Beyond Business Podcast Ep2

Dec 13

Episode 2

Regenerative Business with Jamie Prow

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EPISODE SUMMARY

On this episode of Beyond Business, join us as we journey with Jamie Prow from Make Honey into the realm of regenerative business. Jamie guides us through this new economic paradigm that challenges our conventional approach, moving beyond the depletion of Earth's natural systems to working within and with them. Listen in as we explore the necessity of this shift in mindset, the sustainability of constant growth, and the potential for a more nourishing and life-affirming future.

We also reconnect with nature, reminiscing on childhood experiences that cultivated our deep appreciation for the environment. Jamie contrasts these memories with the fast-paced, linear city life, highlighting the importance of preserving nature and the fear of losing the creativity and problem-solving skills gained from immersion in the natural world. This discussion also touches on the impact of technology on our connection with nature and the need to protect this invaluable resource for future generations.

Furthermore, we discuss the pivotal role of technology in the regenerative movement and its potential to innovate beyond digital platforms. Jamie shares insights into the challenges and opportunities of adopting a regenerative mindset and breaking free from traditional business practices. We also discuss the potential for startups to drive systemic change and the power of business activism. Finally, Jamie emphasizes the crucial role of values and purpose in business and shares how they can foster resilience and success. Listen in for an enlightening conversation on how we can contribute to a better future.

You can connect with Jamie on LinkedIn and Curv.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

00:03 - Debbie (Host)

Welcome to Beyond Business the podcast, the show for impact driven egopreneurs who want to be part of a bigger change and make a difference that reaches beyond your business alone. This week on the podcast, I'm joined by Jamie Prow from Make Honey. Jamie works in the world of regenerative business, supporting startups and early stage business owners to create a mission, a brand and a business model that is fit for the 21st century and really goes beyond business. As usual, hi, jamie, I'm very, very warm welcome to the Beyond Business podcast. It's really, really awesome to have you here. I imagine that we have much overlap in lots of things that we're going to. I shared passion with you guys, I guess, but also these topics, so I think the challenge today is going to be keeping us to time. So, thank you, thank you very much.

01:06 - Jamie (Guest)

Thank you and yes, we'll try to keep time. I also want to say I absolutely love the name of the podcast. I think it's exactly where we need to be starting. So, yeah, it's as simple and eloquent as you put it. I think that's exactly what we should all be talking about is concept of beyond. What more is there to what we know today? So, yeah, thank you for having me and also thank you for going out with such a great name for the podcast.

01:37 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, this feels like such a fitting topic to be kicking off with the world of regenerative business, and he said what lies beyond, and so I wonder if we could start right there and if you could give us for people listening who might not have heard the term regenerative before, or maybe have heard the term that aren't quite sure like where it fits in. I'd be great to hear your understanding about what regenerative business means and what it is.

02:12 - Jamie (Guest)

Certainly yes. So for me, if I'm trying to unravel what regenerative regeneration is, I'd say it's a journey, because my lived experience has been a journey to find this new way of thinking and this new way of, yes, doing business or maybe reframing our economic kind of mindset. But, yeah, it's grounded in the personal journey and in doing inner work and looking as much inwardly as it is outwardly. So to start with that, but I suppose the general concept is we live currently in the world in a system or paradigm where we are depleting, like earth, which is our own kind of life support system. So as we grow, we go to work, we work hard, harder and harder, to kind of fuel our economy and there's been lots of amazing kind of benefits that have come with that journey.

03:17

But as we grow, we also need to kind of extract, we need to take things. We can't kind of grow from nothing, which means we need a culture as a society where we're always hungry, because if we always need to grow, we must always kind of have an inner hunger. So there's this kind of cultural element where our systems always keep us hungry. So we always need more, because our economy is about growing more, but with every bit of more that we kind of pursue. We have to take it from somewhere and that is that scene mostly in our natural capital. What we take from nature In the past nature could kind of deal with the rate of taking. There's an element of bio capacity that our natural living systems can kind of replenish at a rate. But we've kind of far exceeded that now.

