Building a Business for Good: Community Business Law, Benefit Corporations, and Strengthening Small Businesses and Nonprofits with Michael Jonas

Kim Allchurch Flick: Hello everyone. This is Kim Allchurch Flick, and I am so excited to be here today with Michael Jonas. Michael Jonas is a JD MBA licensed attorney community advocate. Champion for equitable economic and social systems. Throughout his career, he has focused on strengthening small businesses, nonprofits, and mission-driven organizations through accessible legal services, legal education, strategic guidance and values aligned support.

Michael continues this work by empowering community organizations through direct legal representation, consulting, training, and legal adjacent education, rooted in clarity, practicality, and community care. Today we’re gonna talk about building a business for good. So Michael, welcome. It’s so good to see you.

Michael Jonas: Yeah, it’s always good to see you. Thank you so much for having me. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: You are so welcome. We have known each other for. Quite a while, and I believe it was through the beginnings of Benefit Corporations for good. You’re a new attorney starting in very young practice. A lot has happened since we met before COVID, which has happened through that.

So thank you for being here and also a super good friend. So tell us about the journey. That brought you here and to this place and how your values played a role. 

Michael Jonas: Again, thank you for having me and I have loved getting to know you and Greg and I think I’ve known you for. Nine years, 10 years, something like that.

Kim Allchurch Flick: That’s very close. 

Michael Jonas: Yeah, so I do what I call community business law. I I’ll tell you a little bit about how I got here, but I know we don’t have all day. The most interesting thing was, growing up my dad and mom always said, you should own a business or you should do something where you have freedom.

My parents had a lot of issues with jobs that either were draining, somewhat abusive, or didn’t really give ’em true ownership. We struggled really financially. And then as a child, we lost our house when I was 12. And then, I went to law school and lost my apartment and my car and had a, another cycle of that after getting educated.

And then I had a hard time getting employed and had to take nine bar exams to become an attorney. That’s the shortened version. And I graduated law school in 2009. I didn’t become an attorney until 2017. In the interim of that, in addition to bar exams, I did all kinds of jobs. I did real estate marketing, mediation.

I did restaurant work. And so after failing five California bars, I decided to move to Portland sight unseen, which is nuts, but I had. I decided I wanted to move to either Denver, Austin, Portland, or Seattle. And I went with Portland. And then, yeah, I moved here thinking, okay, I’m gonna take one Oregon Bar exam and pass.

I ended up taking four here. And so passed my ninth bar exam. And when I passed my ninth bar exam, I was working at BPA Bonneville Power Administration doing. Some contract work there working in the real estate department, real estate record department. And soon after starting that, I checked and got the results.

I thought that maybe this is a list of people who didn’t pass or there’s some sort of mistake. And I remember going outside on the patio and kind of crying hysterically and calling my husband. We weren’t married at the time or yet, but 

He had been with me for four of my nine bar exams in Oregon and basically saying, I passed and how would that affect me and what would I be doing?

And so the first thing I did was let it sink in. I think that because. There were so many years in between. And because I wasn’t sure if I was ever gonna be a lawyer, even though I wanted to and kept taking the bar I had to let that all sink in. A part of me wanted to say, screw you all.

I’m done. I passed the bar. I’m a lawyer now. But I knew that in past circumstances I had to stay at that job. And yeah I thought about all my choices and I decided that the best choice for me was to create my own law firm that matched my values. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Absolutely. And how did you come about the name of that law firm?

Michael Jonas: Yeah, so currently my law firm is Narwhal Law and Business Strategy. The law firm that I started in 2017 is Rational Unicorn Legal Services. I don’t really like how sometimes the legal profession is either inaccessible or arrogant or contentious or immediately adversarial. And I knew that I wanted something to be fine.

And the idea of a rational unicorn is that you are a dreamer and a realist at the same time. And essentially, essentially that’s what I am. And working with small business owners and nonprofits, the idea was for everyone to be a rational unicorn as well. To be someone who dreams big dreams, but also does your your homework and getting the paperwork done, being realistic about resources, but also continuing to dream.

