'Follow Your Bliss' wrote Joseph Campbell. I did just that: I decided what I really, really wanted to do; I then simply worked out how to turn that into income streams. You may wish to do something similar. I hope you will find some ideas here... First, 4 Questions: 1. WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR DAYS? 2. WHY? 3. WHAT WOULD YOU REALLY LIKE TO DO WITH YOUR DAYS? 4. WHY NOT? OK, now hold those questions in your mind while I tell you a brief story... One day, twenty-something years ago, I asked myself the four questions above. Here are some of my answers: I want to change the world: I want to make a living making a difference. I want loads of bright, cheeky, respectful, creative kids. I want to spend a lot of my time with the people I choose to be with: my family and my friends. I want to live and work with them in a gorgeous old rambling house (hint: its portrait is this blog's background). I want to go to sleep to the sound of gently hooting owls. I want my roots in one of the world’s most beautiful cities and, from there, to travel the world. I want to work with passionate, gifted people. I want to be surrounded by great art. I want to enjoy exquisite food, drive delicious (super-eco) cars and wear elegant clothes. I want to live, love, learn and laugh. A lot. It’s all happened. This is my life. Yet oddly enough, it seemed to start out rather badly. My mother was manic depressive and prone to sudden rages and inexplicable violence. My father was rarely present. The family had very little money. I got into all sorts of trouble as a precocious, confused and angry kid. I inherited life-threatening diseases from both my parents. I nearly died several times. My point is that, whatever hand you're dealt, YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL. You just have to figure out a few things like: - Where are you now? - Where do you want to be? - What is required to make that happen? One good thing about a dodgy start: it has most definitely blessed me with attitude. And attitude does help get things sorted out. As well as being quite remarkably fortunate in my private life, I have been able to fulfil my dreams professionally. I have, for instance, co-founded quite a number of social and eco-enterprises, including: the UK farmers’ markets movement; a corporate social responsibility consultancy; the first eco-hotel in Bath, England; an artisan eco-bakery company; a furniture and kitchens company working with reclaimed timber and young offenders (I wonder why?); an industrial-scale composting company and five children. All are still thriving. I want to see if other people might like to try this approach (apart from the dicing with death part, perhaps) Hence this blog...
A quick ponder - or is it a wander? - on Corporate Social Investment (CSI) as a preferable, ROI-focused alternative to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). In this context, the 'Earn, Learn, Create a Return' (ELCAR) model is also touched upon.
OK, so I JUST MIGHT be holding the iPhone upside down (again) - I thought the accelerometer sorted all that kind of stuff out without my needing a PhD in Geekery...(I'll try harder next time...)
WHAT A WONDERFUL EVENT! Duncan and Julia have at last tied the knot and here we all are at their gorgeously celebratory wedding - entirely catered by THE THOUGHTFUL BREAD COMPANY AND all this after FunkyDunk had worked nights at the bakery all week! Julia - he's a keeper! Huge love to you both... <):-)
Off to see an old friend of mine next week. Some years ago I helped him to establish a very successful composting company. He is now in the process of negotiating a contract with a huge food corporation which, if all goes as planned, will be worth tens of millions of pounds. He came out of a fast-track career in finance; I had walked away from a similarly lucrative career in corporate communications. Many people were flabbergasted: 'why have you gone into this hippyshit business' they asked, 'when you were making so much money?' We didn't do it for the money - though we had a few pretty good ideas... Some of those doubters are now wishing they'd turned their backs on real estate and banking. As they used to say in the North of England: 'Where there's muck there's brass.'
OK, it's a rotting apple - courtesy of www.turtleislander.blogspot.com
I remember that moment when the realisation struck me: EVERYONE CAN HAVE IT ALL. It's the Eureka moment, the Ark of the Covenant, the final turning of base metal to gold, the epiphany. After over twenty years of working separately with business, government and third sector leaders, I had finally understood what had eluded me for so long: there IS a way to put all these players together in all-win collaborative scenarios. We have designed a way to build profitable social and eco-enterprises that deliver major taxpayer savings, community benefits and corporate investment advantages. So everybody wins. They're called 'Earn, Learn, Create a Return' (ELCAR) programmes. Ask me about them...
Is the UK Deputy Prime Minister our best salesman?
Anybody who, like me, WANTS IT ALL will no doubt include prosperity in their wish list. If you also want meaningful work, lots of (free) publicity, good sleep and possibly the biggest ethical business opportunity in history, you might want to take a look at this. UK Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, gave a speech today, in which he outlined the government’s new economic model: the means by which the UK will re-build its economic health.
In a pre-speech interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme this morning, Clegg identified the development of skills and education and the new £1bn Green Investment Bank as two of the leading initiatives for economic recovery and development. These, along with localism, community regeneration, social enterprise and the reduction of taxpayer spending are the core elements of Britain’s economic policy for the next few years.
Government leaders in almost all the world’s leading economies are saying much the same thing.
We are working on a business model which achieves all the above goals and takes advantage of all the above opportunities. There has never been a better time to be an ethical entrepreneur.
Here's another way to make ethical business rock... As I said in the last post, eco-social enterprise is a VERY newsworthy topic - now more than ever, it seems. There's another thing we do, though, that makes our enterprises work wonderfully well. Each business, as with the organs in an organism, feeds - and is fed by - the others. We call this approach 'Organismics' (I've written a book on this - ask me for a free pdf). This picture shows our little eco-hotel, Bloomfield House. Customers who like the kitchen (which is made from reclaimed timber by another of our companies) tend to ask to buy one for themselves. Our hotel breakfasts enable visitors to try goodies from The Thoughtful Bread Company. Our well-fed guests also buy my book (see above), which features numerous other eco-social enterprises seeking customers...
How do you start a successful eco-enterprise without a penny? You use all the other very powerful assets that eco-enterprise and social enterprise bring. One of them is that our businesses make SUPERB MEDIA STORIES. We're now on our third TV series at The Thoughtful Bread Co - here's a brief sample from the BBC TV Series 'It's Not Easy Being Green.' This was shot in the early days of the company, about 18 months ago. Meanwhile, the business is growing as fast as the dough can rise...
A brief early-morning stroll through Bath Farmers' Market, one of our first eco-social enterprises and Britain's first such market. In fact, after we got it onto the BBC it triggered the wonderful UK-wide, 500-strong Farmers' Markets movement. It also triggered a whole series of our other eco-social enterprises, some of which I mutter about in the voiceover...
It intrigues me how easily we talk ourselves into all kinds of upward or downward spirals. The man at the bank counter says loudly to the bank clerk: "Please cancel this payment as we're not taking a holiday this year - I heard that there's a recession brewing." The young woman behind him changes her mind about opening a savings account for the deposit on a house. Upon hearing this, her boyfriend decides not to risk the expense of the business he had planned to launch (the one that would have been the next Ben & Jerry's). The jobs aren't created; apprenticeship opportunities for young local people don't materialise; crime continues to increase. The recession spiral begins...
Lord Stern, in the UK Government-commissioned Stern Report, told us that climate change was either a) the biggest calamity ever visited upon humans by humans or b) the biggest business opportunity in history. The economic cost of not addressing this issue decisively and quickly, Stern reported, would inevitably be immense. The business opportunities for those who address climate promptly, thoughtfully and creatively, are very considerable.
In our own set of local eco-enterprises, we're having our best year ever.
Been in lust and love with this cute country wench for thirty-something years - by far the greatest constant in my entire life. She's also helped me (rather a lot) in producing five astonishing children...
EVOLUTIONARY ENTERPRISE... @robweston-blog - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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