Beauty in the Break

Buy the Change: Conscious Capitalism & Common Cents with Cesar Cardona

• Cesar Cardona & Foster Wilson • Episode 44

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Where do you shop instead of Amazon and Target? 

Two words: B Corporations. This episode is for anyone who is tired of corporate greed but doesn’t know what to do about it. Cesar and Foster break down one of the most powerful (and overlooked) forms of everyday activism: conscious spending, ethical shopping and brands to “buy-cott” instead of boycott. They dig into B Corp, an independent auditing organization that scores companies on how they treat their workers, the environment, and their customers.

In this episode they explore: 

  • How to weaponize your wallet in a capitalist society
  • What makes a brand “good”? 
  • What if you can’t afford to buy independent brands?
  • A few good brands to start with

Here are some resources for you! 

If this episode spoke to you, you will love How to Quiet Your Inner Critic where we explore the 4 steps of Growth Mindfulness. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.

Take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps. Like really… it does!

Tell us your barrier breaking story. Send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram and TikTok. 

Cesar Cardona:

Foster Wilson:

Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson

Executive Producer: Glenn Milley

This episode is brought to you by Jamaal Pittman. You can donate to his scholarship at WheelerScholarship.com, supporting college enrollment.

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As a mom it feels insurmountable the amount of activism that is required.

What you're doing is actually raising the future generation and so that alone is activism.

I have built a grand list of companies that we can shift to.

A growing one-stop-shop email with choices of ethically good companies.

The moment you start speaking with your dollars in a capitalist society is the moment they start going in that direction.

Because you're fighting capitalism with capitalism.

Welcome to Beauty and the Break.

Here we explore stories of how barriers are broken both within ourselves and within the world.

I'm Foster Wilson.

And I'm Cesar Cardona.

This is a home for you.

Questioning the rules you inherited and choosing your own path forward.

We are here with you on this messy and courageous journey.

Let's dive in.

Hey beloved. Today I want to share with you a write-up from my newsletter.

Ones that I send out twice a week.

This one here is about empowerment.

I think right now in this society a lot of people feel like they're not in control.

Or they feel like they don't know what to do with themselves in these pretty wild and crazy times.

But I think we have more power than we allow ourselves to realize.

It's called I Feel Empowered.

Please read for yourself.

Question.

Why?

Why must we protest yet again for things we want?

Basic human rights by the way.

Here we are again starting another war with other poor people in poor countries as one of the richest countries in the world that oh by the way has poor people too.

We've protested. Check.

We vote every two and every four years. Check.

But now it's time to vote every day.

If you read my newsletters they come twice a week.

One of them is with life insights I found in the world and the others with good companies that we can start buying from.

And then Scott Galloway recently started this resist and unsubscribe campaign.

Giving us a list of companies to temporarily unsubscribe from to affect those companies where it matters.

Their wallet.

This is a great way to respond from the top down.

But where do we buy instead?

As the foundation of this country we the people work from the ground up.

So I have built a grand list of companies from small to big from everyday products to ones you buy once a year that we can shift to.

A growing one stop shop email with choices of ethically good companies.

There will be household products, clothes, books, kids toys, jewelry, cosmetic and more.

Now this is what I want to ask of you.

If you enjoy any of these companies from my newsletter share the newsletter share the company because the power is always within us.

The people.

I've spent the last few years of my life finding these companies after I was tired of hearing about what other big companies were doing to their employees and to the environment.

And being really stingy with the money that they make from us.

And so I started finding companies that were good to their employees, good to the environment, holding their investors accountable.

And then society started saying, hey, let's stop shopping at these places.

And you came to me one day and said in my mom's group, some of the moms are saying, I can't shop here, here, here or there.

Where do I go then?

Yeah, you're saying it became part of the zeitgeist to not shop at Amazon and then at Target because of DEI because they did away with their diversity, equity and inclusion.

We kind of just started to realize how I think it's difficult in this country to be a big box store and to still do good.

Yeah.

It's pretty, you have to pretty much step on people to be that large of a corporation.

Yeah.

And I think we should preface by saying that nothing I'm going to say is to point a finger at them or to blame them or to call it and look at them in a negative light.