So a rational unicorn was or is a. Person who dreams while doing a reflective analysis of who they’re and where they’re trying to go. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that. And you have some of the creative, most creative logos I’ve ever seen. I think people really need to take a look at that, the websites in the show notes, but such a creative way to look at loss.

Something refreshing and full disclosure, I am have been a client of yours. And I think what attracted me part of it was that as a small business owner, somebody who’s trying to do the right thing, but do it with creativity and, but I can joy and to do things a little bit differently, but still have some guardrails so we don’t get into trouble.

And you’ve done a great job of that. 

Michael Jonas: Yeah. Thank you. I’ve definitely enjoyed it. I think the legal profession and a lot of other service professionals in general they’re taught to take on a sort of persona or character. And I really wanted to be myself as a lawyer. I didn’t want to have two personas.

I didn’t want to, put on a suit every day and wear a tie every day. There’s times where I do wear a suit and put on a tie. If it’s appropriate, but this sort of idea of creating someone outside of yourself because the profession is asking you to do that, I didn’t really wanna do that.

I also, I see business law and business formation as a form of economic justice, and

When I help people with forming or creating businesses or nonprofits, we’re doing community building. And so it’s essentially it’s business law, but it’s public interest law. I think having fun logos or slogans and having a business model that works, that the community can trust. For example, in the legal field, most people, what they know is, give me a $5,000 retainer and I’m gonna bill you every 15 minute call or email or your time is up. You owe more money. And I tried and still try to cut through that to treat clients as humans and to be aware of what they’re going through, and also to not have surprises with billing.

So it’s very much pay as you go, here’s your flat fee project and how can I help you? And that extends to not just business formation or contract reviewing, but what are your goals as a business owner? And do you want me to help you create a social enterprise? Let’s actually talk about that.

So that, 

Kim Allchurch Flick: yes, we’re 

Michael Jonas: talking about how the structure relates to their values as well. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Absolutely. And what do you see as the problems to be solved as you work with for-profit businesses, nonprofits, organizations. What have you seen? What’s been changing? Positive and negative in your Yeah.

Michael Jonas: Yeah. So that’s a good question. So generally, one of the things I see is that the business landscape the ecosystem, whether it’s we have a lot of really great ecosystem partners, but how, business Oregon links to prosper links to, small business office and. Innovation hub and we we have a lot of things going on now, and I think it’s really difficult for people to figure out where to go for help or what that organization does. It’s also a lot to figure out what the Secretary of State does or BOLI (Bureau of Labor and Industries) or the Department of Employment.

The biggest thing I see and saw then, but also still see is this it’s like a, an overwhelm of not knowing how all the pieces fit together.

And I would like to see for one, for that to be more systematized and make it so that people can, whether they’re already here or whether they’re moving to Oregon, it’s very clear how all the pieces fit together. So I would love to see that. I’d also love to see more resource sharing. I. We have the most amazing people here doing the most amazing work.

But we’re all trying to do too much or don’t know what the other party’s doing. And that’s abundance mentality of really we need to collectively figure out what we have and what we need and how we can help. In terms of specifics, like during this time for small businesses one of the issues I see right now is.

Staffing and an issue of tariffs, but one of them is that, the profit margin for small businesses has always been really tough. And then when you add in SBA loans from the pandemic or other loans that they’re paying, and then some of ’em also have. Commercial leases that even though we had the commercial lease moratorium, that’s still money owed to the landlord.

So they either have a balloon payment at the end of the lease, or they’re paying more per month. So when you take the really low profit margin of a business and then you add on top of that an SBA loan and or payments to the landlord, in addition to what the monthly rent. Or was as planned. It makes it really hard. The math doesn’t math. For small business ownership. We also have some of the highest small business taxes in the nation. So anyways, so that this sort of putting it together resource wise and then also putting it together financially, those are really difficult.

