…Okay, everyone, I’m probably going to piss someone off with this. This is your heads up. Ethics are a long game and flipping houses is not it. Pick a business that doesn’t make people homeless.
Transcript
Okay, everyone, I'm probably going to piss someone
Leela Sinha:off with this. This is your heads up. Ethics are a long
Leela Sinha:game. When I first started coaching, approximately 1
Leela Sinha:million years ago, I wanted to use the word "pleasure," I
Leela Sinha:wanted to talk about pleasure, I wanted to talk about the ways
Leela Sinha:that we bring pleasure to each other, not sex, but pleasure.
Leela Sinha:Pleasure, the pleasure of grass between your toes, the pleasure
Leela Sinha:of warm sun on your face on a cold day, the pleasure of food
Leela Sinha:when you're hungry. I had a chemistry teacher in high school
Leela Sinha:who used to talk about the pleasure of getting to pee when
Leela Sinha:you need to pee. Like, basic, basic pleasure. And I wanted to
Leela Sinha:talk about the ways in which connecting to our own pleasure
Leela Sinha:makes us good leaders. I had a website. It's called The Power
Leela Sinha:of Pleasure and Leadership. Well, the first problem I ran
Leela Sinha:into was that I couldn't actually use the word pleasure
Leela Sinha:for pretty much anything; every time I tried to create like a
Leela Sinha:Facebook group with the word pleasure in it, it got flagged
Leela Sinha:for being I don't know, racy? Because I wanted to talk about
Leela Sinha:grass and bare feet? It took a long time, it took about twelve,
Leela Sinha:ten years maybe? Ten years from the inception of my business, I
Leela Sinha:started noticing that a lot of people were talking about
Leela Sinha:pleasure that a lot of people were talking about a lot of
Leela Sinha:things that I had tried to talk about and found that nobody
Leela Sinha:wanted to help me talk about them. In fact, when I first
Leela Sinha:started my business, I consulted some marketing experts, because
Leela Sinha:marketing wasn't a thing I knew anything about. And they all
Leela Sinha:told me that I had to get the word pleasure out of there,
Leela Sinha:because it was too scary. It was too hard for people to handle
Leela Sinha:that. They wouldn't hire me, they wouldn't be able to talk to
Leela Sinha:their friends about me it was going to make it impossible for
Leela Sinha:my business to grow. Maybe I should have known better, but I
Leela Sinha:was struggling. So I took their advice and redirected and
Leela Sinha:refocused and re-everythinged. But pleasure has never gotten
Leela Sinha:out of the root of what I do. And so now when I see businesses
Leela Sinha:cropping up that are about pleasure, and leadership or
Leela Sinha:pleasure in business, I think, uh huh. Yeah, I guess I was just
Leela Sinha:a little ahead of the game. I still talk about pleasure. I
Leela Sinha:mean, that's really what intensives and expansives, the
Leela Sinha:whole framework, that's what that's about, is about being
Leela Sinha:able to create a workplace where you feel good about being at
Leela Sinha:work, where you aren't miserable being at work, where you're
Leela Sinha:excited to be at work, I mean, come on, right? And that seems
Leela Sinha:like it should be obvious. And in this year, 2022, third year
Leela Sinha:of the pandemic, it, it seems a lot more obvious than it was
Leela Sinha:back then. But sometimes it's a long game. Sometimes you have an
Leela Sinha:idea, and it's too early for it. Sometimes you have an idea, and
Leela Sinha:you have to wait for enough other people to have the idea at
Leela Sinha:the same time. Sometimes you have an idea, and you have to
Leela Sinha:wait for a less marginalized person to have that idea out
Leela Sinha:loud first. Yeah, when first to market is not an advantage.
Leela Sinha:Because of who you are, or how you show up. That's, that's
Leela Sinha:tricky. But I'm off topic, because what I want to talk
Leela Sinha:about today is the way that we have to think about ethics as a
Leela Sinha:long process, we can't just think about what's ethical in
Leela Sinha:this moment although that's important, we also have to think
Leela Sinha:about the long impact, the long term impact, the long reach
Leela Sinha:impact. So imagine the impact of the ripples that go out from the
Leela Sinha:stone, not just the first two ripples, but all of the ripples
Leela Sinha:that go out from the stone into the pond, and then from the pond
Leela Sinha:to the shore. And from the surface of the water down, and
Leela Sinha:the impact of that stone landing in the water. And traveling
Leela Sinha:through the water and ending up on the soft muddy bottom of the
Leela Sinha:pond. You know with the kind of mud that squishes between your
Leela Sinha:toes. But to have that kind of relationship with the rock in
Leela Sinha:the pond and the ripples in the mud. You have to spend time with
Leela Sinha:the pond, you have to know the pond you have to walk across the
Leela Sinha:pond when it's frozen or dangle your toes in it when it's warm
Leela Sinha:and still in the middle of summer when nothing seems to be
Leela Sinha:moving, but it's a little relief from the heat. You have to know
Leela Sinha:what that mud feels like between your toes. Or know that you
Leela Sinha:don't want to know what that mud feels like between your toes.
