Our principles for prototyping an ecological, profitable and beautiful business

This is a live document. We’re constantly working on, learning from and iterating on it. Expect it to evolve!

These principles are our adapted version of the 12 Principles for Prototyping a Feminist Business created by Sister.is.

1. You have a body

Honour your limits, and create structures that support and nourish your body and all the other bodies you know. 

2. Remember, you are connected with the earth, the plants, and all living beings

Cultivate loving, healthy relationships with plants, animals, people & the earth. Think about our shared future, and feel a deep connection with the earth. Nourish, nurture, and commune. 

3. Be yourself

Step into wholeness. Reclaim all your parts, and forgive yourself. Own your skills, talents & abilities. Make choices with intention, and in alignment with your values.

4. Build empathy into the foundation of your business

Create frameworks that support feelings. As we learn to empathise with ourselves, we can better empathise with others. Attunement to feelings guides us to the fulfilment of needs. 

5. Be honest, and act with integrity

Admit when you don’t know. Speak your truth. Repudiate lies, deceptions and misrepresentations. Hold yourself and others accountable. Advocate for the people and things you believe in. Use your voice.

6. Reclaim beauty: find new definitions of success

Release yourself from the life society expects of you – be curious and imagine anew. Seek the fulfilment of a shared vision. Move towards the things that bring you nourishment and joy. Remember that wealth has nothing to do with money – feel how rich you are already. 

7. Find freedom in uncertainty

“CONSIDER EVERYTHING AN EXPERIMENT.” —Sister Corita Kent. Do not wait until you know to act—anything you don’t know you will learn in the process. Improvise. Iterate. Ask questions. Give yourself permission to not know and to make mistakes. Be receptive and responsive instead of predictive and protective.

8. Free yourself from the myth of meritocracy

Divest your ego of the want to prove itself through struggle, sacrifice, and hard work. Become attuned to your needs and honour them as they arise. Feel into your body. Let inner wisdom be your guide. Go where you are called. Eat when you are hungry. Rest when you are tired.

9. A business can be healing for yourself and others

Everything that you are needing, someone else is needing, too. Everything you are healing for yourself you are healing for someone else, too. Make your business a medicine, a salve. 

10. Model a new social and economic order

As entrepreneurs, we have the opportunity to agitate the current social, political & economic order by experimenting with new business models that honour our values, our humanity, and the earth. A regenerative business can model new ways of living, working and being together. This is about transforming our relationship to money, to work, to the earth, to our bodies, and to each other.

This is about redistributing power & resources. This is about radical social transformation. This is about regenerating the world to one we want to live in.

Let’s regenerate together!