The structure of capitalism is built that happens to make money go upward and it kind of makes an industry step over smaller people.

It rewards the ones who are taking risks and saving for themselves and it does not reward people who are trying to think more of a community sense.

And I think it's a slippery slope as a business standpoint 

It's a slippery slope.

You start making a product and then you are trying to increase your margins so that you can make more of your product or expand.

And that means, oh, well, get to hire more people, but to make your product cheaper, you have to take your facilities overseas and then overseas they're not regulated and they're employing people that are underage or whatever.

There's a whole lot of slippery slope-ness

about growing a business.

My rule of thumb for a really long time has been the bigger the company, the greater the chance that it's not being good to the people that work for them and to the environment.

Probably. Not always true, but probably.

And so that is why we have shop small movements and supporting local businesses because we know.

I know who owns that coffee shop down the street or that gift shop down the street.

Their employee is also their owner.

That's it.

I can trust that they're not damaging the environment with their practices.

But how do we trust the middle of the road companies?

Where do you get toilet paper from down the street?

And you've done a lot of that research.

Yeah, any individual can say out loud, well run a business and you'll see how hard it is to be fair.

You're right. It's super hard.

It's hard. I'm a self employed person.

I employ number one and only one as a physical trainer and that's hard on itself.

So like I say, no part of me, am I blaming someone or trying to ridicule them or saying they're bad people?

They live in a structured society where it could get rewarded for how they're acting.

Let us start moving our money to other places so they can see where the rewards are.

Simple as that.

Don't hold them with anger or malice. Don't see them as evil.

Remove all of that.

The moment you start speaking with your dollars in a capitalist society is the moment they start going in that direction.

Because you're fighting capitalism with capitalism.

Yeah.

That's really the best way.

Yeah, yeah.

And you're speaking the language and meeting them where they are and shifting over.

And as hard as that is because they should maybe be doing what they can to do the right thing anyway.

Like I said, the power always lies within the people.

This phrase of this person is self made is a farce.

It's not true.

It's not how it works.

They have either inherited money from their family or given money by their family or they got some sort of connection from the government

or they got a wholesale value on some other shop or company that was giving them a product.

And then someone else believed in them and helped them build that and the company starts to grow.

Whatever the scenario is, somebody is doing it with the help of someone else.

Usually a lot of people.

I'm a self employed person, quote unquote.

I still need my clients to do it.

To give me testimonials, they share my information with their friends.

It's all interconnected.

The work that needs to be done now is us as a society realizing that where we put our money is where they are.

Where our money is where they go to look.

So how do we do that?

Because in my mom's group, and I know firsthand too, all right, I'm not going to shop at Amazon.

I'm not going to shop at Target.

I'm going to avoid these big box stores as well.

Where do I actually get diapers?

Right.

I want to preface all of this by saying that we are in a privilege of putting our money in places that are better.

If you listening can't afford shopping at another place and you need to go to Walmart or Target or Amazon, do what you have to do.

We have to stop blaming and pointing fingers at each other.

Even if someone says, I got to do this for the sake of myself, do it.

I won't ever judge you for it.

I won't ever judge you for it.

In some parts of this country, all there is is a Walmart.

Right.

And Walmart knew that going into these small towns.

They would totally pummel the small business owners there and offer everything in one store and put them out of business.

And that happened in a lot of places.

And now consumers in those towns, that's what they've got to shop.

So do it.

Totally understandable.

Do the thing.

If by chance you were to space where you want to make change, and even if it's a small change, even if it's just one thing, the ways we can do that, the biggest way that I've seen so far.

And I post this on my Instagram.

And again, it's on my newsletter on my website.

There is a company called B Corporation and they audit a company.

For example, the soap and dishwasher detergent company, seventh generation.

You can find those in most of your grocery stores.

Seventh generation goes to B Corporation and says, we would like to be a better company.

We want to be better to our employees, to the environment and our investors.

We want to make sure we can speak to them in a way that they can know that we're holding them accountable.

B Corporation says, great, we're going to audit you.

We're going to go through every bit of record keeping you've ever done.

And I've talked to some of these people.

There's a gentleman named Timothy Yee.

He runs a company that helps you invest in your 401k.

