have figured this component out is that grocery is the key to reaching the masses or they just are not like wanting to deal with that challenge. And the couple of other follow-up points I want to say is like, like what I see in front of us, like me, is a smart, driven group. Like, like everyone here is smart and capable. Like, I don't know why we should be scared of this. Like, yeah, we may not have the expertise on grocery stores or distribution centers or whatever expertise, like, we don't have. But like both of these things are things that have been done before. We're not like, we're not reinventing the wheel here. We're not like, you know, shooting rockets into space. We're doing something that lots of other people are doing. We're putting them together. And I think the ability to accomplish that.

Could I comment on just getting to the masses real quick? And I agree, like, I want to get to the masses, but building a physical location in one spot is inherently not getting to the masses when we have to invest, say, $2 to $5 million in one location and then $2 to $5 million in the next, and then et cetera, et cetera. It's an incredibly expensive way to do it.

In that audience there, it allows— we are reaching an audience beyond just the, the tree hugger community. We're reaching a broader, greater population. That's the point. It's not about like we're reaching all of America on store one. Amazon, they all— when they—

okay, well, we're talking about speed in terms— we want to do it quickly to get to the masses. So then, like I mentioned earlier, Drops, they had a massive advertising campaign and they got into everyone's inbox and country instantly.

And they're not, they're not a mass. You could ask 90% of like any location, most people don't know JOPPS. JOPPS is done well with a small niche. That's it.

Yeah, I— let me, let me talk. So I do think that, I do think that the end, the end goal should be a a grocery store, and I agree with you because people have been eating since we've started civilization. I don't think that shooting for a website first is going to stop that from happening, but also I understand what you're saying where it's like, we're going to get a certain type of person on our website, and I think that's okay at in the beginning, and I think we'll actually be surprised in the beginning how much traction we do get. But what we need to do is figure out as quickly as possible how to translate that traffic into regular foot traffic, and eventually that could mean a physical location or something. But if we can go with, if we can go with, like, e-commerce is literally pretty much free at this point. We could create a shop tonight. If we had products to sell, we could sell them. So like, it's a no-brainer that we would have to start online first. Like, that's, that's what I would do if I was going to be funding this with my venture capital or whatever, is I would say we need to get at least an online presence and then we can move from there. But assuming that that's not what we did, assuming that we instead went for a grocery store, what is the smallest shop? What is the smallest footprint that we could possibly put somewhere that's the size of a Starbucks that does what we say it's going to be? It's going to be convenient and fast. What does that look like? Maybe that's how we do it. Maybe we buy— maybe we stand up a small coffee-sized grocery or something like a corner store. What does that look like, I guess? And that might not be $2 million, that might be $200,000, but it's still a lot of capital. And it's still that one spot. So it almost makes sense that we would do that and also have a website. Now I'm going to mute so people can talk.

I didn't get a chance to finish what I wanted to present, but Like to your point, Russell, and I think we're like, we're, where people are not like perhaps aware is like the vision is this, is that I'm presenting is that, right? Like how do we go to market? That's up to us. That's like a feasibility study. That's like us to do analysis. Like, yeah, maybe it's a store. Maybe it's like an Instagram account that you can just order from. And it's just that we don't even build a website. We just do like a really slick, like Instagram account. And we, and we, you know, whatever, there's multiple ways to go to market. And that's for us as a team to figure out like that strategy and to do the research. Today, I was hoping to do is we, we like go through and say, hey, this is like the vision we want to work towards as a group, but perhaps, you know, the go-to-market strategy, is for us to determine and we think about. But if that's not what we wanted, if you want to not hold up on this vote, we want to go through a whole list of other proposals, we can do that. But that's the vision and the— how do we go to market? Totally, that's possible, as you would suggest. I even been thinking about that too, Russell. There's a small grocery store in my neighborhood that just popped up.

It's pretty cool.

