

In this episode of The Business Gay Podcast, host Calan Breckon speaks with Robin Shaban.
Robin is a consultant and Canadian public policy expert. They help advocates, businesses, and non-profits create government policy change by empowering them with in-depth economic and policy research and insights. They’re the Co-Founder and Chair of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, a fellow at both the Public Policy Forum and Social Capital Partners, and is an Associate Partner at Deetken Insight.
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Links mentioned in this episode:
- Robin Shaban on LinkedIn
- The Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project website
- The Public Policy Forum website
- Social Capital Partners website
- Deetken Insight
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Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
- [00:02] Robin Shaban emphasizes the need to address monopolies, which hinder consumer choice and entrepreneurial growth.
- [09:37] Monopolistic practices make it tough for new entrepreneurs to thrive, underscoring the need for stronger support programs for younger generations in the market.
- [18:19] Income disparities among LGBTQ+ individuals, especially bisexuals, highlight the importance of economic inclusion and targeted support.
- [26:43] Diversity drives innovation and economic growth; it’s crucial for businesses to integrate it into their core strategy, not just for marketing.
- [30:14] Entrepreneurs must master business fundamentals while also seeking to disrupt larger competitors in today’s market landscape.
- [34:21] Co-ops and alternative business models like worker owned businesses can promote fair economic gains by leveraging diverse perspectives.
Transcripts
[00:00:00] Calan Breckon: Looking to start a business, Ownr gives you the tools you need to get started today. Trusted by companies like rbc, futurepreneur and the City of Toronto, Ownr enables Canadian entrepreneurs to start, manage and grow their business. Right now, Ownr is offering their sole proprietor registration for just $49. I used Ownr to register my business back in 2020 and it was so easy to do. When I make the move to incorporate, I am definitely going through Ownr find out how easy it is to start your business today at calanbreckon.com/Ownr that’s O-W-N-R or click the link in the show notes. Now let’s get on to today’s episode.
Welcome to the Business Gay podcast where we talk about all things business, marketing and entrepreneurship. I’m your host Calan Breckon and on today’s episode I have Robin Shaban. Robin is a consultant and Canadian public policy expert. They help advocates, businesses and nonprofits create government policy change by empowering them with in depth economic and policy research and insights. They’re the co-founder and chair of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project, a fellow at both the Public Policy Forum and Social Capital Partners, and is an associate partner at Deetken Insight. I’m really excited to chat with Robin today about creating policy that helps shape our future. So let’s jump in.
Hey Robin, thank you so much for coming and joining me on the podcast. How are you doing today?
[00:01:32] Robin Shaban: I’m good. Thank you for having me.
[00:01:35] Calan Breckon: I’m so excited to have you because what we are going to be talking about today is so on point of the moment. So for everybody listening, we are recording this on January 10th, which I, I try to stay out of politics, but today we’re definitely jumping into it. But January 10th is the day that Donald Trump is being sentenced. He’s not obviously going to jail or anything like that, but he is a criminal. And so that is happening today. And they’re also hearing the TikTok ban at the in the US they’re they’re having that today as well at the Supreme Court. And so there’s a lot happening today around monopolies and big business and all these other things. And then also this episode will be airing after January 20, which is supposed to be the Inauguration day. And so it’s just kind of crazy that this specific podcast recording came at this time for us.
So bearing all that in mind, it’s going to colour a little of the conversation that we’re going to be having today. But are you ready? Are you ready to dive in, Robin?
[00:02:51] Robin Shaban: I think I can do it. Yeah, let’s go in.
[00:02:54] Calan Breckon: Okay. Awesome. So you’re the chair of the board and the co founder of the Canadian Anti-Monopoly Project. Why are you an anti monopolist? And why does tackling monopolies in Canada matter? And we can even take this broader into the world at large because I think it’s a really big important topic right now, especially with some Italian guy down in the US There’s a big monopoly thing, health care. So this I’m interested to hear your take.
