10. The Future (Past and Present) is Regenerative

Today we are talking about regenerative economics.

Yes.

So exciting.

Get your notebook now.

It's not going to be an academic discussion, but more of a treatise on regenerative economics, regenerative business, what the future can look like, what the past has looked like, what our natural state is, and how we can get back from where we've deviated.

So let me define some terms.

When I talk about regenerative, I am talking about a system that replenishes as it runs.

You can think of a pump or a water filter in a pond, for example.

It's this closed system where the pump circulates the water over the waterfall and back into the pond and over the waterfall, and maybe it's filtering as it goes, and rainwater is added and it's also filtered and it's added into this ecosystem.

As the pump is going, it is replenishing, it is regenerating, it is adding to the ecosystem.

The pump is happy because it has a job, it's doing its job.

The fish are happy because the water is getting oxygenated and it's alive and fresh.

The people who come and see the pond, like the homeowners perhaps, are enjoying the beauty of it, and there's a whole ecosystem with birds eating some of the fish eggs, RIP, and the water plants, and there's this whole ecosystem that's in balance.

And so that's what I mean when I say regenerative.

I fully believe that our business ecosystem can also be regenerative, and in fact, if we want to survive as a species, it needs to be regenerative.

Before we dive into what this looks like in business, let's look at what prevailing business is today.

Now, I will say that I think a lot of business owners are actually practicing regenerative economics.

Small businesses, at least here in the US, power our country.

I forget the statistics, but it's over 50% of businesses, over 50% of people are employed by companies that have under 50 people or something.

And I think that's amazing, and I think that it is simpler, it is easier to have a regenerative balanced system with companies that are a bit smaller.

I feel like when you have a $3 billion, $5 billion company, so many other things fall between the cracks.

But anyways, even though this may be the case, that I think a lot of small business owners are already implementing a lot of regenerative practices, even if they don't call it that, when we talk about business, when we see the example of business that is touted, at least here in the United States, it is big business, big corporation, maximizing the bottom line, publicly traded, in it for the money and the shareholders, not even the end consumers anymore.

There's this whole concept of enshitification.

If you've not heard of it, I highly recommend you look into it.

It's spelled like it sounds, enshitification.

And it talks about how products over time, in a highly capitalistic society like ours, don't even serve the end user anymore, and they just turn to shit, and try and milk out as much money as possible before collapsing.

So there's so many examples of this.

Netflix is one.

I remember when they were like $8 or something, it was really cheap for just the digital, and then you would pay $8 if you wanted DVD rentals, and then they built out their full online platform, and there was so many good movies.

I remember I had like a golden age towards the end of high school, beginning of college, where I watched all these international movies, all these random ass documentaries that I'm still impacted by today, because Netflix was genuinely concerned with serving up content for its people.

They genuinely wanted you in the app watching things, watching things you hadn't seen before.

They cared about the content.

Now if we fast forward to today, Netflix is churning out more content than it ever has.

However, you may notice that it takes four fucking ever to find anything you want to watch, and oftentimes you don't even.

I was talking to somebody, and they were mentioning how they know somebody who spends their evening looking through the trailers in Netflix, not necessarily even watching one, because it's almost more of a dopamine hit to do that than to start a show, and the way Netflix algorithm works, they'll show you some shows that you may like, but they don't show you probably even 1% of their actual catalog.

This is on purpose.

They want you in the app as much as possible, and utilizing the services as little as possible, because that fundamentally is the highest ROI for them, right?

It's like having somebody pay as much as possible for a gym membership, but come in as little as possible.

They're making so much more money, because they're not having to actually maintain services.

That person's wear and tear on the machines is not factored into everything, and so Netflix wants you in there.

It's kind of the social media vibes.

They want you thinking that the next page over, the next search, you're going to find the perfect show to watch, so they keep you trapped.

This isn't shitification, and this is how business is talked about often.

We see it infiltrating in smaller business spaces, how things are talked about, how we do our marketing and our sales, where we're twisting the knife, where we're being aggressive on sales calls and not taking no for no, like, fuck consent.

I'm going to keep you on this call till you give me an excuse I think is valid, or you say yes, right, coercive sales tactics, creating images of, projecting images of who we are, who we think our clients want us to see us as, like taking pictures only in these really cool spots, taking pictures in front of cars, you know, and I know most of us are not doing this.

