Building an impact business is tough. Simply running a business, you worry about overheads, profit margins and their impact on your livelihood. Now add your need to create an impact on top of that and you get the perfect recipe for a difficult time. Create enough impact, you start worrying about money. Generate enough revenue, you start worrying about losing your focus on the original mission. It is a fine line between existential crises and financial ones.

If you feel like this is not for you, it’s completely normal. In fact, building a business in and of itself is hard work. No one would blame you for keeping it easy at the start. By easy I mean not being suicidal at start, haha! A clear vision attracts the right people to your business but to keep them, you need money. It might be more difficult to steer a ship towards impact once it begins generating revenue, but its better than captaining a sinking ship.

Now that we have weeded out the doubters, lets look at the best impact you can have through your startup:

Environmental Impact

The planet needs you! Your business growth directly relates to a better well-being for the planet. Of course, there are environmental limits on Capitalistic pursuit of growth, but if you are to offset some of the worst offenders with better versions of themselves without offending the consumer or their wallet, Kudos to you!

Social Impact

The people need you! Most small businesses are social in one way or the other, however, to be a socially impactful business, you put the needs of the society above your need for profitability. When you grow a socially impactful business, you see the real beneficiaries of your business in front of your own eyes (I’m saying this because my Carbon footprinting startup is pretty much abstract impact hidden in numbers).

Now whether you are born impactful or want to turn impactful, these two options remain as solid ones. If you are a shoe company, how do you turn environmental? Making your shoes repairable or making repairable shoes the new black! If you are the same company, how do you turn social? By looking through your supply chain or by donating all your dead stock through NGOs. Now either or both are possible for any company, in my opinion. You can be a digital company yet environmental, you can be a commodities company yet social. It is up to you to identify how to do it.

If you are building a business and want impact to be part of the model, not just the marketing, I am building an impact business portal. Message me to get an early access!