From the nonprofit world. A couple things. One of ’em is that cities and counties who no longer do those social services that are, that have contracted with nonprofits for 15, 20, 30 years. Those are services that are primarily federally funded. Or federal money then comes to state money, then goes to city or county.

We have a really hard, a really difficult problem or reality we’re facing where if these nonprofits doing social services that are crucial, can’t survive the city and county no longer have the funds or the infrastructure to do those services. And so we really have three choices and we need to have these serious conversations with nonprofits of.

Are you narrowing your focus? Or what is your focus or purpose? Are you consolidating or are you closing? And making a decision on which of those you’re doing and doing that in a respective manner. And then one more thing, I know I talk a lot. One more thing is 

Kim Allchurch Flick: it’s good 

Michael Jonas: the business ecosystem is set up for, for-profit organizations, right?

So we have. The Small Business Administration Act that created the small business administration and then we get score and SBDC and things like that. There is no federal nonprofit administration or organization. And so a lot of the ecosystem partners that we have, they don’t help nonprofit organizations.

And it actually should be the other way around because we’re expecting people who are doing services. Through a nonprofit to somehow have experience with business and then all, and then not have access to those resources. But then also to know nonprofit DOJ or IRS compliance rules. And so we’re not being good stewards of public funds because we’re not giving nonprofits what they need to succeed.

And I’m terribly worried about that because it was bad before. And then now as we get into sort of a lack of funding we really need to figure out how to fund technical assistance for nonprofits. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: That makes sense. And we’re speaking in January of 2026 and nonprofits themselves can be an all volunteer, no one paid organization to.

Large, like the Gates Foundation or something is also a nonprofit. And how do you work with those clients and what are some of the greatest needs that they have out outside of the funding, but also what do you see as the greatest needs that they didn’t understand and that you as an attorney are helping them?

Michael Jonas: Yeah. And sometimes lately I’m doing law and strategy. In the sense of somebody will call me and say, we lost our funding. How do we continue to do this program? And then advising them on restricted versus unrestricted funds or 

How to do this program with a community, another community organization.

And so having a community partnership agreement. In terms of, what I see or what I’ve been helping with, I think besides these funding issues, one of them is scalability. And so we often see an organization that has done a really great thing and it should be plotted. It’s you did a shelter or you did a really great program to, to feed elderly or whatnot.

When we give them more money because they’ve met their value proposition, we don’t necessarily know if they have the ability to hire or scale in the way that a business would and a nonprofit is a corporation, just like any other corporation. Granted it’s not about shareholders and dividends, but we’re assuming that the scalability is there.

And one of the things that I can help with is. How do you upsize or downsize and how do you do so legally? And that could be advising on hiring employees versus contractors. That could be on having the right contracts or looking at what the funds that they have are and what the rules are about funding.

Can we hire someone for this amount of hours? Is that. These restricted funds. And so we have to go back and review and see if that’s the case. The other thing is staff and board dynamics. A lot of nonprofits, they don’t realize that the power always starts with the board. Like you were saying.

Some nonprofits have volunteers only. The board is the steward of the funds for that particular public purpose. And so the board has to then vote to hire a program manager or executive director, and then in doing so, they have to tell the executive director what authority they have, whether that’s hiring or firing or authority to sign contracts.

There’s a lot of confusion in organizations. Who is in charge and how do the board and staff work together? And what happens is all of that infighting sometimes is needed or it just is. But if it’s getting in the way of actually doing the purpose or doing the good, then we have a problem. So I see a lot of infighting and I think if we just clarify roles and responsibilities and power structures.

Then the processes will play out a lot better. So that’s one. Another one is organizations have bylaws from 10, 15 years ago, and the bylaws, at the time were approved by the DOJ or whomever, but they’re not operational. They don’t give people an idea of. What kinds of committees do we have and or they don’t incorporate other documents, which they can incorporate, community guidelines or how do we do board recruitment? So basically a lot of nonprofits, they have documents that, like my attorney wrote, or I got this from someone 15 years ago, and it doesn’t actually, have applications to their everyday life. And I think that that’s a big mistake because we now more than ever need to capture what our collective rules are for how we’re doing that particular service or public purpose item. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. And I think also a lot of us don’t know what we don’t know and bring it back to Oregon and I believe a lot of states with big cities and big corporations.

