Founding, Growing and Scaling a Business in Climate HR (Part 3)

What This Story Is About

This is the story of what happens when a business that's already growing well decides to go deeper rather than just bigger. Lucy's Year 5 wasn't about accelerating growth. Revenue was already compounding beautifully. It was about understanding what the business could become when the people inside it were given a genuine voice in shaping its direction.

It's one of my favourite chapters in any client's journey, and I think you'll see why.

Lucy's Journey So Far

If you're new to Lucy's story, here's where we've been.

Lucy left a senior corporate HR role because she felt increasingly misaligned with her company's values, particularly around sustainability. She started an HR consultancy but found herself struggling — unfocused, networking randomly, competing with every other generalist in a crowded market.

We worked together to position her exclusively around climate businesses — climate tech startups, sustainable finance, circular economy, and policy organisations. The clarity transformed everything. Within twelve months, Lucy went from £3,500 to £12,000 in monthly recurring revenue with eight retainer clients and a growing reputation as the HR expert for businesses working to solve the climate crisis.

In the years that followed, she scaled to over £850,000 in turnover, built a team of eight HR Business Partners, launched a podcast that became a powerful business development tool, and introduced fractional HR services that extended her reach across the climate business ecosystem.

You can read the full story in [Part 1] and [Part 2].

By the start of Year 5, Lucy had a thriving business, a committed team, and a clear position in the market. Most founders at this stage would be focused on pushing for the next revenue milestone. Lucy wanted to do something different.

Starting With the Right Questions

Lucy began Year 5 with a strategic review. We did a thorough SWOT and PESTLE analysis, as you'd expect at this stage. But alongside that, Lucy did something that most founders don't think to do — and it changed everything.

She asked her team to put together detailed personal and professional profiles that went well beyond their CVs. She wanted to understand who they really were — their wider experience, their interests, the things they cared about outside of work. Through their annual appraisals, she also asked two simple but powerful questions: what would you like to see from the business? And how might we use our collective talents?

These weren't throwaway questions in an appraisal form. Lucy genuinely wanted to know. And the answers surprised her.

What Lucy Discovered

One employee had a background in environmental sciences. Another had studied ecology. Someone had completed a permaculture course and a couple of the team had allotments. Others volunteered in nature recovery projects at weekends and supported conservation work through charitable giving. One had worked for a B Corp before joining Lucy's practice.

Lucy had hired these people for their HR expertise, but they'd also been drawn to her mission. She knew her team cared about the environment — she had a strong relationship with each of them. But she hadn't had the space to look at it holistically. When she did, what she saw was a deep, shared commitment to nature and the environment that went far beyond their professional roles.

When we mapped these discoveries against the SWOT analysis, something became clear. Lucy had untapped strengths across her team that could create genuine strategic opportunities. The question was what to do with them.

Letting the Team Shape the Direction

Rather than deciding from the top, Lucy took a different approach. She asked a small group to examine the opportunity through the lens of the PESTLE analysis — to research the landscape, understand the external forces at play, and present their findings to the wider team. They put together a report and presentation that was thorough, thoughtful, and clearly driven by genuine enthusiasm.

Then we brought the full team together for a day to explore what this could mean for the business.

I've facilitated a lot of strategy days over the years, but this one stood out. The energy in the room was different from a typical planning session. These weren't people being told where the business was going. They were being asked to help shape it. And because the direction being explored - nature protection alongside climate action - came directly from their own interests and values, the commitment was immediate and authentic.

What Emerged

The business would expand its focus from climate action alone to climate action and nature protection. This wasn't a pivot - the core climate HR work remained central. It was a deepening, driven by the team's collective strengths and passions.

Several things came out of that day.

The team agreed to support a local organisation working on nature recovery and biodiversity - not just with a donation, but through volunteer days, fundraising events, and a meaningful partnership. Lucy's practice began hosting a monthly business networking event in support of the organisation, bringing together businesses interested in the climate and nature space. Not necessarily businesses working in it - but businesses that cared about it and wanted to connect with others who felt the same way.

The team also recognised that if they were going to credibly serve organisations in the nature protection space, they needed to deepen their expertise collectively. So they enrolled together on a FutureLearn course - Business Futures: Sustainable Business Through Green HR. What started as professional development turned into something more organic: a learning circle that evolved into a reading group, with team members sharing research, articles, and ideas that were shaping their thinking.