It's called Green Retirement and they're B Corporation.

I talked to him one-on-one on a Zoom chat and asked him a ton of questions.

He said they fine tooth combed every single thing they did.

He told him his car was electric.

They went out there, took photos of it.

He said his toilets were low flush.

They went to the bathroom, flushed every toilet to see what it was like.

They make sure that he's telling the truth.

And then they interviewed every single employee.

They looked at all the records across the board.

Once you do that, B Corporation will give you a grade.

The average grade for an average company, say a Target or a Walmart or whatever, is about 50.

That's their number that B Corporation has given.

To be able to get a B Corporation thumb of approval, a stamp or a sticker on your logo

or at your brick and mortar on your website, you need a score of at least 80.

If you go and B Corporation and look up a business, it'll give you that score and how they broke it down.

And then these companies have to give a disclosure report to B Corporation

and you can go and B Corporation and read all of it.

Okay, cool.

It's wide open.

So it's like how they are to the environment.

Their environmental impact, I guess I should say.

How they treat their employees.

Yeah, so it's governance, how they treat their workers, if they give back to the community, the environments and their customers.

And their customers too.

Okay, does a part of their business have to be employee owned?

A lot of them have to be at least 40% employee owned.

And a lot of the other companies just have a salary cap for their highest paid employee, the CEO,

that can only be X amount more than their lowest paid employee.

Oh, okay.

Most of their employees will get full health care, paternity leave, free lunches, they get wellness care.

It's endless.

All the things we basically want.

All the very basic human assesses.

All the things we are really asking for here in the US.

Okay, cool.

And so you have to get an 80 or above to get the B Corporation's sample approval,

but you can also look up any business and see what their score is.

I would look at it the opposite way.

I would look up the category you're looking for.

Okay.

You're looking at if you want soda, type in soda, and you'll find Ollipop.

You'll find Zivia or Zevia.

I forget how it's pronounced.

If you want detergent, look up detergent.

Will it show you ones that aren't audited by them?

It does not.

Okay.

It does not.

This reminds me of the environmental working group database called Skin Deep,

where you can look up any product that you put on your skin, sunscreen or lotion or anything like that,

by brand and type.

I mean, everything, hair care, everything.

It'll rate it based on toxicity level to you.

It reminds me of that.

It's such a helpful tool.

And there's so many of them that are growing now.

B Corporation's been doing this since 2007.

There's also an app called Goods Unite Us.

You can look up any company now and it'll show you or tell you where they put their money politically.

Right.

When they put it in left wing or right wing.

In my opinion, the one I appreciate the most are the companies that don't put their money to politics.

I prefer that.

Even though I have my own political beliefs, I think we should be more neutral still with those companies

and not push financial influence by way of politics from a company.

Yeah, one way or the other.

I don't think it should be my opinion.

I think this should be removed from that sort of stuff.

What's more is that if you go on this website and you put in these brands and companies,

you can go to the website and read all of what they do, why they do it, their backstory.

It requires a lot of work.

That's why I've made the newsletter for it.

And when the newsletter comes out every Thursday, it is comprised of a category.

Shirts, clothes, drinks, household products, cosmetics, whatever, with at least three companies that are there.

So you can look them up and check them out.

And you can always go back to that email.

My goal in this case here is to, one, put money in places that help other people.

Because the idea of the two-sided party in this political world is transcended by the fact that all of us

want to make sure workers are taken care of, all of us.

We all want good companies to be ethical.

How different conversation?

We want them to be ethical and good.

We want that.

That transcended.

So I'm going to stand on that because that is how we can unite ourselves in each other.

Are you like the B Corp man?

Are you like the spokesman for the B Corporation?

I am not.

I'm doing this on my own accord.

I'm doing it because I love it.

I'm doing it because the more I learn about the structure and the system of this country,

the more I'm starting to admire it.

As a person who grew up who didn't feel part of America, I started reading, but the founding fathers did.

I'm reading about civil rights.

There's an underlying current of an inevitable progress that's happening here.

We are constantly in this country on the main stage as a dynamic melting pot with no other country to tell us how we do it.

And everyone's watching us.

And I think that has the potentiality of being beautiful.

