Is your business a nurtured and nurturing living system?
By Laura Storm
Since founding Regenerators in 2018 I’ve experimented with various ways of making it a nurtured and nurturing ecosystem. An organization that can create the regenerative ripples that I dream of. One that can inspire individuals to become regenerators, help companies, sectors and cities transform to regeneration and offer financial flows towards regenerating land and empowering indigenous voices while nurturing me and my family.
This has been my dream since the beginning – to offer something to the world that could have a regenerative impact and channel resources to where it’s needed, while nourishing me and my family so that the ripples I create can become increasingly impactful and nourishing. The nourisher has to be nourished as nothing good comes from depletion and exhaustion.
I wanted to share how this looks like for me in the hope it may inspire others. Regenerators was the first initiative that I launched after my many years of silence and spending time in nature after my brain injury (I have talked/shared about this in many talks and podcast interviews so I will not cover that today). I was determined to do it differently this time around. I did not want to deplete my own inner resources, and let my passionate fire burn me (and my surroundings) continuously to the ground. I wanted a work life that felt nourishing, and that offered me time to follow what lit me up. I did not want to be the boss, a CEO with employees, I craved an ecosystem of passionate collaborators and an ecosystem that could expand and contract depending on the season. That replaced competition with collaboration, and ego with eco.
Starting with myself – as the inner informs the outer
To ensure my work never become all-consuming I carve out weeks for integration and offline weeks with my family. I take at least a total of nine weeks out of the year to go on adventures with my kids and be offline (four weeks in summer, one in autumn, two over Christmas, one in the winter, one week over Easter and then some). For the weeks that I work, my goal is to work 25 hours a week. Sometimes I work less, sometimes I work more, but I always make a conscious effort to integrate all of the seasons into my workflow; the creative sprints of spring and the regenerative depths of winter. This is of paramount importance for my health, happiness and ability to navigate authentically in deep connection with my inner essence. This looks like consciously planning a - for me - healthy balance between segments of creative work, segments of meditation, segments of introspective reflective work in balance with segments where my energy is outwardly focused (Zoom calls, meetings, workshops, talks etc.)
I also do all that I can to design my work around my inner cycle. This means I never plan anything during my inner winter and, on the other hand, try to plot in talks and workshops for when I’m in my inner spring and summer. Of course, sometimes it doesn’t work out and life gets in the way. A good portion of my income is generated from giving keynotes about Regenerative Leadership and regenerative business, and these types of talks are always booked many months in advance. Recently I found myself on a stage at a very large industry conference on day one of my cycle. And the week leading up to that talk (my inner autumn) was a very busy week with many talks, interviews and holding space. Far from ideal! But because I track my cycle, I knew an intense and challenging 10 days was coming up so instead of travelling home quickly after my talk I checked myself into a mountain village hotel to fully regenerate and recharge so I could come home to my kids and partner with a surplus of energy rather than depleted (which has happened in the past). Nothing extravagant just two days to myself in silence in nature.
So I make sure my life can ebb and flow, expand and contract, go inward for a while before going outward again with newfound inspiration. It’s a dance I’ve taught myself after many years of practicing, failing and adjusting. I still don’t always get it right as I have a lot of inner passion and fire, but I navigate my work life using these few simple rules that offer me the conditions conducive for my vitality and wellbeing.
When I share how many hours I work in a week I often get an equal amount of support and judgment. The latter is often from the assumption that this is something I can do because I’m privileged and rich. To set that record straight; I’m privileged in the sense that I’m white, able-bodied and live in Scandinavia. I have a supporting (in terms of love, not money) family. A great partner (with a middle-range income) and my kids have the best grandparents who are all a very integrated part of our family. But my little family of four currently live in a small rented apartment, I haven’t been able to save for when I’m old since I had my accident eight years ago and banks are still far from giving us a mortgage so that we can buy a home with a garden (a deep, deep craving… I long for a garden beyond words!) However we are still in many ways so privileged; I don’t have to fear living on the streets or not being able to feed my children (that was a lot of record straightening, but I think this level of transparency is helpful in these times of transformation, as we often assume things about other people and now you don’t have to do that.)
A business model that creates financial flows towards the custodians of regeneration
All courses at Regenerators Academy channel 10% of revenue (after local VAT has been paid) towards regenerating land or empowering indigenous voices. I live in a country where I already pay over 50% in taxes and consider this an extra tax that is integrated into my pricing. So far this year I’ve also donated around 20% of revenue from my speaking gigs towards the same purpose and I will continue to do so when I can. It all depends on the cash flow of course and sometimes it’s not possible, but I can recommend looking at it like an extra tax that you don’t even consider whether you should pay or not.
