I’ve been running Agrarian Design for almost a year now.

To be honest, it’s felt way too much like banging my head against a wall and way too little like creating leverage to cool the planet.

There have been too many days where I’ve woken up and dreaded having to go out and try to find customers. I fucking hate prospecting, it’s the worst thing in the world, I will happily pay whatever an SDR wants to go and do it for me.

A year ago, I knew next to nothing about business, growth, marketing, anything. I probably still don’t know that much - but I now know enough to generate massive business value for companies.

But here’s the problem - the companies that are truly regenerative are tiny. They aren’t ready for a growth consultancy to come in and give them a 10, 20, 50% increase in enterprise value (and pay 5 figures for that).

They can’t even fathom spending $14000 per month on ads (which is still very low).

But no big company will use the word ‘regenerative’ anywhere in their marketing copy, even if they are. Consumers don’t know, and they very rarely care enough.

I think the biggest shock to me about entrepreneurship has been how few people are willing to do anything. As I was doing my quarterly review, I wrote down all of the projects I’m working on (way too many - focus is a big challenge). Any one of those projects could easily grow into 7 figure business, if not larger.

But I have no where near the bandwidth to make that happen, and I never will.

Some companies are force multipliers for their CEOs. Apple & Jobs. Tesla & Musk. (And plenty of smaller ones you’ve never heard of and never will, but they make 8 figures each year and fly around in private jets.)

Most ad agencies and law firms operate similarly - someone’s name is on the door, and the company is a reflection of them.

I want Agrarian Design to be a force multiplier for me. I want it to be a vehicle through which I can exert my will on the world.

Maybe not a huge vehicle, but the goal has always been to develop the playbook for growing regenerative companies.

But it’s time to change that:

Sustainable, regenerative, high impact, green, eco friendly, planet positive - They’re all academic terms. Something you’d find in a place where nothing actually gets done.

I don’t give a fuck about any of those labels - the ultimate question is: Does your businesses success lead to the improvement of humanity?

If the answer is yes, then I’d love to work with you and try to add a zero to your enterprise value.

Here’s an example of my thought process, and where something like “regenerative growth” or “sustainable growth” breaks down.

Oatly is literally industrial seed oil + sugar + carbs. It’s probably one of the worst things a human can consume.

But the company is positioned as a sustainable, planet positive company (after all, they’re ‘saving the cows’).

The second order effects of a 50% increase in Oatly’s sales could be astronomically bad - higher disease rates, messed up hormones, etc.

A lot of marginal human suffering.

Compare this with a company that makes a learning webapp for smartphones and donates 50 million phones to India, Nigeria, etc.

To an American this seems incredibly wasteful, I’m sure if you put something like this on twitter there would be plenty of sustainability trolling (“What about the lithium batteries?!!?”).

But the second order effects could literally save humanity from the next pandemic, make us multi-planetary, or feed millions of people.

The impact of entrepreneurship cannot be overstated - creating more entrepreneurs is incredibly high leverage. (not to mention bringing people out of poverty, growing global GDP, etc.)

I would much rather increase the enterprise value of the second type of company than the first.

Sustainability optics are incredibly unimportant. The roundabout path is generally the best way to go.

So going forward - Agrarian Design is a Growth Consultancy for high impact companies.

If the vision leads to the betterment of humanity - we’ll happily work for you and bring all of our skills to bear.

If your company is just another Oatly or someone focused on ‘selling sustainability’ - well I’m sure someone with less ethics would be happy to help out.

Just be high impact, the rest will sort itself out.