Regenerative Right Livelihood

How to thrive while doing the work you love, in service to earth care, people care, and future share

This class is presented by Karryn Olson

A permaculture design course is transformative because it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for our lives and work. However, too often after a PDC, folks require a long time to figure out how to earn a living with something they can feel good about. This module will outline some of the main obstacles on your path and speed up your pathfinding, because the world needs you and the solutions only you can provide!

Welcome to the mini-course!

Note to Students:

In my online Regenepreneurs Pathfinder group programs, I coach participants through a two-phase process to blaze the path towards their sweet spot where they can thrive in their regenerative right livelihood. In Phase one, we work through an inspiring process and workbook to harvest insights on three questions: What do I love? What am I good at? What does the world need?

In this module, I’m including several exercises from that workbook. However, you also have access to the whole workbook if you want to explore additional exercises! If you only have time to do the assignments in this module, they will help you begin to clarify a vision for how you might be able to put your permaculture training to work in your existing vocation, or in a brand new one.

Please note that this module and the workbook are laid out a bit differently, so I suggest you first work through this module. Exercises also found in your Workbook are indicated by bold text.

The top mistakes that people make after a permaculture design course.

Often, after an in-depth permaculture learning experience, folks emerge with the desire to change their living or working situations so that they can make a bigger difference. I’ve identified some common mistakes that are obstacles or detours on the right livelihood path, and I’ll share here the ones I’ve identified so that you can avoid them.

Mistake #1: Permavangelizing.

People are attracted to permaculture for different reasons. Some even “fall in love” with it. Have you? Why? Or why not? (Optional: take time to write about this in your Workbook.)

Here are some of the reasons I was super excited about my permaculture design course back in 1995:

• I found a framework that united a lot of what I was already thinking and feeling.
• I connected with other people who share my ethical perspectives.
• I felt hope that we can use ecological design to heal our ecosystems and communities.
• I’d been searching for a way to ensure my life’s work would be regenerative, and thought, maybe this was it?!

When one falls hard for permaculture, some people want to tell everyone about it, and encourage everyone to take a permaculture course, or think if they just knew permaculture, things would be better.

I’ve heard this called permavangelizing, (I wish I knew from whom, I’d like to give them credit!) and here’s why I discourage it:

Permaculture isn’t the solution to all the world’s problems.

It’s many things (a mindset, a toolkit, a design discipline, a community, etc.), and it offers many solutions, but there are other amazing frameworks out there that are also great solutions. Those of us who have been in permaculture for a few decades have seen the permavangelist approach alienate people and communities. Why? They needed jobs, but we offered groovy herb spirals. They needed safe playgrounds, but we preached about alternative currencies. Perhaps they became super excited about permaculture, but they felt it was out of their reach due to lack of land access. Or they left because nobody in permaculture locally looks like them, or because they recognize their indigenous practices as the foundation of permaculture but that’s not sufficiently acknowledged.

For many, cost, travel, time off work, or family obligations make it impossible to access permaculture design courses.

Instead of telling people what they need, listen first, then be of service! 

Transcend permaculture, or even stop using the p-word!

The word permaculture, for someone who has never heard of it, at best is confusing; at worst, they might think it’s a cult (“permacult”). Yes, someone really asked me this! The best ways I’ve seen people talk about permaculture is to never even use the word. Instead, they listen deeply to the interests and concerns of the person they are talking to, and have a dialogue with them.

What if the concepts from permaculture directly relate to what that person said?

Deep listening is a key skill that supports your livelihood. Later in the module, you’ll see how I used an entrepreneurial version of active listening to discern a niche. I’ll also outline an approach for designing offerings beyond this permaculture course that can liberate you from permavangelizing, support your livelihood and allow you to be of deep service, too.

Mistake #2: Being a forever generalist.

Another reason we fall in love with permaculture is because it is highly integrative and interdisciplinary.

Did you feel your mind and heart was constricted by the artificial siloing of knowledge in school (science, math, language arts, physical education, etc.)?

Were you totally disillusioned that school seemed to have very little to do with our real lives?

Have you felt liberated by permaculture because it is interdisciplinary, honors many ways of knowing, and is intended to be directly applied in our lifestyles?