I think it's beautiful now, but I think it has the potentiality of blossoming to being the most beautiful thing that this human history has ever seen.

I want to be a part of helping that.

But I joke that because I do think you could be the B Corp spokesman if they'll have you.

Well, I'm doing the best I can to try to get a hold of somebody up there that wants to allow me as a public speaker, speak this sort of passion to them.

I'm trying.

Literally, the thing is, you literally feel this passionately about it and you have no time to be corporation whatsoever.

I mean, we're out somewhere.

You and I, I'm like, we'll go to a store or something.

You'll mention, I go, "Oh, you have to be corporation."

Yeah, because it just matters.

And start looking for it too, because out and about, you'll look at your labels of the things you buy and look for B Corporation.

Yeah, look at the back of the product you buy and you'll see the letter B with a circle around it.

That's your B Corporation.

Yeah.

I think what's cool is like what speaks to me the most about this type of movement is that busy moms, there's something that you can do in this moment.

You're going to have to buy diapers, cleaning supplies, food for your family.

I would say as a mom, it feels insurmountable the amount of activism that is required in the world that we live in today.

Marching, protesting.

Protesting is dangerous.

It's dangerous.

You can't necessarily bring your kids.

I mean, it's not always dangerous, but people have kids who have higher needs.

That's not the place they can be.

And also all of the activism takes a heck of a lot of work.

I want to remind people who are in that category right now that raising great children who are aware, self-aware and activists themselves,

like that raising kids in this world and being an authentic role model for them is part of activism too.

It doesn't feel like enough some days because you're like, "I'm wiping runny noses and changing diapers and exhausted and drinking a lot of coffee."

But what you're doing is actually raising the future generation.

And so that alone is activism.

And these are some small changes that can feel really good in your system by being like,

"Okay, I'm going to spend $2 more on this dish soap, Dr. Bronner's dish soap,

because I know this company has been around forever and they're a B Corporation and they treat their employees really well

and I can feel really good about this purchase today."

Where my money is going.

Yeah.

Well, there's two things that come with that in addition.

One, the prices are coming down on them.

There are much more companies that are showing up in our stores that are B corporations.

Because two, we spend more money on it, they become more relevant, and the prices become more normalized.

Well, yeah. How many years have you heard about B Corporation?

Have you seen the B Corporation label on things?

I feel like it's been only recently, but the company's been around since 2007.

So time goes on and becomes more and more a part of the conversation,

but you're only just now starting to hear about it.

Precisely.

Precisely.

And I want to be here in the forefront of it to help people navigate these things.

And I, just like you said about the busy parent or whoever it is in the world,

I'm doing everything I can to meet you right where you are.

Yeah.

You can buy stuff online.

You can find it in your grocery store.

I try to find the places that you are, you don't have to go too far out of your own way to find these places.

You mentioned toilet paper.

There's that fantastic company called Who Gives a Crap?

They make toilet paper, trash bags, paper towels.

Yeah, and they were only online at first, and then the other day I saw them in a big box store.

Yep, precisely.

Which is what can happen when the good companies get enough supply

and enough demand, I guess.

That's a second part of it as well, actually.

If you're able to, if you happen to see B Corporation or good companies,

independent companies being sold in a big box store, in a Whole Foods or a Ralph's or a Winn Dixie

or Publix, wherever you are in the country, buy those good companies from there.

Start there as well.

You can do that.

I would prefer you to find online or buy an independent shop, but if you can't, then just buy it there.

But do what you can, which is to say, "Spend the money you're already going to spend

for something you already need," knowing that that company is now transparent.

They're willing to give you all of their information because they care about your kids

the same way you care about your kids.

That's a good word, transparency.

I think transparency is really so key to all of this.

It's not just, "Check these boxes," but it's also, "Every two years they get."

Audit it.

Audit it again?

Yeah, every two years, I want to say.

It's basically, "Keep giving us the information, keep being honest, keep being open."

Yep, you're right.

That's one of the best parts about this.

B Corporation, Goods Unite Us, the app.

That one is a good way to look at any company, large companies.

Goods Unite Us.

There's another website called Morningstar where you can look up where investors put their money.