Also have this as well, where it’s the collective number of small companies that are actually the economic engine of the state, and it’s that collectivity that matters. The total dollar amount that comes from small is, is a lot. And keeping those businesses healthy individually feeds into part of that.

It also makes communities strong. I find it interesting though that. Each of us has our own perception of what a small business is, or a small nonprofit. But the SBA says 5,000,050 employees, no more than that is small. And yet there’s so many that have maybe five people or less solopreneurs, and there’s so many of them.

So that term small is defined differently according. To who with whom you’re speaking and what the SBA says, but that also guides funding in some ways or at least it used to. And I was just wondering if you could speak to that a little bit and how you see the world being small with nonprofits and for-profits and what makes a community strong and when it’s weak, how can we help what can these community members do?

Michael Jonas: Yeah you raise a good point and those are good questions. And both Portland and Oregon as a whole we’re small business economies. We also have a very big nonprofit sector. I think it’s like 12 to 15% of. The economy is somehow nonprofit related. And I don’t know the specific statistic on that, but 

One of the things that we can do is we focus a lot on startups and I love startups and I’m involved in startups, but. It’s not always about startups and exiting, it’s about starting up and then working on sustainability and scalability. So we’re often chasing, what’s this tech company? What’s this expensive tech company that can come here and then pay taxes?

Or we need another Nike, we need another whale, and that’s great. Or we need other Dutch brothers or Tillamook or salt and straw. But what if instead the focus was. As we’re giving you this ecosystem help, we’re gonna identify who wants to franchise or who wants to grow in that nature. And then we’re incubating businesses.

And this sort of incubation or focus on that would help us create businesses here that wanna stay because they receive the incubation, but also the support that they’ve received in growing would be value proposition oriented or proof in the pudding of this is where I grew and this is where I had the support to grow.

So I think that businesses leave or they don’t start, or this sort of idea of churn and burn startup. I think we need to reevaluate that. I think that we often try to piece together. Small mom and pop store or mother and daughter store with venture capital and exiting, and there’s more to it.

There’s the story and there’s their survival, and there is. How to get them and maybe they wanna just have one location and that’s fine, but we want them to be able to stay in their commercial lease which in itself is a difficult thing. Or maybe we find out that they want have locations all over America, instead of us focusing so much on startup and exit and on that big whale, I would love it if the city started thinking, who are the people that we want to help become the big whale. And that’s one thing we can start doing. Another thing nonprofit related is technical assistance for nonprofits.

Another thing is encouraging shared use of commercial spaces. We often talk about downtown and downtown’s empty. And the reality is that some of these commercial spaces are.

Someone cannot have money to run their business, pay their staff pay for inventory. Even if they’re doing really well, that idea that they’re gonna make it work. I know full-time business owners who also have another job because they don’t have enough money made from their business to pay all their bills.

So the idea or the concept would be encouraging commercial landlords. To have two or three tenants in a building and they would end up reaching the amount of money that’s owed for that lease. And then Portland would love it. So we would go into a place and it would be, a coffee shop and a plant shop and a record store, and they would have less of a burden.

For having the commercial speed lease. They’d have a commercial space. If they do really well, they can leave that space and go onto another space instead of having empty buildings everywhere. I think that the city should do a better job at encouraging shared use of spaces. So that’s something I think another one is we have a lot of education and a lot of resources, but as I said.

If they don’t all piece together, I would love to know what people do and what they don’t do. I’d love to have more clarity on the ecosystem and have someone systematize it. Some of that also means we need urgency there’s not a lot of triage available for, for-profits or nonprofits.

