No, this isn't a review of Spike Lee's 1989 breakout film. This is about doing the right thing in business. We're all just trying to pay the bills, and with a lot of work and a little luck, maybe a little more than that. We're trying to do that against a backdrop of a world where commerce is widely viewed with suspicion. A world where, at least in appearance if not in reality, huge corporations constantly exploit their customers.
So how does this happen? A common belief is that out-of-touch billionaires are just evil people who care more about profits than humanity, and they engineer it to happen that way. That their lack of humanity and willingness to exploit their customers was what brought them their profits. It's a characterization that's not far from Mr. Burns on The Simpsons wringing his hands and exclaiming "Excellent Smithers! Excellent!" as his latest evil scheme comes to fruition. In contrast, small and/or local businesses are looked at as heroes. The math seems to be
Big Business = Bad / Small Business = Good.
I'm not sure I buy that. I remember graduating theater school in my 20s, and feeling like I wanted to make a living as an actor... but thinking I didn't want to be a sell-out. That there was an inherent tension between artistic integrity and commercial success. It seems to me that many people see a similar tension between being a real, compassionate human being and having commercial success. I think that a certain shrewdness can be a valuable trait for an entrepreneur to have, but I don't think it has to cost you your humanity. It's a cultural myth that commerce is an inherently exploitative pursuit, a myth that we as business owners can be seduced by as easily as anyone else, and that's part of the problem. We see a battle between the business devil on one shoulder, telling us that we need to do whatever we can to make it work, and the humanity angel on the other shoulder telling us to do what we feel is right.
It's complicated, right?
Volumes have been written on business ethics. If it was easy to run a business and avoid ethical pitfalls, everyone would be doing it, right? Well, I think there is something simple at the bottom. Something that if we use as a north star, it can steer us in the right direction. It's remembering that commerce, at its core, is a deeply communal, compassionate human pursuit. In this day and age, that almost sounds ludicrous, so let it sink in; commerce is deeply human, deeply co-operative, deeply compassionate. It's the way we've learned to distribute goods and labor that, at least in theory, offers everyone involved the maximum dignity and the maximum value. I think that as long as we are connected to this appreciation of the underlying humanity of commerce, we can simultaneously be good business people and good people. Being better at one should feed being better at the other, not the other way around.
You must be wondering why this is posted on a blog on a voiceover artist's website. Putting aside my personal penchant for opining philosophically, I want everyone I do business to understand what doing business means to me. It doesn't just mean "exchanging a service for a negotiated fee", it means that when I agree to take your money, your interests become my interests. What is good for you is good for me. My financial success relies almost exclusively on your satisfaction. I am your surrogate. That's what you buy when you go into business with me. If you're reading this and you're not someone who wants to do business with me, but are in business yourself, let me just say that I recommend this approach. It's not because I want to make a moral judgement on you, and tell you that you need to "do the right thing". You're all grown ups, and you don't need me telling you what to do. The thing is... it's just a joyful way of doing business! I can't recommend it enough!
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