Sustainable profit

think one of the most misunderstood things about business... is that people are either doing things for altruistic reasons or they are greedy and selfish, just after profit. That type of dichotomy portrays a false image of business. It certainly is a false image of Whole Foods. The whole idea is to do both: The animals have to flourish, but in such a way that it'll be cheap enough for the customers to buy it.

John Mackey, Whole Foods

Our business growth survey undertaken with UK business in spring 2015 indicates that 27.7% of respondents wanted to get better at creating a successful long term ethical business. These weren’t businesses that most people would think of, not Fairtrade or green, just normal business people and over a quarter chose this answer rather than more sales!

Generally we find people respond well when we talk about our passion for working with companies that want to change the world. People want to talk about values and having an impact. They want to make a difference.

But this does mean that the business or even the charity also has to be financially sustainable. You can only make a difference if you are still in business.

There are several ways to ensure profit is sustainable:

Don't let a single customer account for more than 15% of your turnover
Look for regular income rather than one off sales
Consider the cost of getting a customer v the life time value of the customer
Look to sell more to your existing customers - it costs less in marketing and they buy more

As the John Mackey quote shows it is not easy to run a balanced ethical business and as our Ethical Wheel of Success(c) illustrates there are many things to consider. But get it right and you can create an incredibly powerful business.

We always start by considering what are the core values of any business, you can use our digital tool to identify and rank your values here.

Once you have identified your values you need to translate them into behaviour and strategy. Below is the inspire2aspire Mission Map© which illustrates our values and by definition our ethical stance. Talk to us about how we can develop a Mission Map(c) for you.