You Don’t Need to Wait to “Give Back” (do this instead)

Learn more about the Regenerative Business Ecosystem here!

Most people think impact comes after success.

Make money first.
Then give back later.
Then do something meaningful.

But what if your business was designed differently from the beginning?

In this episode, Sam Garcia shares how her online business has funded hundreds of thousands of dollars in reforestation and land restoration — not by waiting until she was “successful enough,” but by designing profit and impact as the same system.

She breaks down the two core ways this has evolved:

• Using business profits to directly fund change (from land restoration to climate mitigation)
• Weaving values into the business itself — messaging, offers, structure, and direction

You’ll hear:

• Why “I’ll give back later” often never happens
• The difference between donating from profit vs. revenue (and how to start small)
• How giving actually changes your relationship with money
• The identity shift required to build a values-led business
• Why your business can feel successful… and still feel misaligned
• How to start integrating impact now — even if you’re early-stage

This episode is for you if:

• You care deeply about the world and want your work to reflect that
• You’ve felt tension between making money and making a difference
• You want your business to feel more meaningful, grounded, and alive
• You’re ready to stop separating impact from income

This isn’t about doing more.

It’s about designing differently.

Want strategy that respects your nervous system—and business growth that feels like a spell, not a sprint?

Join the Regenerative Business Ecosystem: my entire library of courses, live monthly calls, personalized onboarding, and a whole community of magical misfits building world-changing businesses—without selling their souls to the algorithm.

🎟️ Grab your spot now at https://learn.thedirtyalchemy.com/rbe

Open until July 29 at 11:59pm! The Regenerative Business Ecosystem is my membership for values-led entrepreneurs building businesses that regenerate people, planet, and profit. Learn more & enroll while you can here: https://learn.thedirtyalchemy.com/ecosystem-2026

