Episode 2

A purpose-centred approach to online business

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EPISODE SUMMARY

Join me on this episode as we explore the transformative power of purpose-led business frameworks and their potential to create a more sustainable and collaborative online business environment.

We look at how many entrepreneurs, inspired by personal challenges or community issues, are shifting away from traditional profit-driven models to embrace a regenerative approach that prioritizes values, relationships, and meaningful impact.

Listen in as I outline the practical steps to build a framework that aligns with your ethos, ensuring that your business actions resonate with your internal drive to do good in the world and fosters a self-sustaining ecosystem for your business, where collaboration over competition leads to more authentic and lasting success.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

00:02 - Debbie (Host)

Hello and a very warm welcome to the Beyond Business Summer Podcast Series here. Over the course of six main episodes, we'll be challenging the mainstream approach to building a business online and instead creating a regenerative framework inspired by nature that takes your online business from sporadic action to sustainable results. If you would like to use the starter kit that goes along with the series, then head over to www.debbielee.co.uk/starter-kit and download your copy now. That way, you can work along with the episodes week by week and, at the end, have a one-page framework that gives your business the springboard that you need to take action in a way that feels good and gets results. Hello, welcome back to episode two in this six-part series.

01:03

This week, we're looking at what it means to take a purpose centred approach to online business, and I would say that most of the people that I work with would describe themselves as being driven by purpose in some capacity, meaning that, to a greater or lesser degree, their business has sprung out of this internal desire to do good in the world, and so quite often, it's people who have been through a challenging time themselves or they see a problem facing their community or the natural world around them that they feel really strongly about and really believe that they have the drive and the motivation and the skills and impetus to do something about it. So it's yeah, their approach to business really is driven from the inside, and so, even if they don't use the word purpose led, they might describe themselves as heart centred or conscious, or even if they don't use those words themselves, then maybe you will like recognise yourself in them. And so, typically, what my job is is to support these purpose led entrepreneurs with building a framework, so building like the practical structure, if you like, that enables them to bring their big business vision to life. A bit of a stumbling of my words there, but I like to think of it as the scaffolding, if you like, that helps people take action that really aligns with this internal drive and that desire to do good.

02:56

In the last episode, I talked about how traditional or mainstream business practices often encourage us to succeed by being better I'm using my air quotes being better than the competition, and these ways of working carry real pressure to shout the loudest in the already noisy world of online business and online marketing in order to make yourself stand out, and I know that for so many purpose-driven founders. These ways of working just aren't a good fit like one. They go against your ethos and your values. But I think typically, like quite often, um, yeah, the people I work with are more introverted or more like deep thinkers, and so really needing to put yourself out there in a big noisy way just doesn't feel good, it doesn't fit with your personality and it doesn't. It feels inauthentic and like you're forcing something or having to put on a front in order to be visible, and that's just not what we want at all.

04:05

I would say that the people I work with are much more drawn to collaboration over competition and fostering real and meaningful relationships with their customers and their peers and their colleagues and the people in their, in their online communities in many different respects, and so, whereas traditional business practices are focused on making a sale as the end point, if you like, it's this very linear model where there's an input, something is made and then the output is profit. Purpose-driven business, or regenerative business, really puts purpose at the heart of everything that we do. So you can think of it more as a circular model, where purpose and your values and your ethos lie right at the very heart of that circle, and so if you think of the traditional approach to business as this funnel type approach that's sort of designed to entice people or convince people to buy from you, then you can think of the purpose driven approach as a much more self-sustaining cycle where your business is designed to thrive very much in collaboration with the people, the community and the environment around you. In the last episode I mentioned how it's like developing an ecosystem around your business, an ecosystem like a forest that becomes self-sustaining, where everything has its own role that is distinct and different, but everyone works together in a way that produces something where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts. So when you get this focus on purpose or values and ethos right at the heart, it means that everything else becomes clearer.