I was like, it's not a huge footprint, maybe something of that version we could do and plug it in against a really slick website, something like that. But I'm not sure, I don't know. And that's for us as a team to figure that out. So that's my first point. And then lastly, I think there's like, Russell, you mentioned this is about Amazon flipping a switch and going into the— I mean, they kind of already do this. They already have that. And they're competitors that are, are doing extremely well. And, you know, it's, it's, I mean, I almost compare it against a little bit like Facebook versus Instagram. Like Facebook did photos like a long time before, you know, Instagram. iTunes existed long before like Spotify. Like there's plenty of examples where a specialist company comes in and they do this thing super well and they provide like a bunch of value adds. You know, when we do like a bit, when we get to the business model canvas component, like this is where we can sort of like talk about that kind of stuff on a high level. What is our value prop? Like, how do we enter the market and provide value for people? And we distinguish ourselves from Amazon. We don't need to win. And the thing about the grocery store, like our physical location at once, like we don't, like there's nothing, I don't know what this, like, rushing. Like, we, we own the business, we own the company. Like, no investor is gonna like, like be yelling at us like, you didn't grow 5%, you didn't go 10%, or whatever it is. We, we, we start a business, we, we make a good return, we provide a great service. If we're profitable, we keep going. Like, Amazon can continue to put the pressure as they want but they're not going to pay attention to one tiny store and one tiny website. They're only paying attention and put the pressure on when we get really big. There's a ton of different sites doing this already and they don't give a crap about them because they're just tiny. That's how we're going to start, but at some point we will, if we do well, if we're successful, we keep at it, then we will be able to be on their radar and they'll try to rate. But at that point, hopefully we'll be too far along for them to do much.

Another way to phrase that though is the higher the initial investment costs, the more stress we are going to have to make money initially. We don't have all the time in the world if we put too much money into it initially. So to Russell's point, figuring out a way to do it in a less expensive way is important.

What, I didn't understand, for the stress?

You said we don't have investors that are gonna be on our ass, but we still have to run a business. And if we invested a few million dollars to start up, then that debt is on our hands. We're gonna have to work quickly. Any way we could reduce the initial startup cost, I'd be for.

So if I can throw out an idea—

oh, sorry.

No, you go ahead.

Okay, I want to throw out this idea just to have something to juxtapose, I guess. What if it's just— what if this is just like an online Consumer Reports for sustainability where We go into Whole Foods and we just rate how sustainable each product is. And somebody can go to the site and click, show me all the sustainable, you know, show me the best sustainable products. And we give them a list of stuff that's already at Whole Foods.

Great.

You're muted.

And we create some sort of metric that standardizes the grades of all these different products. What goes into them, what kind of footprint they use, and kind of create those metrics across the board for everyone.

Do you think that's still— I mean, I guess I'm trying to get to the core thing, right, of we want to, you know, this There's like an educational aspect. There's getting products out there that are sustainable. Um, you muted. Vivek, were you jumping in?

Oh yeah, I know Russell wanted to say something too, so I'll wait for him.

Yeah, I was just gonna say like, yeah, that's potentially another avenue, but I, I That's also a lot of research and work, but I think we're going to eventually need to do that anyways, but it wouldn't be capital intensive. It would just be a lot of work. And I guess if we're not valuing our labor, then if we start valuing our labor, which I think we should, then it is potentially intensive, but either way, we're probably going to need to do that research. But just depends on when.

Just for note-taking, I'm having like— we're on part 3 or 4 and of the agenda, and we're discussing Vivek's presentation from last week, and some ideas have been brought up. Some of the ideas were creating a brand brand that people can buy into before we— while we're still sorting out exactly what the brand does. And another idea was an eco-consumer report. And another idea was create this— a small store a fun— if we're gonna have a retail store, a brick-and-mortar store, uh, have a small store was another idea.

It's a small store.

Yeah, just start with an online store was, was the original idea.

And then, and then the last idea was a rating system that we could potentially rate existing products, which would also give us— I mean, if we did, if we started doing that research, it would give us potential products to add to our store, which would kind of be kind of cool.

