Reflections of a sustainability solopreneur one year in
A little over a year ago, I decided to found Hower Impact a few days after my father suffered an aortic aneurysm connected to his multiple myeloma cancer battle. Sitting in a small ICU room beside the bed where he lay in a medically-induced coma following emergency surgery, I couldn’t help but think about my own impermanence.
Pulling out my personal journal, I scribbled: What will I regret when I’m laying in a hospital bed one day?
Considering this question, one of the chief regrets I kept coming back to was never trying to start my own business. Coming from a family of small business owners, I had long wanted to continue the tradition by being my own boss. This was not to make it rich — but to have the freedom to leverage my interests, talents and experience to create the biggest positive impact in the world. Yet self-doubt and fear of failure seemed to always postpone my entrepreneurial ambitions.
To get my mind off the worry for my father, I passed the time in the hospital room by sketching out some ideas for what kind of business I could create. I felt passionately about many of the problems afflicting corporate sustainability — including the sustainability careers and connection crisis and the failures of many companies to avoid greenwashing and tell interesting and authentic stories with their ESG and sustainability communication. Meanwhile, I had already started to informally help folks break into sustainability careers, had years of experience under my belt as a sustainability storyteller and was a natural connector and convener.
The day after the doctors brought my father out of his medically-induced coma he asked me what I was working on.
“Just an idea for a business,” I said.
“What’s the business?” He asked.
“Well, I want to call it ‘Hower Impact’ and it will be about helping people and companies connect and communicate better in corporate sustainability. I just don’t know if it’s the right time.”
“You need to go for it,” he said. “What do you have to lose?”
He was right. While time had once felt like a limitless resource, I now saw just how precious it was. I needed to go for it even if I still didn’t know what Hower Impact would become. Rather than burn months developing a business plan and potentially getting derailed, I would just get started, test things out and explore my options.
This week marks the one year anniversary of Hower Impact — and what a year it has been. After putting myself out there and letting people know what I’m about, things quickly took off in a good way.
I started by exploring the “fractional” model where I could fill gaps of sustainability communication expertise with corporations and consultancies. I began partnering with an agency to help with sustainability reporting and communication projects. And less than two months after launching Hower Impact, I landed Mars as my first major client. I would go on to help them create the Mars Net Zero Roadmap — their action plan for achieving Net Zero by 2050 — and support them with ongoing sustainability communication strategy and execution.
In Hower Impact’s first year of business, I worked with over a dozen companies across tech, food, clean energy and more on a variety of projects — from developing sustainability reports and creating sustainability educational learning initiatives for senior leaders to helping organize climate tech hackathons and more.
I also tested out several other services and offerings, including career coaching and building a platform to help sustainability job seekers and hiring managers better find each other. I decided that there already are plenty of great sustainability career coaches out there like my friend Trish Kenlon — and I’m not needed there. Likewise, there already are some wonderful platforms like One Point Five that are helping job seekers. I continue to offer my monthly Connection Sections on Sustainability Career Advice pro bono to job seekers around the world and build Hower Impact’s Sustainability Careers Resource Hub.
Over the course of the year, I refined Hower Impact’s focus to be what I love most — helping companies communicate sustainability. Today, I am all-in as a fractional sustainability communication executive where I partner with companies and consultancies to translate between sustainability and communication / marketing teams and fill expertise gaps. I also began teaching a Writing for Impact Masterclass to help sustainability professionals improve writing skills. And most recently, I launched The Sustainability Communicator podcast to examine the intersection of corporate sustainability and storytelling.
Throughout all of this, my dad got better — recovering fully from his aortic aneurysm and successfully completing his multiple myeloma treatment. Every day, he gets stronger and continues to encourage me on my entrepreneurial journey.
Moving into Hower Impact’s second year of business, I am more excited than ever with a full client roster, my new podcast and more opportunities to solve corporate sustainability communication and connection challenges. The business will continue to evolve as I find new ways to expand my ability to create positive impact.
There's nothing quite like the feeling of being exactly where you're meant to be, doing exactly what you're meant to be doing. It takes courage to follow your instincts, even when the outcome is uncertain. But the reward is worth it — even if you have to fail along the way. And the fear of failure is worse than failure itself — we can use it as data points that help us do better in the future.
I hope everyone has the chance to experience this feeling at some point in their lives, and to hold onto it for as long as possible. Imagine how different the world would be if we all felt this way — and the collective impact we could all make?
This originally appeared in the ENGAGE newsletter. Subscribe here.
