Member Article

Making money is not the point of business

It’s the result. That’s right. All these shows you have been watching and all those magazine articles you have been reading. You know the ones, successful business person (usually a meglomaniac) rips amateur to shreds for not having enough profit margin or a sufficiently awesome growth plan.

Yeah, that’s helpful?!

Yes, you could have a myopic view that your entire existence is based upon generating cash. If you have this view, it is unlikely you will reach your goals and if you do it is even more unlikely you will sustain your goal. I know. This was me. I got the “make money” T-shirt and figured out it didn’t really fit. And I found out that you can only go on so many holidays, buy so much wine, and buy so much stuff before you realise that it all pales in comparison to purpose driven work.

Don’t despair, I’m not talking about joining a monastery.

Far from it.

Lots of successful business people tell us that they wasted so much time in pursuit of cash that they missed out on life, love, and sustainable happiness.

“Money can’t buy life.“ — Bob Marley

And yet most of us slough it off as a bunch of well-meaning talk by people who can afford such luxuries. But, it doesn’t just happen when people make £1m or £100m or even £1b; it happens when people reach as little as £50K in salary per year. ‘High Incomes Don’t Bring You Happiness’

So how do we avoid this trap of earning a good living without being bummed out about it. Or worse, poor and purposeful. We pick a different path to building our business. We make capitalism a force for good by building intrinsic value into our business.

Product + Purpose = Profitable, Durable, Impactful Business.

In this way, you will be creating an emotionally, economically, and hopefully socially sustainable business.

It all starts with Why? Sound a bit wooly? It’s not.

Let’s look at an example of a thriving small business in this thin space:

Ignore the charitable message. A real live intrinsic value business exists under the trendy branding. It’s Molly Moon Ice Cream.

Molly Moon starts an ice cream business devoted to making brilliant ice cream, in zany flavours that attract the entire community to create memories one scoop at a time. What’s Molly doing here? Ice cream? Memories?

Molly is blending those two ideas to reinvent the community centre within an ice cream shop. Her purpose is clear. Her product is awesome. Her business is boomingŠ—Šshe has 6 shops and a staff of 100 during peak times.

9 times out of 10 this kind of business is employing low paid sessional staff and spinning a story to move move buckets of pretty good ice cream. Not this time. Molly pays a living wage and covers 100% of healthcare costs for her employees—Šand has done so since the beginning. Molly is successful firstly because she delivers a stellar product. A remarkable experience.

But, fueling this success is the alignment of her purpose with her product. Importantly, Molly is not making money and then donating profits, Molly has integrated her business’ impact with her business model. Guess what happens when you do this? Your impact is both continuous and sustainable. It’s part of the business DNA. As a result, her shops are micro community centres generating cash. And because she pays a living wage, her staff become marketing ambassadors and important parts of the local GDP. Local producers benefit from providing to local outlets, reducing distribution costs and food miles for Molly. All of this leads to more traditional support mechanisms like the support of local community enrichment groups with her profits.

The beauty of this model and others like it is the way in which the impact is integrated within the business model. Imagine if Molly told a different story, a story where low paid staff created higher profits for Molly. There wouldn’t be much value added to the local economy because her employees would be stressed out, under paid drains on society.

“But, paying our people more is costly. It is inefficient. It is contrary to the purpose of a business.“

These are the rants of the accountant, the shark, the lizard brain of the business. If we can stop the lizard brain from becoming too loud, we can reach beyond the normal business cycles and create dynamic, robust businesses that change the world.

Go on, be like Molly.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Todd Hannula .