Um, so I think we're all pretty much talking about like, what does the next year look like? Right, we're still pretty much everyone's in agreement on like the 5-year, like 10-year plan. To kind of Vivik's point, um, we're kind of— we're taught— we're kind of digging into the details here.

Well, I think she was, she was just going to try to reiterate, reiterate what we brought up is what she was doing. Yeah.

No, yeah, I think that's right. I guess I wanted to see if there's foundational stuff that we're— that people are worried about, or if it's, um, like implementation details.

I think it's— I think it's we're trying to figure out the first principles of how to tackle the problem the best way.

Okay.

And I think we all agree on the problem and we agree on the vision, but how to tackle that is tricky.

I think, like, they brought up a good point. Right now we're, like, deciding if we support the vision regardless of how big it is or ambitious. And then later we're going to start going into details and seeing, like, how can we make this possible. And if it's possible, right, then we can make adjustments.

I just thought to be clear, I don't know if you all agree. I think Adam is not in agreement with this vision. I just want to add an additional point and I'll let Adam or Tyler or anyone else speak. Jennifer, thank you so much for your recap. That was very, very useful. Thank you for pausing us. The last thing I wanted to mention about like these other sort of like ratings things or Consumer Reports things, stuff like that, like a lot of that can be perhaps like our go-to-market stuff. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. The way I envisioned it, you know, and we can always discuss this as a team is like, You know, once the marketing committee had some clarity on a few things, like, that can be their focus. And I sort of was doing a little bit of that. Erica had helped me a little bit with that on the Instagram page, and that's sort of like kind of the messaging you put up. And we found some people through Instagram that like sort of came to us. And I think there's lots of opportunities that way. And in my initial presentation, I talk a lot about community and focusing on education. And education is a huge component of it because when people talked about barriers, barriers for them to make purchasing eco-friendly products, they said being able to access it, like convenience, and they talked about education. And this is the two things that I fully support. I believe you could be the thinking about and working towards as like first, some of the first action items when it gets to like solving the problem?

Yeah, so I think we might be just getting caught up on, I guess I don't want to put words in people's mouth, I'm trying to summarize, but I think we might be getting caught up on the idea of the providing products to everyone, everywhere, and kind of the logistics involved in that. Does that— I think Vivek, you kind of summarized it much better. We're focusing on convenience and education. And I guess if we're going to vote on something, I think we need to be very clear about what we wanted to vote on. Right. And it's not necessarily like we're going to have a store every— everywhere that you can walk to, or, you know, like, we're going to have giant distribution centers, or like, you know, it's not necessarily that. It's just that we want to, we want to focus on sustainability, education, convenience. Was that too much? Or did I, did I Summarized, or did I like agree, disagree with that?

I think that was good. And I, when I spoke up earlier, I didn't mean to like put a wrench in the whole situation at all. I guess my main discussion, my main concerns were A, getting into the grocery business, and then B, the scale of the initial project. So I just wanted to come from a perspective of reducing complexity and maybe analyzing what we want to sell at the end of the day. Yeah, those are my main two points.

Yeah, I mean, for me, Yeah, I wanted to vote on, on that vision. That was like my focus. And, you know, I presented it, I wanted to get through with the vote. Now, if people want to, like, delay that so that we have a discussion about something else, that's up for the group to decide. But it's not like— and what I propose is not about just purely about education and about convenience. And like, it like comes into this packaging of that, of this, of the product that I presented. And, and it came with like fairly like detailed research that I, you know, been putting together for the last year and one. And so that's why it came in that packaging. And now once again, if the group does want to hold off that vote, if they If they don't, like, there's no consensus on this, then that's what the group's agenda is. But like, for me, that was what I wanted to present.

But I wonder like how much actually value is in this if we vote on it today or a very near future. This is like such a major, I mean, it's so important right now. Is it going to change What is going to change that? If we maybe— maybe this will evolve, I don't know, maybe we'll still— maybe we change our mind on the way, but what is going to change if we vote on it right now?