06:11

I'm hesitant to use the word simpler, because often it's not simple and it's often not easy either, because it is going against the grain and it is going against the mainstream and it is being more vulnerable in your approach, because you're really showing more of yourself and often you're showing more of yourself as you're also getting to know more of yourself. But having this purpose at the heart, it means that when you then go to consider for, for example, the way that you market your work, or the way that you sell and who you sell it to, and what you want to sell and the way you want to sell it and what type of a service or a product you want to deliver. It all stems back to this purpose, and so a really good starting point for all of this is getting super clear on what that purpose is, both from your own perspective so like how does purpose relate to you and your own internal world and maybe that internal niggle that you feel inside, but also how does it relate to your customers and the types of challenges that you want to support them with, and who those customers might be in particular? And then how does this scale up into your community? And then how does this scale up to like your bigger mission in the world and how you see your contribution to some of the most pressing social or environmental challenges that we're we're currently facing. And so this week, some I'm going to suggest some questions that you might want to explore in order to help investigate the why behind your work, and and these will be included in your show notes, but just to go through them, I wonder why this business matters to you in the first place, what was it that brought you here that give you that incentive, that motivation, that drive to start and take action? Or where did that little seed or little nugget of an idea come from?

08:31

Secondly, what is it that you personally want from it? And this is where I think that regenerative business is often a lot richer and more meaningful than traditional approaches that consider, I guess, assume, that we're all looking for financial or monetary output above all of else. All else and, yes, I imagine that most of us listening here want to make a living from our work and maybe even go beyond, like, the day-day essentials and stretch out into a place of more comfort or like being able to treat ourselves sometimes. But beyond that, what is it that you want like? What is the lifestyle that you want the finances to support, and what additional ingredients are important to you in order to feel like your work is meaningful and impactful and really making a difference? And this might be yeah, it might be those sort of more emotive outputs, but it might be very practical considerations. So it might mean that you want to be able to work certain hours of the day, or take time off during the year, or work in a particular way with people. So you only want to work one to one with people, but having those criteria mapped out, or at least like having thought about them and having some idea right at the start, can be really helpful.

10:04

What is the bigger story that brought you here? So many of us can identify like a starting point in our business, but when we look back then through our lives, there's often a trail of breadcrumbs that led you here, and what are those events, or, yeah, those pivotal moments that feel really significant and really important? Then, if we maybe move away from focusing on you, I wonder then how do you feel about the impact that you want to have on a particular group of people, or the individual people that you want to work with? What is it that you want to work with? What is it that you want to change in their day-to-day life? Um, and why will they? Why will they care about this? What's, yeah, what is it that for them that will draw you towards their work? Um, and then lastly, like, what big world world problems do you care about solving?

11:06

And this can either be at the the much bigger scale, like the global scale, or it might be something that you also see echoed in your own community or your immediate friend circle of friends and family, like what is it that you this problem that you see that you really care about making a difference, making a contribution towards? So those are all things to mull over and consider, and when they are added up, they come together to form what I like to call purpose, and what I find is that the other useful thing about putting this at the centre is that when we're clear on the purpose, then our offerings, in the products that you create or the services that you create, they can take wildly different forms many times. Wildly different forms many times, and like, for example, if you want to support people in climbing a mountain, then maybe you want to produce a guidebook for that. Maybe you want to train and become a mountain guide, maybe you want to manufacture outdoor clothing or equipment. There's so many different forms that this can take, and usually, though, it's the why behind it.

12:29

All that will stay the same and provide a root or a foundation for you to keep coming back with and be a guide and a go to when you're making subsequent decisions and subsequent choices, because you can assess decisions against whether they meet the criteria that you have laid out here, and, yeah, this is why I like to think of it as being the heart or the foundation, or really the soul, I guess, of your business.

13:01

So I would love to know how you get on with this. Please feel free to get in touch and share anything that you come up with, or if you have your own reflections to share. I would love to hear from them, from you, and, and if this approach in general is something that you would like to hear more of, then make sure you've checked out the earlier episodes in the series and it's a six-part series running over the summer that aim to help you build a regenerative, a one-page regenerative framework for your business. So if you would like the starter kit, the workbook that goes along with this, head over to www.debbielee.co.uk/starter-kit and download your copy now. No-transcript.