This approach is refreshing because life is interdisciplinary and integrative, and learning should be too! However, the liberating it’s all connected generalist approach is a real challenge for most livelihoods. Why?

First of all, permaculture demands one have a good understanding of a huge array of knowledge. As a joke, and in a fit of frustration, I spent five minutes brainstorming a list of all the things one should probably know at a basic level as a permaculturist. 

Here’s the long but incomplete list:

Farming, gardening, biology, horticulture, animal husbandry, herbalism, geology, geography, hydrology, surveying, soil science, vermiculture, ecology, mycology, carpentry, plumbing, heavy machinery operation, agriculture, horticulture, food preservation, cooking, organizing, non-profit management, farm business planning, compost, aquaponics, forestry, systems thinking, beekeeping, invasive species, plant breeding, genetic diversity, bioregionalism, alternative economics, group facilitation, pedagogy, conflict management, governance, legal issues, climate, disruption/mitigation/adaptation, mechanic skills, alternative energy, green building, recycling, waste management, public health, water management, movement building, seed sovereignty, globalization, fair trade, social justice, racism, edible forest gardens, consulting, drafting, business skills, marketing, budgeting, human resource management, childcare, primitive skills, indigenous knowledge, mycology, keyline design, appropriate technology.

In your workbook, check out the growing list and feel free to add to it.

The point is, nobody can learn it all. And thinking we need to leads to what I call expertise overwhelm. And women especially often feel they have to be pretty darn good at something before they will call themselves a professional at it. Double overwhelm. That can lead to paralysis about how to move forward in our livelihood.

To remedy this, many folks invest lots of time and money learning, taking tons of courses …(beekeeping, keyline design, group facilitation, forest gardening, etc.), and they don’t add up to a livelihood that puts food on the table. Unless you are a farmer who literally puts food on your table with your hard work and amazingly wide set of skills.

Otherwise, the current economy tends to reward specialization. This makes sense, in that you hire a plumber to unclog your drain, you don’t pay them for being great at pruning fruit trees, software engineering, etc. because those skills aren’t relevant to the job.

What’s a permaculturist to do?​

The solution, as I see it, is to discern your sweet spot.

Once you do that, it becomes really clear which training you should invest in, so that you can be excellent at what you do, and get paid for it. We’ll get you started on finding your sweet spot, or niche, in this module.

Mistake #3: The “b-word.”

Why are so many permaculture people still using problematic business models? Speaking for myself, it is because I didn’t know what a business model was, I didn’t know I had one, and I certainly didn’t know how to design one. I was hyper-allergic to “business,” because I felt like “business as usual” has taken the interconnected webs of life to the brink of collapse.

Pause here.

What images, thoughts, etc. come up for you around the word business?Optional: In your Workbook, on page 2, do a 5 minute free-write.

Back when I did this exercise, I realized that business felt like a bonafide swear word to me, I even called it the real b-word.

Then I started learning that business owners who understood regenerative were fast-tracking regenerative solutions way faster than governments and non-profits. For example, I met builders of large-scale home developments, who were filling demand for greener subdivisions. Their work was causing whole supply chains to shift their manufacturing to greener processes over the span of a few years.

Later, I researched the terms and found out that business and entrepreneurship are different things, and the entrepreneurship is a mindset that enables one to create new solutions that never existed before.​

I still have healthy concern about extractive capitalism. I feel that the extractive economy is violent, and thus impossible to make sustainable or regenerative.

In the subsequent parts of this module, I’ll share more about how we can thoughtfully claim the tools of entrepreneurship in service to earth care, people care, and fair share.

Mistake #4: Putting the horse before the cart.

As a permaculture designer, would you design a site without ever having seen it, or speaking in-depth with the stakeholders? No!

However, we do this type of thing all the time in developing our permaculture offerings. We fall in love with an idea, and we think everyone will believe it is amazing, so we spend a whole bunch of time getting the curriculum or product just right, and then we take it to market. We didn’t do much market research. At best, we might have a vague idea of who our client is. So we put up flyers in the food co-op, post in likely Facebook groups, reach out to our like-minded communities.

​And then we don’t get enough enrollment, or we get enough enrollment but pretty soon all the likely suspects have taken our training and demand dries up.

