I’ve been exploring the world of sustainability in business for a few years now. And through my connections with some wonderful people like JK and Jannine, I have also been following the concept of regeneration with interest for a while – thinking about how nature can, and should, influence the world of business. 

My relationship with nature and sustainability is a long-standing one which strengthens as I grow and become more in tune with my well-being needs and a desire to explore my creative streak.  

But until I started Optimo, most of my career had been spent in offices, on trains and in hotels up and down the country, working on projects with a process or IT focus. “Not very nature-y” I hear you say! 

What changed?

In my twenties, I took a backpacking trip. That’s when I first realized how nature calmed my inner chaos. In my travels, I found a new peace in forests and meadows, on hills and mountains, and by rivers and oceans. I found an ability to sit and just exist. To take deep breaths and let everything else but that experience fall away.  

I found my calm.  

Then it was much more recently when I realised I wanted to find a way to ‘be’ more creative. I don’t know why it took me so long to remember who the young Danielle was- the one who played musical instruments and loved painting and drawing. I got so caught up in my career as a project manager and consultant. Being good at logic, structure, and systems is great but I forgot the flow and freedom I find in music and art. 

My creativity never really left me. To do my work, I need it. It’s key to problem-solving and doing more with less! 

But, I’m feeling a pullback to the traditional meaning of this word. There’s something about the sensory experience of sitting in a woodland. I love listening to the wind in the leaves, the flow of a nearby river, and the sunshine on my skin coming through the branches. (Or even the rain – this is the UK, after all!)) and the smell of bark and flowers that also brings a desire to create. 

Optimo is a huge part of my life. I started my own business to combine my skills with my passions. So, it was always meant to build nature and sustainability into what we do.  

So where did I start? 

The Think Like a Forest programme presented itself at the perfect time for me. I was ready to take the progress the team had already made by getting us B Corp certified to the next level. Our next step was to embed regenerative practices more deeply into our work. As JK has been one of my coaches for a few years, it was perfect that she and Sarah’s programme would be the facilitator for this. 

Before I got stuck in, I thought regeneration was about replenishing. I have long known that humans harm the planet, and ourselves. From the word alone, I understood we must move in the other direction. 

My key takeaways: 

Nature and sustainability don’t work in straight lines.  

And the programme definitely embodied this. I found the concept quite hard to grasp at first, but it ended up making loads of sense and became really enjoyable. Logic and process are so ingrained in me that I can play with them. I’ve started to see this in my client work. We still start at ‘the beginning’ with clients, in their current state. But, we explore variations in their roadmaps and flex their priorities as we work together. 

There are no right answers.  

Each business has different experiences. There are endless ways to apply nature’s teachings to your strategy and operations. All of them are worth considering. Regenerative business is a deeply researched concept, as well as a very new one. As purpose-driven business owners, we must experiment with embedding these values. We should lead the way for others. 

We are already doing a lot of it.  

I was comforted to discover that many of the principles we covered in the programme described some of our existing ways of working and values. If your business cares for people, the planet, and profit, this program will validate your responsible practices and inspire new ideas. It connects to our nature and our link to it. 

We’re taking it further.  

As a business that embodies improvement, we’re committed to learning from the programme. We will find ways to build this into what we do, and how we do it. This has included sharing the programme principles with the team and ideating on what this means for us as individuals, a team, a business, our community and a wider ecosystem.  

If you want to find out more about us and the different commitments we make to sustainability and responsible business, check out our About Us page!