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Regenerative Business Podcast. In today's episode, it's actually pulled from a video I recorded recently for my new YouTube channel. You are welcome to check it out if you want to stare at my beautiful face while listening to this. But it felt really important to bring onto the podcast, especially as more of you are thinking about how your business actually contributes to the world. This is a conversation about money, about impact, and how those two don't have to be separate systems. And if you've ever felt that tension between I want to grow my business, but I also want to do more good, this one is for you. So let's get into it. My online business has funded hundreds of thousands of dollars of reforestation and land restoration. And it wasn't because I started donating once I made it or waiting until I was successful enough. It happened because I designed profit and impact as the same system from the beginning. And once I saw how that worked, I could not imagine building a business any other way. So I know a lot of very conscious business owners, entrepreneurs, founders, people in general who care so much. Like truly give a shit. And this can sometimes feel at odds with growing a successful business. Especially as you get to phases of you have enough to give yourself a comfortable salary and pay people well, and then feels even more uncomfortable as business success keeps happening. Especially if you pay attention to current events. I woke up to environmental activism when I was 19 and unrelatedly stumbled into a marketing career, which was just scraping by for a long time, but eventually really rapidly picked up success and speed. But I talk about that in other videos. I found myself with a successful marketing agency and making more money than ever thought I would or ever dreamed of. And even though I loved my clients and they're all spiritual online businesses trying to make the world better, it kind of felt like there was this hole inside of me, and there was this really loud voice in my head of I'm not doing enough. I'm not doing enough for climate change mitigation. I'm not doing enough for my local community. The world is going to shit and you're not doing enough. And I had some well-meaning mentors in my life telling me that because of the positive impact I have on my clients, that's doing enough. And maybe for some people that is enough for them. But for me, again, with a strong background in environmental activism, it wasn't enough. And it took me a lot of years to figure out how to weave it more deeply and intentionally into my business framework. And it's looked different ways throughout the years. So if you also are an online business owner and do want to be doing more, I know that this video will give you some ideas of directions that you can go in. Now, there are two main sides to moving my business towards feeling like I am doing a shit ton of good work in terms of the change that I want to be seeing in the world. On the one side, it was incorporating my values and my activism into my actual business. And on the other side, it has been using business profits to fund the change that I want to see. And I encourage you to play on both sides because I found that they feed different parts of me. So the business profit into funding change is like, I mean, that's pretty straightforward, right? You make money in your business, a certain percentage of it is profit, you give eight percentage of that percentage towards the change that you want to see in the world. Now, for me, it started out really fluid of like, wow, I have all this extra money, what can I do with it? I'm in a unique position where my husband is a regenerative farmer, and that is exactly where my values lie. So funding actual agroforestry projects that he was working on was just so easy. I didn't have to make new connections, I didn't have to research worthy organizations. It's right in front of me, it's literally there, and I can fund this thing. So it's looked like my husband not having to work for a traditional business or even have to worry about the marketing and sales side of his farming. He can instead just give food away to our local community. It's looked like buying for farm equipment, like bucket trucks and excavators to make larger projects happen. It's looked like buying trees. And then a second category of ways that funding has happened is committing a certain percentage of program sales to a certain thing. So I've had certain programs in my business, like the regenerative business creation lab when it existed, 5% of all sales, so gross revenue, not just profit, going to regenerative farming projects. And now this year I'm committing a certain percentage of my gross sales, so not just profits, but gross revenue going towards climate mitigation projects and writing a check on a monthly basis. So at the end of each month, looking at my gross revenue and writing a check based on that percentage of gross revenue. And that change has felt so meaningful. I mean, all of the other stuff has felt meaningful, but on a monthly basis, writing a check has helped me feel so much more connected to it. And the organization I'm giving it to, they are able to not have to come to me and ask for funding for certain things. They have the money to buy trees, buy irrigation supplies. Like in January 2026, they told me that they bought all the materials for a brand new watering system, which like a lot of people are like, oh, for each sale it's a buying a new tree. But like buying a seedling or a sapling or a tree, it's like, what about actually maintaining the tree? What about watering the tree? What about paying people to care for intend for the tree for years to come? So having the materials for an actual watering system makes it so the trees and the land can be cared for and watered. But like you can kind of feel the change in the dynamic of like coming to me for money versus here's money for you and let me know how you spend it. So even if you're brand new to business, getting started with committing a certain percentage of your profits or your gross sales, starting that from day one actually makes it easier to maintain over time. Even if it's 1% of profit. Starting that early so you're in the habit of it and you are in the rhythm of it, it makes it so that you don't have some sort of whiplash of like, oh, I'm gonna start giving so much once I make seven figures in my business. It's like I know it's seven-figure and multiple seven-figure business owners that like feel anxious about writing a ten thousand dollar check to a charity, which what that's one percent of their business. But if they had been in the habit, and then I also know like eight-figure business owners who have given away 10% of their sales from the very beginning. So they have donated over a million dollars as an online business owner, is just such a beautiful example. So even if you're brand new or you are super established and you don't have a commitment in place, start thinking about it. Because not only is it going to really activate this sense of generosity in yourself and all that you gain from that, but it's gonna force you to have to research what organizations or people you would actually want to give the money to. Which guess what forces you to actually talk to people who are in the area that you care about. A really big piece for me, just so you have more examples, is before this year, so it's stuff we're already doing, is me and my husband bought land in an area on Maui where we live that used to be forested land, but because of really shitty agriculture between sandalwood, cane, and pineapple, this entire area has been deforested and it's essentially a desert. And so these seven acres that we have that we're in the process of reforesting, we're also going to be leaving to the Hawaiian people, to Kanakamaole for regenerative agriculture. You being in relationship with what your values actually are, what causes you care about? Mine are climate change mitigation, reforestation, land back to the Hawaiian people. Yours are gonna be different. What actually puts a fire in your veins? And what organizations can you fund or partner with, or what projects can you do yourself and be a part of? You've probably heard me mention the regenerative business ecosystem, but what actually is it? RBE is my all-access membership for online entrepreneurs who want to build thriving, ethical, nervous system-safe businesses, ones that feel as good to run as they look on paper. Inside, you'll get every single course, workshop, and template I've ever created from copywriting alchemy and drill-worthy offers to evergreen ecosystem and your root system. Everything's organized into clear learning pathways, so you'll always know exactly what to focus on next for your season of growth. And when you join, you'll get a personal onboarding audio from me, like a private welcome ritual, where I help you identify your next right steps based on where you are in your business right now. But my absolute favorite part of RBE is the live calls. Every month we meet twice. One of those is always a QA call with me where I answer every question you asked. You'll get what you need every time. We also move through quarterly implementation cycles, themed seasons of focus, reflection, and growth, plus access to audio drops, a private podcast, and a vibrant community where collaborations, referrals, and real friendships happen. RBE isn't another hustle container, it is a living ecosystem built on rhythm, reciprocity, and regeneration. When you join, you get to grow your wealth and impact without losing your aliveness. Members have used these tools to double their income while working fewer hours, rebuild their creativity after burnout, and finally feel grounded in their leadership again. You can join us now at thedirtyalchemy.comslash RBE, and podcast listeners get 20% off their first month with code podcast. Your next season of ease, expansion, and impact starts here inside the regenerative business ecosystem. Join now and have your best year yet. Okay, now swinging over to the weaving your values into your actual business structure. It took me years to do this to build the courage to pivot and shift my business. But over time I actually shifted so that what I'm able to talk about in my business is directly related to the earth, to regenerative agriculture, the metaphors I use. Like I wrote a book called Regenerative Business, which speaks so much about nature-based systems, both in food systems and in business systems. Most of my branding's around it. The stories I tell are around it. And once I did that and really settled into that, the feelings of I'm not doing enough went away. Because even though I was doing all of this stuff over there of actually using my online business profit to fund local change, because a lot of my working time was in this other arena that didn't directly feed back to what my soul felt was important, it didn't feel like enough. And I don't think everyone needs to do this, but for me I did. It makes it so that when I'm writing, when I'm sharing, when I'm talking, I get to relate it back to what I care about. And it took a lot of courage to get there. I pretty much had to redirect so many elements of my business, restructure my business so it was more digital products versus done for you services. And I'm not saying that that's the path that you have to take, but for some of you, shifting so that you can be talking about what you care about in your business is what spirit is asking of you. And if your next step isn't clear in that regard, again, it took me years to get to the point where I understood the direction I needed to go in and took the leap and built it up and kept going. So as you're listening to this, I really want you to ask yourself, what would it look like for your business to be a vehicle for the change you actually care about? Not someday, not when you quote unquote make it, but now in a way that feels real and integrated. Because what I've found is when impact and profit are designed as the same system, everything just feels and becomes more meaningful. Your work feels more live, your money suddenly feels intentional, and your business becomes something that you are actually proud of building and motivated to grow. So whether your next step is donating 1%, funding something locally, or starting to weave your values more directly into your work, just start somewhere. You don't have to have the full picture yet. And if this is something you want support with, building a business that actually reflects your values and creates real impact, that is exactly what we do inside of the regenerative business ecosystem. I will link to that in the show notes, but for now, I'm really glad you're here and I will talk to you next week.