Welcome to The Ethical Move Community

Introducing
The Ethical Move Community (TEMC).

We started The Ethical Move as a conversation about ethical marketing. 

TEMC is here to open up that conversation even further.

To the places that may hurt. Feel confusing. Or overwhelming.

• You’ll feel supported while implementing the pledge in your business. This community will have your back when you refuse a tactic your competitors use. The member directory will connect you with customers and clients who appreciate you for what you stand for. And you’ll find it wayyyy easier to articulate your values to your audience. Because you’re getting your practice every time you interact in TEMC.
• When you’re ready to make your website more accessible, increase the data protection of your email marketing, or review your social media presence, you’ll find accountability partners and a helping start in TEMC. Think of TEMC as your stabilizers, so you can speed along on your bike and cry, “Look Mom! No hands!”
• Together, we’ll shed light on psychological manipulation, define what ‘ethical marketing’ means, and tease out the manipulative elements from the fun and creative ways you do marketing. So your brains and muscle memory can finally back up what you’ve been feeling on a gut level for a while.

TEMC ONLINE COMMUNITY

Your virtual space to have the conversations that matter.

Welcome, welcome! Your Mighty Networks community is waiting for your vibrant thoughts and questions. In order to foster meaningful exchange, we’ve built TEMC on 4 values:

1. Diversity (including diverse opinions + approaches)
2. Kindness + respect
3. Learning
4. Fun

Here’s how you’ll see these core values in action:

A gentle, professional approach to hosting.

• Jeffrey, Sabine + Alice are here to create and hold the space so you can show up as yourself in all your glory. With all your wisdom, questions and doubts.
• Just because we’re the hosts, doesn’t mean we know it all. You’ll see us modelling vulnerability, depth and connection.
• While we’re serious about making TEMC safe for everyone, we’re conscious of our cultural differences. Which means, we seek to understand and facilitate mutual understanding — not to shut down necessary conversations.

Topics built to help you do your best thinking.

• The Liberation topic is all about creating a marketplace built on justice, equity, diversity + inclusion: by shining a light on practices that disempower people based on disabilities, neurodiversity, ethnicity and race, class, gender, sexual orientation... (the list goes on). What can we do to dismantle the systems of oppression? Discuss and do the work with passionate fellow members from diverse backgrounds.
• Use the Pledge Lab to share your experiments with implementing ethical sales + marketing approaches so we can all learn from each other. We provide a handy template so you can document and reflect on the way you’re implementing The Ethical Move pledge.
• Get all the latest info on The Ethical Move via the TEM Updates + Announcements topic. New resources? New team member openings? You’ll never miss a beat.
• Ethical marketing has to include a look at Sustainability. So we’ve got a dedicated topic to discuss hot questions such as greenwashing, shaming people into eco lifestyles, and the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt spread by big corporations.
• Ethical marketing and our culture’s obsession with hustle don’t play well together. That’s why we’ve given Self-Care + Celebrations their own topic area. Let's speak about our workloads and what we’re dealing with in life. And make celebrating our wins (personal and business-wise) part of our self-care regime!
• If you're looking for a recommendation, a joint venture partner or new team member, you might just get a spot-on referral in the Opportunities + Referrals space.
• And of course, there’s a “Watercooler” Chat Room for fun off-topic discussions. Anything goes conversation-wise!

A built-in directory of future collab partners.

• Claim your work identity: choose a profession when filling in your profile, so other members see your area of expertise at a glance.
• Explore the member directory to meet fellow entrepreneurs, connect with colleagues in branding + marketing or discuss a potential project with a web designer.
• Can’t find the right fit? Ask for a recommendation and tag your post with the Opportunities + Referrals topic.

TEMC Pledge Lab

Crowdsource Aha! moments while forging connections.

Once a month, bring your questions and ideas to the live Pledge Implementation Lab. We’ll start us off with a broad theme each month. Your hosts will be there to guide the conversation, provide input and help us go deep. Then the floor is yours! Let’s brainstorm solutions and crowdsource alternatives together.

TEMC WORKSHOPS + TRAINING

Do business without resorting to manipulative tactics.

Many people who’ve taken the pledge tell us they fell down the rabbit hole of resources we’ve collected on The Ethical Move website. Read dozens of books. Made important changes in their business. And still want to learn more.

If that sounds familiar, look forward to TEMC Workshops + Training!

• There’ll be at least one workshop per quarter at no extra cost to members.
• Depending on the session, paid tickets may be available to non-members via Eventbrite.
• These events are designed to help you level up, so as a TEMC member you’ll have a big say in choosing the topics we’ll cover.
• Plus, you’re invited to share your expertise with the community. We’ll support you in planning and delivering your session for maximum impact with minimum stage fright.

TEMC NETWORKING SESSIONS

Find new work friends + collaborators.