However, it's impossible to not see this happening.

We're surrounded by it, and it can get into our bones that this is the way to be successful in business, or that the people who are really big, this is how they get there, there's no other way, or that this, even if we don't have to do that, we believe in our methodology of business that does not include all these weird-ass things that people are doing.

We may still believe that the Amazons, the Googles, the Microsofts of the world are going to win, right?

But they're the big guys, and they got here through some of these tactics.

So I want to encourage us today that regenerative business and economics is the way of the future, and in fact, the past and the present.

I talk a lot about nature on my show because we are nature, we're in nature, we're of nature, all of it.

We're not separate from nature.

And when we look at nature, we see that the most stable ecosystems are the one that are in balance, and where there is this regenerative cycle, where the scat from this animal fertilizes the earth, and this plant grows, and this bird eats that plant, and then flies and drops the dung, and this grows, and like, all the way back to grade school biology, right?

The most robust systems are interconnected, are regenerative.

They don't have an invasive species, for example, just dominating and throwing everything off balance and killing off the other species.

That is a fragile ecosystem, right?

Like, I know here in Indiana, we struggle with ash borers, and when they get in the trees, you know, the trees die, and they're dead, they're at risk of, it doesn't get that hot and dry here for this to be a big concern, but in large swaths, it presents a risk for fires and it reduces the nutrients and the support for a thriving ecosystem, right?

Because a species has invaded and has dominated and has destroyed that regenerative cycle in many pieces, in many ways, and in many places, I should say.

So if we as a species want to remain and to survive, our biggest endeavors, which are often around commerce, right, like, this is the core of us as a species.

This is our primary activity, is commerce.

Then our commerce needs to be regenerative.

It is unsustainable for the largest enterprise of a species to be one in which we are destroying our own species as we're going along.

And because of this, I think as well that regenerative business will win.

It will win or we will die.

This is a little fatalistic, but I believe in the resiliency of the human spirit.

I believe in our desire to survive.

Every species has this primordial, like, the substance of life drive to maintain, to grow, to expand, to continue on.

So this is a bit of a meta episode, but I'm hoping it's making sense so far.

What I'm really wanting to do is just encourage us, first and foremost, that the quote-unquote big guys who are doing shady, shitty things are not going to win because it's a natural law and a natural principle.

They may destroy some societies in the process, but they will not win because regenerative interaction is the way of nature.

It's the natural law of the planet we live on.

Now if they blast off to Mars, which they should, all of y'all go.

Leave us alone, the rest of us who actually like this planet and don't want to just destroy it.

Leave us here.

You guys go to Mars.

That's a wasteland and intense and survival of the fittest.

That's your vibe.

Go there.

Leave us alone.

But I firmly believe that all of these things are going to have to come in line.

And so for us, we want to make sure that we are operating regeneratively, that we are aligning with natural principles, that we are not letting ourselves be swept up into the facade of how some of these more manipulative, extractive businesses run.

So 10 minutes in, and what does regenerative business actually mean?

What does it look like?

It looks like making sure every human involved in the process is paid fairly.

It doesn't mean paid the same, but it means being paid a dignified wage.

It means making sure that every human in the process, their voice is valued.

They are seen as equal.

And this isn't just about you as a founder saying, I believe these things, but it's building it into your company in such a way that it doesn't require one person to bear it.

It's literally building the bones of your business around the principle and idea of I win, you win, you win, I win.

Not in a nepotism, cronyism kind of vibe, but literally it matters so much to me that everybody is taken care of in this process, that it's in our handbook, that the salary progression is in our handbook.

These vacations, more than the normal just 10 days, a year here in the US, which is bonkers, is put in.

It looks like recognizing that I want additional help, but I'm going to continue using technology until I can pay somebody a fair wage to receive help from them.

It looks like designing our client journeys for clarity, to solve their actual problem.

We're not upselling indiscriminately.

We are listening to our communities and seeing what they need and building that.

It looks like even approaching business and problem solving from, yes, the place of our desire of what to produce, but also from the place of what does the world need?

It looks like marketing that is aligned, that is ethical.