[00:03:26] Robin Shaban: Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, you make a good point. Monopoly, it’s not just a Canadian issue, although we do have a lot of monopoly in Canada. It’s global, right? Because a lot of the biggest, most dominant firms in the world are global in nature. They’re the big digital companies, the Facebooks, Amazons. But monopoly is also a local issue too. And I think both levels of this are super important.
I’ll share a bit of my story, how I got into being obsessed with monopolies.
So when I was in university studying economics, I learned about the Competition Bureau. And this is an agency in the federal government that’s responsible for regulating marketplaces and making sure that Canadian marketplaces are competitive and not dominated by monopolies. And this matters because when we don’t have dynamic marketplaces where entrepreneurs can enter and offer meaningful, useful products and services to people, we all suffer, right? Consumers suffer because they lack choice.
They also lack innovative and new solutions. Entrepreneurs suffer because they face unfair barriers to growing their businesses that have nothing to do with their ability to deliver meaningful products or lack of hard work. Right? But are the result of unfair business practices that are enabled by bigger businesses that have dominance over marketplaces. And it also impacts people who work as well, right? When you don’t have a variety of options for where you could work, it means you get paid less and you get treated worse by your employer. So we all benefit from having these open dynamic marketplaces where businesses are competing with one another both for consumer attention in dollars, but also for worker talent. I should clarify that to say we all benefit except the monopolies, right? Obviously dominant businesses that have grown perhaps in their own merits, right? And have come to dominate marketplaces.
Obviously they get a lot of benefit from that because they can take income, they can take consumption dollars from consumers and workers and kind of just milk it. But are we as a society really benefiting from that model? No. And that’s why this work is so important.
Part of why advocacy in this area is really important is because for the longest time, the Policies and laws that regulate businesses and help to prevent monopolies in Canada have been really weak. And this is something that I came to learn when I got a job at the Competition Bureau. I worked hard in my undergrad and masters and was really one of my goals was to work at the Competition Bureau because I thought that these issues were really important. And when I got there, I realized, wait a minute, people here actually don’t care about this stuff. And a lot of that has to do with regulatory capture, which has improved over time. I’ll give the Competition Bureau credit on that. But there has been regulatory capture in this space, both in a very direct way, like relationships with big business that is permissive of big business, but also, too, there’s a mindset and an ideology that underpins that. This ideology that big is always better, that we need big businesses to compete effectively on the global scale as a Canadian economy.
But these things are not actually true or beneficial to Canadian society more broadly.
So this is why I’m so motivated to do work in this area and is why I did my PhD on the topic. I recently wrapped that up at Carleton University in the School of Public Policy. So something that I’m so excited to be talking about here with you today.
[00:07:58] Calan Breckon: And extremely passionate about. And we need people like you doing this work, because as a Canadian, we growing up, both of us in Canada, we understand and know that there’s the big businesses that just kind of run the country, and they just kind of continue to get bigger and bigger. And I remember growing up, like, cell phone was such a huge expense, like the hundreds of dollars people would pay to have a cell phone, because there was such little choice that they knew that they could charge through the nose whatever they wanted. And I just look at things now and I. The world is really in a very precarious position right now because people have kind of come to a point where they’re absolutely fed up with it, with the rates and everything, that they have jumped exponentially after the pandemic. And it seems as if capitalism is kind of turned into the Ouroboros and it’s now eating its own tail and it really doesn’t have anywhere else to go. And that dystopian world of, well, there’s eventually just going to be one big corporation or a couple of big corporations, and, like, we’re all going to have to bow down to them. And it’s like, okay, I guess you won capitalism. Like, like what’s right? Yeah, like, what’s the outcome for it? And it blows My mind that it’s not like I look at big businesses, fiduciary duty is to turn, do business and make money. And so you can’t blame them for doing what their job is. And some people get really upset about that because they’re like, well, they should care about this and that and the other. And I’m like, some do, but their duty truly is to make money, and that is their goal. And thus that is why we have government. Because in my mind, government’s role is supposed to then be the social socialist, I guess you could say, side of that where they balance that out and they provide that counterbalance to it. And it’s supposed to be kind of this functional circle that everybody’s kind of feeding off everybody, and it’s all working together collectively to move in a direction. But that’s clearly not the way things have gone. Our government works very differently than the US for sure.