Creating a product for which there is no market is a major reason why businesses fail.

What’s the solution?

​Familiarize yourself with the tools of entrepreneurship to design your right livelihood

We need to create lots of new, regenerative solutions. We are already using the permaculture lens to reclaim agriculture, ways of relating with nature, ways of being in relationship with each other, and more. So if the skills of entrepreneurship will support that, and we can align entrepreneurship with our ethics, then let’s reclaim it. Check out the whole Regenepreneurs Manifesto here.

​What is a right livelihood?

How can you design a regenerative right livelihood?

The concept of right livelihood is one component of the Buddhist Eightfold Noble Path, and centers work as a path for personal development, as well as the transformation of our collective existence. It emphasizes that we should avoid work that brings direct or indirect harm to any sentient being. It requires dedication to one’s ethics.

What does right livelihood mean for you? Take time to reflect on that now. Optional: Explore this in your Workbook, on page 2.

Here’s a video that explains how design relates to our regenerative right livelihoods:

DESIGN Your Right Livelihood

We can use the sweet spot graphic to guide our inhale and to assess how our unique experiences and skill-sets intersect with what the world needs and how we can earn a living doing work we love.

Optional: At the end of this module, you’ll work through an abbreviated version of the “Your Harvest” section that is on pages 3-8 Regenepreneurs Workbook. So you might wish to hold off on that work until then. Or dive into the Workbook now if you have the time. Either way, to get clarity on your sweet spot, it’s useful to inventory your life experiences and to assess and analyze the landscape of your life. (See the connection to the design process described in the video?).

​In the next section, you’ll dive deeper into the crucial what you can get paid for aspect of discerning your sweet spot. But first, you’ll explore what entrepreneurship is, and why you want it in your permaculture toolbox.

​The role of entrepreneurs in the regenerative economy

​What is an entrepreneur?

If you look up the history of the word, the French origin is “one who undertakes or manages”.

When I saw this definition, I thought “Heck, I do that all the time!” You probably do too!

Saras Sarasvathy, an expert on entrepreneurship, explains that “the entrepreneurial mindset boils down to being willing to do what we can with what we have, taking the first step towards solving a problem, then pushing on from success or failure. Entrepreneurs believe that what we humans do matters and can make a difference in our future.”

​Entrepreneurship is about solutions, and often about innovating new products, processes, ways of organizing or marketing, or even new business models.

Social entrepreneurs create solutions that benefit disadvantaged communities.

Ecopreneurs create and sell environmentally-friendly products and services.

Conscious entrepreneurs want to merge their passion and personal growth with their work.

But how do we practice regenerative entrepreneurship? The way I see it, we either apply entrepreneurial skills to regenerative endeavors like permaculture, or we apply regenerative approaches to entrepreneurship.

An entrepreneurial approach to the permaculture design course.

Here’s an analogy, one that is not regenerative, but one that everyone should understand:

The permaculture design course mode of delivering permaculture education was developed in the 1980s. Until recently, that same model (with some variations, like weekend permaculture design course or 4 seasons permaculture design course) was being replicated.

​Apple started out in the 1970s as a manufacturer of personal computers, but now sells phones, tablets, tvs, all kinds of media in iTunes, the genius bar for tech support at its stylish stores, etc.

What if Apple had only stuck with the personal computer? Where would it be now?

Apple evolved because it listened to the end user of its products, and kept its eyes open for new ways to bring its special sauce to market (which coupled a great design aesthetic, usability, and pop culture with functionality).

In business speak, Apple innovated all along its value chain, that is, all the activities that add value to the services and products that the organisation produces.

What if permaculture design course organizers did the same?

Two other co-founders of the Finger Lakes Permaculture Institute realized there were folks in our region who didn’t need a permaculture design course certificate, but needed support to design their own sites. These people worked full-time, so they wanted to do this over several weeks in the evenings. So my colleagues designed a lower-priced, abbreviated course around that, and it was one of our best programs in terms of participant satisfaction, ease of enrollment, and our investment of time as teachers and unpaid organizers.