Oh, you know, I don't know if anyone else wants to say anything, but yeah, it doesn't change a lot. We just delay this, uh, the process of like the action. We, we were focusing on further deliberation, which is You know, that's what the group wants, that's what the group wants. So, doesn't—

I think we're kind of at a good point for Tyler.

Anyone else? Sorry.

Yeah, sorry, does anyone else have a comment on that?

I'm doing okay.

Okay, I guess I'm not sure of the mechanics. Do we vote to postpone, or do we just— or do we have a vote to, um, do we have just like a yes or no vote on the proposal?

I think what we, what we can say that we have consensus on is the convenience, education, and sustainability. I think you were right about that, that we do agree. We could focus on what we do— what we did agree on.

And then would we still postpone the— or have kind of further discussion on the, I guess, the larger part of it, the, like, focusing on locations and What Russell said in the very beginning was kind of like a, sure, why not?

I think I wrote it down. Why not research this more? I think that's where I'm at.

Yeah, if the vote was to whether or not we, we continue research, then yes, I think we should continue research towards having us having a physical grocery/marketplace, because it seems like Vivek wants to continue doing that research as well. And if we can break it up such that other people can help, I think we can move along faster. However, I also brought up that— and other people have brought up other ideas where we could also be working towards.

Okay, so I guess let's vote on On whether to research or not.

So this is not on this, on this particular vision, continue like forward on this particular thing, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Does that mean, is that, is there, unless there's other discussion, I guess I want to kind of get to that step where we decide as a group.

I don't see any reason why I would block I don't personally see any reason why I would block more research. I wouldn't block more research. I think that more research is always okay. But I don't want to spin our wheels.

I mean, sure, I agree with Russell, although we also want to kind of get some pace, right? We want to start moving. So how much more for the research?

Well, the research is key. Like no matter what idea we do, like even if it's like a totally, it was a totally different idea, we would have to do research. That's a good, and research doesn't mean like, oh, we're trying to prove that this is wrong. It's research is like we are just doing some due diligence on the concept, like what is required of it, you know, and bringing those like information back to the broader group and And we continue on with like, we would like, along the process, we would have like go/no-go votes.

Like, perhaps we, perhaps we try to vote on whether we should look research towards an MVP of, of a grocery store as like, as the research topic, instead of trying to go like how big, like across the nation or across the world. What does one store look like and, and how, what are the constraints that we'll have and also like the costs?

Well, if we can kind of fit it into a format that Erica was talking about in her presentation, okay, where we, I, I think that might be best since we're, you know, this is like our first one of just like, here are, here's, well, Erica, maybe you can talk to what you bring up concerns and then they're addressed later on and then we have another vote? Is that, is that how it goes?

Okay, so the way I see it, yeah, maybe I'm wrong, like, uh, we were asked to vote whether we will support this vision. We want to go on, um, doing this, um, grocery store in-store and online, right? And everybody brought up their concerns. And so where we're standing now is, are these concerns stopping us from continuing to, uh, going in this direction? So that would be the question, right? And we walk into the decision, are we— do we want to do more research? Are we okay with it? We live with it, we fully support it. Because also we're talking about getting a pace and getting things started. So maybe if we decide today, if we want to go on in this direction, we can have different tasks or work going in this direction. If we can't reach this decision, then we have to bring to the next meeting our concerns and our points of view and focus on our solutions, why I think this is better or that's better. That's the way I see it.

I just wanna add to that. I think what Adam originally said was he would like to delay the vote so that we can potentially discuss alternative options. And I think that— Adam, correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what you're kind of proposing initially.

Uh, yeah, I think so.

Um, so the, so the vote, it's like if we basically— if you didn't— if you don't vote yes, um, uh, and we don't come to like a consensus on on yes, like, let's move forward with this vision. The alternative is we sort of like, we figure out some process to investigate alternative options.

But what is that? But what is the alternative then? What, everyone would bring their own idea, or how does it work?

What I'm saying yes to is make sustainable attainable. That's the best thing I've heard all night. So I mean, that catchphrase, that's gold. So I think that's where we agree.

