I start­ed Whole­grain Dig­i­tal with my wife Vinee­ta in 2007. At the time, con­sumers were increas­ing­ly look­ing for new and dif­fer­ent options but were faced with a choice of well known, well-pre­sent­ed brands, or niche eco brands that only appealed to hip­pies. We believed that we could help sus­tain­able brands reach a wider audi­ence. We want­ed to start an agency that could help social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble busi­ness­es com­pete with main­stream busi­ness­es; we want­ed to use our tech­ni­cal and cre­ative skills to help good brands thrive in the marketplace.

In the ear­ly years, there were times when pay­ing the rent and buy­ing food weren’t a giv­en. As our sav­ings rapid­ly dis­ap­peared, we paid the bills by tak­ing on almost any project that came our way. We did some work that I’m not proud of in order to sim­ply keep going — one for a Chi­nese phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny, anoth­er for a ​“cash for gold” busi­ness, and anoth­er for a some­what ques­tion­able nightclub. 

Tak­ing on those projects made me feel like I was a fail­ure even though they were what kept the lights on. I felt like I had let myself down and was ashamed that I had com­pro­mised my prin­ci­ples. But I’ve Learned that short term com­pro­mise can be essen­tial in achiev­ing long term goals. It’s thanks to those uncom­fort­able ear­ly deci­sions that we made it through our start-up years and now have a busi­ness that I’m proud of. 

But try­ing to be selec­tive about our clients has taught me some hard lessons about the rela­tion­ship between my val­ues and my desire to make mon­ey. It’s shown me sides of myself that I didn’t always like and it’s taught me that we just can’t have it all. Life some­times forces us to choose between doing the right thing and doing the prof­itable thing and it’s in those choic­es that we learn who we real­ly are.

Bad mon­ey

When it comes to mar­ket­ing, com­pa­nies are pay­ing mon­ey to inspire, encour­age, or trick oth­er peo­ple into chang­ing their beliefs or behav­iour — most often what and how much they should buy in the mar­ket. That might be as sim­ple as mak­ing it eas­i­er for peo­ple to pay their car tax online, encour­ag­ing peo­ple to donate mon­ey to a char­i­ty, or entic­ing them to buy a new pair of shoes. 

But some­times the behav­iour we are asked to encour­age makes us uncom­fort­able or sends up red flags; some­times the beliefs we are asked to change keep us up at night. Those oppor­tu­ni­ties are what I call bad mon­ey — paid work that goes against our per­son­al val­ues or tries to change behav­iours in a way that we dis­agree with. And how we act in those moments tells us a lot about what we tru­ly believe in.

Good inten­tions

Tun­ing in to your feel­ings is the best way to under­stand what you real­ly care about, what you’re will­ing to sac­ri­fice, and when you are (or aren’t) being hon­est with yourself.

Our busi­ness was inspired by the rise of so-called eth­i­cal con­sumers — peo­ple who treat their pur­chas­es as votes for com­pa­nies that oper­ate in line with their own val­ues. It’s the trend that drove the rise of fair trade and organ­ic prod­ucts in the mid-2000s. 

I con­sid­ered myself to be one of these eth­i­cal con­sumers. I believed my mon­ey had the pow­er to change the world based on how I spent it, but I also believed that my mon­ey had the pow­er to change the world based on how I earned it. If I was being picky about who I gave my mon­ey to, then I should be equal­ly picky about who I earned my mon­ey from.

We all have an idea about who we think we are and what we believe in. I like to think that I’m an envi­ron­men­tal­ist — wear­ing my hemp jeans, dri­ving my elec­tric car, eat­ing my organ­ic veg­eta­bles, and crap­ping in my com­post­ing toi­let. But I also like to think of myself as an entre­pre­neur. After all, it’s my busi­ness that pays for my so-called eco-friend­ly lifestyle. But those two sides of myself don’t always align. 

There have been times when I had to ask myself which part is more impor­tant, the envi­ron­men­tal­ist or the entre­pre­neur. At times I have tried to con­vince myself that I’m an envi­ron­men­tal­ist at home and an entre­pre­neur at work, but I knew that was just a lie of con­ve­nience. Robin Hood did­n’t work as a project man­ag­er for the Sher­iff of Not­ting­ham and then go vol­un­teer for the poor on week­ends. I have learned the hard way that I can’t leave my val­ues at home when I go to work.

Hard choic­es

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that means I have had to make some very hard choic­es over the years. Liv­ing your val­ues ful­ly and com­plete­ly is hard. Some­times the right deci­sion is star­ing you in the face but oth­er fac­tors, such as rela­tion­ships with peo­ple you care about, can cloud your vision and pre­vent you from see­ing what the right choice real­ly is.