04:14

And the way that I kind of describe this to people is I use the waistband analogy on your shorts and trousers and it's you know, it's all good if we always kept hungry and we keep eating until we hit the waistband right and then it starts to get painful. Now that waistband is our planetary boundaries and our economy is only fit to continue to keep us hungry, to keep eating. Now we don't really feel the pain as per se as you would on your waistband, but we do experience it through what's going on with climate change, biodiversity loss and all of those other big topics that we're in today. The opposite of that is, instead of how do we work in a framework that depletes Earth's life systems, it's well, how do we work within and with these systems? So that's the kind of parallel and it's a bit different from the typical sustainability kind of discourse, which is well, we can continue to grow at faster and faster rates as long as we find innovations that keep us within kind of these limits.

05:21

But the problem with that is we don't seem to be able to innovate fast enough or be able to find solutions that actually do bring us within, even close to being within, that waistband. So I opt to work within the more regenerative spaces, which is all about how can we reduce the waistband, how can we make it so. Every action we do contributes towards bringing that back in, bringing us within the planetary boundaries, and it opens up so many more possibilities and it's very exciting place to work. So I'll leave it with that. Hopefully that's a sink to answer for you.

05:57 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, I really like that analogy. It's something that feels like it really captures a lot of the thinking behind it, and I also really appreciate that you started with the idea that it's as much about a mindset and a way of being as it is about what we actually do, how we do business the two they seem very complementary and, yes, distinctly different too and yeah, to me that's the easiest way to understand is regenerative business I think of as life affirming, like it creates new life for ourselves. It creates like a sense of self nourishment and a new life on the planet too, in terms of the natural systems, and the opposite of that being like the degenerative way that we have traditionally been doing business.

06:57 - Jamie (Guest)

Yeah, I think that's exactly it, and I think once you kind of get into that space and you have that mindset of, well, maybe the way that we've done things was good for now, but there is something beyond, beyond that, that we can look to, and what I look to and I think what a lot of people base their agenda principles on, there's obviously nature and the natural world. There's more diverse living holistic systems, and then once you start to study them so I work with clients who work with things like soil, biology and these deep interconnected webs of life and actually how biodiversity is an enhancer. But you know, in our current world we kind of silo things off and create like linear tangents rather than looking at the whole. And I think that's the. The first step of actually actioning regenerative by action, taking in your business is to, yes, kind of start to do the work that we need to acknowledge the landscape, changing that. You know that needs to happen, but then also it's okay.

08:03

Well, what do we look to? You know this is brand new. There aren't people who have done this before per se, people are still finding their way, but nature is something that's that's done. That and I see this more and more clearly in my mind now is well, for millennia, we evolved to live with and within nature, and it's only quite recently that we've decided to say, actually, we're going to stop putting ourselves in these boxes that we've not evolved to work in. And I actually see that as the, you know, the response to why, maybe, we get stressed with work. We, you know, don't have some of the wellness elements that we should have, you know, with when we come together with groups of people. It's because the work environment is putting us into a box that we never evolved for, and I think the regenerative movement is actually saying well, actually, that's better, look at our evolution and and the environment and the landscapes that we thrive within, and how can we start to, you know, take the walls of those boxes down, which?

09:02

is yeah, that's kind of where I'm at with that in the business yeah, like that, it really.

09:08 - Debbie (Host)

It really conjures up the idea of a business ecosystem when you say that like a living group ecosystem that's constantly evolving and changing, changing on a seasonal level and like on longer annual cycles as well. And yet I think that, as you say, the typical way working is that I don't know, is this like always on type mentality, which is you know more machine like, I guess, and driven by production and efficiency. And yeah, just, I mean, when you think of it in that way, it's it feels obvious that that way of being is not sustainable for the long term. And so, yeah, that gives it like a really good sense, I think, of why what regenerative business is and really why it matters. I wonder, like on a more personal level, for you, like what, what brought you into this field of work and what was it that really grabbed your attention?