Very glad that we have the rules and restrictions we have around financing, you know, elections and stuff here in Canada.
But when it comes to monopolies, growing up, it, it was such a big issue, and it still is because there’s really not a lot of options in this country because we don’t have the population per se to support it. And so what are some of the things that big businesses do that are hurting competition and entrepreneurs today? Because there’s so many of them.
[00:10:38] Robin Shaban: Yeah, yeah. Well, and I mean, before I launch into that, I want to say that there’s, I think people broadly understand how monopoly isn’t good for consumers. It hurts consumers, it hurts us as we’re going to the grocery store, buying the food goods and services we need. It’s also not great for workers either. Right. And I think on an intuitive level, we really understand that.
But what’s often overlooked in the conversation is how. How monopoly is bad for entrepreneurs. And there’s this tension between, in that dialogue, because on the one hand, entrepreneurs want opportunities to be successful. Right? No one’s. No entrepreneur is asking the universe to hand success to them on a silver platter. Right. That’s not the game of entrepreneurship.
And entrepreneurs want to grow businesses depending on your goals. Right. But many entrepreneurs want to grow businesses is to become leaders in their marketplace.
So that’s the, the one dimension of this. But then there’s the other dimension where if you are a market leader for too long or you’re a market leader and you get that top spot and you’re not working for it anymore, that’s a problem. Right. Entrepreneurship is an ongoing process of Competing against other businesses. Right. And there’s that tension that we need to reconcile. At the same time, though, I think everyone can agree that competition is critical for opening doors to people who have innovative ideas and solutions that they want to bring to market. And one of the ways that a lack of competition, or rather one of the ways that big businesses can hamper that sort of opportunity is through merger and acquisition activity. So not all mergers and acquisitions are bad, but oftentimes businesses will use mergers and acquisitions in order to maintain their dominant position in a marketplace without actually having to work for it. Right. Like, they’re basically just. I mean, that’s opportunity and success on a silver platter, right? Here, take my money so that I can become more successful versus thinking about how to improve current products or services or come up with new products and services to maintain that top spot in the marketplace. So M and A can sometimes be good, but is sometimes used by businesses to keep out potential competitors by remaining in this top spot without actually having to work for it.
Another issue that can happen is dominant businesses can collude with one another, right? And there’s two types of collusion. There’s this really explicit collusion, like dudes getting together on the golf course and talking about how much they’re going to sell their product for this week. Yeah, bread, right?
[00:13:49] Calan Breckon: That was a big thing in Canada.
[00:13:51] Robin Shaban: Yeah, yeah.
But there’s also tacit collusion. And this is a situation where dominant businesses in a marketplace collude without actually speaking to one another. And they can do this by, over time, learning and recognizing patterns in each other’s pricing strategies. And it becomes more of like a wink, wink and less of a calling up my buddy and agreeing on the price of something.
And that is a real problem, especially in markets like telecom and airlines where you have a small number of big players. And obviously this increases the price of key services that businesses need to succeed. Right. Telecom, travel. And we can see this in other markets as well.
Dominant businesses could also use their dominant position in conjunction with sneaky business tactics to what’s called abuser dominant position. This is the technical term within competition law. So this could look like setting up exclusive agreements with suppliers, upstream suppliers, knowing that if there are new entrance competitors that want to enter the market but need that critical input, they’ll be blocked from accessing that. That is a really common play. Another type of abuse of dominance is predatory pricing. So if a dominant business sees that an entrepreneur wants to enter the market, they may totally plunge their prices down and keep those prices low. So that it’s not viable for an entrepreneur to enter the marketplace. And they can do this as a dominant business because they’re making. Yeah, they have the cash cow, right? They dominate the market. They have all this cash available because they’re just milking it and they can outlast a new entrant that’s coming in. So there’s all sorts of strategies and tactics and competition law is supposed to prevent these sorts of things so that entrepreneurs can enter marketplaces and viably compete.