For example, if I tell someone who’s about to close, you should look into this leadership program, that’s great. And maybe the leadership program’s good, but they don’t have, they don’t have six, six weeks. Six months. They literally, right now they’re about to close the restaurant, or literally right now they’re a lot, they’re about to close their nonprofits.

So we need to have real adult conversations about businesses. Nonprofits where we create an environment of vulnerability and we create an environment of community partnerships and resourcing. And I don’t think that we’ve done that. We are here to help and we do have a wishful thinking attitude, but that does not match the time that we’re in at all.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Oh, indeed. He’s spoken about some real things and the shifts from COVID as well. There were often those commercial places were full of people doing service type of work, and discovered that remote work is also very viable and except perhaps consumer goods and places where you have to be on site, manufacturing, restaurants, retail sales, that remote work.

It can actually be healthy for a company. It keeps people, they can expand their reach about where the talent is. So there’s a lot of shifts that have happened that aren’t only political, but came just from having a pandemic as well. Yeah. And we’ve learned from that good and bad, but we’ve learned from that a little bit and what the possibilities are.

Michael Jonas: Some of what we learned, we unfortunately forgot right away. Yes. And that’s the sad nature of America sometimes. But one of the things we learned, for example, is that a lot of business owners they’re not their own employee. They’re taking owner distributions or 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yes. 

Michael Jonas: Their work is contractor based, and so none of them were paying into an unemployment fund.

And so during the pandemic, the state of Oregon had to create a pandemic unemployment fund. The government has not caught up with e-commerce or a freelance economy or contractor economy. They’ve not caught up with remote work. And so we have to modernize all those systems to actually match what the economy looks like.

So I think that that’s really important. We also learned, about digital tech deserts. Do people have computers or internet if they’re gonna be working from home. We learned about daycare I also think we collectively are not remembering people in the pandemic and we’re not also.

It things are a little bit too quick to go back to normal. I think that we should take a moment and be reflective on what we learned. I did see a lot of people learn about themselves and who they are and, I don’t wanna do this shitty job anymore. I wanna do my own business and I wanna lean into my own values.

And that’s really exciting to have both then and now clients who are like. I want to take my business and make it into a social enterprise, or I’ve been doing this thing that I really don’t care about. I really, my heart is in this I’ve had a lot of clients who have expressed that and that’s really exciting that they learned that their way of life is important and that their values are important.

Kim Allchurch Flick: That can be really healthy. It’s not always easy to make a living, but they can get started that way. And that’s what you did as well. You created something that was important because of your values. And I was wondering also, what does it mean to you to be a benefit corporation for good certified company as a benefit corporation in Oregon?

Michael Jonas: Yeah my previous law firm that I sold was a benefit company and then my current law firm law and business strategy is also certified benefit company. I take it really seriously, and I don’t mean seriously, as in stern, I mean as in if I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it. And with the triple bottom line, profit planet and people.

I think a lot of times with law firms or with professional services, profit is always assumed or is the most important and I don’t really work well that way. And so being a benefit company helps with my values. I am very much into, if I’m not a lawyer. Helping people or solving problems and what am I doing?

And yeah, I have bills to pay. I have student loan debt, I have a mortgage, I have a mom assisted living. I have a lot of, expenses. But I really feel that anybody can anybody can and should care about people and the planet. And I think someone might be like, well, oh, your law firm, how do you do that?

Because they’re thinking of. If you’re a food company, you could recycle or, you could do things related to that. But I do this for me so that we are accountable. But also I do this so that my clients have an example so that they themselves can think about how they wanna be a benefit company or uphold these standards.

And so I always ask people whether they’re benefit company certified or gonna do that or not. What’s your community piece? What’s your social enterprise piece? Is there a bigger why? And so some of the stuff we do is not just in our pricing model and me being on probably too many nonprofit boards.

But in how we deliver services, we’re asking questions about. Who are we helping and why, and how does it affect community? We’re doing a lot of pro bono and low bono work. And we also are really focused on education. In addition to our seminar series, I give presentations all the time for last week I had three.