10:17 - Jamie (Guest)

the initial answer is it feels authentic, which isn't doesn't give you much, much but it. That's probably where it starts from. I think quite early in my career I started to realize actually before my career, maybe through education, I started to realize a lot of the things that we're being asked to do, maybe not to say by people and institutions, but the systems that kind of govern them, didn't feel authentic to me. And I think when you're a young person you just kind of feel like I'm the odd one out and I'm a bit strange, which is fine, you can kind of deal with that and you know I I was fine, I didn't particularly struggle, but I just kind of felt that I didn't quite fit in. And then I think, as he started to work, I could quickly see going one of two ways. It's like well, now, in a professional capacity, I ever decided to fit in and continue going down that path for the rest of my life. Or I find ways to explore why and it wasn't necessarily like, I don't think, trying to find a place that I thought I would fit in, but it was trying to explore well, why, why do I have these feelings and can I? I think it started, can I disprove to myself that actually, yeah, maybe I'm wrong. And now that I understand that I'm wrong, I can just get on with normal life like everybody else. But the more that I dug, the less satisfied I was. So actually the opposite happened. Now where does that come from? I don't know for sure. I do a lot of work to try and figure that out, because I'm quite interested. I'm.

11:53

I'm on the assumption that I grew up in a tiny island with a lot of freedom. It's a very safe place. It's got some of the lowest crime statistics going. In fact we don't really have crime statistics especially. But then, and because of that I think I was allowed to explore from quite a young age and it kind of made me realize that I quite enjoyed my own time and I enjoyed my own time in nature. So I'd always be outside, mostly on my own, to be honest with you. But I never felt alone. I felt already, just felt it was normal and I had this connection with the world around me. And because I grew in a small up in a small place, you kind of are in this bubble where you just think that's normal and you, you don't know anything, you're naive to the rest of the world. So I was kind of brought up with like us in an eight, this is normal. And then as I got older and I learned more about the world, I started to see the difference in the juxtaposition between maybe how I grew up and other people get to grow up and loads of different ways. You know your mind gets broadened and I thought, oh, that's interesting, but not too much of it. Until I moved out of the island. I moved straight to London. So I never lived anywhere else to move to London.

13:21

I did a 10-year career in London in in the startup space inside Circle Economy, and that's kind of when I realized how busy and linear maybe a lot of the world's more was than I thought.

13:41

And I think because I had grown up, feeling like the more and kind of holistic view of enjoying and playing in nature was just normal, it really really created a barrier for me when I was outside of that environment and it really pushed me to keep exploring it. So yeah, I think it kind of comes from my childhood and it's an element of wanting to go back to that authentic state of play you know like we have as a kid, but for me that was immersed with nature. So obviously I want to protect the natural world. There's an element of that because I want other people to be able to experience that freedom. But also I think it's just a long way to go back to that beautiful way of living that we do when we're young and just given the freedom to embrace what I believe to be the way that we're supposed to be operating and living. And that's where there was closely as we can be with the natural world.

14:42 - Debbie (Host)

I love that. So, yeah, really working with nature and supporting nature and nurturing it and I know a lot of people talk about this as like stewards of nature, custodians of nature.

14:54 - Jamie (Guest)

It was more that, because I was young, it just felt like a default, like I didn't feel like a steward, I wasn't necessarily like going out and rewilding and planting, I was just authentically having the best time of my life, like we used to camp on a tiny island, really, really small island, you know, no cars, it's just common ground, grass, the sea, and I would spend three weeks at a time in a tent, you know, just completely feeling whole and under the starlight and just wild. And then I realized when I grew up that we don't live like that anymore and it's always been a question well, why? And I know there's practical reasons in the society, but I try to look beyond that and say, well, I think those elements that I'd like to hold on to and I think the world would be better if we all did, and it's just about trying to bring those back to life.