I think I'd be happy spending a week either developing the grocery store idea and starting to get into the real numbers, dividing up amongst us where we wanna research, or we could decide to spend the next week coming up with different ideas of deployment of a solution to the plastic problem. Personally, I'm happy either way. I just want it to be, decision, um, as opposed to just, uh, we're just gonna just keep rolling.

Sorry, you did, you did want to come to decision to like, like today about—

I, I would say just to reiterate either choose today to, um, to just focus on, on the grocery store and vetting the idea a little more, because either way we're going to be vetting that idea, right? Um, and actually putting like real numbers into it and, um, reality into it. Um, or spend a week, um, um, proffering alternatives. To that idea. Well, of course not like cutting it out, just thinking about and offering differing methods. One way or the other, I'd like to roll forward with it, get productive.

I'm 100% on the idea of cutting generating as many ideas as we can and then choosing from there which ones sound the best, most feasible.

Okay.

How does everyone else feel, yes or no, about everyone coming up with ideas separately? Is that how we're describing it? I just want to make sure I'm describing it correctly.

I mean, I'm— I'm for just more research because the result, maybe then we come up with still having this grocery, online grocery, but smaller. We start smaller. Everything what is big now started small. So I believe in that. So I don't know.

So I guess, do you like this format though of everyone working separately on what this would look like and then coming together and talking about each person's idea?

No.

Okay.

The next one.

Yeah, I'd like, if we're gonna do research on the grocery, maybe can we split it up? Like, so we're not all doing the same thing.

Okay.

Sorry, I just wanna be, I mentioned two things. So A, it's like 8:59. I want to be the stopper. Like, we're about to— like, technically we should end. I don't know if maybe we could just ask everyone to maybe stick around for 10 minutes more. And is that possible, guys? Like, thumbs up, like a yes? Sure. Tyler, Jennifer?

That's fine.

Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah.

Okay, so that's that. I think Jennifer said that she would like to just like talk through ideas. It sounds like there's like a mix on this, on this, but it sounds like, you know, generally speaking, people want to not go forward with this vote right now on this particular proposal. And it's either kind of deciding between whether we— everyone presents a bunch of ideas or some select group of people present a bunch of ideas next week and or some group of like, or we all just divide up doing some research on the proposal that I talked about and we decide like based on that research, whether we wanna move forward on a vote on it.

Yeah, I know I come from the skeptic's perspective, but I actually, I almost think that I would vote for us researching the grocery idea and pushing that.

So, um, breaking that up, that idea up, and, uh, like individual people would have one section to flesh out and get more details on.

Uh, yeah, yeah, vetting it essentially.

Yep. Tyler, yes, no?

I'm, I'm actually more for the idea of us coming up with alternatives and running by those. I don't love the pinpointing on one thing. So yeah, I'm for a couple more ideas. Not to say that we don't go the grocery route, but just to say that we look at other ideas as well.

Tyler, Jennifer, Russell, I think you—

yep.

Yeah, you could, you could put me in the group with Tyler and, and the fact that I also do think that running with the grocery store one is also a good idea. So I think I'm at the point where I just think more ideas are going to be great, and I think we should come try to come next week with, with ideas and also have a chance to, to vet the grocery one a little deeper if we can prepare that work.

Okay, I see that, uh, I'm with the idea of doing more research for the grocery store, and I have an idea that if maybe, because we want to do further research, maybe, um, the people that want to do research about groceries does that and then do that and then people who want to have— want to come up with different ideas can also do that, and then it would be like the same, right? Like then one of the ideas would be the grocery store and the research behind it, and everybody who has a new idea should also do some research about it. So we can bring that to the next meeting.

Are we going to try to present next week a little bit of the ideas?

Okay.

Ooh, okay.

I think the very clear though, the metric we're trying to like nail towards, right, is how do we impact the plastic epidemic, right, in America? And like on a large mass scale, right? So that's, I think that's the important part.

Okay.