On one occa­sion, we were approached by a well known right-wing pub­li­ca­tion who felt that our Word­Press exper­tise could help them grow their online read­er­ship. From a tech­ni­cal per­spec­tive, it was an inter­est­ing project. I knew that we could do a good job, but I also knew that it didn’t align with our values. 

For sev­er­al weeks I pre­tend­ed that every­thing was fine while I con­tin­ued dis­cus­sions with them. But at the same time, I was hav­ing rest­less nights. I knew deep down what I had to do but there were dol­lar signs in my eyes. So I ratio­nal­ized it. I con­vinced myself that it made good finan­cial sense and that I shouldn’t Turn it down with­out a bet­ter rea­son than: ​“It doesn’t align with my values.” 

It was my col­leagues that set me straight. They knew I was cheat­ing myself and they told me that they didn’t work at Whole­grain Dig­i­tal so that I could sell their souls to the Dev­il. I knew they were right, but think­ing about wav­ing good­bye to over £100K in rev­enue was a heavy weight to bear. I was respon­si­ble for pay­ing their salaries. But they remind­ed me that my val­ues were also their val­ues and, in doing so, helped to bear some of that burden. 

Despite some short term stress, we even­tu­al­ly got hired for oth­er projects that we were much more hap­py to work on. And I am grate­ful to my team for encour­ag­ing me to stay true to my val­ues. They helped me real­ize that I need to be hon­est with myself (and with them) and to have faith that we can suc­ceed as a busi­ness with­out say­ing yes to any offer that comes our way.

I became bet­ter at telling the dif­fer­ence between good mon­ey and bad mon­ey but that did­n’t make those deci­sions any eas­i­er. You see, even when the right thing to do is plain as day, say­ing no can be hard for oth­er more com­pli­cat­ed and con­fus­ing reasons. 

A few years ago, Whole­grain Dig­i­tal reached a point where a sin­gle client was pro­vid­ing almost half of our rev­enue. I knew it wasn’t an ide­al sit­u­a­tion but we had a great work­ing rela­tion­ship with them. That is until they asked us to build an online cam­paign lob­by­ing the British gov­ern­ment to sup­port mil­i­tary action against Palestine. 

My imme­di­ate, gut reac­tion was to just say no. But that lit­tle voice in my head told me that the client rela­tion­ship was impor­tant enough for us to at least con­sid­er it. I talked about it with the team and every­one agreed that we need­ed to draw the line. Regard­less of any per­son­al pol­i­tics, none of us were pre­pared to build a cam­paign encour­ag­ing mil­i­tary action that would inevitably destroy the lives of inno­cent peo­ple. (Our deci­sion was strength­ened by the fact that one of our team mem­bers had lived through a war and seen the impacts firsthand.) 

So I polite­ly explained to the client why we could­n’t work on the project. And I learned that it’s very hard to turn down work on eth­i­cal grounds with­out caus­ing offence, no mat­ter how sen­si­tive­ly you attempt to han­dle the situation. 

We were accused of being anti­se­mit­ic and our con­tracts were can­celled. Near­ly 50% of our rev­enue dis­ap­peared overnight. We were lucky that the busi­ness sur­vived. Look­ing back, I should have been more pre­pared for how this deci­sion would offend our client. Yes, we man­aged to bounce back with­in a few months. But maybe I should have vis­it­ed them in per­son to talk about it and hear their per­spec­tive. Maybe I should have made up an excuse to turn down the project with­out mak­ing it an eth­i­cal discussion. 

I’m not sure. But, over the years, I’ve learned that my own val­ues are not as black and white as I thought; when it comes to eth­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing, there are many shades of grey. I’ve also learned that I can­not write a for­mu­la to tell me whether a project is a good fit or not; I often need to trust my gut. And some­times that means I have to pluck up the courage to say no to bad mon­ey, even when I don’t have a clear expla­na­tion about why I need to do so.

How to turn down bad money

For over a decade, Whole­grain Dig­i­tal has had the pol­i­cy to turn down work that doesn’t match our own val­ues. It can be just as dif­fi­cult to do now as it was back at the start, but along the way, we have learned a few impor­tant things about how to turn down mon­ey with­out ruin­ing your business.

Be open about who you are

In an ide­al world, you would nev­er have to turn down paid work. But the type of enquiries you get large­ly depends on the sig­nals that you send out. If you are clear in your com­mu­ni­ca­tions about what type of work you like to do, you will attract more projects well suit­ed to your skills, inter­ests, and val­ues. This saves you the hard job of hav­ing to decide whether to turn down mon­ey and the hard­er job of actu­al­ly doing so.