I gave a presentation for the organ, coastal Community College, SBDC in Lincoln City. And then I gave Fantastic at that same night, I gave a presentation to queer health service providers. And then the following day for NAMC for National Association of Minority Contractors.

I talked about, I love 

Kim Allchurch Flick: that, 

Michael Jonas: how to go from residential contracting to commercial and what the risks were, and we’re constantly thinking about the work we do. And how does the education piece play into community? And so when we’re helping clients not only are we reflective upon our values, but and if people don’t have those values and they don’t wanna work with us, that’s fine.

There’s. There’s a law firm for them. There’s a law firm for people who want this sort of legal work. But I think that it’s easier to build community when you’re collectively all agreeing to do your best in terms of how to affect community. So when we work or partner with other organizations, when we all have shared goals, which are at a further community it’s easier to work with ’em and build something special.

Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that. And what states does Narwhal operate in? 

Michael Jonas: Yeah, so we currently operate in Washington and Oregon for business services, for nonprofit services, for existing nonprofits or for intellectual property trademarking or copywriting. Those are federal. So we have clients for IP and nonprofit work across the country.

Kim Allchurch Flick: That’s fantastic. So I want everyone listening to know that because we have listeners who might be from out of state as well. I think Michael, you are more in tune to what it takes to understand legislation policy making things than the average person by a long shot. And I was wondering if you could speak to that a little bit, because you’ve spoken about federal funding and how funding rolls down to the state, but also.

People in states and federal are making decisions that affect businesses. So there’s policy and legislation. Yeah. I was wondering if you could speak to that a bit and if you want to about your propinquity to politics. 

Michael Jonas: Yeah. So one of the things is that folks know is these executive orders about DEI related.

Communications. This administration is saying that sometimes First Amendment rights are considered domestic terrorism, which is completely upside down and wild. But I have clients that either do DEI work or had to completely scrub their website or change all of their services in order to not get in trouble or to continue getting funding.

So there’s that piece where, the work that both I do. And so that relates to this I am not an immigration attorney, but I prepared a kind of a guide for the Oregon Farmer’s Market Association for, oh their member markets, so that if ICE shows up to your market. Here’s what you should know about public and private areas.

Here’s what you should know about administrative versus judicial warrants. Here, here’s some advice from a team perspective of how to organize your team. That’s definitely new. I mentioned tariffs earlier. I tried learning tariffs. I tried learning about tariffs for several weeks and then I just gave up because they kept changing.

One of the main things I’ve been telling clients lately is kind of sad but true. I say I’m gonna give you the rules, but they could change tomorrow. And then I also say I’m gonna give you the rules, but they may not be followed. So in no time in my career have I had to give those two disclaimers of these rules could change or not be followed.

In terms of the economy, so the one big beautiful bill or HR one or one big ugly bill, whatever people wanna call it there’s a lot of cuts to things, but the Medicaid cuts are somewhat scary because there are whole health organizations or hospitals that rely on Medicaid funding.

And what that does is it causes unnecessary strain on already resources that were few and far between. And so helping clients have that real conversation of, okay, we know that you’re not gonna get this money. Do you have a development plan? Or you, I know you need to lay people off. How can we do that in the most efficient way?

And. I think a lot of what I’m doing is resource building making organizational organizations stronger making sure that if they’re audited or if they’re questioned that they have their ducks in a row so that there’s not a pretext being used to close ’em. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Yeah, indeed. And I also find that you are so good at explaining and through my life I’ve had attorneys for a variety of things.

Sometimes properties, sometimes. Drawing up wills, things of that nature. And sometimes the legalese is just something I can’t grasp and I start to need pictures and visuals and every time I’ve spoken with you or gone to one of your classes or a webinar or heard you speak, it is down to earth. This is why it’s important.

This is what you need to know, and it you do it in such a way that it’s not speaking down to people at all. Speaking in a way that is comprehensive and understandable, and that’s something in the legal field that I think is somewhat rare, and I really, really appreciate that. I’m gonna switch gears on you a little bit and ask you what makes you optimistic.