[00:16:00] Calan Breckon: I didn’t even think about the one where they would lower the price so low that the new entrepreneur coming in can’t compete. I’ve, I actually experienced this just in the business that I’m building and what I’m doing as an entrepreneur entering the market. In today’s world, you’re up against such behemoths that when discussing with investors and other people, it’s almost just like, they’re like, good luck because they know how the game is being played. Especially in what I’m calling specifically right now in today’s world, late stage capitalism, where there is these insane companies that just have insane market values like Apple, Microsoft, what have you, the big names. Um, and for me or for anybody to get your foot in the door is just such an uphill battle that I look around and I’ve talked to a number of folks in government and outside of government about this, about how there needs to be those programs set up to give younger generations the leg up and the opportunity and the equitable opportunity to get into the market through entrepreneurship programs, but also teaching them how to buy businesses, giving them access to the capital to do so. Because if we don’t, it will just continue to go in this direction. Then there’ll be like five corporations that own absolutely everything, which is kind of where the world has gone. And we’re going to be experiencing what we’re experiencing now, where people are fed up, they have no more money to go and have fun. And this. I’m going to go off on a tangent here. I’m so sorry. No go laid on me.
[00:17:35] Robin Shaban: Let’s go.
[00:17:36] Calan Breckon: This, like this all leads back to, I look at the kind of mental health crisis and what we’re experiencing, today’s world and Gen Z not being as sociable and all these aspects and they’re like, oh well, it’s this problem, it’s this problem, it’s this. I’m like, no, it’s capitalism. It’s capitalism after all. Like Karis Wisher’s book. Oh, so it was Capitalism, after all.
Yeah, like it, it goes back to that because if you don’t have extra funds to go out and have fun with, you don’t have the capacity to create those relationships, to create those friendships, to create those safe spaces where it’s like, yeah, I have an extra couple hundred bucks each month that I’m allowed to go out and have fun with. And so people are staying home and I, I one of these prime people, like if I had the extra cash, I’d love to go out and be with friends. But I know once I leave that front door, that’s like a hundred bucks minimum to go out and do anything and have fun in any kind of regard. And so people are opting not to do it because they don’t have the extra funds to do it, because they have to pay for all these basics of being a human, like shelter, communication, what have you, that they don’t have it to go out. And then that’s creating these mental health issues that people like, oh, it’s this, it’s that and the other. And it’s like, no, if people just had a decent living and could enjoy life, then a lot of these problems would be solved. But this is the late stage capitalism. Acting like it is, and I’m not. Capitalism in and of itself isn’t bad. It is the way people have used and abused it because every like, it just seems like more needs more, needs more and it’s so gluttonous and it’s just like, at what point are you going to be like, okay, I won the game. I’m not going to say a specific person’s name because I think they’re disgusting human being now. But like, at what point have you won the game that like you can’t go and escape Earth and go to Mars and start again? Like the work to do that is so much more than the work to just do it here on Earth, that it’s like, what is so wrong with humans that we can’t just take care of ourselves now? And so that’s why I think this next couple years, 20, 25, 26, 27, is really going to be a pivotal point for the human race as a society as a whole. Because we all see the writing on the wall and we’re like, something truly has to change, but I don’t know what that is. And so folks like yourself who have way more insight into how these things actually function and work, I hope are going to be the ones that float to the surface and are able to implement new things and that society as a whole shifts to appreciate folks like yourselves more who know how to implement things and what to implement that will truly actually make a difference and a change.
