I have grown to love the concept of LJ Urban’s marketing more and more. I think it is our duty as small business owners to help other people who haven’t been given the same opportunities as us and LJ Urban have hit the nail on the head by figuring out exactly how their business connects with people who are trying to do the same thing and giving them a hand.

What I loved about LJ Urban, when we first spoke (apart from the fact they’d been reading Simple and Loveable for a while) was how super enthusiastic they were about how they’d managed to avoid the traditional housing development marketing model. I hate billboards, I hate advertising, even if that was a viable marketing option for us, I’d never go there. It was waaay harder for them because billboards are what developers do. They’d put so much thought into how to achieve the same outcome (a lot of eyes on their project) while doing good in the world and the word they used to describe this clearly hefty ambition, was ‘fun’.

Most economists would say that it is impossible for them to succeed when a large part of this project is basically charity. I believe the opposite, they will be super successful because they are building a sustainable company, based on building sustainable products, cutting out the marketing waste and helping other people start using the same model in their own countries. Check out the review on Springwise, they described this much better than me.

LJ Urban have also got me thinking hard about what to do with my company. I love what I do and wouldn’t necessarily get hands on in many of the things I believe in at this stage, but it would be awesome to track a cut of our revenue towards a project that I believe in. I’m going to be putting a lot of thought into this in the near future but would love to hear about or from other companies who run their business in a way that benefits not only their bank account, but the community around them in a real, significant way.