Summary: In this essay, the author reflects on the importance of balancing profit and mission in business. The author shares personal experiences, such as considering joining a monastery and running a travel company, to illustrate the need for financial sustainability. They highlight examples of how even mission-driven organizations, such as Trappist monasteries, prioritize profitability to support their work. The author concludes that finding a balance between profit and purpose is essential for building a sustainable and values-driven business that can make a positive impact.
It turns out that even in a monastery, someone needs to take fiscal responsibility. Monasteries still exist within a capitalist society and need a solid enough financial model to make sure their monastics have food to eat, a place to sleep, and access to healthcare.
This was the first time I realized that there was no escape from the money problem. To do meaningful work in the world, you have to care about margin as much as you care about mission. This realization set me off on a journey to understand how businesses can achieve both profitability and impact. (View Highlight)
Even in a mission-driven organization, you have an ethical imperative to find and protect your margin. It’s the only way to build an organization that sustains over time and does business in a values-aligned way. (View Highlight)
This is why I often advise founders to create minimum specs around what matters to them in their business. This could be the type of customer you want to serve, the culture you want to create, the values you want to espouse in your work, or the specific outcome you want to see in the world. If you start to compromise these, you need to ask yourself some hard questions about where the business is going. (View Highlight)
And while it may seem easier to optimize for just one of the two—margin or mission—both are necessary to do work that really matters. If you sit with the tension long enough, there’s often a creative path forward that allows you to optimize for both. In the words of Ray Dalio:
“When faced with the choice between two things you need that are seemingly at odds, go slowly to figure out how you can have as much of both as possible. There is almost always a good path that you just haven’t figured out yet, so look for it until you find it rather than settle for the choice that is then apparent to you.” (View Highlight)