I can understand how it’s simply not possible for all in this space to design their business model with inbuilt donations but I really think most could do more than they currently do.
My pet peeve is the so called “regenerative consultants” that are currently popping up left and right who are into regeneration because their trend-radar has sensed this is the “new shiny thing” they must offer services on to be ahead of the game. In my experience it’s mainly lingo, and no sincere effort has been made to consider their own business model, price structure or offerings.
Making the knowledge accessible to as many as possible…
I’ve wanted to design an entity that makes wisdom and insights around regeneration (and for me particularly Regenerative Leadership and regenerative business) available to as many people as possible. For this transition to reach its tipping point in due time we need not just a few thousand people engaged, but millions. What can we all do to mobilize and share insights without exhausting our own resources by making everything free?
What I do in terms of my business model to make whatever wisdom and insights I may have accessible to as many as possible is to offer scholarships on my Regenerators Academy programs and courses. This way I can help ensure that those that cannot afford the courses still have an option to access the content and community. I offer five scholarships a month on the Regenerative Leadership Course, and on my year-long Regenerative Leadership Journey every time a corporation signs up they also directly sponsor a scholarship (the Robin Hood model).
…without exhausting and extending your own inner resources
Coming back to the previous point about tending to your inner ecosystem before you can tend to others, there is a tendency in our culture for people to overwork and exhaust themselves. The regenerative community is unfortunately no exception. Work for free, offer wisdom for free. That goes for many activist-like communities where everyone feels the weight of the world on their shoulders, so they work non-stop without tending to the cauldron of their own inner magic. That, to me, is not regenerative. In fact it’s degenerative. Exhaustion will inevitably create and foster degenerative ripples: when you operate from a state of inner depletion and exhaustion you’re likely to show up in the world in a way where you’re easily triggered (losing your temper, writing angry emails, assuming the worst… the list goes on). You’re also a lot more prone to fall into fear and scarcity patterns. The best we can do is put on our own oxygen mask first. When we feel nourished, and that our time and wisdom is being respected, we’re much better equipped to do the transformative work required of us at this epochal hour.
Allowing money to do good requires shadow work
There’s such a stigma around money. Especially among activists. There’s a tendency to see money or payment as inherently evil, or something to hide or be ashamed of. Adding to the point above, I believe that it’s not possible to have sufficient impact on the world without access to capital. What if we could collectively uninstall any negative programming around money and work towards a relationship with money as a sacred ally? What if it could represent the feminine energy of the nurturer, that is here to offer access to the resources we need to dream a regenerative world into being? What is our relationship to money and which emotions does it evoke in us? How do we talk about money? I think a lot of shadow work in this area is urgently needed.
Longer-term vision – torn between what I feel the potential requires and wanting my freedom
I know many coaches would say that my limiting beliefs are getting the best of me when I share that my inner dilemma is between wanting to seize the potential that I sense Regenerators has as an entity, and my resistance to it because of what it would require of me in terms of hours spend in front of a computer. I’m not willing to hold space for many employees (I’ve done that for many years in the past and it sucks out all my creative energy and life force) and as the number of partners and collaborators grow, so does the amount of emails in your inbox! The collective hive design where everyone has their own entities but gathers for collaborative projects has so far worked great, but the more projects I’m involved in the greater the complexity. The greater the amount of emails in my inbox, and tensions to tend to; because we’re all human and collaborative efforts bring with them their share of tensions.
How to design Regenerators as a mycelium-inspired entity going forward is on my mind a lot these days. I want it to create increasingly strong ripples, while becoming less dependent on me and my time (and management and emails in my inbox). I would also like it to be gathering together a tribe of practitioners that can showcase their unique contributions, and make it easier for all of us to work together without the effort of investing a lot of time and energy into building brands and platforms in the traditional sense. Instead, we could get some real work done together. How to design such an entity without needing to spend more hours on a screen that I’m willing to is the challenge but maybe someone reading this has ideas?
What else could I do?
So what else could I do? What would a regenerative business model look like to you? In this blog I wanted to share what I do, and how, in the hope that it offers inspiration. I crave an open, compassionate and transparent sharing and conversation around how we design regenerative entities and business models that nurture ourselves, our families, our communities and the greater interconnected web of life that sustains and nurtures us all.
I would love to know what you do in your business to offer regenerative ripples – please offer your insights in the comments section. There is so much we can learn from each other when designing new ways forward. And please if you have any ideas as to how Regenerators could seize the great opportunities that comes its way without having many employees or working around the clock – I’m all ears:-)