In thinking about why I write, it felt the perfect opportunity to link back to the first words you will read if you’re kind enough to look at a copy of my first book, Scaling Conservation – The Business of Restoring the Wild, due to be published on June 17th, 2025, by Rethink Press and in partnership with the wonderful people at Triodos Bank UK.
Has anyone ever asked you how you think? Not just what you think, but the mechanics of your thoughts – how ideas spark, collide, and evolve inside your mind? For some, thoughts might be linear like a Tube map, or smooth and long-formed like a sound wave. For me, it’s like a firework display. Give me a single suggestion, idea, or even an object, and my brain explodes into a thousand possibilities. It’s exhilarating, exciting, and sometimes tiring; but it’s how my mind works. This mental cacophony is mostly a blessing but occasionally a curse. It’s brilliant for running scenarios, evaluating consequences, and imagining the impossible and improbable (Oxygen Conservation being a case in point). When I want to truly grapple with something complicated – to dive deep, unpack the nuances, and challenge my own real thoughts – I turn to writing. It forces my thoughts to order, align, and present themselves in a structured form I can share with others, just like I am doing now.
We’re building an entirely new asset class in real-time, meaning virtually everything we do requires invention, innovation, or iteration. I prefer to do this collaboratively, moving fast and fixing things in real time. Writing allows me to involve a wide range of people and perspectives into my developing thinking, drawing on different experiences, ideas, and reflections to sharpen and strengthen the adventure we’re on.
The environment sector remains wonderfully warm and kind but sadly still amateurish. I write to share this challenge, to highlight the improvements that we and others are working hard to make, and to expose the broader challenges the entire sector faces if it really hopes to attract the investment we need to make a meaningful difference for the planet.
The environment sector, and those working in sustainability, are often held to completely unreasonable standards. Because we advocate for less air travel, it’s assumed we must never travel. Because we want less plastic in our rivers and oceans, we are crucified for using a plastic bottle on the rare occasion when no alternative is available. Businesses that seek to do good are doubted, criticised, and met with cynicism and attack. Therefore, I write to meet this attack with radical transparency – preferring to be criticised for the truth rather than myth or rumour. I write about our thinking, our mistakes, our learning, and sometimes — importantly — to share the team’s successes.
One of our most popular pieces is “Reasons to Criticise Us.” I’ve always believed it’s better to talk openly about your compromises and contradiction rather than pretend they don’t exist — thinking back to my sporting days, I always played defence with an attacking mindset, and I’ve brought that philosophy into business too.
It’s taken me more than forty years to have a genuinely honest answer to the classic interview question: what’s your biggest strength and your biggest weakness? It’s a question I recommend everyone practise answering, because when your response feels deeply authentic, it becomes incredibly illuminating. One of my many weaknesses is that I care too much about what other people think. And not just friends, family, or colleagues — but random strangers who know little about what we do and even less about how or why we do it. Logically, I know that feedback should only come from those you would seek advice from, and that counsel should come from those already where you aspire to be — but that understanding takes practice. For me, writing, and perhaps even more importantly publishing, lets me practise that resilience. It’s an essential muscle that, in the years ahead, I know I will need to develop further.
I write to practise. Any business leader who doesn’t believe that communication is their job — from imagery to language to human interaction — doesn’t truly understand the world we live in. I write to shape the very language of Oxygen Conservation and the wider natural capital sector. Just like in the gym, every time I write is another rep and another set. I’m training to communicate, to get feedback, and to improve.
Our work spans so many different arenas — environment, sustainability, conservation, ecology, community, politics, engineering, technology, and of course, investment. It is in these conceptual collisions, in these meeting points between disparate worlds, that wonderful new ideas and opportunities emerge. By writing, I can bring these collisions to life in more thoughtful, explorative ways, creating space for unexpected solutions.
I write to try and inspire others to believe in the importance of audacity, ambition, and unreasonableness. I write for the younger me, who didn’t have access to the opportunities, information, or ideas that we all enjoy today. I’ve been incredibly privileged to have people write to me and say how impactful they’ve found our work and my writings. I write for them too.
I write because I want to share our story. I want to engage people in our process. I want others to learn from our mistakes and successes. I want to foster competition — the collaborative kind is best — but I also want thousands of startups trying to solve the environmental and natural capital challenges we face. Scaling an entirely new asset class requires an ecosystem of thinkers and deliverers. Writing is part of how we cultivate that ecosystem.
Ultimately, I write because in a world moving this fast, the only way to keep up — to build, to dream, to lead — is to capture the many ideas my mind refuses not to produce. Writing tethers the firework display of thoughts flooding my mind to something tangible, something others can pick up, challenge, improve, or just avoid – not everyone likes fireworks.
And so, just as I began: has anyone ever asked you how you think? For me, the answer lives not just in the fireworks inside my mind, but in the act of turning those explosions into words — imperfect but urgent, messy but honest. I write because it’s the best way I’ve found so far to make sense of the speed, to involve others in the building of something bigger, and to keep chasing the beautiful, improbable, exhilarating possibilities that are always just beyond explosion.