Purpose with Profit

I have enjoyed reading several books during lockdown including ‘Let my people go surfing’ by Yves Chouinard of Patagonia and more recently ‘This could be our future’ by Yancey Stickler of Kickstarter. Both of these books have been great at detailing how great business can also do great things for the world, society and our environment. This has been a fascination of mine since pausing property development last year with the withdrawal from Crescent Gardens in Harrogate, UK. How to combine really great business with great purpose and do it in a way that genuinely creates meaningful impact and change in terms of consumption.

One of the things I read recently in another great book, Tribes by Seth Godin, was that business alone often simply leave behind a trail of products, in my case in property development in Harrogate it was concrete, stone and an assortment of material which made up people’s homes. Where as a Tribe, a collection of people with shared beliefs and values, with a collective mission can leave the world a better place. That is something I am incredibly passionate to create at STARS®.

I believe that we can build businesses that provide a great product, something that people will love without harming the planet, alongside creating an organisation whereby people engage in really meaningful creativity and at the same time the company also brings about a sense of Tribe for something else, a higher meaning of togetherness, of purpose, of creating something better for our future here on Earth, a beautiful awe inspiring biosphere which we share with thousands of other species in a delicate balance of interdependence with one another.

For this I am grateful for this time of pause and reflection and an opportunity for how we can do better in the future, in life and in business. Adam Thorpe.