They pursued the Professional Certificate in Sustainable Human Resource Management - at just £140 for those fast-tracking, this was an accessible investment that gave the team a shared foundation. Lucy took the GLOMACS Certificate in Sustainable HR, and each team member developed their own CPD path, building specialisms that reflected their individual interests and the areas where they could contribute most.

This collective investment in learning wasn't box-ticking. It was the team equipping themselves to match their expanded mission — and it opened up genuine opportunities to work with innovative environmental organisations that hadn't previously been on Lucy's radar.

Building the Strategic Foundations

All of this work - the team profiles, the PESTLE research, the strategy day, the learning and development - formed the foundation of a new five-year strategic plan and brand strategy.

The aim of this year wasn't to accelerate growth. Revenue was already compounding at around 45% year on year. It was to lean more deeply into the core purpose of the business and establish foundations that could sustain and guide the next phase of growth. To make sure that when the business grew further — as it inevitably would — it was growing in a direction the whole team believed in.

My own role evolved during this period too. For the first time in our partnership, I moved from monthly strategic coaching to a fractional executive position, working with Lucy and the team a day a week to develop the strategic plan and brand strategy. This was a different kind of engagement — more embedded, more collaborative, working alongside the team rather than advising from outside.

We've since settled into a cadence that reflects where the business is now. I facilitate the annual planning process, build the plan, growth strategy, and action plan with Lucy and the team, and then meet Lucy monthly in more of a consultancy role - providing the ongoing strategic support that keeps the plan alive and responsive to what's happening in the market.

The Decision to Pursue B Corp

The team's decision to pursue B Corp certification emerged naturally from this work. It wasn't a marketing initiative or an attempt to add a badge to the website. It was the logical structural step for a business that had spent a year collectively articulating its values, deepening its expertise, and building partnerships grounded in genuine commitment to climate action and nature protection.

They're currently working through the certification process under B Lab's new framework, introduced in April 2025. The old aggregate scoring system has been replaced with clearly defined minimum requirements across seven specific Impact Topics — a more rigorous standard that demands genuine performance rather than selective reporting. Lucy and her team are pursuing it with the seriousness it deserves.

The Results

Revenue continued to grow through this period of deepening, exceeding £1,250,000 the following year. The circular economy specialism that had been on the horizon at the end of Year 4 emerged naturally as team members developed new areas of expertise through their CPD work.

But the real result wasn't the revenue number. It was the transformation of the business from a founder-led climate HR practice into something genuinely collective - a team that knows what it stands for, has shaped the mission together, and is building the structural foundations to protect that mission for the long term.

Lucy still leads the business. Her vision, her strategic clarity, and her commitment to climate action are what made all of this possible. But the purpose is no longer hers alone. It belongs to the team. And that makes it immeasurably stronger.

Why This Matters

Most founders think purpose is something they define and the team delivers. Lucy's story shows something different.

When you create the conditions for your people to bring their full selves - their interests, their expertise, their values, the things they care about on weekends and in their own time - the purpose that emerges is richer and more resilient than anything you could have designed alone. The best strategic plans aren't imposed. They're discovered.

Lucy knew her team cared about the environment - she'd built strong relationships with each of them. But she hadn't looked at it holistically until she created the space to do so. The permaculture courses, the allotments, the volunteering, the backgrounds in environmental sciences and ecology - she knew pieces of this individually. What she hadn't done was step back and see the collective picture. She found it because she asked the right questions - and because she was willing to let what she discovered reshape the direction of the business.

That takes confidence. It takes trust. And it takes a founder who understands that building something meaningful isn't about having all the answers. It's about creating the conditions for the right answers to emerge.

If Lucy's story resonates with you - whether you're at the beginning of building a purpose-led business or looking to deepen the purpose you've already established - I'd welcome a conversation. This is the work I find most rewarding: helping founders discover what their business can become when purpose and strategy work together. [Book a call] and let's explore what that looks like for you.

You can read the earlier chapters of Lucy's journey in [Part 1: From Corporate Misalignment to Climate Impact] and [Part 2: Building a Team, Scaling Impact].

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