What if we took that concept of unmet needs even further? What if entrepreneurial folks in permaculture listened to the needs of those least served by the present permaculture design course business model and co-created new models? More radically, how would the delivery of permaculture look if we aim to innovate new models of permaculture education that better meet the needs of women, people of color, poor people, etc., and value all the wonderfully diverse ways that humans show up in the world?

This online women-led course is an example of the co-creation of a new model for the delivery of a fully certificated permaculture course.

Besides permaculture courses, what other ways can permaculture meet people’s needs? Social permaculture courses center the design on the people care aspects of a system, and emphasize caring, relationship building, and process-oriented work. They also place value on personal reflection and transformation as center to reconfiguring oppressive social patterns and finding new systemic solutions that allow all to thrive. These courses have been nurtured by people like Robin Clayfield, who saw that for permaculture to be truly regenerative, more focus on people care was necessary than in the current curriculum. Nowadays, many more folks are working on social permaculture. Check out the past interviews I’ve done; you will see most are incorporating social permaculture into their work. This course evolves the permaculture paradigm by integrating social permaculture as a central component of the curriculum. See? It’s happening!

Optional: Brainstorm in your Workbook on p.9: who isn’t currently fully served by the permaculture design course model? Or, what are all the ways you can envision permaculture better meeting the needs of diverse populations?

​An entrepreneurial approach beyond the typical permaculture vocations

​In the last section, I showed some examples for innovating new approaches to permaculture education.

Until recently in permaculture, besides teaching, the main discernible and supported career paths and niches in permaculture have been as a designer, or in a land-based undertaking.

For the widespread application of regenerative practices to take root and flourish, we need to innovate lots of cool, super useful ways to fast-track regenerative practices into new products and services.

Some people providing these products and services don’t even mention the word permaculture, even though it fully informs their livelihood design.

Let’s look at some of the ways regenerative practices can solve real-world problems. Here are some ideas from past clients and speakers (some in inception, some already in action): 

• Indigenous Knowledge and Skills Trainings.
• Regenerative Parenting.
• The Permaculture Action Network.
• Postcards to the Earth.
• Women’s Carpentry Classes.
• Women’s Water Leadership Academy.
• Mother Earth School.
• Teaching Sustainability in Urban NYC Schools.
• Commemorating Life Transitions.
• Regenerative Food Services.

To apply a permaculture principle: the possibilities are “theoretically unlimited, or, limited only by the information and imagination of the designer”.

Optional:  The “What The World Needs” part of the workbook for this class has a section on pages 8-9 for documenting and brainstorming niches. Have fun with that!

​Applying regenerative approaches to entrepreneurial endeavors: ​a pattern language for business design

What unfilled, regenerative niches can you identify?

In the wider world, a growing professional niche involves helping current mainstream businesses to transition to regenerative approaches. If you are already a professional in a field that seems very different from permaculture, there is solid evidence showing that businesses who incorporate diversity and sustainability into their business models and organizations perform better than ones that don’t. So if opting out of the mainstream economy isn’t possible for you right now, you can still do powerful, regenerative work!

​People informed by permaculture are even pioneering shifting industries towards regenerative supply chains. In today’s economic climate, it also helps if you can articulate the business case, which compares the costs of doing business as usual with the benefits of transitioning to regenerative practices. Most often, making the shift saves money and reduces risk! (In the Resources section of this module, check out The Sustainability Advantage, The Future Fit Benchmark, and The Natural Step).

I’ve made my case for why entrepreneurship is another skill-set that belongs in your permaculture tool box.

Next, I provide an overview of the skills and ways of thinking that characterize an entrepreneurial approach that helps you discern if you can get paid for your regenerative work.

First of all, as Saras Sarasvathy said above, entrepreneurs are people who use what they have at hand to take a first step towards a solution, are willing to make mistakes, and to push on. 

However, here’s a key point: Wasting time and money increases your risk of failing as an entrepreneur, so we need to get better at learning from our mistakes. Towards that end, we can apply entrepreneurial methods, almost like the scientific method, in which we form hypotheses and look for quick ways to prove them, or disprove them, thus converting all efforts into learning. In this section, I’ll outline the basic framework of an entrepreneurial approach.

Remember Mistake #4: Getting the horse before the cart, in which folks create a product or service without evidence that there is a paying customer for it?