“OK, OK. So far, TEMC sounds like awesome learning + growth... But where’s the fun?”

We hear you! That’s why we’ll have monthly networking sessions. Think of them as Happy Hours:

• Everyone brings their favorite snacks and drinks.
• We all get together on video.
• And we hang out together just for fun.

Sounds awkward? Don’t worry! Your hosts will inject a bit of social butterfly magic dust so you’ll feel like meeting old friends.

TEMC VIRTUAL CO-WORKING

Do the work, do it together.

We could talk about ethical sales + marketing all day, all night. But at some point, we gotta put in some elbow grease and make changes: Switch to more privacy friendly tech. Make our website more accessible. Review our hiring process so it’s more inclusive. Create an editing checklist that targets unconscious bias in our copy.

Your life is busy, and so it’s easy to push that kind of work to the bottom of the list. That’s why we get together once a month to work on our ethical marketing together in a virtual co-working session:

• Join our Zoom for the full 3 hours or drop in later
• We’ll set goals together, focus for a time, and then celebrate our achievements.
• Ahhh, feels good even just writing about it!

Solidarity Pricing:

The Ethical Move Community is offered at a sliding scale. The actual cost of the monthly membership $CAD 30. Memberships below that price are limited.

If you’d like to pay it forward and help make TEMC membership financially accessible to brilliant minds with limited funds, please consider purchasing your membership at the higher price of $CAD 60.

Please read our sliding scale guide before purchasing your membership.

• X solidarity memberships are available at $CAD 15 per month
• Unlimited regular memberships are available at $CAD 30 per month
• Unlimited pay-it-forward memberships are available at $CAD 60 per month

Meet your hosts:

Jeffrey Shiau (They/He)

Community lead, from NYC.

To me, “The Ethical Move” is a journey.

It’s hard to pinpoint when I took my first step. Putting aside a lifetime of being sold to as a consumer, I was exposed to scholarship about the worst of capitalism and consumerism in high school and college.

Abstract knowledge became lived experience during the first few years of my career as an in-house marketer for a small business. However, it was only when I started working for myself in 2017 that I was exposed to all the worst parts of marketing.

Starting an online business meant being bombarded by advertising from bro marketers and mainstream business “thought leaders.” Once the algorithm learned I wasn’t interested, the feed became populated with #girlboss brands. This experience, coupled with ongoing research into the history of business, showed me how toxic, manipulative, and exploitative marketing could be.

I’ve come to realize that unethical practices are but a symptom of all the systemic problems in our society, and the structures we have in place incentivize unethical behavior.

But no one will change the world alone.

Whatever future we create… it will be a result of our collective efforts.

I want us to smash binaries and embrace nuance. Both in the world and within us. We all hold multitudes. To free each and one of us, we need to break out of the boxes that we were forced into.

I believe the way out of our current predicament is to learn how to be with each other. To form new relationships and strengthen the ones we have already.

The only way we can break out of our current cycle of harm and destruction is by learning how to connect and re-connect with each other.

To support each other in our respective journeys.

I joined The Ethical Move as a community host because I believe the only way forward is… together.

Sabine Harnau (She/Her)

Learning + development lead, based in the Netherlands.

Teaching language and literature in Scotland and Germany, I found that I naturally gravitated towards topics such as media literacy, the social psychology of fashion and the inner workings of marketing & advertising.

With no voice of their own and no obvious ethical marketing codex, teenagers were so vulnerable to the images thrown at them — with consequences ranging from eating disorders to blackmail, from shoplifting to depression.

In 2012, I started and led the global copy team at LEGO Customer Service. I’ll forever be grateful for the opportunity to work as part of a team with a strong ethical stance and a conviction that we need to do the right thing. It was a great honour being able to pour that spirit and mindset into tone of voice guides, copywriting and advisor training. And success proved us right: some LEGO customer service emails went viral.

I then spent a few years at a London-based consultancy, writing for over 70 iconic brands — some of which promoted values that I don’t share.

It was really during that time that I could no longer ignore the fact that people and planet will soon go to **** if we don’t get our act together.

If we want to make sustainability the norm, we need sustainable communication.

If we want people to take more responsibility, we need responsible communication.

If we want to break down the barriers that keep us from working together, we need communication that connects — not divides.

That’s why I started my own communications consultancy, and why I joined The Ethical Move in 2018.

Because to stop climate change, save species from dying and make society more humane, we need a radical rethink.

We need to stand together.

And we need to get heard.

Alice Karolina (She/Her)

Founder, from Switzerland – based on Pender Island, BC, Canada.

At 18 I was confronted with inequality in the most literal sense. For 3 months I lived in a rich, gated community in La Paz (Bolivia) – separated from the slum a few hundred meters down the road by a piece of wood and an armed guard. Almost every night, people would die from mudslides because the houses of the rich were crammed onto the hill above.