That's important, right? And to be, you know, be like, you know, I think there's a little confusion also, like when I say masses, it doesn't just mean like on day one, you know, that we reached like, you know, 100 million Americans audience, it means being able to get to the average Joe. And even if it's a small market, you reach the average Joe in that small market, that would potentially show that we could replicate that, you know, in any city, or, you know, is that, is that like a fair definition?

I'm not, I'm not, I didn't, I missed the part where we decided to focus specifically on plastic. I was just still on sustainability, whatever that means, undefined sustainability.

Yeah.

Um, there's feedback there.

Um, okay, we can make it more broad. Yeah, it doesn't have to just be plastic, but trying to like figure out how to address— well, I mean, not— when we originally came together, we came together with the mindset of sustainable products, so not like carbon-related sustainability, but sustainable products. So I think we should try to keep within that at least that context, is that not reasonable?

Yeah, for sure. Cause it's like, you know, sustainable produce, sustainable, you know, byproducts, things like that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

But specifically, and you were, you were thinking specifically addressing the like plastic, large amounts of plastics that are used. Yeah, I guess sustainable products to me can mean a lot of different things.

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think plastic's probably the biggest offender of this, you know. Okay, like, sure, of products. Uh, not like— we're not talking about carbon footprint stuff, but like purely—

so, um, sorry, sorry to cut you off. I just want to kind of keep this moving a little bit, so I'm going to throw myself in the, uh, on the grocery store e-commerce group. So, but everyone kind of knows which side they're on and like people who want to come up with ideas will come next week for their ideas. And then I think there's 4 people who said they wanted to do, who wanted to dig deeper into the store and e-commerce route? So it was Adam— actually, I should have written it down.

I don't—

was it Ulla and Vivek and Erica? I guess me. I got to include myself. How do we want to break up, um, uh, how do we want to break up that idea so we each have a piece to research?

Perhaps like you get— we can connect post-call or something.

Okay, do you want to just do that? I don't know, that's my— everyone okay with that?

I'm confused at the question.

Well, I guess I was just talking about the people who were, um, focused on the e-commerce, uh, store idea.

We're kind of, we're kind of breaking, uh, a break, like breaking the group up, sort of. Not breaking it up, but delegating. We're delegating. Yeah.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to— yeah, so I think we'll— yeah, we'll—

Brad, we'll follow up.

We'll just follow up. I just wanted to quickly, before we have to all jump off, Um, yeah, just a reminder, I can actually— assuming we're gonna do a call next week, um, you know, maybe same time, assuming everyone's fine with that. Uh, is that reasonable to assume, Tyler, Jennifer?

I'm good.

Yeah, that's okay with me.

Okay, and we'll just send this out. Um, I could use like— so I'm out actually.

This is—

we try to squeeze this meeting So I'm out next week, but I feel confident that you guys will figure this out and we'll proceed in the wisest direction possible. And, but I could use a hand, like sending out a follow-up note to like the normal group, which is what I would do. I don't know if anyone wants to take that.

Assignment. Is that a facilitator thing?

God damn it.

No, no, no, actually not.

What did I sign up for?

No, we can have a—

I mean, I can do it. It's fine.

Okay, sure.

Well, I guess, Jennifer, you have the notes, right? I kind of took rough notes.

Some rough notes.

Yeah.

Okay.

If this is recorded, I might not mind going back to the recording.

Plus we have to grab the chat. Is there any chat?

No, I'll get you guys the recordings, or we'll get you guys the recording somehow. And any other—

so maybe we can add to the Trello board why would you be doing research. And yeah, and then And yeah, like if you maybe you cannot think of something right away, but you can sleep on it and tomorrow you can add a card and say I'm gonna do research on this. And then next meeting we share our ideas and information and if we get— we vote again.

Yeah, sounds good. Goes in the— you think that goes in the business model board?

Maybe we can put it in the meetings board, just the title of the meeting or something, like, and then we can also add it to an action item that everyone has to do.

Okay.