The sweet spot diagram helps us avoid that because it reminds us that one of our focus areas is what you can be paid for.

We are paid by other humans (in money, time credits, bartering arrangements, or other forms of abundance). 

How do you know if people will pay you for your product or service?

How do you identify these people?

Market research is one way, but it is best when paired with talking to people who deeply desire a solution to the problem you have identified.

Your big question is not: can I create this product or service? Your guiding questions must be: 

Have I identified a service or product that should be built (because it solves a problem for customers who will pay for it/or donors who will fund you to provide it)?

and

Can I build a sustainable business model around this offering? (In this case, sustainable = financially and energetically viable in the long term).

What is a business model?

A business model is simply how we create, deliver, and capture value for our clients or customers. For a non-profit, we exchange clients/customers with co-creators.

In the video below, you’ll take a look at the mainstream concept of a business model, which you can think of as a pattern language for entrepreneurs. You’ll also explore a more regenerative concept of value and how you can build this into your business model, and create what I call an abundance model.

Optional: There are exercises on pages 10-12 in your Workbook that go along with the video.

Biz Models and Abundance Models

​Thriving as a regenepreneur

​To recap, we have covered:

• The mistakes people make in their livelihoods.
• The concept of right livelihood.
• How we can design our right livelihood.
• How to discern your sweet spot.
• An overview of basic entrepreneurial skills, including some serious number crunching.

Even better, we’ve talked about how to make these regenerative. I’ll finish this module by sharing why women in permaculture are well positioned to be kickass Regenepreneurs, as well as some key pointers that I wish someone had shared with me.

​Three reasons why women make excellent regenepreneurs

​1. Women excel at leadership.

I covered this briefly in my Pattern Language for Women in Permaculture article, but I have compiled a whole treasure trove of studies that show that women excel at the skills needed for leadership in the 21st century. Look for more of that information in future articles.

2. Entrepreneurship is leadership, and a training ground.

To succeed as an entrepreneur, below is a short list of skills and behaviors needed. Note that they overlap with many of the skills needed to co-create our regenerative future, and skills that women excel at:

• Cultivate a compelling vision.
• Communicate that vision to others and motivate them.
• Be able to spot and embrace opportunities.
• Deal well with uncertainty.
• Work well with others.
• Make effective decisions.
• Build networks.Put collaboration ahead of personal interests.
• Manage, crunch numbers, and have fantastic interpersonal skills.

3. Women want green and socially just solutions.

The 2013 publication The Big Green Opportunity, a Small Business Sustainability Report, documented that growth rates of green segments are outpacing conventional segments in every industry where data was collected.

The greener businesses in this survey had a stronger performance.

A regenepreneurial approach goes beyond green and incorporates social justice, so it provides you distinct advantage. As a woman, you also have a unique lens through which you can spot and fill new regenepreneurial niches.

Entrepreneurship=risk.

​50% of small businesses fail after five years. The main reason for this failure is they created a product the market didn’t need. That’s why I emphasized this point in this module. I don’t want you make that mistake! You can reduce risk, though. Most of the reasons why businesses fail can be addressed through education and support. Moreover, small and slow solutions allow you to start out with lower risk.

Entrepreneurship + mentorship = success.

Mentorship is key for women entrepreneurs. As a professional mentor for women entrepreneurs, I wanted to share some thoughts on the topic.

Shockingly, in 2014, a study showed that confidence matters more than talent and competence for career advancement. Mentorship helps a person avoid mistakes, and build confidence and networks, so it makes sense that mentorship increases the chances of success of entrepreneurs.

Women entrepreneurs report less confidence and more fear of failure than men, but direct contact with other women who are role models helps women to enter and succeed as entrepreneurs.

Personally, I’ve found that expert mentorship in entrepreneurship is too often from the neck up. By this I mean mentors and mentees are too focused on thinking through solutions without addressing emotions, or considering bodily wisdom. Even mentorship programs specifically for women seem to fall into this pattern, and I think it’s really important to find a mentor that allows you to show up as your whole self.

Mentorship is different for regenepreneurs.