How­ev­er, we’ve also learned that you need to be care­ful with your lan­guage. In the ear­ly days, our mes­sag­ing said things like: ​“We only work with sus­tain­able and eth­i­cal brands.” But we found that a lot of real­ly for­ward-think­ing and eco-friend­ly busi­ness­es didn’t actu­al­ly see them­selves as sus­tain­able or eth­i­cal brands. They would actu­al­ly say things like: ​“We are inter­est­ed in work­ing with you but we don’t think we are sus­tain­able enough.” Or they would ask ques­tions like: ​“Will you turn us down because we are not eth­i­cal enough for you?”

You don’t want to be hav­ing those sorts of awk­ward con­ver­sa­tions, and you don’t want to be los­ing busi­ness from pos­i­tive clients because you made them feel that they weren’t good enough for you. So think care­ful­ly about the word­ing you use and adjust it if it isn’t deliv­er­ing the results you want.

Under­stand your finances

It’s very dif­fi­cult to make hard deci­sions about whether to turn down a project if you don’t know if you can afford to turn it down. As a busi­ness own­er, my nat­ur­al instinct is always to assume that we need the mon­ey. But, in fact, the accounts often tell a dif­fer­ent story.

In the ear­ly days, we had to take on some projects that we were uncom­fort­able with in order to sur­vive finan­cial­ly. But we don’t have to any­more. The busi­ness is finan­cial­ly mature and we have a rep­u­ta­tion that attracts the type of clients that we want to work with. You shouldn’t give your­self a hard time for com­pro­mis­ing if there is a gen­uine finan­cial need — those com­pro­mis­es will keep you afloat until you are able to do more pos­i­tive, eth­i­cal, and ​“good” projects.

The key is to treat the finan­cial aspect as com­plete­ly objec­tive — either you need the mon­ey or you don’t. If you do, then take on the least bad work you can. If you don’t need the mon­ey, then enjoy the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be picky and only work on things that you care about.

Keep cash in the bank

It’s one thing to be objec­tive about whether you need the mon­ey, but it’s anoth­er thing to plan ahead to ensure that you can afford to be selec­tive. As every busi­ness own­er knows, you need to main­tain good cash flow at all times. 

If you are rein­vest­ing every pen­ny in growth as soon as it enters the bank account, you’ll have a lot less flex­i­bil­i­ty to turn down projects and wait for some­thing more desir­able. After we lost half our busi­ness in one fell swoop, we decid­ed to always keep at least 3 months run­ning costs in the bank at all times. That way, we would be in a bet­ter finan­cial posi­tion to make future hard deci­sions less hard. Sure, that might have slowed our growth at times. But it has also made us a lot more finan­cial­ly sta­ble and ensured that we always pri­or­i­tize the job secu­ri­ty of our team.

Set your bound­aries in writing

When mon­ey is dan­gled in front of you, it can be hard to remem­ber what it is you actu­al­ly care about. We found that writ­ing down our val­ues and prin­ci­ples was the only way to clar­i­fy what real­ly mat­ters to us so that we could hold our­selves to account. 

We doc­u­ment­ed our cri­te­ria for screen­ing projects in an eth­i­cal pol­i­cy defin­ing them as green, grey, or red. Green projects match the cri­te­ria for things that we are pas­sion­ate about such as human rights and green ener­gy. Grey means that we are either not sure (and need to research or dis­cuss the project) or that the project is eth­i­cal­ly neu­tral or harm­less. Red projects match any one of the cri­te­ria for things that we nev­er want to get involved with such as gam­bling or armaments.

These bound­aries will nev­er pro­vide per­fect clar­i­ty, and we often find that projects are too com­plex to make such a sim­pli­fied assess­ment. But hav­ing an eth­i­cal pol­i­cy laid out pro­vides a very help­ful start­ing point. 

Be nice

As we learned, there is often no good way to tell some­one that you don’t agree with the ethics of their project and we need to be respect­ful of the fact that every­one has dif­fer­ent beliefs. These kinds of deci­sions are sub­jec­tive, and we need to be care­ful not to point fin­gers or imply that we think we are bet­ter than others.

There may be occa­sions where you want to open­ly take a stand against some­thing that you don’t think is right. Fair enough. But in many cas­es, espe­cial­ly when you are bas­ing your deci­sion on a gut feel­ing, you should also try to think of the feel­ings of the peo­ple on the oth­er side. Chances are that they are good peo­ple that sim­ply have a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. A bet­ter start­ing point than just turn­ing them down would be to have a con­ver­sa­tion — explain things how you see them and ask them how they see things. It might be that the real­i­ty of the project is dif­fer­ent from how you first saw it. 

