When entrepreneurs learn about Shift/Co, the first question is almost always, “what is a conscious business?”

In its simplest form, a conscious business wants to do good and make money.

If that sounds like a novel idea, you should know that there are an estimated 60 million conscious entrepreneurs around the globe. They’re all trying to improve the world while building a thriving business. 

Futurists referred to it as the Triple Bottom Line, a sustainability framework that examines a company’s social, environmental, and economic impact.

Entrepreneur and business writer John Elkington conceived the triple bottom line in 1994 while at the think tank SustainAbility. The term was later incorporated into Shell’s first sustainability report in 1997. John believed that companies should track and manage economic(not just financial), social, and environmental value-added — or destroyed. Specifically, people, planet, and profit. 

If you search Google either “Conscious business” or “Conscious Entrepreneur” you’ll find terms such as Stakeholder Capitalism and Conscious Capitalism. These organizations are the genesis of this movement. They’re responsible for identifying that purpose is equally as important as profit. 

That means there are 4 P’s: People, Planet, Profit, and Purpose. 

If you care about those 4 P’s and want to make the world better while making money in your business, you can consider yourself a conscious entrepreneur.

How to Find Conscious Business Coaching

Our founder, Terri Maxwell, identified that we struggle with growing our businesses, primarily because most business training introduced hyper-growth techniques that felt very inauthentic.

When Maxwell created Succeed On Purpose, this kind of coaching did not exist. Through trial and error in her own business endeavors, she developed what is now the Conscious Business Growth Platform™, which integrates business growth strategies and the principles of conscious business and stakeholder capitalism. 

The way we do busineess isn’t more difficult than traditional business; it’s just different and there aren’t enough role models and conscious business coaches to show us the way. Erroneously, we’ve been taught to think that it should be purpose or profit, but not both. This is why Shift/Co exists today. We are on a mission to teach conscious entrepreneurs how to make a difference and make money. 

One of the many ways you can identify a conscious business is when a company’s purpose is measured.

For example, Shift/Co’s purpose is “to support the development of conscious entrepreneurs in building socially and environmentally-beneficial businesses.” 

We measure our success based on the number of businesses that successfully grow to the next business phase within 1-2 years of using the Shift/Co platform. That means they would have doubled or tripled their income in that time. 

Give some thought to your purpose and what you can measure to determine how you’re performing. What IS your impact?

Remember, you’re not alone, and we are stronger together. We call it Collective Impact. 

Collective impact thrives in collaboration, community, and connection.

If this type of movement sounds exciting to you, please join any of our net-weaving opportunities in our HUBs.