Your regenerative vision will influence everything in your business: the products and services your create, and how you price, market and deliver your services. Your love and pain for the world are probably motivating factors for your work, and you don’t want to have to justify that to your mentor.

I’ve gone through several entrepreneurial training programs, and few of them have understood my regenepreneurial approach. In my search to find a mentor or program that understands my approach and my market, I’ve repeatedly started over and invested a good amount of time and effort establishing common vocabulary.

So my advice to you is this: find a mentor who understands your regenerative approach, and stick with them for the long run. If you think you might like to work with me, I’d love to hear from you. My contact info is in my bio.

Visualize your unique, regenerative contribution in the web of life

(Additional exercises on pp. 4-6 of your workbook).

This visualization will help you avoid incrementalism. We often create a vision that’s just a little bit better or bigger than where we are now. It is essentially still based in the present system, which is not built on the ecological and social reality of interconnectedness. Incrementalism won’t get us where we need to go.

By contrast, humanity’s task is to create a vision for our collective future that connects earth care, people care, and redistributes our surplus to counter the dysfunctional success to the successful patterns in our current economy. That future unfolds through the work of each one of us cultivating new ways of being in relationship with each other and the web of life, including through our life’s work. That larger audaciously regenerative vision can only arise from the sharing of individual visions.

Some people shy away from a big audacious vision for themselves, thinking it’s selfish. It’s not selfish to envision an audacious vision that is grounded in regenerative ethics and in service to the whole. Your work of cultivating a vision for your regenerative right livelihood is actually deeply in service to the larger community of life.

Take time to record various pieces of your emerging vision using the visualization linked below (or any other visualization that works for you).

​How does this link with the design you’ve been working on throughout this course?

Visualization

Part One:

After you do the visualization, set a timer and free-write for 5 minutes in each category (optional: also dive into more exercises on pages 3-7 in the Workbook).

1. What do you love? For example, if you found out today that you had five years to live, what work would you dedicate yourself to?

2. What are you good at? List all the skills you have acquired that support that ideal livelihood.

3. What does the world need? What problems in the world capture your attention repeatedly?

4. Have you ever felt like you’d love to dedicate your life to addressing a particular problem? What was it? What stopped you?

Part two

When you’re done with the freewriting exercise, take a short walk and think about what you came up with. Then, come back and work through these questions: 

​5. Which of the open niches you brainstormed really resonate for you?

6. Define regenerative entrepreneurship, in your own words. Why is it an important part of a permaculture design?

7. What are some common mistakes that people make after taking a permaculture design course that you hope to avoid? How will you avoid them?

8. How will you reconcile your mindset about business and money with the need to live in a money-based economy while working towards a regenerative economy?

9. Do you have an idea of what your sweet spot might be? Elaborate.

10. What kinds of alternative economics might you embed in your abundance model? How does this look practically (for example, is there already a time bank in your area? Does it enable national or international time-credit transactions?)

11. To whom will you redistribute your surplus for high-impact social justice work?

12. When you did the surviving or thriving exercise to determine the minimum rate that you need to charge as an entrepreneur just to cover your basics, did you learn something new? How does that number feel? How does it compare to how much you are currently earning?

13. How will what you learned in this module impact your design for this course?

Now, Review your design project. Where do you see opportunities for income, for entrepreneurship? Come up with at least one place in your design that could potentially produce income for yourself, and spend some time brainstorming how you might proceed exploring the viability of your ideas.

Final video of the Design Your Regenerative Right Livelihood mini-course

Homework

This class has its own special workbook, so if you find it helpful, do the exercises! At minimum, consider the summary below.

What’s your unique contribution? This exercise will help you discern that!

Open up your email. Think of one person whom you trust and admire. Address an email to them. Cut and paste the following text into your email, and edit so that it makes sense for you. Send.

Repeat at least 3 more times.

Dear ______,I’m working through a permaculture course and in this module I’m designing my regenerative right livelihood. One assignment is to send the following questions to people whom I trust and admire, and I thought of you. I’d sincerely appreciate your frank responses. Might you be able to send them back to me within the week? Thanks for considering this!

• What characteristics come to mind when you think of me?
• What do people receive from being in my presence?
• How have I helped you?

​Collect the responses (with name and date). It’s great to do this at least annually. Bask!