If this kind of open dia­logue is not pos­si­ble, it might some­times be eas­i­er to turn down bad mon­ey with­out talk­ing about it too much. Giv­ing a more gen­er­al rea­son such as: ​“we don’t feel that we are the right fit for the project” might sound like a cop-out, but some­times a cop-out is sim­ply bet­ter for everyone.

Trust your gut

In many cas­es, there isn’t a clear answer when it comes to decid­ing what to define as bad mon­ey or decid­ing what to do about. It should be clear by now that try­ing to keep your busi­ness aligned with your own beliefs and val­ues is hard. Look­ing back at our expe­ri­ences, the only con­stant is that things tend to go bet­ter when we trust our guts. 

We can spend hours (or even days) ana­lyz­ing a project in search of an obvi­ous or ratio­nal answer as to whether should take it on. But what mat­ters more is how we feel about it. There isn’t a spread­sheet or flow chart that can tell us how projects make us feel. Tun­ing in to your feel­ings is the best way to under­stand what you real­ly care about, what you’re will­ing to sac­ri­fice, and when you are (or aren’t) being hon­est with yourself.

What if you don’t own the business?

As co-own­er of our busi­ness, I am in the for­tu­nate posi­tion of being able to make deci­sions that keep our busi­ness in line with our beliefs. But what if these kinds of deci­sions are not yours to make? If your man­ag­er assigns you a project that you don’t feel com­fort­able with, can you real­ly say no? I’m not sure. But here are some prin­ci­ples that might help you feel good about the work you do.

Set your own per­son­al guidelines

It’s easy to pass respon­si­bil­i­ty up the chain of com­mand and say, ​“I’m just doing my job.” But you can’t entire­ly out­source your respon­si­bil­i­ty. You have to take own­er­ship of your actions and see your­self as com­plic­it in the impact of the work you do, pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive. Yes, you might some­times end up work­ing on things that you don’t agree with. But you should­n’t do so passively. 

We have our com­pa­ny guide­lines for screen­ing projects. You may not have sim­i­lar prin­ci­ples to fol­low but you can get bet­ter at lis­ten­ing to your inner com­pass. What type of work makes your heart sing? What type of work makes your gut feel a bit iffy? It’s an ongo­ing process of learn­ing and grow­ing, but if you devel­op the habit of being hon­est with your­self, you’ll be in a bet­ter posi­tion to devel­op a career that you are tru­ly proud of.

Talk open­ly at work

One of the big rea­sons that com­pa­nies don’t fil­ter the type of projects that they take on (at least from the per­spec­tive of their beliefs and val­ues) is that many work­places don’t have an open cul­ture of talk­ing about what their staff believe in. The more that peo­ple talk about things, the more that it becomes part of the orga­ni­za­tion­al dia­logue and cul­ture. And you don’t have to be an own­er to lead that charge. Push your­self to be more open. Start thought-pro­vok­ing con­ver­sa­tions, tell peo­ple what you think is impor­tant and give oth­er peo­ple an oppor­tu­ni­ty to be hon­est at work.

Chal­lenge man­age­ment when needed

It’s nev­er easy to pluck up the courage to ques­tion a man­ag­er on their deci­sion, espe­cial­ly if it appears that you are ques­tion­ing their per­son­al ethics. If you’re not care­ful, it could be a fast track to a pink slip. I active­ly encour­age our team to be open with me and chal­lenge me. But even I was a lit­tle bit pissed off when our team unan­i­mous­ly said we shouldn’t work for the right-wing publication. 

It’s a lot eas­i­er to have these con­ver­sa­tions if you’ve helped cre­ate a cul­ture that encour­ages them. Start­ing to talk about how (or whether) client work aligns with your val­ues is eas­i­er in the abstract than in the spe­cif­ic. Frame things in an aspi­ra­tional rather than a per­son­al way. Start with the assump­tion that every­one is try­ing to do the right thing and wants to improve; inspire or chal­lenge oth­ers to be the best ver­sions of them­selves rather than mak­ing them feel bad about things they did in the past. If you lis­ten to what oth­ers have to say and always keep an open mind, man­age­ment will learn to do so as well. 

Make sure you are in the right job

I hope that when you reflect on how your work fits your val­ues, you’ll find a good fit. If there isn’t, then you have three choic­es: decide that you don’t care, decide to push for change from with­in, or start look­ing for anoth­er job. Only you can know which choice is right for you. But if you strong­ly feel that your val­ues don’t match the work that you are being asked to do (and if you believe that push­ing for change is futile), then you’ll be doing every­one a favour by pack­ing your bags and tak­ing your tal­ents to an orga­ni­za­tion that is cre­at­ing a world that you want to live in.