If you want to put your 401(k) for example, or if you want to just invest in some stocks

like your own Robinhood or whatever it is, you can go to Morningstar.

There's another website called Fossil Free Fuels.

You can find...

Say that three times faster.

Right, right, right.

You can look up any of the ETFs and mutual funds and they'll show you how much money they put into fossil fuels.

Amazing.

And they give them a rating, like an F to A rating.

And keep in mind, we are also making this transition.

So not every company and most companies are still going to be imperfect.

They're going to do the best they can with what they got.

And this company, this website, Fossil Free Fuels, they give a grade based upon not just where they are,

but how much they're trying to shave off their input to fossil fuels.

I was going to say also with the audit, do they give coaching to businesses about how to make their business more environmentally friendly or whatever?

Thank you for reminding me about that.

We do actually.

B Corporation in particular, especially for the larger companies like Panagonia, which is a big company,

they're a B Corporation and 7th generation.

They will give a designated official to work with them one-on-one to help them maintain and/or increase their betterment of the company.

That's cool.

That would be the thing that I as a business owner would want.

Maybe I'm doing something accidentally that's causing a lot of, I don't know,

textile waste in my little clothing shop that I don't own.

And what do I do with that?

And how do I responsibly recycle things on set?

Let's just talk about production, for example.

When I'm working on productions that I have some kind of say over as producer or director,

often the question comes up about waste and it's like you're on a location and you need food.

And does the catering company use Styrofoam or do they use recyclable materials?

Also, water bottles, if you've ever been on set, oh my God, the number of plastic water bottles,

half drunk or a quarter of drunk or barely drunk, that just get littered everywhere.

These are kinds of things that as a producer trying to make a movie happen,

you've got a whole heck of a lot of things you're thinking about.

And that's just this other thing that's important to me.

And I care, but sometimes people are moving so quickly.

There's actually a company in LA that will help you make your production more environmentally friendly.

And they'll come in and be like, here's cardboard boxed water.

We'll do composting at your, you know, whatever it is they have.

That's super cool.

They make recommendations like that.

So I appreciate that B Corp does that as well.

I think I've said plenty of it here.

I don't want to get preachy about it.

I'm trying to keep the tone of making it more about empowering us as a society

because the power does lie within the people.

It always will.

Whether we're aware of it or not, it always will.

I know we can do this one step at a time.

I love the fact that more and more good companies are showing up in the world.

I love that when I post on my Instagram a video about which companies are doing quite well,

that gets the most shares, the most saves, the most reshares.

I love it.

It brings me so much joy.

This is a very important thing to me.

I think the most important part for me about it is that they treat their employees really fair.

Yeah.

They've worked so many years in restaurants and in offices, and I could see the top executives

or the owners really being super nice to the customer or client and then turning around

and being super harsh on the employees saying, "Why are they wanting this?

Why haven't you done this?"

"How come you haven't answered their call yet?

Why haven't you waited on that table just yet?"

The moment I would work and see companies where the employer treated the employee really well,

that employee turned to the customer and treated them marvelously.

Those customers come back, which helps the bottom line for the employer.

That is super important to me from a personal experience perspective

and from just a general understanding of basic economics and running a business.

Treat the people well.

Who would have thought?

You treat people well?

People keep coming back for more.

Wow, that's amazing.

It's more than just having the cheapest product in the neighborhood.

All jokes aside, you are speaking completely authentically.

Zero people that we've mentioned today sponsor this show yet.

But if anyone wants to, that's fine.

Please.

I would love to talk to you.

Sorry, continue.

But literally, this is a deep, deep passion for you.

That's why I think someone should just appoint you as the B-Corp man.

The logo, when they shoot in the sky, they do Batman.

It's just a B with a circle or it's B, the number 4, C.

B4C.

B 4 Cesar Cardona

Oh, God.

All right.

Sorry.

That was terrible.

They're going to fire me before they even hired me.

Continue.

No, I just think it's really, I think it's really actionable and it's something that we can do today.

And I implored you to make a guide of all of the companies that you have shared in your newsletter so far so that someday somebody who's not yet gotten all your newsletters can just download the guide.

Okay.

Here are all the products that we use in our house.

And we walk the walk.

