The Business Case for Giving a Damn About the Planet
I’ve sat in enough boardrooms and startup pitches to know that “purpose” still makes some people nervous. Like it’s code for “less profitable” or “soft.” So let me make a different argument — not the values case, but the commercial one.
Organisations that genuinely care about their impact are outperforming those that don’t. Not because the market is rewarding virtue. Because caring about something tends to attract better people, create stickier communities, and build the kind of trust that’s almost impossible to manufacture.
People don’t buy products. They buy belonging.
The most successful purpose-led businesses I’ve encountered don’t lead with their product. They lead with the world they believe in — and invite customers to be part of building it. The product is almost secondary. It’s the vehicle. The mission is the engine.
Patagonia doesn’t sell jackets. They sell a stance. Oatly doesn’t sell milk. They sell a provocation. Whether you agree with their politics is almost beside the point — they’ve built communities of people who feel something about what they stand for.
The small organisation advantage
Here’s something I find genuinely exciting: purpose is one of the few areas where small organisations can outcompete large ones. A big corporation can say they care about the environment. But when a small business actually restructures how it operates because of that care — when it’s baked into who they hire, what they stock, how they treat their suppliers — it’s credible in a way that no marketing budget can fake.
“The best marketing is just evidence that you actually believe what you say you believe.”
Starting with soil
My entry point into all of this was literally the ground. The regenerative agriculture movement is full of people who built viable, profitable businesses while genuinely improving the land they work on. They’re not martyrs. They’re pragmatists who understood that the extractive model eventually runs out of road.
The same logic applies to any business. You can extract — squeeze margins, cut costs, optimise for short-term returns — and it works for a while. Or you can build something that gives back more than it takes and watch it compound over time.
That’s not idealism. That’s just good strategy.
If this is the kind of thinking you want to bring into your organisation — through a keynote, workshop or facilitated session — let’s talk.