Leela Sinha:You have to you have to know that there's that one fish that
Leela Sinha:swims through the middle but never quite close enough for you
Leela Sinha:to tell what it is. And then there are like at least two
Leela Sinha:frogs that grow and live along the edge of the pond but you've
Leela Sinha:never seen them, you've just heard them on a summer night
Leela Sinha:walking home slapping mosquitoes. You've got to know
Leela Sinha:the ecosystem of the pond. And so when I see
Leela Sinha:people in my neighborhood, I live in the Bay Area, and every
Leela Sinha:week it seems like somebody else is gut-rehabbing a house. And by
Leela Sinha:gut-rehab, what I mean is that they take everything, all the
Leela Sinha:woodwork, all the walls, sometimes even the floors out of
Leela Sinha:the house, they rip everything out of the house. And then they
Leela Sinha:put in new, usually less well constructed. I've never seen one
Leela Sinha:constructed better, less well constructed walls, mouldings,
Leela Sinha:everything. They rearrange the arrangement of rooms, they
Leela Sinha:change the heights and shapes and designs of the ceilings,
Leela Sinha:everything is different. And then they put it on the market
Leela Sinha:for a few hundred thousand dollar more than it was when
Leela Sinha:they bought it. Because that's the whole point. They're trying
Leela Sinha:to make a profit. They're flipping the house. This is not
Leela Sinha:a rehab, so we can live in it situation. This is a rehab so
Leela Sinha:someone else can live in it situation. And it's a nightmare.
Leela Sinha:I worked briefly in a fine woodworking shop. And I can tell
Leela Sinha:you, the construction they're doing in there is no good.
Leela Sinha:They're cutting corners, they're cutting costs. They're doing
Leela Sinha:everything they can to improve their profit margin and get in
Leela Sinha:and out of there as fast as they can. Because the way these
Leela Sinha:projects work is they get these short term what are called hard
Leela Sinha:money loans, where they can get the money on a very high
Leela Sinha:interest rate to buy the house cash and rehab it. But they have
Leela Sinha:to sell the house before that loan comes due. Because once it
Leela Sinha:starts coming due the payments are astronomical and it will
Leela Sinha:sink them almost immediately. So they're under a lot of pressure
Leela Sinha:to meet their deadlines. And there's so much wrong with it.
Leela Sinha:First of all, the houses they're doing this to were mostly built,
Leela Sinha:in my neighborhood, they were mostly built in the 1910s.
Leela Sinha:They're arts and crafts houses. This means that they have solid
Leela Sinha:plaster walls, beautiful mouldings, high ceilings, and
Leela Sinha:not just any kind of high ceiling but often coved
Leela Sinha:ceilings. And they have all kinds of interesting ventilation
Leela Sinha:and cooling built into them. And let me tell you why this matters
Leela Sinha:because a well built solid old building is way easier to heat
Leela Sinha:and cool than a modern building. Not because the insulation is
Leela Sinha:better, often that's the thing that really ought to be
Leela Sinha:improved, is the insulation. But because the shapes and designs
Leela Sinha:and airflow are all built without additional heating and
Leela Sinha:cooling in mind, or with very little. So you have things like
Leela Sinha:transom windows, clerestory windows, coved ceilings are
Leela Sinha:actually less echoey, than flat ones. The most echoey room in my
Leela Sinha:house is my office. This building was built and rehabbed
Leela Sinha:in the 1910s and 1920s. And my office is the only room that has
Leela Sinha:a flat ceiling. It's also the worst echo. There are all kinds
Leela Sinha:of reasons, all kinds of thought, all kinds of craft that
Leela Sinha:went into these buildings and when we rip it ou--, of course,
Leela Sinha:if it's destroyed, it's destroyed. If it's rotted, it's
Leela Sinha:rotted-- but when we rip it out, when it's perfectly good. We're
Leela Sinha:disrespecting, we're disregarding, all of that
Leela Sinha:careful craft and thought and handwork that went into it. We
Leela Sinha:do not know better, and especially most of these
Leela Sinha:flippers do not know better. It's not like somebody's coming
Leela Sinha:in having deeply considered what the best alternatives to those
Leela Sinha:old systems are. They're just tearing out the old systems and
Leela Sinha:replacing them with brute force. And brute force is pretty much
Leela Sinha:never the right way to do something. Pretty much never,
Leela Sinha:unless someone's dying, which no one's dying. These houses don't
Leela Sinha:need to be gut-rehabbed at all. They don't need to be
Leela Sinha:gut-rehabbed, they probably need some paint, they probably need
Leela Sinha:some plaster fixing. Maybe they need a new piece of woodwork
Leela Sinha:here or there. After a while things here tend to get dry rot.
Leela Sinha:But you're never going to get that quality of work back in a
Leela Sinha:house. Unless you're a multimillionaire and you have
Leela Sinha:all the time in the world. You could have that quality of work
Leela Sinha:if you simply didn't destroy it. And the dumpsters that they fill
Leela Sinha:with materials... there are other options. There are other
Leela Sinha:ways to do things that don't involve so much distruction.
Leela Sinha:There are small upgrades yes that are useful and important
Leela Sinha:like insulated windows, but the insulated windows can look like
Leela Sinha:the old windows or you can insulate the old windows in some
Leela Sinha:cases, it depends what you're dealing with. It doesn't, it
Leela Sinha:doesn't need to be like that. But the problem is that these
Leela Sinha:folks are not thinking about long term ethics. They're not
Leela Sinha:playing the long ethics game. They're playing the short profit
Leela Sinha:game, and that's a different game. It is, in fact, a game and
Leela Sinha:not a way of life. I would say that ethics, I said ethics are a
Leela Sinha:long game, but what I really meant was ethics, are a way of
Leela Sinha:life. Ethics are a thing that we do all the time through
Leela Sinha:everything. And we should not be, we should not be gutting old
Leela Sinha:construction for no reason. And your profit motive is not any
Leela Sinha:reason also, you're pricing people out and for why? Leave
Leela Sinha:that house on the market for someone else. Pick a business
Leela Sinha:that doesn't make people homeless. Ethics are a long
Leela Sinha:game, and flipping houses, is not it.