Our 2025 year-ender!

Congratulations – we all made it to the end of another year!

I’m writing this extended end-of year ‘Members Weekender’ knowing that people will read it at different times over the holidays, or might not read it until the new year itself. So I wanted to take an opportunity to look ahead to what we have planned for 2025.

First some honesty.

Vegan Business Tribe turned five years old this year which was an amazing milestone to hit, and also our daughter Awen turned one. Becoming a dad again in my mid-40s was a blessing beyond words and Awen is already becoming a hit at the vegan events she’s accompanied us to. But, animal-agriculture propaganda permeates every level of early-age education (anyone fancy a quick sing-song of Old McDonald and a free bottle of cow’s milk?) and my wife Lisa and I agreed that we were not willing to put Awen into that kind of environment until she’s fully-equipped to defend herself against it. That meant that instead of enrolling Awen into nursery, Lisa took a step back from Vegan Business Tribe to become Awen’s full-time carer, teacher, friend and mentor.

And what we’ve proven this year is that while I’ve been able to run the tribe largely on my own, I can’t grow it at the same time. Which is why I started talking to people about finding funding or investment to help us scale VBT. Those conversations lead to me winning a place on the ProVeg Kickstarting For Good Incubator for social-impact entrepreneurs and hopefully you watched some of my incubator video diaries here.

The incubator has been a phenomenal experience. The contacts I made going through the programme in Berlin have been as valuable as what I learned about scaling an impact-focussed organisation. I’d not really built connections within the wider animal-rights movement before because I was fearful that, with my purely commercial background, I might not be accepted. Business and big corps are the enemy after all, right?

How wrong was I.

If anything, the opposite has been true. I have found that the movement welcomes people who have commercial skill sets. And while there was no guarantee of funding at the end of the incubator, we’ve already been introduced to a couple of potential backers who value what we’ve built at Vegan Business Tribe and are excited about the potential of what we can become with more resources. Talks are in their early stages but, so far, have been very positive!

Next year, you’re going to see the results of the plan we created on the incubator to scale-up Vegan Business Tribe. Of course, how fast you’ll see those results largely depend on if we’re successful in finding funding/investment or not.

The first area we need to invest in is bringing people onboard to work with us. Namely, a community manager whose job it will be to reach out to members to increase engagement and help support them directly; and an editor/social media manager to vastly increase our output and reach on social. We produce a HUGE amount of content – this year alone we’ve added more than 80 new workshops, guides and podcasts to our academy. This means that we’ve got an almost endless source of content that can be chopped up into 60-second shorts to give us a constant stream of social content to help vegan business owners around the world.

The second area we need to invest in is impact. Through the Kickstarting For Good Incubator, I’ve learned a LOT about how organisations create impact. If we want to truly help the vegan movement with Vegan Business Tribe, the way to do that is to help YOU increase the impact you make with YOUR business. And step one has to be helping you to grow a successful and profitable business because (and you will have heard me say this before) you can do a lot more good in the world with a profit than you’ll ever do with a loss.

So in 2025 we will be introducing exciting new initiatives to help you grow your business including mentor-matching and refocusing our Vegan Business Academy with new learning pathways specifically to help you grow. And, taking leaf out of my own book, this is going to come with a significant price-rise in the new year.

Now don’t worry! As an existing member, you will continue to pay what you pay now, for as long as you stay a member. I’ve always tried to keep the cost of Vegan Business Tribe as low as possible (you know, our contribution to the cause etc) but this has limited our growth. The irony hasn’t been lost on me that the first piece of advice I usually give a member is to put their prices up, whilst ignoring the fact that we charge less than half what a standard business community in any other sector usually charges.

We also have our sights set on increasing our footprint in North America in 2025. Now, I know, I’ve been saying we’re going to do this for a couple of years, but 50% of our members now come from outside of the UK and the vegan business revolution is really starting to gather momentum in the US and Canada. And as someone who has been supporting (some might say playing a leading role in) that revolution in the UK for the past five years, the experience, support and resources we have built at Vegan Business Tribe will massively help the thousands of vegans that are starting to gain a foothold with their businesses in North America too.

So I’m going to be incredibly busy over the holidays making all this happen! I’ve also been blown-away by how many people have said they have enjoyed watching my incubator video diary, so I’m considering continuing some form of weekly behind the scenes video (because, obviously, I don’t already produce enough content!) so that I can continue to take you on this journey with me as we focus on scaling and growing Vegan Business Tribe.

And as always, if you have any comments or input into what we’re building, or just want to share your own stories of how Vegan Business Tribe has helped you, please hit reply. We’ve built this community hand-in-hand with our members, and as we start this next phase of growth, I will continue to do the same.

Have a great break as we approach the end of the year. And as I always close the podcast: I’ll see you, on the next one!