I know people have mixed feelings about marketing because we've seen such bad examples of marketing and advertising where marketing becomes a shiny package that hides the shit inside, but when the product is good, when the service is good, when it's meeting the need, when it is aligned, then marketing just becomes telling that story.

Marketing and sales just becomes inviting people to get their needs met, right?

So it looks like crafting marketing and sales that is true to our product and service and being honest with ourselves, which is the biggest thing.

And honestly, gathering people around us who will be honest with ourselves, be honest with us too, where if we are seeing that we're wanting to inflate how we talk about things in marketing or shrink this, saying, okay, where is my ideal of what I provide and what I actually provide mismatched?

And how can I bridge that gap?

Not by words, but by actually adjusting my product, right?

This is what would solve the problem for situations where people are marketing something that is actually shit.

Okay, there's something going on here.

Fix the product or recognize that maybe this industry, this place is not where you need to be.

This will be a full transparency moment for me.

So I placed a administrative specialist, really nurse care coordinator with a doctor's office.

And that was an experience.

It did not go well, ended up having to let that woman go.

The administrative specialist had to remove her from the business.

And this was in the earlier days of my placement process where everything was a la carte.

I hadn't refined and niched.

So we ended up going with another agency and I just helped with the onboarding and training and interviewing process, but that was really hard.

And I had to take a step back because there was a lot of potential for this industry.

There's a lot of smaller practices who absolutely could use nursing help.

There's a lot of nurses out of jobs in Ghana because the government is not paying them.

It's crazy.

There's some people who literally have not been paid for a year and then when they finally get paid, they're paid for the year in arrears, but they still have six months that they're going to be working and not get paid.

It's a mess.

And I saw the potential for really cool service.

Recognize that I could not, in good faith and conscience, continue to work with doctor's office, et cetera, because I don't have that background.

And there were things that slipped between the cracks.

Even though we all, the doctor and I, were collaboratively working, there were things that as a staffing placement service, I need to be able to guarantee that I couldn't.

So I was faced with a choice.

I could plow ahead.

I could tighten up my marketing.

I could continue to serve this demographic and just hope for the fucking best, or I could take a step back.

And I did.

And I had people around me who helped me assess the situation, who helped me evaluate and recognize, like, I cannot do work regeneratively here.

I'm going to be creating stress for myself, for my clients, for the people I place.

This is going to be an extractive situation.

But over here, where my background is in construction and remodeling and civil engineering, there is a need here.

And there is budget here for people to be paid handsomely.

There is budget for me to be able to do good work.

And there is a high workload and specific workload where there is such benefit for remodelers, designers, et cetera, to have somebody who understands the industry.

And so I found my niche.

I found my place.

And I love it here, right?

But we are faced with these choices day in and day out as executives.

Where does it make sense to be, how can we shift and move?

And just like an ecosystem out in the natural world, the ecosystem of our business shifts and changes as well.

Something that works for everybody today may not work for everybody in a year.

Something that makes sense today with change in political climate or economy may not make sense in a month.

And it's not this continuous correction and change.

But it's this overall approach of tuning in and recognizing when things are no longer aligned and primed for regeneration.

And listening to the people in our ecosystem, right?

It doesn't matter if they're the intern all the way up to the vice president.

It doesn't matter if they're the client or somebody we meet at networking.

Not necessarily making decisions strictly based on that input, but taking it all into consideration.

And this goes back to recognizing that everybody is important.

Everybody not, maybe not have equal importance in every decision, but everybody is important and has a unique perspective that can be valuable to us.

So in conclusion, regenerative businesses are going to win.

We are already winning and we're going to continue to win because that is the way nature works.

That's the way our world works.

I fully believe that, that systems that don't align with that crumble.

Look at ancient Rome, extractive as hell, cast system out the wazoo, abuse rampant and they fell.

I'm sure at that time, the Roman empire looked like something that could never fall, right?

We have had different systems and economies come and go.

And I fully believe, fully believe that those that are regenerative are the most strong, the most flexible, the most agile.

So let's lean into that.

And let's purge from our systems, both internally and literally our business systems, anything that does not align with ensuring that the people within these systems are well taken care of.

So glad you could join me.

If you made it this far, I would love to hear your thoughts on regeneration, economics, all the fun things.

We're at Blue Sky and LinkedIn.

You can always email us as well.

I'm Edie, and until next time.