Author, Jason Thomas

An increasing number of small business owners and entrepreneurs are offering sustainable solutions to people’s needs. Unfortunately, too few businesses start with the necessary experience to compete in the marketplace or the capital and confidence to hire those who do.

Some of the most beneficial programs in the world are never heard of outside of their founder’s small circle of influence. These enterprises will have a tough time expanding their reach unless there’s a shift in mindset and approach.

Permaculture teaches us to look at the problem as the solution. If we want our unique businesses to make their intended impact, we must redesign our mindset and approach toward modeling the best of what successful companies are doing to thrive.

Is it possible to improve your business’s efficiency and increase profits by evaluating it through the lens of the Permaculture Design Principles?

Can examining your business through this lens open you to using more modern technologies, tactics, and business practices to further your cause - while still honoring your ethics?

This article describes the permaculture design process in a way that you can apply to your business model. It’s a process of asking foundational questions and inviting you to discover honest answers. It’s also filled with several proven tactics to improve your company’s social and financial sustainability.

This guide is an invitation for you to ask some deep questions. Let’s explore which shifts in perception the permaculture lens can offer your approach to designing your business model for abundance and lasting resilience.

As a consultant for regenerative-minded land-based entrepreneurs & collectives, I guide my clients through contemplating ways they can apply the wisdom of the permaculture design process to their respective businesses. I do this in a way that bridges them with modern-day tools and tactics proven to be effective.

Only after sufficiently observing and evaluating their ambitions through the permaculture lens do we design actionable steps to enhance the efficiency and productivity of their projects by bridging the best of the 21st-century business practices that many of my clients tend to shy away from.

It’s a journey of uncovering their long-term personal goals, evaluating their desires and ideals alongside some of the more fixed elements in their reality, and finding the most efficient path toward meeting their needs. We discover what’s been holding their business back, plan to set it right and focus on taking the most effective steps forward, one at a time.

It pays off big time to find the 20% of the effort you can apply to your business right now that will make 80% of the difference as the project grows.

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The Permaculture Framework

The ethics of Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share are crucial to keep in mind at all steps of the game. For the sake of this article, I’m going to assume that you, dear reader, already have this engrained into your heart, mind, and actions.

Many people have begun considering a 4th permaculture ethic – Transition Care. This 4th ethic is especially applicable as we navigate business, finance, and economics. It acknowledges that we’re working with what we’ve got to get to where we’re going.

In my work, I’ve come to appreciate how many of our modern-day business tactics directly align with the permaculture principles. Here are a few examples:

Observe and interact

Interview your ideal customers and learn what they need, want, and fear most.

Catch and store energy

Once you’ve got someone to your website, incentivize them to give you their email address so you can create a relationship with them off social media.

Obtain a yield

Charge appropriately for what you’re offering so you can afford to continue offering it.

Apply self-regulation and accept feedback

Use surveys, polls, and quizzes to study your customers’ behaviors and modify your products and services accordingly.

Use and value renewable resources and services

Build a sales funnel that systematically attracts curious people, offers a digital resource to build trust, and follows up with automated emails, nurturing them toward interest in what you have for sale.

Produce no waste

Once you have a new follower, keep them interested, educated, and entertained with regular social media and email communications.

Design from patterns to details

Find a hungry market, sell them what they want, and give them what they need.

Integrate rather than segregate

Join a Mastermind or other support group for entrepreneurs in your field.

Use small and slow solutions

Create a beta test for your offer before investing in substantial infrastructure.

Use and value diversity

Leverage other people’s audience by guest blogging (like I’m doing now) or creating an affiliate program to incentivize others to share your offer with their network.

Use edges and value the marginal

Collect testimonials for potential customers to relate to the positive experiences of your existing ones.

Creatively use and respond to change

Be ready to modify or pivot your offering if customer feedback leads you to believe you should.

Work with nature rather than against it

Pay attention to market trends, provide goods and services that people are already buying, and put your offer in front of people where they’re already looking for it.

The problem is the solution

Instead of turning a blind eye to what’s not working, investigate what it is, why it’s the case, and how other professionals have championed that problem.

Make the least change for the greatest possible effect

Put your offer out there, A/B test the effectiveness of your message and make small changes while measuring the comparative results.

The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited

Once you have something that’s working, think of (or create a survey to discover) other ways you can provide more value in a way that your customers will be delighted to pay for it.

Everything gardens

Design your business as a vehicle for profit, as well as ecologically regenerative outcomes!

The Design Process

All good permaculture designs start with observation.

We lay out what we have, who & what we’re working with, and what we want to achieve as a result of applying effort. From there, we:

Contemplate all the information together
Research how others have successfully pursued similar ambitions
Organize the pieces into a logical order
Re-evaluate what we can do to minimize unnecessary investments or where we can stack functions
And lay that all out into an intelligent design.

This might seem like common sense (as are most things in permaculture once you learn them.) However, what’s more common is the practice of starting with an idea, ideals, and desire and making hasty investments toward those goals without laying out the big picture in a holistic and contemplative way.

