One on the Left, One on the Right

The two people walking in front of me were talking about what they wished existed. They seem to have some money to invest, but they didn’t dare do so. The person on my left suggested to the one on my right to invest in somebody you know, maybe someone in your family?

But, responded the right person, I don’t have anybody like that!

Person on the left laughed and said, Well, neither do I. And I don’t have that much to invest, either.

A bit later, the person on the left brought up “community” and the person on the right said, yes, right, I wish I knew where my money went. The big funds end up investing in things I don’t like. They invest in a clean business, but it owns another business and it owns another business that sells some crap like vaporizers.. And, oh, the irony: she said this just as they were walking in front of a store that sold CBT vapes.

A bit later they walked ahead as I got to where I was going.

Radical Investments

As they were talking I kept thinking that Radical investments addressed their issues. Radical investments fail like investments (i.e. if the company does not make it, the money is gone), but they look like loans in that you get a return on your money. The latter could range from a percentage of the investment amount to a percentage of revenue for some time. No matter, there are no shares and you don’t have any other powers over the company. This sounds a lot like what is commonly known as a friends-family-and-fools investment, the foundation of which is trust.

The foundation of a Radical investment is trust as well. But,; the counter goes, there is not enough trust in the world to fund all the unicorns that are coming up. Indeed, many of these have lost their horns and are no longer unicorns. In any case, those are capital investments, purely for wealth. Whether or not they contribute to the health of the community don’t matter, these investments are made exclusively to generate wealth. Radical investments are made to generate wellbeing, and some wealth.

Wellbeing Comes First

Wealth generation almost invariably comes at the cost of the wellbeing of the founders, that of the “ground floor” employees, and the wellbeing of the community as well. As one upset Board member put it, Your job is to leverage our investment. Otherwise, you are not going to get anything for all the effort you and your crew are putting in! Scary words which you take as a warning that you’d better listen to and do what you have to do to leverage their investment, even if it costs you your wellbeing, your family’s, and that of you “your crew” (i.e., your friends).

From that perspective, the wellbeing of your community does not count. And as we now know, the wellbeing of our environment, our life support system, has been the loser as we chase wealth.

As a practice supported by the Radical system, Radical investments do not put pressure (i.e., force) on co-owners. And because of this, these investments are robust, long lasting, and make the odds of financial success higher. And all of this without the cost to wellbeing to companies or their communities.^∇

ENDNOTES

• Matt Perez, Adrian Perez. Radical Investments. 2022. <https://radicalcompanies.com/2022/10/18/radical-investments.html>