Welcome to Pick Me Up, I'm scared. The podcast. I'm your host, Madeline, and today we have no co-host

Kenna. She is out for the week. So this week, it is just going to be you and me in like a non-sexy way. I realize that kind of sounded sexy.

So getting started, this is where I would usually ask, Kenna, a question tangentially related

to our topic for the day. But since we don't have that, I'm just going to dive right in. Now, if you know anything about me, you've probably figured

out that my non-podcasty day job is in apparel design. I have a four-year degree in apparel design,

and I have 13 years of experience working in the fashion industry. And I actually run a clothing line

today. It's technically my business,

but we run it on a socialist platform. So we all have equal pay for all the employees of the

business, four-day work weeks, profit sharing, and great benefits. But we work with a lot of other

businesses in order to get our designs, made, advertised, shipped, and ultimately in the hands of our customers.

We are not an island, right? And one of the biggest things at our company is trying to find

other businesses to work with who have similar values to us. There's the warehousing, for example,

and that one's actually pretty easy. A friend of ours owns a warehouse. Her boyfriend is the manager, and all of their friends,

all these like hardcore boys and bands, they all work in it.

And they have similar values to us, so everyone is paid and happy and treated well.

But then there's also the manufacturing end because we design clothes, right?

But a different type of company has to make them.

It's like a division of labor going on there.

It's a different skill set.

And we work with small batch sweatshop free manufacturers in places with good wages and worker protections

who are more committed to and aligned to our values of getting people paid

adequately for their work. That's important to us. And what shocks people a lot is that most

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