Um, yeah, unfortunately we didn't get a chance to check out like next steps. Um, I think this is a healthy discussion, um, to worthy of our time. I would have loved to have gone through like sort of high level what the next steps in the process are. And, but hopefully, hopefully next week you guys will have a better feel of where we stand as a group and we can, we can get to that part after. Otherwise, I'll definitely share this stuff with, with Ulla and she'll have access to it. Perhaps be able to talk to you guys about it if time permits or something like that. But is that cool? Anything else?

So, uh, to wrap— I'd love to know consensus. So we all agreed to move to the fellow board. Is that what we could— because I'm following along the agenda, and it was discussion of the presentation. We came up with some ideas. We had some concerns. And then we came to consensus. What was the consensus?

We all, we vote on what we chose to vote on.

Yeah, we're going to kick the can to next week or the week after that. And yep, and we're also going to prepare more research for all, for ideas including the grocery store idea.

Yeah, that is like clear, Jennifer.

Uh, to be continued is what I'm going to be continuing.

I think it was And just confirming that we feel confident in the direction we're going to go work-wise.

Before we adjourn, do we have a way of keeping in contact besides email and Trello? Is there any way we can talk? Like, some, some organizations use Slack or Teams or a bunch of other chat room type, type things. I don't know if we're ready for that yet or not, but I was wondering if that was— that's potential, because I know sometimes I'll come up with an idea, whether it's after the shower or whenever, like after this call. Be nice to be able to just say, hey, I thought of this, is this a dumb idea, should I look into this further? But email seems too formal.

Thoughts?

You want me to research things we could potentially use for next— for next week?

A proposal? Okay, we'll do Talk about it.

Sounds good.

I do like Treams. Have you ever used Notion? I actually was thinking that Notion would be really good.

I haven't, but I'll— maybe we can use it together and see if it works.

Sure.

Yeah. I mean, yeah, I'd love to like hear a thought about it. I've been always like hesitant about these things because sometimes it creates like a lot of noise and to like, asynchronous nature of Trello had been nice, but perhaps like, you know, there, we want that ability to be able to share thoughts more freely. So maybe, maybe you can share some ideas. Yeah.

I mean, I'm, I'm probably thinking we would keep it, keep the group small to people that actually attend the meetings at first, and then eventually we could go bigger with it.

I think, I think that group that it was the group that's on that email thread, like they are the ones that respond. They haven't— not everyone has showed up, but they, they literally, you know, responded to some communication saying, hey, I would like to be, and they attended certain meetings. So I feel like they, at this point, they would be the group. We should, we should still include them.

Okay, sounds good.

I'll try to get something ready.

Okay, so, um, the people who are doing further research on the grocery, are we meeting after this?

Um, I can, or we were gonna, uh, for that, for like emails. I think we're gonna follow up with an email or something, but we can— I mean, I can meet now if you guys want to meet now.

Yeah, I could meet.

Okay, that means I need to meet.

I'll excuse excuse myself.

Yeah, I mean, are we spreading ourselves too thin here, or does it make sense to have 50% of us work on one thing?

I would like to have time to think about what kind of research I want to do and maybe just meet next week.

Oh, you mean save it for after next week?

Yeah, I would like to, like, I think right now is a little too soon to just talk about what research we're going to do.

Just to be clear, sorry, so Russell, Tyler, Jennifer, I think you guys could jam. I don't think you need to stick around, but Erica, like, I think they need to, we need to connect because the goal is to bring research to next meeting. So whether we do it now or via, we decide that through email or maybe you guys meet Thursday. Like they're just trying to figure out how we break up the research. That's the point.

Just so we're not doing the same work. Everyone's, you know, everyone's researching the same thing. That's the idea.

If I can, I propose Thursday because it's kind of late and yeah, we, I kind of, it's difficult for me to stay right now. Okay, but I would like to attend on like a call or something.

Yeah, that's what you're saying.

Okay, okay, yes, unless you guys want to just talk together and kind of pass it to us.

But, um, if Thursday works, um, Thursday can work for me. Um, I was expecting it to be like an email, but Not necessarily a call, but—

It doesn't have to be a call. I don't know, Adam, Erika?

