I’ve never been any good at fitting in.

At school, this was a bad thing. But now it’s an ace up my sleeve. Conformity is, quite frankly, dull. It lacks substance and character. And in business, it's expensive. Because it keeps organisations doing what they've always done, in a world that no longer exists.

The world is changing. And it needs organisations willing to lead that change, not manage it.

While businesses created most of the problems we face today, businesses are also best placed to solve them.

We're at a turning point.

Most organisations treat sustainability as an afterthought. A cost to manage, a report to produce, a box to tick before getting back to the real work. I've watched this pattern repeat itself across industries and it doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense commercially.
It doesn't make sense logically.

The word economics and ecology share the same root: oikos. It's the Greek word for home. But it means more than that, it's about managing your household resources. Somewhere along the way, business decided to manage money and ignore everything else. That's a problem.

As my friend Mark Shayler says: you can't make money on a dead planet.

There is a different way.

My MA Anthropology research took me to an eco-village run by research fellow, François Schneider, in Cerbère, on the Southern France-Spain border. Here, I saw how social, economic and environmental resource management become one. They applied the same logic to all three.

What struck me was their resilience. This community produced wine profitably, built strong partnerships, and was thriving. Because when you align sustainability with financial performance, the results speak for themselves.

This insight is what drives The House Outside today.

We exist for organisations that are ready to stop apologising for their values and impact and start using it to change the world for the better. We've worked with NGOs, social enterprises, brands and founders who stand for something and are proof that impact and commercial performance go hand-in-hand.

We're not a sustainability consultancy. We're not a brand consultancy. We work at the intersection of both. Because that's where the opportunity sits. Turning social and environmental impact into commercial value.

We all work in sustainability now.

The hardest part is finding how it works for you.

Sometimes it's articulating what you stand for, so people unite around you. Sometimes you don't know where to start. Sometimes the impact is there, but it's not working commercially yet.

Together, we can change that.

— Kevin Karaca

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When I'm not helping teams and organisations thrive, you'll find me playing the guitar, rock climbing, or walking in the Peak District with my wife and lurcher.