[00:20:19] Robin Shaban: No pressure. No pressure.
[00:20:21] Calan Breckon: Yeah.
[00:20:21] Robin Shaban: You just need pivotal change in humanity and.
[00:20:28] Calan Breckon: Right, right. Social. The whole society just shifting gears. Okay, so speaking of shifting gears, let’s change topics just slightly. You’re a fellow at the Public Policy Forum, which is a think tank. The PPF recently put out a report that you wrote about economic and financial inclusion. In it, you say one quarter of people report facing barriers to earning a livelihood. Can you tell us more about that study and what we can learn from it in order to support. I want to talk specifically about, like, queer entrepreneurs.
[00:21:01] Robin Shaban: Yeah, yeah. So, like, everything you were just saying ties in so well with what our goals were for this report. So the focus of this was economic and financial inclusion. So how can we create economic and financial systems so that everyone in Canadian society can participate? And one of the core principles underlying the research was the axiom that everyone is entitled to wealth, and wealth means different things to different people. But when we thought about wealth, we thought about it as an experience. It was the feeling and the security that come with knowing that you can afford everything that you need and then have some leftover for that fun stuff. Right. And oftentimes when we think about poverty or we think about financial and economic exclusion, we think about people being deprived. Right. Like you’re deprived of the resources you need to effectively participate in society. So the principles that you’re talking about here are so closely connected to the experience of exclusion, the experience of poverty. And I think one of the characteristics of this version of capitalism we’re in today is this, in a lot of ways, where we live in a world of abundance, yet we have, especially younger generations, have less than what they had before, both in terms of the actual incomes they have, but also opportunity. Right. Opportunity to exert oneself to get more wealth and security. And those are two really important dimensions in all of this.
So back to the study in particular, and some of the findings. So we found that there were about 6 million households that reported facing barriers to making money. And that means that there’s a large proportion of Canadian. Canadian society that is not bringing their full potential to society. And when I looked at LGBTQ people in particular, there were some really interesting results. And I’ll preface this by saying there are a lot of data gaps, especially for transgender people. From a quantitative standpoint, these gaps are partly because the population is relatively small, so it’s difficult for US to draw broad insights from a small population. But it also has to do with gaps in reporting, which Statistics Canada, our statistical agency, is working hard to fill. So it’s a matter of time before we get insight on transgender people. But what we do have are insights about gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. And something that I found absolutely shocking from the data were employment disparities between particularly bisexual people and straight, but also gay and lesbian people. So when you look at the breakdown of income potential or employment income for these different groups, you find that in general, obviously, straight men make the most.
And there are also pay disparities between straight men, straight women, gay men, and lesbians. But in general, with the income from these groups is relatively similar compared to bisexual people, who stand out as earning far, far less than their peers, especially for bisexual men. And the disparities were so profound, like, I almost didn’t believe it. But if you’re looking at, take two men with a bachelor’s degree or more, one is bisexual, one is straight. The typical employment earnings for a bisexual man is about half that of a straight man.
So, like, yeah, it’s. It’s insane. It’s insane. And I do think a big part of that is age disparities, because younger men who report being bisexual tend to be much younger than straight men on average.
And there are actually a lot of discrimination drivers of that reporting, because the reality is there is a lot of bisexual stigma in our society today.
And the pay disparity you see there is actually driven in large part by this ongoing discrimination and bias against bisexual people, especially bisexual men. And this shows up not just in statistics from Statistics Canada, but also more qualitative research done by various academics, mostly in the U.S.
so there’s more work that needs to be done not only within Canadian society, but also within the LGBTQ community to create more inclusion and erase stigma, because when we have segments of the population that are stigmatized, it undermines mental health, which then has an impact on earning potential, but it also has a direct effect of keeping bisexual people out of opportunities that they otherwise could be a great fit for. So there’s a lot more that needs to be done in that area. And one of the things that I recommend in the report, and I’ll say that the aim of the report here, was to provide recommendations for government, right? What can government be doing? What policies can governments implement to create more economic and financial inclusion? And one of the key recommendations is broad. It’s a bit existential, but I call it flipping the script. And that is actually shows up in the title of the report. And what I mean by flipping the script is instead of thinking of inclusion and diversity and inclusion as an afterthought to a business’s strategy or as sort of window dressing for marketing purposes, actually understanding inclusion as a business strategy, particularly for businesses that are innovation centered, Diversity and innovation do have a link and that the success.
