Business as usual

It's one of my great regrets that I have always found it far easier to get a job in a corporation in the top three in its sector, than I have been able to get a job in a charity. All of the odds should be in my favour; market leading companies on my CV, experience worth probably hundreds of thousands of pounds, but no success. The loop I've faced is: see, apply, don't get acknowledged/don't get invited to interview.

This is a shame for me because, as must be obvious by now, I'm not greatly motivated by money - I don't want to be a fund manager or a venture capitalist. I'm much more interested in the effects of my work on people.

So in the past week I've put £5 into Trading 212, to deal stocks and shares to see if that's viable as a business, although admittedly the idea leaves me quite cold and so I haven't chosen which shares to buy.

What I'm particularly interested in is business as a lever to improve things; all around us recently we have only seen the exact opposite either by, or for, business. Either things have been run down so that private companies can enjoy a fire sale of assets to turn a profit on (the NHS, for example), or private companies have failed so miserably that what should be something worthy and worthwhile is pretty much ruined (i.e. the railway franchises where the taxpayer will eventually pick up the pieces).

What if we could start a venture that 'made money' out of doing good? The comedian Stewart Lee mused that there are hugely rich comedians, and also comedians such as himself, who have never achieved great financial security, though he also pointed out that if you can get a hardcore of 5,000 fans willing to pay £10 each to see you, that's a nice living. (Which gives me the opportunity to share unquestionably the greatest lead into a gag ever: https://youtu.be/IkI9h7EGYvI)

So what if the company doing good made enough for a person, but not huge profit - essentially a lifestyle business?

What if we didn’t sell anything? What if we gave it away and asked people to donate according to what value they thought the venture brought? Trading in coins not being a valid business under my self-imposed rules, I’m going to have a go at the above idea.

Progress this week: I’ve begun getting a transcript together of The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Before this coming week’s update, I’m going to pick stock and invest.

Comments

Beginner’s luck

Three Fivers is predicated upon being able to start a ‘business’ that makes money from just five pounds of investment. Today I could close it down as successful. In my first ever venture into share dealing, I bought £5 worth of Harland and Wolff shares at 4:05pm. At 4:38pm, I offloaded them for a 13p (2.6%) profit. Not enough to pay the mortgage, nor even to qualify as a side hustle, but profit nonetheless. 13p doesn’t buy much these days - not even a Freddo - but, 2.6% profit compounded does add up; my love of a spreadsheet shows how profit becomes more interesting over five days below. Over 12 months (365 days, although you cannot trade for at least 104 of these days) that would turn my humble £5 into around £5300. Not bad. I’m not especially enamoured of share trading, but it can be quite interesting I think if I add in additional rules; devote a maximum of 5 minutes a day to it and invest the whole of the capital at once - no portfolio. Whether this will survive even the next ...

Happy New Year

A quick post - later than I wanted, but close to my promised weekly post. A very quick update - for 2023, I hope I lose all of the princely £5 invested in the share trading app, because I’ve had an alternative idea that I want to include, but rules are rules… On the publishing company, we’re closer to being able to republish stuff that interests me; as I understand it (and there’s always that nagging possibility that I do not understand it at all), copyright law allows for free reproduction after the author’s life + 75 years have elapsed. Therefore, after the 21st January 2025, royalty-free reproduction of George Orwell’s works will be possible. In the meantime, I’m going to try to curate a group of great influential books such as The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists in a sort of socialist imprint. That should cover some considerable time and effort, but is at least something concrete. For now, Happy New Yesr!

Failure is not the same as a business failing

Already, I have failed. It's not terminal to the project, maybe not even to the strand of the project, but it's failure nonetheless. Despite literally *minutes* of trying, I've been unable to link Google's AdSense to this blog to (hopefully) monetise the blog. (If anyone can explain to me how I get round a circular set of "Press this to verify > You need to do this in blogger.com > Go to Google AdSense > Press this to verify", I'm all ears.) Now, I'm pretty unmoved by this - I've lost nothing and I'd be writing these anyway. Everyday I hear of more and more businesses that are laying people off, closing UK operations or just plain going under. That's heartbreaking, because they're not just venturing a fiver and writing stuff in lunchbreaks. Fortunately, I still have a nominal five quid left - having used no resource other than my time - to invest into another venture. Comments are open and I'm open to ideas, before I start ...

Three Fivers

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