“Sustainable” has become one of the most overused words in business. It is often reduced to a shorthand for environmental performance, or a label added to an ESG page.
The interviews in The Sustainable Business, commissioned by Brevity Marketing and published by DECISION magazine, present a more demanding definition. As the foreword notes, sustainability is a holistic business concept: everything a company does is interconnected by its culture and sense of purpose. Environmental responsibility is one outcome of that system, but it is not the whole story.
Across sectors and generations, business owners and directors were asked a simple question: what does a sustainable business really look like? While their answers vary, clear patterns emerge. These go far beyond isolated initiatives or well-meaning statements.
This blog introduces those patterns. The rest of this series will explore them in detail: purpose and values, proof over posturing, marketable products, culture, money, and community.
Purpose and values as the operating system
For many interviewees, sustainability begins with why a business exists and how it behaves when decisions are difficult.
Charles Robinson of estate agency Jones Robinson describes three essential pillars: purpose, values and mission. Purpose defines the “why”, values underpin it, and mission sets a time-bound goal. “Our set of values, the behaviours we abide by, provide us with guidance when we have to address a problem or make a decision,” he explains.
Planning consultancy founder Anna Gillings approaches the same idea from a different direction. Her first stated value is happiness. “Happy team means happy clients, resulting in a happy business because it’s successful,” she says. Values, she argues, are endemic to the business, not something applied selectively or referenced only when convenient.
Throughout the book, purpose and values are not treated as aspirational statements. They function as an operating system: shaping who is hired, which work is accepted, how trade-offs are made, and what success actually means.
Financial resilience as a foundation, not an afterthought
The contributors are equally clear that good intentions are not enough. Financial resilience is treated as non-negotiable.
Zahra Afshar of Ahmad Tea describes profitability as the economic baseline of a sustainable business, but stresses that it must exist in balance with people and resources, rather than being pursued at their expense.
Martin Wood, founder of UKSE Group, is more direct. Asked about the lifeblood of a sustainable business, his answer is simple: good cash flow. Without it, he argues, uncertainty creeps in, stability is undermined, and the risk of letting down staff, customers and suppliers increases.
The conclusion is unambiguous. A business that wants to make a positive impact tomorrow has to remain viable today. Purpose requires a solvent vehicle.
A marketable product that fills a genuine gap
Several interviewees emphasise that sustainability is inseparable from having a product or service people genuinely want.
Organico’s Charles Redfern cautions against lecturing consumers. A business can “shine a light on what is right,” he says, but the product still has to be a compelling consumer proposition. Ethics, in his words, sit “under the bonnet”.
For SolarBotanic Trees founder Harry Corrigan, sustainability is tied to the continuous improvement of a real, useful product. A sustainable business, he argues, constantly evaluates how every element of what it does can be improved, while remaining clear about what it is ultimately trying to achieve.
The point is consistent across the interviews. Purpose and ethics cannot compensate for weak product–market fit. Sustainable businesses sell things that solve real problems and stand up on their own merits.
Proof over posturing in an age of greenwash
When almost every company claims to be sustainable, distinguishing substance from spin becomes harder.
Redfern observes that producing a polished ethical or sustainability policy is no longer a differentiator. “A free AI program can write a pretty good ethical or sustainability policy in seconds. Any company can bung that on its website. Job done.”
His response has been to move beyond general claims. Organico became the first UK company to adopt Planet Score as part of its triple guarantee, with every product independently assessed across climate, pesticide and biodiversity impact. The business also established an internal ethics committee to monitor developments and policy in the ethical space.
From an investor perspective, Charles Whelan of Polestar Corporate Finance notes growing belief among private equity funds that strong sustainability practices can improve exit multiples. At the same time, his research shows many businesses struggle to demonstrate return on investment or even know where to begin.
Taken together, these perspectives point to evidence-based sustainability. Certification can provide a useful framework, but it is only a starting point. What differentiates credible businesses is proof: data, policies, governance and third-party verification that show alignment between what is said and what is done.
Culture, happiness and commercial outcomes
The human dimension of sustainability runs strongly through the book. Culture is treated as a commercial asset, not a soft extra.
Gillings describes building her business around happiness and honesty, while resisting the urge to reduce values to metrics. “You shouldn’t need to be looking for ways to KPI your values,” she says. Instead, she emphasises embedded behaviours, shared responsibility and giving people the authority to challenge actions that do not align.
Mat Rule of Toca-io links culture to delivery and accountability. He describes creating an environment of transparency and trust, where people are given ownership rather than being tightly managed. The result, he argues, is more consistent delivery and better outcomes for clients, because teams take responsibility for solving problems rather than simply completing tasks.
Rule is also explicit about protecting culture through decision-making. He is prepared to turn down work that conflicts with the company’s values, even when it is commercially attractive. Compromising culture for short-term gain, he argues, erodes internal trust and ultimately damages quality, client satisfaction and long-term growth.
Across the interviews, culture repeatedly shows up in commercial terms: retention, delivery quality, client relationships and the ability to scale without losing consistency.
Community, supply chains and the wider ecosystem
Sustainability, in these interviews, extends beyond the organisation itself.
Andy Best of Change++ argues that sustainable businesses are built through relationships with like-minded suppliers and customers, encouraging partners to move forward together rather than treating sustainability as an isolated internal effort.
Beverley Gower-Jones of Clean Growth Fund links sustainable business to the ability to stay the course. For her, sustainability means doing the right thing across everything a business touches, from emissions and resource use to the way it treats stakeholders and communities.
Other contributors point to local procurement, community engagement and long-term stewardship, including choosing to protect local jobs or reinvesting profits into community initiatives. The common thread is responsibility for the wider ecosystem that enables the business to operate.
Long-termism, focus and clear communication
The book also contains warnings.
Brevity’s own chapter in the book highlights the risk of what we often see in growing businesses: “shiny object syndrome”. It’s the temptation to chase every new idea, initiative or framework before anything has had time to take hold. From our perspective, sustainable businesses are built through focus and consistency. They empower their people, allow room for learning and mistakes, and maintain momentum through steady, repeatable action rather than short bursts of activity.
The same principle applies to communication. Kaia Vincent, founder of Brevity, notes the pressure many businesses feel to be constantly visible on social media – to “say something” simply for the sake of being seen. Her view is that sustainability in marketing comes from restraint and clarity. That means understanding what your customers actually want to hear, balancing online activity with real-world relationships, and making sure what you promise publicly matches the experience people have when they get in touch.
From our point of view, marketing isn’t a performance. It’s an extension of how a business really operates.
What this series will explore
Taken together, the voices in The Sustainable Business suggest that sustainability is not a single initiative or department. It is a way of building and running a business:
• With clear purpose and lived values
• On a foundation of profitability and cash flow
• Offering products and services that genuinely meet needs
• Backed by evidence rather than slogans
• Sustained by a culture where people can thrive
• Connected responsibly to its community and supply chain
In the coming blogs, we will explore each of these themes in depth: how to turn values into everyday behaviours, how to move from rhetoric to proof, how to balance purpose with profit, and how to build relationships that make sustainability real.
Follow this series as we examine what sustainable business looks like in practice, through the experiences of leaders working to build companies that last. The marketplace is crowded. AI tools have made it easier than ever to produce content, which means noise has gone up while quality hasn’t always followed. Too many businesses hand their marketing to juniors or outsource cheaply overseas. The result is bland, inconsistent messaging that doesn’t resonate.
Download your copy of The Sustainable Business Book commissioned by Brevity Marketing – Download now