Call is easy, but I'm starting to feel like skeptical that the group is going in different directions. I feel like we should focus on one thing or another. And when I voted to continue researching the grocery, I, it was almost like, okay, let's go down that path for a few weeks and get just deeper into it. Because any ideas that we're gonna bring to the table next week, it's only one week of work. So Vivek has taken the grocer idea way farther than anyone's gonna be able to for next week. Are we doing two things just because we're not finding consensus right now?

No, I think I have, I have ideas. I haven't really introduced myself yet. So like at some point I'm going to need to drop like the pool of knowledge that's in my head out to the, to the, to the group. And I think that maybe next week or the week after might be a good time for that. And The vision's not— the vision is, it's basically the same vision, but it's a different, you know, different strategies. And I don't know, like, it's not necessarily grocery specific. Like, it doesn't necessarily need to be grocery. So it would be a disservice to try to like hijack that when that seems like it's the— there's a lot more research that's already been done. I believe Tyler probably has something similar where he has ideas that he wants to test, which is why he brought that up.

But I'd like—

I'll let Tyler speak for himself.

No, that's exactly it. It's, to be completely frank, what I have in my head, it does include the grocery. It just puts it off a little longer. And so, um, and so yeah, I would just like some time to go through what I have, look at, look at what what research is out there along the lines of what I'm thinking and then come back to you with a more solid idea/opinion.

Yeah, I think that's good. I mean, I think in the end, we'll— my hypothesis is that we will end up with an amalgamation of all the ideas that we come back together with, either, you know, if it's next week or we want to, you know, push it back farther.

Cool.

Yeah, my hope is that we get excitement and we get an aha moment that's like everyone's just like, yes, this is what we need to do. And then we have consent in that way and we're just like, let's run. But I don't know if we've all found that yet, even though we all want to be there.

Yeah, to your point, Adam, I think we are still looking for consensus. I think that is the point. Wasn't that what you were asking, if we're kind of splitting up here too because we don't have consensus?

I guess my point was whichever direction we take, the one of proffering new ideas or the one of vetting the VEX idea, like they're probably going to get us to the same point at some point. You know, if we don't like— the grocery store for some reason, then we could start over in like a month. So I'm happy going in either trajectory.

Yeah.

And I wouldn't say that my, like, I'm a lone wolf, so I'm not going to be pulling resources from anybody else's efforts at this moment until we can all talk about it more and, and, and agree with that. Um, in fact, my ideal— ideally, out my work, whatever. Ideally, I'll get action items and I'll just be able to run with it and try to get things done for the, for the group's goals. But until then, but yeah, it's just a matter of getting, getting all of my ideas out so that people know what they are. Yeah, first.

Yeah, definitely.

I think that's good. Okay, so everyone kind of have an idea what, what we're going to do for the next meeting?

I think so.

So using Trello, right?

Yes, Trello is good.

Yeah.

Okay, well, but the people who are still researching at the grocery store, in order to not research the same thing, we— Adam proposed to divide what we are searching because Correct?

Yes.

Right. So our group, uh, no, doesn't know exactly what we are doing.

They're like, sure, I guess. Yeah, there's some more coordination.

That's why we just have to coordinate between us.

Yeah, that's what I said. Look, maybe we can just add a Trello card because we think overnight and say, okay, I want to do research about this, then someone else would just research about something else.

Yeah, that works.

And then we don't need to necessarily meet for this.

Yeah, the only reason a phone call might be better is because if, as we split it up, we might suggest what the next person might take. But Trello might sort it out on its own, so it's fine.

Cool.

Thanks, guys. I hope, you know, that, yeah, this Some of these processes sometimes takes a little longer than we all desire, but I think the good feedback and just a lot of discussion is healthy. We'll be better for it in the long run. Thanks, everybody. I'll see you guys in 2 weeks. And hopefully don't build the store next week or build something next week, but I'll be ready for it if it isn't. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

Thanks, guys.

Thanks.

Take care.

Bye.