15:52 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, really resonate with that when I grew up in. I grew up in Belfast, on the outer edge of the city, and there was fields behind my house for as far as you could see and that's where my friends and I spent all our summer just roaming through the fields and, yeah, that immersion in nature and the freedom like it's going to say mindlessness but more than mindfulness that comes with that, where the focus is entirely on play and you know, there's an aspect of like we grew up and we get responsibilities. It's not possible to spend our days that way anymore. But I also wonder why society has changed quite a lot since then and I wonder, like, why kids these days, on those experiences that you know when you share your example, like they really and like they set you up for life?

16:54 - Jamie (Guest)

Really Well when, I was when I was at university.

16:59

I'd gone back to that little island is called home is beautiful as a little break just before my final year, right in my dissertation, because I didn't know what I was going to write it on, and I went back to the campsite which I spent months and months and months of my this is my happy place, right, and there was a kid on an iPad and I I just knew that I had to write about something along those lines.

17:25

So I ended up writing about fantasy, play and the joy of play my dissertation for university and how it impacts the way that we think and our creativity and the way to solve these problems, solve these things, and it comes from a deep worry that I don't know I might be wrong, but what happens if we lose that and we're in the midst of this crisis? That is exactly what it requires. It requires a very creative comprehension of what's next and a way of solving it, and my fear is we might lose that, and I think that's also a product of us losing our culture as we keep pursuing this endless growth and requiring more and more, more silos and linear thinking to achieve that.

18:16 - Debbie (Host)

And I think that's something that's deep to my heart, yeah. Yeah, I think like safety, like there's such a big concern around safety and these things, which I wonder what my kids are really and I notice now how forced scaling is becoming so much more popular and I guess like that way of getting kids back into nature and seeing it as as play ground, in a place for learning and be important. And, yeah, what I wondered was like what do you do then on the ball of technology?

18:52 - Jamie (Guest)

So I work with some tech clients which I like and I actually have a tech techie background and startups. I think there's a thing If you look at the definition of technology, I think we've kind of we've kind of drifted away. I think we've kind of put all our eggs in this. I know digital realm of technology but, like most things we make, most tools we use are technology right and those can be analog or they can be digital, which is we live in like a digital age. Now I think if we're working in tech in a regenerative space, we have to kind of recognize that technology is a tool and that it doesn't necessarily mean digital tech. You know like loads of things are tech, like road infrastructure, that's technology. You know plumbing pipes that's technology.

19:49

It just came before the digital kind of revolution and I think things like AI are really smart and they're really intelligent. It's in the name and I think that's helpful because we don't need to be more intelligent to solve the regenerative movement and move out of the crisis. We need to be more wise. So actually, if machines can help us do a lot of the more intelligent parts of decision-making, that's fine because that should free us up to diving back into our wisdoms and looking at other things that are wisdom like, based on wisdoms, and to make our whole offering and our way of operating more complex and diverse, and I think that's where the strengths in that kind of technology will be. But then also, you know technology, and if we are moving to regenerative farming, you might not necessarily have digital tech, but you're going to be using lots of other types of technology, even in the trials that you have and I think this is something that we need to kind of come to terms with a little bit when we talk about tech is, technology has always existed as part of humanity.

20:59

The thing that sets us apart from other animals is our ability to tell stories and our ability to make and use tools, and that is we have to always harmonize those things together. But what annoys me again and it's along this siloed notion of profit and progress and efficiency is we're moving and moving closer and closer towards this digital version of ourselves, but we're forgetting all of the analog and I'd love to see more analog technology and removing innovation from that same box too. You know innovation is being coined with innovating for the sake of productivity, but actually we could innovate in many different directions, but we don't because that's not the way that we've been success in our society and economic structures. But actually, if we did look at things more broadly and holistically, we'd be able to innovate in every direction. And that's what really excites me and I think that's what you know, what, in like today's terms, regeneration probably is. It's a way of innovating in every possible direction, not just in a 1D or 2D kind of way of framing things.