These are the companies we actually use.

Right.

You found a company the other day that makes creatine?

Oh, right.

Ancient and Brave.

Ancient and Brave.

And like went to their little pop-up and everything's in glass bottles and it's local.

I don't know, local.

It's not local.

It's from the UK, but they're trying to start in America and they put a pop-up in LA.

I drove a good 45 minutes to an hour south to go spend time with them, talk to them, got her email.

Yeah.

Like things like that.

You know, there's a million creatines you could buy on Amazon, but that one is B-Corp.

They are B-Corp.

Things like that.

So we try to walk the walk as much as we can and you'll put together the guide so that someone could download all of the companies that you could switch to if you don't already.

Who gives a crap for toilet paper and this for trash bags and this for soda on and on.

Yep.

I sure will.

I love doing this work because we all can work this thing together.

Like I said before, we're all interconnected.

There's no self-made person.

If I become Mr. B-Corp, I'm not a self-made Mr. B-Corp.

I got there from the help of everyone else and I will do the work.

I will go to each and every one of these places and I will speak for these companies because we're not a protest society.

We are not a abstention from buying society.

We are a capitalist society.

Capital comes first.

Whichever political party you're standing on right now that you feel you're opposing political party, they tend to not be affected by protests.

They tend to push back and get angry.

But the moment you call a company and say, "We're going to unsubscribe from you," all of a sudden that late night talk show host got put right back on the television.

That's your way in.

You let them know what matters through their wallet.

And then he's presenting on the Oscars.

And then he was presenting on the Oscars.

Oh, there is a place called Giftphoria in Northeast LA.

What's that?

Giftphoria, G-I-F-T-P-H-O-R-I-A.

Correct.

And they build themselves as the anti-Amazon.

They are local.

Okay, so local to Los Angeles.

A lot of people don't live here.

But they figured out a way to just have local gifts from local shops in the area.

And then you order it online on their website.

And they will deliver it to you in the area within three hours to compete with the Amazon, two-hour delivery, whatever.

So shopping local with a three-hour delivery.

So they're trying to meet people where they are, which is why would you shop on Amazon when you know all the bad things about it, right?

Because of convenience.

That's why.

Precisely.

And we occasionally, we have to do that.

We're not purists about it.

Sometimes the kid needs the shoes for the dance comp tomorrow.

Do what you gotta do.

Gotta do what you gotta do.

And they tried to find a way to make gift giving when it's always last minute, right?

Oh, I gotta go to that housewarming party and I gotta bring a gift, right?

It's simple because it's local and it's coming right to you delivered to your door.

So it's an unproven model yet.

I don't think they're profiting yet, but they are really trying to do something about it.

And they got written up on the local news and it could happen anywhere.

Like anybody could make that anywhere in the country, right?

We'd love them to have them on our show.

We would love to.

Shout out Giftphoria

I'm gonna -- spell it one more time.

Okay.

Oh, me spell it one more time?

Correct.

Who me?

It's my new phrase.

Gift, G-I-F-T, phoria, like euphoria, P-H-O-R-I-A.

Perfect.

And their Instagram is giftphoria_shoplocal.

We will put it in the show notes.

Great.

And lastly, I'm gonna raise you that.

I'm gonna raise you a LA specific thing because we're Angelinos and talk about Refill Bodega.

That's in North Hollywood.

Oh.

It's a shop that you can go in there and do your refills for like soaps and detergents.

And then they have B-Corporation stuff there as well.

Cool.

It's owned by three women.

It's in, like I said, North Hollywood on Burbank Boulevard, Refill Bodega.

I went in there, met them.

They are phenomenal people.

They are so dope and friendly and they care the same way we all care.

I love a refill store.

Yeah.

Pretty much my favorite thing.

We got that.

Thanks for listening today.

Shop B-Corp.

I don't know.

I guess that's our new phrase.

And please, as always, follow the newsletter.

Just kidding.

Oh, God.

Please, as always, be kind to yourself.

If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.

That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.

And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty and the Break wherever

you get your podcasts.

We'll see you next time.

Beauty and the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.

Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.

Original music by Cesar and the Clew.

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Cesar Cardona

Host
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Foster Wilson

Host