Vegan Business Tribe has done well over the last four years, and I’ve got you to thank for that. For the first couple of years, my wife Lisa and I largely funded Vegan Business Tribe ourselves, subsidising it with tens of thousands of pounds of our own money. Now it can largely stand on its own two feet through member subscriptions and sponsorship, but I still continue to do some consulting work outside of VBT. The money earned from that is what enables us to punch above our weight and do things like the two-day Vegan Business Tribe Live event we did at the London Olympia last year, as part of VegfestUK.
In my past career, I built a name for myself as someone who could help companies that operate in specialist and hard-to-market industries, so I still get contacted by people who know me asking if I’d consider getting involved in a project. I spent a couple of days in London this week doing just that. It’s fairly easy work (well, when you’ve got a career’s worth of experience doing it that is!) but it’s also like returning to a parallel universe. First, I have to wear a suit instead of my VBT hoodie, and second, I have to keep reminding myself that most of the people around me aren’t vegan (as I was bluntly reminded where one guy – exasperated at all the vegetarian options on the buffet lunch – ran after the server to ask ‘excuse me, where’s the meat?!’). Don’t get me wrong, these businesses are not anti-vegan per se, or I wouldn’t be there. They are just, well, ‘ethically neutral’. But it’s just not me any more. Each time I work outside the vegan sector, I feel like the gangster who’s now gone straight agreeing to do ‘one last job’…
So that’s why you’re seeing a lot of new initiatives from Vegan Business Tribe at the moment. We’re working on making it more financially sustainable so that I can finally give all my focus to the vegan sector.
First, we’re increasing our member-only content, having commissioned a new series hosted by the original vegan business guru Katrina Fox, interviewing some of the biggest names in the vegan sector about using your business as your form of activism. After the success of our shorter video course on ‘How to get customers‘ last year, we’ve also got two new courses in development on ‘How to start a vegan business’ and ‘How to get the most out of shows, fairs and events’. Plus we’ve got our new book, Vegan Business Revolution, which will be accompanied by a new podcast series of the same name, interviewing Vegan Business Tribe members about their business (please apply here!). We’ve also got lots more online workshops planned with vegan experts, starting with ‘How to get your vegan business in the news‘ later this month with ex-journalist and radio presenter Karin Ridgers, followed by a live workshop with Vegan Punks next month about how they built up a 100k+ social following and answering your questions on how you can do the same.
We’re doing all this to make membership of Vegan Business Tribe even more valuable which will help us to continue to grow our community. You can also help us grow by referring other vegan business owners you know, using our refer a friend form here. This form will send your friend a free month trial membership, and if they sign-up for that free month, then we’ll apply a free month to your account too as a thank you!
But we’ve also got more initiatives planned planned to help VBT become more commercially sustainable, starting with our new Certified Vegan Business scheme which we soft-launched in December and have received great feedback from the companies that have already signed-up. You can also still use the coupon ‘vbtmember2023’ on checkout until the end of the month to receive a £200 discount on becoming certified.
Then lastly, we’re also increasing our 121 coaching capacity because this is where we have been able to make a real impact with members and have had some amazing success stories from people who have gone through it. But alongside that, we’re also going to introduce a new level of Vegan Business Tribe membership for people who need more active, hands-on support but might not have the full budget for coaching. This ‘mentoring’ tier is currently code-named ‘VBT Pro’ and will give you direct access to support through a weekly 20 minute Zoom session and 121 WhatsApp support. We’re going to initially open this up to just a handful of members as a trial, and if you’re interested in being one of those members please let me know!
So it’s a really exciting time to be part of Vegan Business Tribe, but we’ve built this amazing community hand-in-hand with our members. So if there’s something you want to see or would find really valuable – or if you have feedback or want to get involved more – then just email me on hello@veganbusinesstribe.com or message me in the Slack group. With a bit of luck, it will mean I don’t have to keep pulling my suit out of storage!
David’s thoughts from the week, published every weekend for members only.
As a member, you should receive David’s weekly blog in our Members Weekly email that also includes a full round up of all the conversations from our Community Hub and other updates.
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