Turn down bad money

There is no doubt that we have made life unnec­es­sar­i­ly hard for our­selves by putting our val­ues before finan­cial prof­it. Despite that, we con­tin­ue to do it. This year we have already turned down a project for a casi­no and anoth­er for an oil and gas recruit­ment company. 

Con­ven­tion­al wis­dom would say that turn­ing down any mon­ey is bad busi­ness. If max­i­miz­ing short term prof­it was the only objec­tive, I would agree. But that’s not our objec­tive. I start­ed a busi­ness because I want to spend my work­ing hours doing things that are mean­ing­ful. I want to do work that I’m proud of. 

Over the past decade, we have turned down over half a mil­lion pounds worth of rev­enue. But align­ing the work we do with the val­ues we hold has also had finan­cial ben­e­fits that are hard­er to quan­ti­fy than rev­enue but just as significant. 

When I work on things that I am gen­uine­ly pas­sion­ate about, I’m more excit­ed to get out of bed in the morn­ing, I have more ener­gy, and I feel hap­pi­er. When we feel inspired and moti­vat­ed, we do bet­ter work, we deliv­er bet­ter results for our clients. And clients who have the same val­ues as we do can see that we are will­ing to put our own necks on the line for what we believe, and that makes them excit­ed about work­ing with us. The more work we are pas­sion­ate about, the bet­ter work we do, and the more of that work we are like­ly to get. 

We have turned down a lot of work and that has result­ed in some tough, stress­ful peri­ods of time. But I tru­ly believe that stay­ing true to our val­ues has helped us grow a prof­itable long-term busi­ness with­out hav­ing to adver­tise at all.

Be ide­al­is­tic

It may be hard to do, but stand­ing up for what you believe in has a real impact. If it were easy, every­one would be doing it; it’s the hard that makes it great.

I know what you’re think­ing — not every­one is in a posi­tion to be so picky. It’s hard enough to turn down bad mon­ey when you have mon­ey. It’s far eas­i­er for me to say no to projects now that our busi­ness is estab­lished than it was dur­ing our ear­ly years. And I know that not every­one has that luxury.

If we want to be able to say no to bad mon­ey, we need to ensure that we have our pri­or­i­ties in order. If you gen­uine­ly need the mon­ey, you need to make com­pro­mis­es to care for your­self and your fam­i­ly. You should always choose to feed your chil­dren over doing work that isn’t aligned with what you believe in. We should not give our­selves a hard time for pri­or­i­tiz­ing the necessities. 

How­ev­er, we are lucky to work in an indus­try where typ­i­cal income lev­els are fair­ly high. For many of us, the ques­tion is usu­al­ly not whether turn­ing down bad mon­ey will result in us going hun­gry or home­less, but whether we’ll be able to afford a new iPhone or a hol­i­day in Thai­land. The point is not to give our­selves a hard time when things are tough, but to rec­og­nize that those of us who have the lux­u­ry to make excus­es are the ones who should make them the least.

Make good choices

When we start­ed Whole­grain Dig­i­tal, our goal was to be a shin­ing exam­ple of how busi­ness­es could be a force for good. We tried to design the busi­ness to be social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly respon­si­ble from the out­set. Twelve years lat­er, our busi­ness is a Cer­ti­fied B Corp with a no-fly pol­i­cy and numer­ous incen­tives to help staff live more sus­tain­ably. We’ve just built a small solar farm in Lon­don. We faced many chal­lenges in try­ing to keep our busi­ness prac­tices aligned with our ideals, but pick­ing and choos­ing our clients has been the tough­est by far. 

Say­ing yes to projects you believe in is easy. Say­ing no to projects you don’t believe in is hard, espe­cial­ly when you are strug­gling to get a new busi­ness off the ground. In this big, com­plex world, it might seem like per­son­al sac­ri­fice is futile — that our indi­vid­ual efforts are but a drop in the buck­et. It may be hard to do, but stand­ing up for what you believe in has a real impact. If it were easy, every­one would be doing it; it’s the hard that makes it great.

Mak­ing these eth­i­cal choic­es changes our soci­ety and changes us as indi­vid­u­als. It helps us to learn who we are and what we real­ly believe; it gives us a sense of pride in our work and improves our self-esteem. It can open our eyes to oth­er issues that we nev­er would have stopped to under­stand and it can lead us on a path where we will find oth­er like-mind­ed peo­ple work­ing on projects that are try­ing to do the same thing. 

So be more hon­est with your­self. Have the guts to act on your beliefs. And try your best to make good choices.