The first step in a contemplative business design is to describe in detail:

What you and your project have to offer.
Who you want to serve.
What they need & want.
How to provide it in a way that’s regenerative for you, your project, and your customer.

(Steps 2 & 3 are too often left to assumptions, and step 4 is too often left to trial & error.)

Once this foundation is laid, we begin our “site & sector analysis.” We start with examining elements that are largely unchangeable, like:

Climate

What are people currently looking for? What are they already buying? Who’s selling it to them? How are they doing that successfully?

Seasons

What are other influences that affect market trends? How are other successful businesses managing that?

Elemental qualities

Earth - What are the personality traits of your ideal client?
Fire - What are their habits?
Wind - What’s the conversation happening inside their head?
Water - What is their budget? How can you work with their personality traits to guide them toward modifying it?

In doing this analysis, we consult with those who’ve already been watching the patterns. If we’re planning for long-term sustainability, these factors must be considered, designed for, and contemplated before we get down to the details of our design. When we understand that design is not a whimsical process of imposing our will on the market, that rather we engage in a responsive interplay with the environment, true creativity & potency for resilience begin to emerge.

Examining the zones of influence is another technique that can be applied in different ways. One way that I advise new entrepreneurs to use this technique is with regard to their digital workstations. The following delineation of ‘zones’ is not fixed. It’s a way to consider the energy needs of our business environment. It allows us to place those elements in relation to one another, particularly concerning our communication with the outside world.

I wrote an article on my website called Setup your Digital Workspace the Permaculture Way that I welcome you to explore. For quick reference, I’ll describe the basic framework for you here.

Zone 0 - Your Digital Hardware

Zone 1 - Your Desktop

Zone 2 - Your Browser

Zone 3 - Your Website

Zone 4 - Social Media Platforms

Zone 5 - Other People’s Brilliance

Once you get your first few zones dialed in, you’ll want to create as much Zone 5 as possible. This is how we connect with and expand your audience and community.

Establish a Sustainable Workflow

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Once we understand the many components that we’re going to interact with to design a successful enterprise, we move into the Workflow. At this stage, we begin to lay out a plan for how to interact with the audience we want to serve. Without an intelligent design, this part can lead ambitious dreamers and entrepreneurs to overwhelm, burn out, and struggle.

When designing a workflow, we’re considering how to move through our work-related tasks, place elements relationally, and use our zone planning to maximize efficiency. The goal is to reduce the frivolous, unproductive, or unenjoyable time we spend operating our business.

We might create a process that batches tasks to a single day of the week or optimize our daily tasks to fit the rhythm of our natural mental & energetic patterns.

Creating automations is another crucial piece to consider. This is done by evaluating repetitive tasks and finding ways to use available tools to stack functions and distribute information to many places so that we can input it only once.

For example, we’ll appoint one day a week (or month) for scheduling our social media posts for that period into a program that will distribute them as desired. This one practice saves us from having to open all those accounts every day to post them manually.

We could also create a virtual farm tour to show new guests around our property without having to be the one to walk them to every site ourselves.

Poor workflow planning can cost many hours of potential productivity and create an unpleasant work environment. Integrated workflow design, however, can dramatically increase efficiency and enjoyment.

As humans, we tend to do what’s easiest. If it takes an extra few minutes (or hours) out of our natural workflow to send an email to a new prospect or customer, it will be much less enjoyable and may be skipped entirely. We’ll lose energy from our system and reap less yield. Setting those emails up to send automatically is invaluable to the growth and sustainability of your business.

Listen to our lastest Podcast! These change-makers are walking their talk and actively seeding a regenerative nation. You can check out the episode on our website, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

In Conclusion

Contrary to how many good-intentioned back-to-the-landers think and talk about it, permaculture and money aren’t opposed to each other. You can harness the energy of money as a tool in your efforts to regenerate our beautiful planet and its many ecosystems.

If we’re going to be empowered to make the changes this world needs, more people in the permaculture (and other regenerative spaces) need to step up to earn, invest, and manage money (and other forms of capital) in an abundantly holistic way. This is the key to diverting it from extractive industries toward more life-serving enterprises.

We can’t do it by playing small!

If you have a regenerative enterprise and would like assistance clarifying your vision for holistic abundance, schedule a Clarity Call with me. I’ll be happy to guide you on your way.

Bio: Jason Thomas is the founder of Regeneration Nation Costa Rica, a podcast exploring who's doing what to bring Costa Rica toward environmental and social well-being. As a permaculturist with a background in business, he’s begun to bridge ecologically-focused entrepreneurs with the 21st-century tools and business practices he’s found useful in his own endeavors.

In 2009, he co-founded Finca Fruicion, a permaculture education center and homestead in CR. During his dozen years dedicated to that project, he hosted hundreds of volunteers, interns, and students, produced events, taught a little, and learned a lot.

Jason’s been a dedicated earth steward for more than 20 years. His current mission is to promote & network regenerative projects throughout CR, hoping to enhance their potential to make their intended impact and thrive.

He currently hosts the Land Steward Mastermind - a support group for land-based entrepreneurs and offers private consultation services.

Design Your Business the Permaculture Way