Do I have to come up with something totally new for it to “count?”
I’ve known for a long time what I want to do as a business… teach other entrepreneurs about sustainable business practices so they can grow a holistic life. But I thought I:
- a) had to learn everything there is to know about business
- b) prove the concepts myself
- Or c) all the above.
Well, learning everything there is to know about business is fun, but kind of an unrealistic goal. Spending all my spare time since 2015 reading books, attending webinars, and taking courses has proven that.
The good news is that there’s a LOT of material out there, which is great for a serial learner like me.
The bad news is that there’s a LOT of material out there, which is not so great for busy business people who don’t have time to study or compare or figure out how “x” fits into their business.
The research that I did was not even close to “everything there is to know about business,” but it WAS enough to start seeing patterns.
People talk about principles, frameworks, strategies, tactics, systems, processes, “custom everything,” etc
How to boil it down?
Well, to put it in permaculture terms:
Climate
The terrain, altitude, longitude/latitude, and weather that dictate what is possible in your environment.
Microclimate
Your specific situation and location, the position of rivers, mountains, forests, and other large defining features.
Permaculture Design
Planning a network of elements that each perform multiple functions, and ensuring that each function is served by multiple elements; so if one element fails the whole system doesn’t collapse. Also, designing a closed-loop system that generates and recycles its own nutrients, and is situated in its microclimate to take full advantage of beneficial features and minimize detrimental features.
Perennials
Food-bearing plants and trees that will last many seasons and multiply your yield. The main crop.
Annuals
Short-term plants that will provide a burst of resources, but must be renewed year after year. The pretty, but short-lived, eye-catching flowers.
Ongoing Work, Maintenance
Manual labor of nurturing your garden or food forest, harvesting + processing the yield, testing new tactics to increase your yield or improve storage. Removing underperforming trees or crops. Measuring and collecting data.
Planning Work
Looking ahead, having the community connections and foresight to know if your neighbor is planting mostly wheat, you should plant corn or you’ll drive down the market; or seeing a surge in sustainable fashion so you plant bamboo for another income stream. Keeping track of macro-weather patterns, knowing the earth’s cycles. Being aware of what’s going on in the world.
My current theory is that this framework correlates to business in the following categories:
Promises, Principles, Laws of the Universe
Things like sowing and reaping, the 3 laws of thermodynamics, gravity, seasons/cyclical nature, the golden rule. These are The Way The World Works and no amount of hustling or hacking will subvert them. Working against them will destroy you; working with them will prosper you.
Frameworks & Strategy
This is your business model, your revenue model. This is The Way You Work, taking your personal strengths and preferences into account. This is where you make sure you don’t have a system that schedules client meetings at 8am if you aren’t human until 10.
Infrastructure
These are your systems of creation, of distribution, of sharing between departments. This is The Way Your Business Works and is comprised of the highways of information, sustenance, feedback, and garbage removal.
Service
This is the way you help people, The Way Your People Work. This includes you, your team, and your customers. This is your service or product, your meta-niche and niche, your blue ocean, your tribe. This is the heart of your business, where people connect and are made better because your business exists.
Information, Messaging, & Marketing
This is how you Tell People You Can Help Them; your list building, your branding, your positioning. Running ads, content upgrades, promotions, launches, bundling products, etc.
Research, Development, Iterations
This is where you’re Continuously Improving your **current** infrastructure, service, and messaging. Your core frameworks probably won’t change that much while you stay in the same business. This is the paradoxical meeting of “if it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” and “those who won’t grow, die.”
Vision & Innovation
This is where you’re Taking a Step Back from day-to-day operations to consider where your industry is going, where the world is going, and how those two intersect. This is your chance to brainstorm new concepts, new ways of serving your people, finding new groups of people to serve.
These categories must all be considered at some point, but aren’t necessarily in order. Think of them more like buckets in which all your activities and planning can be organized.
While I don’t pretend to have all that figured out just yet, I am developing a theory (more on that to come). I make no bones about it: this is a theory that I’m talking about to get other people’s input, so PLEASE comment and message me with your thoughts and experiences.
If it helps you, great! Eventually I’d like it to be a full blown framework for teaching people business from the ground up. But if something sounds kooky while I’m working out the kinks, please use your common sense.
I’m going to be writing and talking about these concepts because I think that we can learn a lot from permaculture that is extremely beneficial to our overarching understanding of business. After all, the first businesses were directly tied to the natural resources a person had access to.
So while I don’t know EVERYTHING about business, I think everything can be categorized into one of these buckets, (which will make it easier to determine what we should be focusing on at any given time) and give us a framework for sorting through all the advice online.