Michael Jonas: Yeah. One of the things that makes me optimistic is seeing the community come together. Whether it’s a march, whether it’s a community fundraiser. Fee. I like the stuff when they’re cutting SNAP benefits. I saw all kinds of people in the community coming together. I’ve seen I’ve, I am seeing and see neighbors who are asking their neighbors, what can I do for you?

Do you eat food? Do you need a ride? So I think the optimism I get is not necessarily always from large governmental things. Everyday people standing up and doing things for others. I get optimism when I see not the shootings happening in Minnesota and how ice is ice asking, acting, excuse me.

But when I see Minnesotans, coming out and below freezing temperatures to. Not only alert if ICE is there, but to see how their neighbors are doing and then to protest in the streets. So I’m optimistic for that. I’m also optimistic in the sense of we’ve been through times in America that have been horrible and catastrophic.

And I’m not saying that we’re not. A time of fascism because we are. And we, it’s arrived. It’s no longer uncertain times this is the time. But I am optimistic when I read about what could be, or I think about what if we rebuilt America in 2028 and we, we untethered corporate greed for moral imperatives and we had legislation or an amendment.

Get rid of what happened with Citizens United and calling corporations people. So I still believe in not only the American dream in terms of equity and the social contract that as America. I also believe that there could be a time in a couple years where we come to our senses and just decide everyone needs universal healthcare and everyone needs a clean environment. And these, yes, these are political and there’s ways to do them, but really these are human decency related things. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. And what can people do, even if it’s something small to be activists like that, but also to support themselves if they’re a business owner and to support local.

Michael Jonas: Yeah. I’ll do a shameless plug of my new podcast called All American. Why? And you can listen to that and the goal with that is I’m asking questions that America is either afraid to ask or has gone in circles with for years. So I think the reason why I bring that up is people can continue to ask why and demand more.

I think that is, i’m not saying it’s our fault because it’s not, but I think we need to flip the script. I think we’ve enabled power structures to act as they want. In terms of how can you get involved ask your neighbor how they’re doing. It is literally these small acts I think are most important now.

And also identify people in your community that may feel as if they can’t leave their house. They like my trans friends, they’re worried about people not thinking that they should exist. I think, we’re taught right now or they’re trying to teach us that empathy is bad, which is bullshit.

And they’re sort of hating people and then telling us that they’re good Christians and that they’re patriotic. What I’m gonna tell you is that the opposite is true. Having leaning into love and leaning into empathy is what we need to do is we need to look at people in our community and ask them what they need and how we can help.

And we need to remind them that we love them and that we are here for them and we see them as they are and that and whether that’s someone who is queer or an immigrant, or. Someone who just feels all alone and is having a mental health crisis. We need to remind people that, that on the opposite of hate is love.

And that if we all prescribe to this social contract of America, you don’t have to be the same as someone else, but 

You should. You should see them and love them and make them feel like they have the safety that they need. And so I struggle with this because we’re being told right now that hate is just a difference of opinion or that it’s negotiable.

And I know that sometimes it’s hard to talk to someone who doesn’t believe in truth or fact or creates their own truth. My thing is, yes, we have those people, but I also want you to focus on people who might feel like they are alone or in danger every day. And all it takes is for you to check in on them and see if they’re okay and ask them what they need.

To me, that is the most tangible thing that people can do right now. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Thank you. Thank you so much. And another podcaster once said that. Running a business and supporting a business is a form of resistance. And I think listening to you that empathy is also a form of resistance, and empathy builds capacity.

And I know from living a lot in the outdoors and being in open spaces that the most important strength to keep a forest healthy or an environment healthy is biodiversity. And diversity in our communities is the same. It’s a form of resistance, a form of strength, a form of, and empathy. Empathy is a, it binds, it really helps people.