How do I want to say this?
It’s not enough just to throw a bunch of people together with various backgrounds in a room and say, be innovative. Like, that’s not how it works. You do need management systems to actually capitalize on the benefits of diversity. But we need to be thinking of diversity as an innovation strategy that is an engine for economic growth, not as a nice afterthought of, yeah, let’s get rich, and then, you know, then we can do nice things.
[00:28:28] Calan Breckon: Yeah, there’s. I know that Mark Cuban down in the US is a big proponent of this and he has like doubled down on it because there’s the whole anti DEI movement happening from the far right in a lot like Canada and the U.S. um, and it’s just the basics of it in my mind is I was like, well, if you have a diverse surrounding, a diverse voices surrounding you, you’re going to get a much broader picture of the reality of real life and real people in that world, that different needs will help different people and different things, and that that can only support your business and support that growth. And Mark Cuban is a proponent of that. He’s like, I need these voices in my organization because if we’re just all an eco, like an echo of each other, nothing is going to change. But that’s what a lot of people want is they want to keep the status quo, they want to keep the normal. Because a lot of people are fearful to death of change.
It’s like the biggest, scariest thing for so many people. And that’s, you know, why I think a lot of things are happening right now is people are so terrified of change because they don’t understand it. And also just generationally, the boomer generation grew up in such a different era and different times than Gen Z right now. I thought millennials were kind of in the. I thought we kind of were the ones experiencing it, but we were the bridge gap over it. We were kind of like the bridge between, like, okay, we get it, parents, but, like, we are going to be like this and like, we’re the ones coming out and like, we really pushed forward that, like, coming out, be yourself and all that. That it made the Gen Zs feel safer to be themselves than to do that. To the point where I think there was a study and upwards of 30% of Gen Z now identifies as LGBTQ to some degree. And that a large, I think like 60% of that 30% is bisexual. And that’s how they associate themselves. And it goes back to my original theory of like, just life in general, that like the, like humanity as a whole is very sexually fluid and there’s these rules that have been pushed on us and narratives that we have to live by, that we’re now seeing the breakdown of those rules and boundaries of what we were supposed to be. That Gen Z’s like it because they’re so screwed in so many ways that they’re like, well, might as well just enjoy my life. Because once you break out of the box and break out of that fearful thinking of change, so many things open up. And that’s also why I think that queer. I’m going to use that as a broad spectrum. Yeah, Queer entrepreneurs, queer folks are a lot more innovative and perform better in business. Statistically. We have the data now. StartOut did a study where entrepreneurs of queer background do perform better and have higher numbers and better return rates and file more patents than regular heterosexual counterparts in business when it comes to entrepreneurship. And I think it’s because the adversity we have faced has forced us to be more creative and that we are passing that on to later generations.
So, yeah, I could go on forever about all this stuff.
So based on your research.
[00:31:47] Robin Shaban: Yeah.
[00:31:48] Calan Breckon: What do you see as the biggest thing? Entrepreneurs, especially queer entrepreneurs, need to be thinking about moving into the future.
[00:31:56] Robin Shaban: Okay. So business fundamentals are key. Right. There’s no substitute for that. So if you’re an entrepreneur and you want to be successful, you need a good idea. You need proper product market fit, like the fundamentals, you need to have them. But to your point, right, about generational shift, the competitive environment that entrepreneurs are working in today is different than the past, I would say. What makes it different?
