We start and build businesses that make a small contribution to solving big problems.
We believe that the most powerful solutions will help restore harmony between humankind and nature. We therefore seek to understand and work with the natural world, rather than trying to conquer or dominate it.
Clearly, the expertise and ingenuity required to achieve this lies largely outside our organisation. Our role is to help scientists, engineers, poets and entrepreneurs amplify and scale their ideas. We provide money, additional relationships, and as much strategic insight as we can muster.
It has been said that the purpose of capitalism is to make money, but that there is an urgent need to make this process more ‘sustainable’. We see things differently. We would like to suggest that the purpose of business, as in any endeavour, should be to preserve and improve life on earth, whilst doing so in a financially sustainable way.
We apply our energies to any business or sector that achieves this. Our current activities touch psychology and mental health, sustainability, preventative and natural well-being.
What to measure?
The model taught in most business schools argues that a company’s share price is a fair measure of the total value created by that business. The theory teaches that the share price, or privately agreed valuation of a company’s equity, reflects the impact on all stakeholders – including customers, employees, suppliers, the community and the planet.
The reality is that these stakeholders have neither a perfect transparency of information nor a perfect ability to exercise their voice or concerns. The planet in particular, and its natural beauty and resources, is an entirely silent stakeholder.
Focusing solely on company valuations (or in the case of countries, growth in GDP) as currently measured, fails to take into account the depletion of natural assets – the ecological health of the Earth or the well-being of communities.
Any company’s profits or share price ignores externalities – for example the destruction or depletion, or indeed improvement, of the natural world and any other social or ecological asset that sits outside a company’s balance sheet.
There are strong and valid debates about how to properly measure such externalities, how these measures should be reported, and how they should be used or legislated for.
Whilst these debates continue, we will choose to adopt both science-based targets (relating to soil health, deforestation, water, greenhouse gases, plastic and pollution) and also ‘Natural Capital’ accounting methods – where we measure and report not only the internal profits of the company but also the use or improvement of nature and the quality of life enjoyed by humans.
(As an aside, perhaps we can all debate whether governments might do the same thing with national economic reporting. To report not solely GDP but also an assessment of the wellbeing of people and communities, the ecological state of the country, and the impact on communities and the environment in countries we trade with. This is the true ‘balance sheet’ that respects both humans and nature.
A big goal
A note from John our Founder
Since 1971, the year I was born, we have destroyed 68% of the earth’s animals.
And today 40% of our plants are threatened with extinction. We have poured poisons into our soil, air and water. At the same time, diet and lifestyle related illness and mental health issues have risen exponentially. We wish to play the biggest part we can, which will inevitably be a small part, to address these challenges.
My personal goal is to live long enough to see a reversal of this in my lifetime and to restore a more harmonious relationship between humans and nature.
It will require me to be well and to be creative and collaborative.
Freedom and responsibility
My experience of working with governments, businesses and people from diverse communities has taught me that we need governments to do better – to make the right laws, create the right regulation and provide funding in areas where business is unlikely to provide a solution. But I have seen that governments are slow moving, and sometimes unimaginative. The biggest solutions are going to come from the choices we make as consumers, the arguments we make as employees, and the creativity we provide through entrepreneurial businesses.
For the good of the human spirit and for the good of our planet, we seek to protect human freedoms and to encourage human responsibility. We believe that if we fail to create conscious or ethical capitalism, there will be pressure to compromise individual freedom to move, to choose how we want to live and how we run and build our businesses. With freedom comes responsibility.
Our grandchildren deserve a world which cherishes both nature and freedom – to move, create, speak and live without coercion, and if they so choose, to pursue natural solutions to their well-being and health.
We have called our organisation The Longhouse after the homes built by the Iroquois Confederacy of Native American tribes. These tribes believed that when making decisions and taking action one should consider the impact on seven generations from now. Today these tribes seek to share this message more widely, and it is with respect and humility that we have called ourself The Longhouse.
Up to twenty families traditionally lived in a ‘longhouse’. They worked together and supported each other. That is what we seek from the stable of brands and companies that we create.
Our businesses
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you don’t need to read this bit
Our thinking is in large part informed by the ancient martial art Wing Tsun, developed in part by two women and emanating from the Southern Shaolin Temple. It was developed over a thousand years and was informed by Taoism, Confucionism and Zen Bidhism. Confucionism gave it structure and discipline. Taoism gave it wisdom and an understanding of flow and freedom, and Zen Buddhism taught how to move beyond self and beyond the constraints of the rational mind.
In collaboration with my teacher, Sifu Julian Hitch, I have described these in a book called Winning not Fighting. It describes how one can apply these to life and business and how we brought them to life in running the naturally fast food business LEON.
The principles were important too in the development of Feed NHS where we were the first and largest provider of meals to front line medical teams in the Covid pandemic.
Wing Tsun puts into practice the spiritual, physical and mental progression required to optimize one’s wellbeing and to pursue one’s particular dharma or purpose. One progresses through the four ‘doors’ of Wing Tsun. Each is an increasingly effective physical set of movements or ‘forms’, representing and bringing to life a path and set of philosophies informed by the Taoist and Zen Buddhist teachings of the southern Shaolin Temple. In turn the ‘doors’ teach us to become conscious, build positive relationships, to free ourselves mentally, emotionally and physically, and to have a positive relationship with planet and ourselves.
Door 1
Siu Nim Tao (‘way of the little idea’) teaches us to become conscious, which requires in part knowing ourselves and staying relaxed in order to not create conflict and in order to be conscious of the world around us. It is known as a small, low door that requires us to bend down to enter, thus beginning to put aside our ego.
Door 2
Chum Kiu, (‘bridge with others’) teaches us to develop positive relationships with those around us. We can only do this is we have previously successfully understood ourselves.
Door 3
Biu Ji, (‘flying fingers’?) teaches us to free ourselves from mental, emotional and physical impediments. In this door we are truly achieving, without allowing ourselves or our learnt fears to hold us back.
Door 4
the Wooden Dummy, (mastery and wholeness) teaches us that our only enemy is ourselves, at the same time as teaching us that we are connected to everyone and everything. It teaches us to importance of purpose and mastery, and the importance of immersing ourselves in practice whilst ‘giving up the fruits’ (not chasing outcomes through ego, desire or greed or fear).
We believe that humankind needs to move from separation, fear and conflict to wholeness and love. To remember our right relationship with ourselves. each other and the planet.
My dharma, purpose, is to live the universal practices of these four doors of winning not fighting and to help others do the same. Living in flow and doing the things that I love.
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