The Radical Business Owner's Guide to Profit
The purpose of profit.
I’ve been on chewing variations of these two questions for years now:
How do business owners committed to positive social change understand and deal with profit?
Our businesses need profit to survive, but can we lead a profitable business without exploitation?
And I’ve long been struck by two interrelated truths: there’s a dearth of financial education in business and— related! —we’re not all that clear about what we’re talking about when we talk about profit.
On one end of the spectrum, there’s the mansplainers1 out there telling you to maximize profit: a strategy well suited to stealing everyone else’s toys. On the other, in an effort to distance from the harms of extractive capitalist commerce, are those who regard the substance with suspicion, distaste, or derision.
I want more for us than these polarities!
I want to treat profit as a form of care.
Non-exploitative profit has concerns— maintenance, care, future sustainability— separate from the production of individual wealth and infinite growth. We need profit, but not because it’s important to just make (more and more) money; we need profit because it’s part of tending to the humans and ecosystem of our businesses. This is not a middle way, a path of compromise, but a reorientation for considering the resources and purpose of business.
The first volume of The Radical Business Owner’s Guide to Profit is out today.
This zine is the first of a series exploring the mechanics of profit— what it is, how to grapple with it within your own business— while expanding a framework for how we might contend with profit as people that care deeply about non-extractive and non-exploitative ways of existing in the world.
To download The Radical Business Owner’s Guide to Profit, become a paid subscriber, or purchase a digital download without subscribing here.
Out Now: Volume 1 explores the purpose of profit for business owner's that care about people and the planet. How do you think about profit when you’re not hellbent on personal gain?
Coming October 2024: Volume 2 takes up the question of where profit comes from and how it is created: a not uncontested question!
Coming November 2024: Volume 3 considers various ideas for working with profit as a form of care and maintenance.
Digital Zine Downloads are available to all paid subscribers. OR purchase a copy without a subscription here.
Print Copies! there is a limited edition of hand bound print copies that will be sent to Zine Club Members (memberships available via subscription upgrade).