Michael Jonas: And whether you believe in, in, God or Mother Earth or creation, story, science, whatever you believe in, right? Big Bang Theory. We are all in it together. We are all related, we are, we’re all on earth. We’re all using the same resources. I’m not an expert on religion, but really to me, environmentalism is one of the most godly things.

The other thing that is extremely godly is being yourself. And we’re now having people who are fighting against. People who were created and there’s a beauty in diversity that the people who are spewing such hate are missing out on and are not realizing that the beauty or sanctity of diversity is actually like what you said makes us stronger and makes us better.

And so that’s really unfortunate, and I think that the thing you said about business and business being a form of economic justice and resistance, a lot of times people who start businesses, they can’t be themselves at a job place or they feel like they don’t have a voice or they can’t create what they want, or they’re in an abusive job relationship.

And the act of business formation allows you to be you doing the thing that you care about, and there is great power in that. And also the public now, as you probably know, not only do they support sustainable businesses, we really like businesses that come from people who have authentic stories.

And we see the person in the business that they’re forming and growing. Yeah, for anyone listening if people are telling you not to be yourself and they’re giving you hate, I’m gonna tell you be exactly who you are and that there are people who love you and see you.

Kim Allchurch Flick: Indeed. Thank you so much. And before the last question, how can people reach you? 

Michael Jonas: Yeah. I am on Instagram in a variety of ways, but Narwhal Law and Biz BIZ strategy, you can find us on Instagram. You can go to NarwhalStrategy.com. So Instagram, website. I’m on LinkedIn, and all the things. Feel free to reach out.

Kim Allchurch Flick: And everyone, also remember that the law services are available if your issue is federal, no matter where you are in the US.

Michael Jonas: We’re also in the process of building out something called Narwhal Pod. Narwhal Pods. And the idea with that is to present holistic service providers as they are, and then like an integrative health approach.

You can find your people. Based on their values. So check out narwhal pod.com. We were very blessed to receive a Portland State University MBA team of four that are doing their capstone project to help us with the narwhal pods. I’m excited about that. And yeah, just trying to grow community in all the ways possible, and that’s what’s needed right now.

Kim Allchurch Flick: I love that. And for the record, Mighty Epiphyte Counsulting – soon to be renamed – is a member of the Narwhal Pod, as are some other amazing people that we know. The final question is, if you could have dinner up to a table of four, so you could have three guests, one, two, or three guests, your choice, living or dead, who would they be and why?

Michael Jonas: That’s really hard. It’s 

Kim Allchurch Flick: hard. I know. 

Michael Jonas: I think right now in the moment that we’re in, I think I wrote down three people because I knew you were gonna ask this question. I think one of them would be Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Another one would be Harvey Milk, and then another one would be Mar Martin Luther King, Jr.

But yeah, that’s 

Kim Allchurch Flick: probably put a table, 

Michael Jonas: that’s a difficult question. But I think in the time that we’re in, those are the three people that I would love to have dinner with and would love to see them communicate with each other.

Kim Allchurch Flick: I’m trying to imagine how profound that would be. And they crossed over, not generationally, but they were all alive at the same time for a little bit.

In different areas doing different things, and yet strong values driven to peacefully make change. 

That’s a beautiful thing. 

Michael Jonas: Yeah. Thank you. It’s, I could think of a long list, so it’s hard to narrow down, but, I would love to see like Greta Thunberg interact with MLK, like interesting conversations of that nature. 

Kim Allchurch Flick: Wouldn’t it be amazing? I know this is a hard question and it’s why I like it. We could answer it different ways in a different day as well. There’s all sorts of reasons to wanna reach back in history, but also connect with now. Yeah. So Michael, thank you so much everyone.

The the links verbalized are also in the show notes. We really would love for you to interact with Narwhal and one of those educational offerings, which are often online so you can access them anywhere, the podcast. And look at the Narwhal pod. I’m Kim Allchurch Flick. I love helping businesses do more for good, whether it’s certifying or just really think about your impacts and being able to measure them, express them, and share them with the world.

Thank you all signing off, and I hope you have a great week.