Profitable from Day One
A curious notion…
I’m in one of my favourite cafes, listening to EDM, sipping a 1.5shot cappuccino on regular milk.
The chocolate on top gives a honeycomb flavour.
I always feel like the ultimate rebel, nodding along to some grinding EDM surrounded by skulls and black walls, having mother fucken’ chocolate sprinkles in the morning.
What a G!
These two things are supposed to be for the evening.
Mum would be piiiised…
Profitable from Day One hey?
Something I’d never really considered before.
How could I?
All my previous projects never set out to be that.
‘“And why the fuck not Benny?” Screams angryish (inside my mind) Benny
“Hmmm. Pipe down” I say, “why are you swearing at me?”
It terrifies me to think with a terrified look on my face that my projects probably never had the intention of being profitable.
Between screaming matches with clients in Central London, I escaped on my bicycle for 45 minutes to pitch my first project to global ticketing powerhouse Ticketmaster in their North London office.
I‘d run a successful pilot and the month before I’d sat having beers and a three course meal in a private box with the European Director of tickets.
We were watching the Gunners get beaten at Highbury.
The perfect way to spend an afternoon…
Now, in that boardroom; those fellas loved my idea.
They saw it work. They smiled and laughed along with me.
However, they knew this wasn’t meant to be profitable.
They could read it in my face. They were in the ticket selling business. I was in the empowering communities business.
I’m not playing the blame game, perhaps a shortfall of trying to work in “positive impact”.
A friend dedicates a fair chunk of his life to cleaning up the planet.
A smart dude by all accounts, he once said
“There’s no money in saving the planet.”
My teeth clench.
I know it’s not true, but I know it’s certainly the harder road.
And ‘positive impact..’ with your bold, italic signal of virtue.
What the fuck does it even mean?
It’s the outspoken side of business chat.
With the other being ‘negative impact’.
Nobody says, “yeah I work for Shell, we focus on negative impact.”
And I’m not having a go at all the people who work for Shell.
It’s got a nice name. Shell. And there’d be some good crustaceans on the inside trying to do their best. But from the outside it seems to be a sparkly turd scenario at best.
And what’s more.
Positive and Negative impact are subjective.
Creating biofuel plants by clearing sacred lands?
Pablo Escobar had good intentions…
Or murkier…
Those working in projects for the planet! Squeaky clean regenerative triple bottom line mother fuckers. Hallelujah!!!
♫ ‘But then they go and ruin it all, by saying something stupid like I love you… more than my family.’ ♫
They forget about the crisis’ in their home town or within their friends and family groups — their literal backyard.
Saving the world begins at home.
And in the home, if you’re ‘working from home’, because pulling 16 hour days Is. Your. Yewj*
The almost fact remains…
If you’re a cunt to yourself, how can you be good to others.
Eventually the destruction of self will most likely lead to destruction of other.
When I was working in, close to my favourite role ever, I was saying something stupid. I was doing those hours.
Working on projects across the planet from ocean conservation, to rights for Paralympians and awareness for kids with rare diseases.
Fighting the fucking good fight, I was!
While being an absolute cunt to myself.
We probably all were on some level.
And that’s why that business doesn’t exist anymore.
So what the fuck am I really doing today?
Sitting here sipping a 1.5shot cappuccino in my favourite cafe for bangen’ tunes on Yugambeh Country, Burleigh Heads, QLD, Australia, World, Universe, my mind.
I’m sitting on a precipice.
It’s meant to be uncomfortable, but I kinda like it.
Half of my day will be spent preparing to leave for a farm.
The other half attempting to put my current business on auto-pilot with love (is that possible), so I can launch headlong into an October with hands in the dirt, both literally and other literally.
The following 30 days will lead me to my 34th birthday.
It will be an exploration on how to build a project that’s profitable from day one, in a way that takes into account all of what you may have read above.
And if you think I’m talking about generating money.
Then you’re correct.
Well done!
But that’s only 1/12th of what profitable from day one means in my new world.
And I’m prepared to accept that 1/12th as part of the design. (The other 11 will come tomorrow)
God, that feels good.
Since I was a cunt to myself at 29, I’ve been learning from old and new friends and mentors, how to do the opposite.
Over these 30 days, they will be woven into the narrative in realtime as Rob Gronbeck (the genius behind the initial spark for this project) and I endeavour to knock it out of the park.
I’m declaring that this project – that will be profitable from Day One – will be built on the foundations for a world with a future. A Syntropic World.
For now, that’s enough, as I focus on the two halves of what will make up a successful day, in order to have a successful month, quarter, year, decade, lifetime.
*Slang for ‘Usual’. Stoked to slide a ‘Yew’ in there.