Back to your experience, right with the bow.
The players that you’re going up against are bigger, the stakes are higher.
So to be successful, you need to be more disruptive. You need to be thinking about, how am I fundamentally disrupting some of the largest Goliaths in my industry? Unless you’re doing something totally Greenfield where you don’t really have a whole lot of competition, you need to be thinking on that scale. The scale is bigger and the risks are higher. Right. I think that the potential for success, quite frankly, isn’t as high as it used to be in the past, depending on the type of market you’re going into. But the potential returns from that can be higher because we’re in a more winner take all dynamic in a lot of marketplaces. And that’s the nature of competition when you’re going up against big players.
So if you’re navigating that sort of landscape, like how do you go about doing that? And I, I’m a big proponent of strategic thinking. And your typical four square SWOT analysis is not going to cut it like that is. It’s insufficient for most marketplaces today. When I’m working with any type of organization, whether it’s for profit or nonprofit, I like to develop what I call a system map. And this is a methodology that comes from strategic foresight. So using essentially methods that futurists and other long term thinkers and strategists use to do analysis. And a system map means that you quite literally map out your environment that you’re operating in with all the different competitors, consumer groups, government organizations that are regulating you, et cetera, et cetera. And once you have that really clear lay of the land, you need to develop a vision. So given the context I’m operating within, what is my contribution to this environment and how am I going to fundamentally disrupt it? Because again, those are the stakes that we’re operating in today. In most marketplaces it’s not just about opening the community store, the coffee shop down the street, even the coffee shop down the street is competing with Starbucks, a multinational organization. So how are you going to be fundamentally disrupting some of these bigger players? You need to up level strategic thinking and come in with a really clear, crisp and compelling vision. And that takes time, but it’s doable. And I’m hopeful that entrepreneurs, I mean queer or not, are able to surmount these new challenges and create more opportunity for themselves and all of us too.
[00:35:34] Calan Breckon: Do you think things like co ops are going to become a lot more popular in the coming years?
[00:35:42] Robin Shaban: Yeah, I think alternative business models are also really important. And they’re really important because they are a way for us to share the gains of our economic prosperity more fairly. Right.
It really comes down to joint ownership and that could look like cooperatives. It could also look like employee owned business.
And what’s really interesting about these business models as well is that I think they’re really set up to capitalize on diversity. Right. Like we talked about before, we know that queer entrepreneurs have, or queer workers for that matter. Even queer consumers have unique perspectives that can really support good business strategy.
And if we’re able to leverage those insights along with all other insights from various different types of people, business can be more robust and successful.
[00:36:42] Calan Breckon: Wow.
[00:36:43] Robin Shaban: The way of doing business in the past is just not. It’s not going to cut it. Like we, we. If we want innovation, it needs to start with us.
[00:36:51] Calan Breckon: Yeah, truly. Yeah, truly. This has been such a delightful and insightful conversation. I could go on for hours with you. And I know I can because we’ve done it before.
We’ve done it before. Which is why I’m like, we have to have a podcast about this. Thank you so much, Robin, for being on the podcast today. Where can folks find out more about you or connect with you or contact you?
[00:37:14] Robin Shaban: Sure. Yeah. Well, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. That’s where I’m most active. I have a blog called Open Mind Economics and it’s my thought play space, so you can find information about that on my LinkedIn.
So yeah, please reach out on social media. I’d love to keep the conversation going.
[00:37:36] Calan Breckon: Perfect. Awesome. I’ll make sure to have all those links in the show notes for everybody to contact. Robin. Robin, thank you so much. Have a absolutely magical day.
[00:37:44] Robin Shaban: You too. Thanks so much for having me.
[00:37:46] Calan Breckon: Thanks for tuning in today. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. And if you really enjoyed today’s episode, I would love a star rating from you. The Business Gay podcast is written, produced and edited by me, Calan Breckon. That’s it for today. Peace, love, rainbows.