Returning from Bolivia, my life was never the same. After a decade and a half of research into all possible avenues of relief work, I conceded that ‘relief’ would not come from a fix: a new well, a new school or a new community centre in an impoverished (read: exploited) nation.

The only thing to do to create lasting change, is to look for the source of the inequality and break the system that creates the need for relief.

Unsurprisingly, the source is us – and our insatiable hunger for more. Try as we might to fight the urge …we were born addicted. Raised to want. Because being satisfied with what is right in front of us doesn’t generate profit.

And greener pastures are so easy to conjure. A dash of envy and a bit of urgency is all it takes to create a willing subject ready to eat out of our hands. If we listen to the chatter online; the better we are at hacking the minds of your people, the better we are at doing business.

But we lose sight of what is infinitely more important than profit: integrity, trust, creativity, relationships, community, our health, and the health of others. We forget that there is fallout to our insatiability – and we desperately need to remember for us to build an equal society.

I created The Ethical Move because I truly believe we can break the cycle by changing the way we sell. Even if not in my lifetime.

The Ethical Move + guarantees.

Conventional marketing says that this is where we should give you some sort of “golden guarantee”. We should tell you that we have such unshakeable confidence in TEMC that we’ll offer you a refund if you don’t see certain specific results.

But here’s the thing.

TEMC is a social movement, not an online course.

We’re here to build a new marketing paradigm. A utopia. 

And while we may have specific ideas about what that could look like, we hope you’re invested in this new tomorrow because it’s the right thing.

Not just because you hope to profit from it.

The kind of change we seek to make demands commitment and patience and a willingness to be wrong. That’s why our shortest membership is for 3 months. 

We hope you’ll sign up for a quarter, give it a shot, fall in love with this community and stay for good.

Unsure if you want to give TEMC a try?

If you’re wondering about questions like these, we’d love to see you in TEMC:

1. Are you going to use me as a free influencer to promote The Ethical Move?

No, quite the opposite! We're going to promote your work as part of the community and invite you to new ways of stepping into your power.

2. I'm worried that people will judge me for not being ethical enough.

TEMC is a non-judgmental, safe space for conversations about ethical marketing + sales. We're all doing our best, and each of us is on their individual journey. You'll find lots of support and encouragement here, whether you've been on that journey for years or are yet to take your first step.

3. How can you create a safe space for me if I'm different than you? I don't see myself represented in your group.

We hear you. Right now, our team doesn’t represent all voices equally, and we’d love to change that. If you’re willing to allow us to learn from you, please bring your individuality, your background and accessibility needs.

4. How much time do I need to make in order to benefit from joining TEMC?

Invest as much or as little time as you can, there's no minimum time commitment. But we can promise you this: the more time you spend with this community, the more you'll get out of it. This is your home, and we'll do whatever is in our power to make this a place where you love to hang out.

5. What if I can’t afford the membership?

If your hunger for change is bigger than your budget, please use the solidarity pricing to join us. We also offer a limited number of scholarships. Email us at hello@theethicalmove to find out more.

6. Can you remind me what I can expect when I join today?

Sure can! Here’s what you can look forward to inside our Mighty Networks:

• Jeffrey’s, Sabine’s + Alice's gentle, professional approach to hosting
• Topics built to help you do your best thinking about Liberation, Pledge Implementation, Sustainability, and Self-Care + Celebrations. Plus TEM Updates + Announcements, a space for Opportunities + Referrals, and a Watercooler Chat Room for off-topic fun.
• A built-in directory of future collab partners
• Monthly Live Pledge Implementation Labs
• Quarterly workshops + training based on the needs and interests of our members’ (that’s you!)
• A chance to share your expertise and experience with the community by teaching workshops with our support
• Monthly networking sessions with like-minded people around the world
• Monthly virtual co-working sessions to hold you accountable for “doing the stuff”

A Quick Guide to TEMC Solidarity Pricing

We’re grateful to Alexis J. Cunningfolk for their in-depth thoughts on the sliding scale and permission to riff on it. While we encourage you to read their articles, here is what you need to know about TEMC pricing:

• $30 CAD (regular membership) is the actual cost of the membership. If you choose a place price below the middle tier, you are receiving a discount.
• $15 CAD (solidarity membership) is for those who are able to meet their basic needs but have little-to-no expendable income. Paying for this membership may qualify as a sacrifice but it would not create hardship.
• Scholarships are for those who struggle to meet basic needs. Paying even the bottom price would still be a significant hardship.
• $60 CAD (pay-it-forward membership) is twice the actual cost of the membership, and that extra money goes towards supporting scholarships as well as solidarity memberships. Essentially it's an opportunity to not only become a member but also support your fellow community members while you're at it. Sweet!