22:17 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, what you say there really takes me back to what you said at the very beginning around mindset, like a change in mindset, and I guess that yeah, there's been. I guess a lot of the drivers that have got business to the point that it is today have all been around ways of increasing profit, increasing efficiency, increasing productivity and like breaking out of that mindset is like it's a tricky thing to do and, I think, quite a courageous thing to do.

22:50 - Jamie (Guest)

Yeah, it's also a mad thing to do because, in a way, the reason we have the mindset is because it's the most successful way of being within this paradigm. So, within a catalyst, self-interest mindset which works on kind of yeah, like production and pushing things forwards and then trying to make things as efficient as possible, the only way your business is going to get a grant or some fundraising, whatever it might be is if you are innovating to help people do that. One path and that's what really bothers me is like we've seen the part of innovation. That's the reason why a lot of this stuff we've done in the past is amazing, because it's brought along amazing innovation. It's brought on certain types of social equalities and things like that, which is amazing.

23:37

But actually that was just us running really hard in one direction. What I want to see is what happens when we run in multiple directions, or we don't necessarily have to run. Maybe I think if we start opening ourselves up to multiple directions, we'll learn that the power comes in the diversity and actually we can stop running, which is also part of the power of it all. We only have to run because this paradigm is all about efficiency. Now, if we were to look at multiple different paradigms that complemented each other. We might not have to run anymore. That means we can do more living, and I would rather live and continue to run, and that's you know, maybe that's personal.

24:14

I love to work. I really love to work. I'd always want to work, but at the same time I enjoy the depth of the types of work that we could be doing. But at the moment it seems that we were kind of shuttered into this one place and I think that's mad. And I can see why it could be mad to challenge that. But it doesn't mean that we shouldn't and it doesn't mean that things needs to change. Yeah.

24:40 - Debbie (Host)

Yeah, and I guess with you, I'm with working in the startup space as well. This is where I guess startups hold a lot of opportunity because they don't have they're not like embedded in established ways of thinking or established ways of doing things. And yeah, there's something there that feels like a real opportunity and starting from scratch, I guess, and like thinking what do we want to do, as opposed to having to go through a huge change and tweaking and refining things before we're even able to start in this new pathway?

25:21 - Jamie (Guest)

Yeah.

25:23 - Debbie (Host)

So I'd be curious to hear I guess we've talked a lot about like the mindset and the theory behind things but I wonder if you could share some examples of businesses that you've been working with recently or examples of people you've seen doing cool stuff, like a way to get some like tangible examples that people might want to explore.

25:48 - Jamie (Guest)

Certainly, so I've got quite a few clients on them. What's really nice is if I explain how my ecosystem that we've been a built works, it might make this a bit clearer, but it inherently is a bit more of a challenge. But it inherently works in that everybody has a common goal, which is they all see the need for some kind of system change one way or another. They're not content with the way that either society or that industry or even maybe a job, role or function might be, is at different scales, and that's the common ground. But actually they're all working in different places, which is really interesting. And what I'm trying to build is we have an advisory arm and an enterprise design arm which I as make honey and the centerpiece of and I help people to one do some of the mindset and coaching parts and also give people, hopefully, empowerment to try and be different, because we need to be different. I go into that in a little bit. But then the other part, yes, is a more the tangible. Okay. Well, once we're there and we understand what mechanisms one exists in today's paradigm which can help us transition, and also maybe what are some more novel things that we can come up with ourselves and try and try and push and innovate and pioneer, and then also working with the founders to figure out what's within their comfort zones, to like, I don't want to push people to be more radical than they need to be, but I do want to push people to be doing things different. And so that we kind of frame that in an easy terms is, how can we change the function of business from just being business as usual as we know it today? You know the function of business is business to having a societal or environmental element of change and the change and we just kind of summarise that as activism. So how can we change business acumen into business activism? And I think it's this the art of flipping it, that the activism happens as a result. You don't necessarily have to be an activist, but in doing things that other people seeing them work, it starts to change things.